but is it (contemporary African) art?
I found this to be interesting article on Yinka Shonibare, if only because it inadvertently hints at a European obsession with whitewashing any African protestation of the colonial status quo.
This is not exactly the writer’s take on what’s going on. Here is how she talks about the problematic of a hybrid African identity that marks Shonibare’s work – even, guarantees its success in Europe.
In many ways, the stories around colonialism, African culture and history have not yet washed over sufficiently to give space for African art which can talk of the present.
Shonibare still lies undeniably attached to the stereotypes of African art by discussing African issues.
Indeed, the circle is vicious; there is no way in which his art could be significant if it was not somehow about African colonial history.
The irony lies not only in his work, but also in the situation. A state of affairs in which Shonibare’s willingness to speak of African identity and colonial history is informed by the knowledge that we would not take notice of his art if it did not touch on these themes.
Ambivalently, we continue to foster and assert myths of what African art is. We are lured to images of war, darkness and disaster and to a discussion of the colonial past.
And finally,
One can only hope that Shonibare’s works and his reception will have the capacity to activate a dialogue on our shared past and future, eventually allowing us to move beyond a discussion of an imagined Africa to a contemporary one.
To begin with I believe the question of what contemporary African art is, is a problematic one.
What the framing of the question does is it serves to presume an authority about “what the art is” and “what it is not”; even, “what the artist is” and “what he is not.”
We are told that Shonibare is a “hybrid identity”. He is like Jamaican-born hybrid Naipaul. He “carries the history of colonialism in his work and biography” – and as evidence of this the author quotes the only line in the entire article by the artist – “My work is about colonialism, about my own colonial background.” And that’s the first and last we hear from him.
All other quotes about hybrid identity are in fact from Naipaul – to whom the artist has been likened by the author.
“the stories around colonialism…have not yet washed over sufficiently to give space for African art which can talk of the present”
This presumes that “contemporary” African art is what we must all make space for. And in order for space to be made for contemporary African art, we all need to “get over” our colonial baggage – get over the stories we have and get over African culture and history. We must forget, it seems. The contemporary has no space for the past; or what is indigenous anymore.
“there is no way in which his art could be significant if it was not somehow about African colonial history”
This according to the writer is a kind of tragic “irony”. Shonibare’s work is trapped. In order to be successful works of art, they must (regrettably) regress into telling those stories of colonialism.
But Shonibare himself is also trapped, according to the author. He is caught up in a –
“state of affairs in which (his) willingness to speak of African identity and colonial history is informed by the knowledge that we would not take notice of his art if it did not touch on these themes.”
hmm. So the social production of art is part of a system that reproduces false value; but when the artist dares to consciously subvert this system by giving us what ‘we’ want (albeit not what ‘we’ need), then he too is just a victim of reproducing notions of an “imagined Africa”.
Shonibare is not really a contemporary African artist. Maybe one day he will be; but not yet.
Ja, right!
Maybe Shonibare is “caught up”, trapped and chained… the truth is I know very little about him or his work. He certainly seems to be ‘successful’ at working a select art gallery circuit – and making it work for him.
Something about his headless colonial figures made me sit up though. And after reading this article I am, ironically, slightly more interested in what he will do and especially, how he will be received, in years to come.
PIC: Reverend on Ice, 2005, by Yinka Shonibare
Life-size fiberglass mannequin, Dutch wax-printed cotton, steel
learning html
I’ve changed this blog’s theme and have been off-line for a day.
It’s like shaving one’s head on a whim I guess. You catch yourself in the mirror and for a second you wonder about the stranger staring back at you; until you remember who you are. I like that. Catching myself off guard. Also your head feels exposed and you feel more vulnerable to the world; more honest.
But back to the blog. Changing the theme allows me I suppose to see old content afresh, in a new form, and I get a kick out of that.
I don’t like this new form by the way, but what it’s doing is to get me to practice html – which I’ve played with before but damn! it’s a slow process.
Like learning a new language, unless you’re practising it, the vocab leaves you much quicker than it takes to lodge into your head. Like maths, too.
Guess it’s why I’m digging html – it calms me. It’s certain and specific. One digit in a spot produces some thing. Change one part, you change the meaning of the whole.
So this blog, whilst public, is now officially a training ground for my html practice. Things may not be how you last left them.
glitter-graphics.com
when death awakes
I hear the township moaning, dying. My limbs are tired. My feet are blistering, bleeding. I cannot feel my pain. I cannot pretend that this is a dream. The vultures have landed. Maybe death is waking up from a dream. Maybe. I don’t know.
I don’t know anything for certain. I only know that I must face death, my death. I must confront the moment we are all taught to dread. The process has already started. We are all dying yet we appear to be living.
I can smell the stench of death. It is in the air, in the food we cook and disguise with herbs and spices. It is in the water we drink and its poisons that are draining our energy, forcing us to become old when we are young. The message is clear, time has run out. We are running out.
I feel close to madness because it is the only way of understanding what is happening. There is nothing grand, poetic or tragic about our lives, our failure. The poets have lied to us. The historians soiled honour. We will meet our demise with the smallness of our lives. Our heroes have been clowns, charlatans, they have led us further into blindness.
I don’t believe in anyone any more.
I’ve just read The Quiet Violence of Dreams by K. Sello Duiker. Any review attempt would seem somehow inane, as would superlatives and flattering adjectives. But fuck, good book.
Duiker took his own life three years ago. He published two novels and was busy on a third when he died – one month after the unexpected death of his contemporary Phaswane Mpe. He was 30.
Link: To Burn So Bright and Die So Young by John Matshikiza, another gentle G who surprised us all with his passing in September last year.
The truth is I only want to fly, to spread my wings a little and feel warm air form curlicues under my arms as I glide. I want to close my eyes forever and let forever embrace me secretly. I want to be the beloved for a change and not know love as an unreliable friend always making promises. Is that too much to ask for?
(hamba kahle y’all)
* All extracts from The Quiet Violence of Dreams
pause
Not the site but me. Will post soon.
glitter-graphics.com
*two rubais
You walk in looking like you’re about to say,
“Enough of this!” But it’ll take more
than frowns and harsh talking
to make my love leave.
This is the undauntable bird,
who’s never been caged,
or felt fear.
……………………………………………
Imagining is like feeling around
in a dark lane, or washing
your eyes with blood.
You are the truth
from foot to brow. Now,
what else would you like to know?
……………………………………………
– by Jalal al-din Rumi, 1207-1273 (translated by Coleman Barks)
* The rubai is the four-line poem indigenous to the Persian language.
To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never, to forget. – Arundhati Roy
Below – The beginnings of occupation September 11, 1922.
Links:
Video – on youtube taken from a music/video collage called we
Israel launches new attacks on Gaza, Tuesday 27 Jan 2009, Press TV
* Post title taken from John Berger
living philosophy (1)
After reading Trebitsch’ preface to Critique of Everyday Life, I’m left asking myself exactly what I will get from embarking on this exercise… it’s going to be a dense read!
I started with the intention of finding a place to locate a critique on how we “watch” – how we view and imbibe the visual. For one.
I’m also interested in how the dominant culture (or, Adorno’s culture industry) uses “knowledge” to manipulate our understanding of how we absorb the world around us – and more specifically how we make sense of how we absorb visual representations of the world around us.
It ascribes a value to what we see… including everyday life, work, time, people, the movement of people, etc. Narratives and specifically visual narratives on beauty, desire, trespassers or terrorists; these are manufactured notions. They’ve become everyday, where the “everyday” is a construct that is not revolutionary; where it is reactionary, assumed.
And so I guess I’m wanting to find the revolutionary potential within the everyday that moves against its numbing grain. Festivals do it. Carnivale does it. “Festival, like revolution, marks both a break in everyday life and a rehabilitation of the everyday” – this idea according to Trebitsch stems directly from Critique of Everyday Life (xxviii).
I started with Adorno to find a place for all this – and I should have stayed there perhaps. I will get back there maybe. This is an unguided, unled excursion into an intellectual quagmire I fear I’m wholly unequipped to navigate. But then I don’t trust the “institution” entrusted with guiding me. So what to do!
Just be lost for now. Try to read with understanding where I can. Take what is useful for what I’m trying to do? And get through it as quickly as possible! Be guided by my own ineptitude for now and see where I end up.
Why Lefebvre? Because I’m interested in the theme of “revolution as the revolution of everyday life” (xxvii) and the call for “revolution in individual everyday life” (xxviii) – which lies at the heart of what the situationist movement was about.
Lefebvre broke with the situationists in 1961/1962/1963 – each accused the other of plagiarising the other’s writings but of course the frissures ran deeper than this:
…it’s a delicate subject, one I care deeply about. It touches me in some ways very intimately because I knew them very well. I was close friends with them. The friendship lasted from 1957 to 1961 or ’62, which is to say about five years.
And then we had a quarrel that got worse and worse in conditions I don’t understand too well myself, but which I could describe to you.
In the end, it was a love story that ended badly, very badly. There are love stories that begin well and end badly. And this was one of them.
Critique was pre- the break-up and his other text that I am more interested in getting to – The Production of Space – was published post- the break-up with the situationists. Here I’m keen to get to his ideas on re-appropriating time, work, space for ‘other’ purposes as well as his ideas on spectacle.
Finally, I’m keen to explore what Trebitsch says about his persistance in defining a “living philosophy”:
I find Henri Lefebvre’s originality, not to say marginality, lies in an unshakeable determination not only to reconcile Marxism and philosophy and to endow Marxism with philosophical status, but also to establish Marxism as critical theory, i.e. as both philosophy and supercession of philosophy (xiv-xv).
the palestinian holocaust
The Jewish Holocaust (Nazi Germany)
The Palestinian Holocaust (Israel)
View the complete photo essay here by Norman Finkelstein illustrating history then – and now: “The grandchildren of Holocaust survivors from World War II are doing to the Palestinians exactly what was done to them by Nazi Germany.”
Also this essay by Bill Bowles Now Why Can’t Those Damn Palestinians Just Disappear?
And by Ali Abunimah Why Israel Won’t Survive
critique of everyday life
Right. I’m setting a second task to read Lefebvre’s trilogy on Everyday Life. The aim, as with the previous exercise, is to use this space to discipline myself into getting through some texts.
I’d prefer rigorous engagement with others of course but don’t have the will to seek out peeps to come here and partake. So if you’ve stumbled upon this post and are interested in reading along or adding your sense to the coffer, you’re welcome!
It would be very cool too if someone(/s) who has read this or is familiar with Lefebvre’s work happens by! I’m approaching this very much as a layperson sans qualifications, other than my experience of daily life. That’s my disclaimer done.
We’ll start with the first volume simply entitled Critique of Everyday Life, summed up on the back-sleeve as an analysis of the alienating phenomena of daily life under capitalism.
I’m reading the 2008 edition published by Verso – you can squizz this handy summary of it here.
By the next post (around this time next week) I’d have read the short preface by Michel Trebitsch.
gaza
a great miracle happened here
a festival of lights
a casting of lead upon children
an army feasting on epiphany
i know nothing under the sun over the wall no one mentions
some must die wrapped in floral petroleum blanket
no coverage
i have come to every day armageddon
a ladder left unattended
six candles burn down a house
a horse tied to smoke
some must die to send a signal
flat line scream live stream river a memory longer than life spans
the living want to die in their country
no open doors no open seas no open
hands full of heart five daughters wrapped in white
each day jihad
each day faith over fear
each day a mirror of fire
the living want to die with their families
the girl loses limbs her brother gathers arms
some must die for not dying
children on hospital floor mother beside
them the father in shock this is my family
i have failed them this is my family i did
not raise their heads i have buried them
my family what will i do now my family is bread
one fish one people cut into pieces
there is a thirst thefts life
there is a hunger a winter within winter
some must die to bring salvation
i have come to end times always present
the woman lost parents her children and screams
my sister i have lost my sister i want to die
my sisterʼs eyes were honey her voice mine
i canʼt face this only god only god my sister
medics killed schools hit convoys bombed
the injured are dying the dead are buried in three
hours the people pray together and curse the people
mourn loud and quiet always too loud not enough
some must die because they are the vicinity
some must die because it was written
no army does not apologize has never
apologized authority chases paper assembly
occupation settles deeper
a great miracle here
the living are dying and the dying living
a festival of lights
a strip a land a blaze
the sea a mirror of fire
a casting of lead upon children
their heads roll off their shoulders into streets
their tops spin in hands
an army feasting on epiphany
driving future into history
carrying torches into women
– by suheir hammad
niteflyer's pozi 