The Ghana ThinkTank: Developing the First World
The Vera List Center for Art and Politics has hired the Ghana ThinkTank Mobile Unit to solve the problems posed by the MobilityShifts: An International Future of Learning Summit.
The “Mobile Unit” is a custom-built teardrop trailer designed to journey into different locales in the so-called First World where it collects issues of concern to the local community. From there, the problems get sent to think tanks in Ghana, Cuba, El Salvador, Mexico, Serbia, Iran, and Afghanistan or other countries, where strategies are developed to address the problems. The trailer then rolls back into the communities, this time as a mobile workstation, cooperating with community members to apply the solutions received from this global network of think tanks. Ghana ThinkTank thus reverses the customary flow of knowhow from so-called developed to developing countries in playful and provocative ways.
For the duration of the summit, the Think Tank will be positioned outside The New School’s historic main building to ask, “what is wrong with digital education?” Solutions received from this international network of think tanks will be presented, and additional queries gathered. So come, voice your concerns with digital education and take note of the Ghana ThinkTank solutions.
Ghana ThinkTank was created in 2006 by Christopher Robbins, John Ewing, and Matey Odonkor. Maria del Carmen Montoya joined the project in 2009. Between them, they have lived and worked in West Africa, the South Pacific, former Yugoslavia, the Caribbean, and South, Central and North America. They have exhibited in the National Museum of Wales, PERFORMA, Kunsthallen Nikolaj/ Copenhagen Contemporary Art Center, the Station Museum, and received awards from the Knight Foundation, MIT Community Fund, New York Foundation for the Arts, STEIM, SIGRAPH, and Rhizome Commission. Ghana ThinkTank was a finalist for the Frieze Foundation Cartier Award in 2010. http://ghanathinktank.org/