Horror-prone and exotic, a continent in waiting, defenseless, where everything remains to be done: Africa as accounted for by the "North" is in a sad state. Or, yet again, is in the midst of an unfettered economic boom. A tale of extremes prevails, lacking all nuance.

Other accounts are in need of hearing: Africa's own, unmediated by the simplifying gaze of the self-anointed center.

AFRICA ACTS aims to highlight such accounts.

Over the course of a week, from 5 to 12 July, twelve performance artists and dancers, musicians, poets, film and video makers, DJs and VJs come together in a series of carte blanche events. In the mix as well, an exclusive film series dedicated to performance as engaged social practice.

The artists around whom AFRICA ACTS revolves work resolutely outside the box. They share a refusal of easy choices and a dedication to forms of expression that push the boundaries of their respective disciplines.  Their practices speak truth to power, rejecting in manifold ways the social, political and economic violence of our contemporary world and seeking, simultaneously, to transcend it. Theirs is art that re-enchants the social order, thinking it through the prism of imaginaries that stand on their heads clichés and ready-made ideas.

A first in France, AFRICA ACTS takes place in a range of spaces across Paris: museums and contemporary art centers, jazz clubs, university lecture halls, streets and plazas. In these stings, audiences are invited to become active participants in the making of performances both original and radical.

AFRICA ACTS is deployed in dialogue with the European Conference on African Studies (ECAS). Held every two years in a European capital, in 2015 ECAS brings to the Sorbonne some 2000 scholars around one key theme, which AFRICA ACTS celebrates and embodies: "Collective Mobilizations in Africa".