ABSTRACT
In 2003, the artist Goddy Leye promoted Bessengué City , a public art event organized in a neighborhood of Douala, the economic capital of Cameroon. The project, supported by the international funds of RAIN-Rijksakedmie International Network, involved four artists in producing site-specific artworks in Bessengué, a neighborhood that UN Habitat terms a slum. Within this project, the sound artist James Beckett created a one-kilometer-range radio station, easily authorized to broadcast in Cameroon, since it was an artwork. The inhabitants of Bessengué-an informal settlement, constantly threatened with forced eviction, without streets, electricity, sanitation, access to clean water or waste management, positioned in a hazardous location regularly impacted by floods during the rainy season and dangerously connected to a major road-were the first neighborhood of Douala to have their own radio station. A group of young people and the community started volunteering to produce radio programs, and the simple technical equipment was located in a shelter created by the artist Jesus Palomino. One year later, after the end of the Bessengué City public art event and during the summer holidays, the radio station was still broadcasting. Ten years later, after a series of art-based workshops and projects (Les Ateliers Urbains de Bessengué, 1 Bessengué City, 2 Bourne Fountain, 3 La Passerelle 4 and the SUD Salon Urbain de Douala 5 ), Bessengué has a development committee, streets, electricity and fountains with access to clean water. The place where many public art interventions have been implemented is now a shared space, a place people care for, where people meet and children play. It is not an anonymous slum; it is now the neighborhood of Bessengué.
