Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy (L) on the set of Ms Marvel, directing actor Mehwish Hayat (R). Credit: Disney/Lucasfilm

By Zofeen Ebrahim
KARACHI, Apr 25 2023 (IPS)

The announcement by Lucas film’s president, Kathleen Kennedy, about the upcoming three new live-action Star Wars films was enough for lawyer Maliha Zia to get euphoric.

But there is another reason for the excitement for many Pakistani Star Wars movie buffs like her. Among the three top-notch directors that Kennedy said her company would be helming the three films is Pakistan’s Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy.

“This is beyond phenomenal,” said an excited Zia, associate director at the Karachi-based Legal Aid Society, who, by her own unabashed admission, is a life-long Star Wars fan, watching the films since she was four.

Now a mother of three, she religiously watches the original three every year, coercing her 8-year-old to watch with her. “I never imagined that someone from Pakistan would ever get the chance to direct a film from this iconic series,” she added.

What is even more exciting for the lawyer is that she had not even in her wildest of dreams imagined she would actually know someone who would be directing them. “Something so iconic [as Star Wars films] seemed so far away, untouchable and amazing; it’s unbelievable that it seems so much closer now!” She and Chinoy have collaborated for a long time on an animated series on women’s right to property.

The Disney-owned studio may have selected “the best and most passionate filmmakers” in the three directors, including Dave Filoni and James Mangold, but with Chinoy overseeing the final new movie, there will be many firsts.

“She is the only Pakistani, the only South Asian, the only woman, and also the only woman of colour to be helming a Star Wars movie,” said Omair Alavi, a showbiz critic, and a huge Star Wars fan, excited by the news of the three films. Although for him, “the fabulous episodes of The Mandalorian” on the TV screen kept him well appeased during this interim period.

This year’s USC Annenberg (it examines specific demographics  — gender, race/ethnicity of directors across the 100 top domestic fictional films in North America) study, titled Inclusion in the Director’s Chair, looked at the gender, race and ethnicity of directors across 1600 top films from 2007 to 2022, found a mere 5.6 percent were women, and the ratio of men to women directors across 16 years 11 to 1. In 2022, it was 9 percent — down from 12.7 percent in 2021.

“Hollywood’s image of a woman director is white,” said the study and pointed out that the “think director, think male” phenomenon disregarding the “competence and experience of women and people of color” should be done away with. In addition, instituting checks in the evaluation process of potential directors was also critical.

In a way hiring Chinoy may open the doors for the unrepresented.

She is also the only among the trio to have won two Oscars (for her documentaries denouncing violence against women). In addition, Chinoy has seven Emmys under her belt, aside from being honoured Hilal-i-Imtiaz, Pakistan’s second-highest civilian award.

“So so proud of you, my friend. May the force be with you!” global actor Priyanka Chopra congratulated Chinoy on her Instagram Stories.

Although she is a seasoned documentary filmmaker, having directed and produced the first ever Pakistani 3D computer-animated adventure film Teen Bahadur in 2015 and directing two episodes of the 2022 TV series Ms Marvel, this will be Chinoy’s first stint in Hollywood. Will she be able to handle the big project?

“Sharmeen has a knack of doing things that other people only dream of,” said her former employee, Hussain Qaizar Yunus, a film editor, who, although awestruck, was “unsurprised” to learn of Chinoy’s being selected to direct the Hollywood movie.

And with the last few films not very well received, he said, “A fresh perspective from someone like Sharmeen is exactly what the franchise needs right now.”

Nevertheless, she was an “unusual choice” to be directing a Star Wars film. But her documentary background could work to her advantage, he said. “Her experience of telling real stories of real people would perhaps ground the story with a sense of realism to what is otherwise an epic space opera,” he added and hoped Chinoy would bring South Asian representation to Star Wars, both in front of and behind the camera, “the same way that she did with Ms Marvel”.

English actress Daisy Ridley (L), Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy (middle), and filmmaker Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy (R) at Star Wars Celebration in London on April 7, 2023. Credit: Disney/Lucasfilm

Chatting with IPS over WhatsApp, Chinoy said: “As a filmmaker who has championed heroes throughout her career, I think that Star Wars fits in with that mission of a hero’s journey of overcoming against all odds.”

“The story I will be bringing into the world is about the rebuilding of the new Jedi Order, the new Jedi academy,” said the newly appointed director, who seems to be a Star Wars fan, having named her dog Chewbacca (after the fictional character in the Star Wars). Set 15 years after the end of the last movie (2019), British actor Daisy Ridley will return to her role of Rey, the heroine of the last trilogy, as she fights to revive the Jedi order.

“She’ll be able to pull it off; she knows her job!” said Alvi confidently.

Kennedy also revealed that these films will take place across vast timelines from the very early days of the Jedi to a future beyond Rise of Skywalker. “Hopefully, this new series will attract both the older and the newer generation; my generation, who watched it as kids, can watch it with their kids or grandparents can take their grandchildren; it will be worth the wait,” anticipated journalist Muna Khan, who watched the first film as a kid back in the late 70s and the memory of which is “seared in my mind”. These films are not just for folks who watched it then; they’re “timeless, and each new instalment adds to the timelessness” she pointed out. The first of the three films are slated for release in 2025.

IPS UN Bureau Report

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By SWAN
PARIS, Mar 28 2023 (IPS)

It’s a new direction for UNESCO, getting involved in movies, so to speak. The United Nations’ cultural agency and Netflix – the global streaming and production company – have partnered to “support” and “promote” Africa’s new generation of filmmakers, and the results will be revealed to the world from March 29, when six short films by young directors will be available in 190 countries via the video-on-demand platform.

The films are the winners of an “African Folktales, Reimagined” competition that was launched by both entities in 2021, attracting more than 2,000 entries, according to UNESCO.

Ernesto Ottone Ramírez, the agency’s assistant director-general for culture, said the joint initiative “pays homage to Africa’s centuries-old tradition, passing wisdom from generation to generation, from elders to the youngest”. He acknowledged that this is a departure for UNESCO whose work with streaming platforms have mostly focused on regulatory and policy issues.

Meanwhile Tendeka Matatu, Netflix’s director of film for Sub-Saharan Africa, said the company believes that “great stories are universal and that they can come from anywhere and be loved everywhere”. He said that what Netflix and UNESCO have in common is the desire to “promote the multiplicity of expression”.

The submissions to the film contest went through a first selection process, before being narrowed to 21 candidates, who presented their projects to an international jury. The judges – including film mentors – then selected six finalists: from Kenya (Voline Ogutu), Mauritania (Mohamed Echkouna), Nigeria (Korede Azeez), South Africa (Gcobisa Yako), Tanzania (Walt Mzengi Corey) and Uganda (Loukman Ali).

Each finalist won $25,000 and a production grant of $75,000 to create their short movie with a local production company, UNESCO said. The films were completed earlier this year, and their streaming (as an “anthology”) will begin with the 6th Kalasha International Film and TV Market in Kenya, a three-day trade fair taking place March 29 – 31.

Speaking at an in-house “advance” showing of the films at UNESCO headquarters in Paris, Ottone Ramírez said the agency was “particularly pleased” that the short films captured “not only the culture of Africa, but also the cultural diversity within Africa”.

Some observers privately expressed concerns, however, that any association with global streaming platforms could lead to formulaic storytelling or could undermine local film ventures – a fear that Ottone Ramírez said was unfounded.

He told SWAN that the filmmakers had complete freedom, and that the films were their own vision. What Netflix “put at their disposal”, he said, was access to an experienced film partner, as well as financial and technical support. (The “Netflix-appointed supervising producer” was Steven Markovitz from Big World Cinema, an African production company based in Cape Town, South Africa.)

UNESCO says the partnership illustrates a “shared commitment to the continent’s audiovisual industries, which generate jobs and wealth” and that the creative industries “are an asset for the sustainable development of the continent”.

The creative industries are also an opportunity for companies seeking to expand into new markets, which could be mutually beneficial, observers say. While Nigeria and a few other countries have well-established filmmaking sectors, many African directors might benefit from international support.

Anniwaa Buachie, a Ghanaian-British actress and filmmaker, told SWAN that “budget” is one of the biggest constraints for independent films. “You cannot go back and re-shoot, money is tight, which also means time is limited. You just have one chance to make sure you get the right shots, the right lighting, etc.”

Some of the industry challenges are highlighted in a report UNESCO produced in 2021 on Africa’s film sector, titled The African film Industry: trends, challenges and opportunities for growth. The report found that the sector could create some 20 million jobs and generate 20 billion dollars in annual revenue on the continent. With the survey, UNESCO could identify the need to create capacity building and to “scale up” efforts by policy makers – using Nigeria as one model, Ottone Ramírez said.

(Read here: The African film Industry: trends, challenges and opportunities for growth – UNESCO Digital Library)

It was on the completion of the report that UNESCO decided on the current project, Ottone Ramírez told SWAN. At the same time, Netflix was also seeking to launch a project in Africa, so talks began on a partnership, with “months” of discussion about the format and the call for applications, he added.

As for “priorities”, UNESCO hoped to include indigenous languages and gender equality in the project, he said. Alongside English and French, the winning films are made in a variety of languages including Hausa, KiSwahili, Runyankole, Hassaniya Arabic, and isiXhosa – reflecting the UN International Decade of Indigenous Languages (2022-2032).

Many of the stories also centre on women characters, with topics including domestic violence and the struggle for equality within patriarchal structures.

“It shows us how important this subject is for the young generation of African filmmakers,” Ottone Ramírez said. “I would say it was the main theme in each of the 21 pitches before the final selection. We’re seeing another way of storytelling.”

Part of the aim was equally to boost opportunities for women filmmakers – something that has already been happening with the long-running FESPACO film festival in Burkina Faso – and to focus on directors living in Africa, Ottone Ramírez told SWAN.

During the selection of the winning pitches, UNESCO and Netflix acted as observers, leaving the choice to the international jury, he said.

Aside from being able to produce their films, perhaps the biggest advantage to the winners is that they have access to a global platform, which Netflix said it is “proud” to provide.

“We know Africa has never lacked in talent and creativity” said Matatu, the Netflix director. “What has been in short supply, however, is opportunity. Emerging talents often struggle – they struggle finding the right resources and the visibility to fully unleash their potential and develop their creative careers.”

The winning short films will potentially reach some 230 million subscribers of the video-on-demand platform around the world, he said – an unprecedented opportunity for these young filmmakers. – SWAN

Industry mentors were Bongiwe Selane, Jenna Bass, Pape Boye, Femi Odugbemi, Leila Afua Djansi, and Tosh Gitonga.

Youn Sun Nah in Brussels (photo by A.M.)

By SWAN
BRUSSELS, Jan 31 2023 (IPS)

When the parents of Korean jazz singer Youn Sun Nah realized that the COVID-19 pandemic had begun, they called and urged her to return to Seoul from New York, where she was based at the time.

“They said buy the ticket immediately,” the singer recalls. “There’ll be a total lockdown and you might never be able to come home. When I watched television and heard that borders would be closed, I packed my bags and I got the last ticket. I thought I would come back in three months, but not a year.”

In Korea, under travel restrictions like most of the world, Sun Nah wondered how she could fight the blues that threatened to overwhelm her. She began writing lyrics and composing music for what would become the extraordinary Waking World (Warner Music), her 11^th album, released in 2022.

The songs are an exploration of the life of an artist, confronting angst and despair, and their haunting beauty – as well as experimental range of styles – may help Sun Nah to broaden her already substantial international audience, as she embarks on a “Spring Tour” beginning in March. With the memorable track Don’t Get Me Wrong, the album also contains a message about the dangers of spreading misinformation and hate, the “other” ills of the pandemic.

Born in Seoul to musician parents (and named Na Yoon-sun), Youn Sun Nah learned to play the piano as a child but grew up focusing on the usual curriculum at school. She graduated from university in 1992 with an arts degree, having studied literature, and she thought this would be her career direction. She didn’t want to pursue music, she says, because she had seen her parents – a choir director and a musical actress – work too hard.

Still, when the Korean Symphony Orchestra invited her to sing gospel songs in 1993, she began taking her first steps in the world of performing and recording, eventually moving to France to study music, as she relates. In Paris, she followed courses in traditional French chanson and enrolled at the prestigious CIM School of Jazz and Contemporary Music, where she had to overcome certain artistic challenges.

In the years since then, she has performed worldwide, sung at the closing ceremony of the Sochi Winter Olympics in 2014, contributed to a Nina Simone tribute album, and taken part in the 2017 International Jazz Day concert which was held in Havana, Cuba. (International Jazz Day is an initiative of legendary jazz pianist Herbie Hancock and the United Nations cultural agency, UNESCO.) In addition, she has received the Officier des Arts et des Lettres award from the French Ministry of Culture, the Sejong Culture Award from Korea, and a host of other music prizes and accolades.

In an interview with SWAN before a recent concert in Brussels, Youn Sun Nah spoke of her career with self-deprecating humour, discussing the effects of the pandemic on her art and the meanings behind the songs on Waking World. She shed light, too, on the experience of being a jazz singer amidst the global Korean pop music phenomenon. The edited interview follows.

SWAN: How would you describe yourself?

Youn Sun Nah: I’m a jazz singer from Korea. I studied jazz in France, and I travel around the world, and I’m kind of all mixed up, but I’m very happy with that.

SWAN: Are you now based in France?

YSN: No, I used to live in Paris for a long time, but actually, I don’t have a place to stay in France now. Every time I go there, it’s just for the tour, so I go to different places. I could say I live in Korea, but it’s a nomadic life.

SWAN: Let’s speak about Waking World, which was released last January. You’re doing a tour to promote it now, as that wasn’t possible earlier, during the pandemic.

YSN: Yes, we couldn’t really do the promotion thing, but c’est la vie. My manager called in 2021 to say: now you can come, you can take the plane now. So, I quickly bought the ticket, came back to France and recorded the album in Paris, and then I did some shows.

SWAN: A lot of artists have had to find ways to keep going during the pandemic, and it’s been especially difficult for many musicians who couldn’t tour, couldn’t be on the road. Has that been the case for you too?

YSN: As you know, jazz is really live music, and I think most jazz musicians feel the same way. You want to do as many gigs as possible. I don’t know if people listen to my music on platforms like Spotify or iTunes, but I feel very lucky to perform live music. More than 400 jazz festivals exist in France, so it’s a privilege.

SWAN: How did Waking World come about, and what does it mean for your fans, for you?

YSN: When I went back to Korea at the start of the pandemic, I was kind of optimistic that things wouldn’t last long. Everyone was wearing masks, but we could move around, just not take the plane. Then … six months, seven months, eight months. From that moment, I got really depressed, and I thought that maybe I should change my job, that maybe I would never be able to go back to Europe and perform. What can I do, I thought. All the musicians I played with were in Europe because I studied jazz in France, and I don’t know that many jazz musicians in Korea. So, I had a kind of homesickness even though I was home. But in Korea, we never lose hope, so I think that’s in my DNA. I told myself: you should wake up, and you should do something else; you can’t disappoint the people who’ve supported you for a long time, you should have something to present to your audience. So, I started writing some new tunes. Without the musicians I usually work with, I had to do it all by myself.

SWAN: But you’re used to singing in English?

YSN: Yes, after I started studying jazz. You know, when I came to France, I didn’t know what jazz was. If I’d known, I would definitely have gone to the States. I was so naïve … and maybe stupid? One day I’d asked one of my musician friends in Korea what kind of music I should study to become a good singer, and he’d said: do jazz. What is jazz, I asked him. And he said: jazz is original pop music, so if you learn how to sing jazz, you can sing anything. And I said: oh, it sounds great!

I’m a huge fan of French chanson, so he said one of the oldest jazz schools in Europe is located in Paris, so go there. Oh, great! I arrived there, and what you learn at school is American standards, and everything was in English. I actually studied in four different schools at the same time because, well, I’m Asian, and I’m used to that education system where you don’t have to have any free time for yourself! When I had only six hours of lessons, I thought: what am I gonna do with the other eighteen hours? (Laughter.)

SWAN: That kind of approach must have helped with the album?

YSN: Well, I didn’t know when I could record this album, so I just kept writing and composing. And arranging by myself, as I had a lot of time. But, as you know, jazz is like … we should gather together and arrange in the moment. When I could finally fly to France, I just gave all the material to the musicians. And they said, oh, we’ll respect your scores. And I said, no, no, do what you want. But they played exactly what I wrote, every single note. I’m embarrassed.

SWAN: Tell us about the inspiration behind some of tracks, such as Bird On The Ground, the first song, which has the refrain “I want to fly. I want to fly. I want to fly.”

YSN: Well, “bird on the ground” – that’s me during the pandemic.

SWAN: Don’t Get Me Wrong, the second track, has an infectious melody, but the message is clear: the world “has no chance with those who lie and lie”. Tell us more.

YSN: During the pandemic, I could only watch TV or go on the internet to know what was happening. But sometimes the information wasn’t true, and even though it’s a lie you end up believing everything. Yeah, so I thought the world has no chance with people who lie.

SWAN: The sixth track has an intriguing title – My Mother. (Lyrics include the line: “How can you keep drying my eyes every time, my mother?”) What’s the story behind it?

YSN: With the touring, I usually don’t spend that much time at home. But with the pandemic, I was home for a whole year, and I spent a lot of time with my mother, and I really had the chance to talk about everything, about her life and what she experienced. She’s my best friend, and we became even closer.

SWAN: And the title song Waking World?

YSN: I wanted this to be a dream and not real, but at the same time this is the reality, so it was kind of ambiguous for me. Where am I? Am I dreaming? No, you’re wide awake.

SWAN: Tangled Soul, track eight?

YSN: My soul was completely tangled. (Laughter.) And then one day, I felt: it’s okay, everything will be all right.

SWAN: Speaking about music in general, K-pop has become a global phenomenon. Are you in the wrong field? (Laughter.) More to the point, are you affected by the huge interest?

YSN: At every show, I’m really shocked or surprised because the audience says “hello” and “thank you” in Korean. Unbelievable! There are many people who’ve told me about their experience in Korea, too, saying they’ve spent a month or six months there. It’s something that my parents’ generation couldn’t have expected because the country was destroyed during the war – it’s not that long ago – and they had to build a completely new country. They worked so hard, and because of them, we have this era. People know Korea through K-pop, through Netflix.

SWAN: Then there’s this Korean jazz singer – you. When listeners hear your work, the “soul” comes through. Can you talk about that?

YSN: When I arrived in Paris, not knowing what jazz was, as I mentioned, I told my parents: Oh, I’m gonna study jazz for three years, and I think I can master it, and then I’ll come back to Korea and maybe teach. And afterwards, I felt so stupid, and so bad because I can’t swing, and I don’t have a voice like Ella Fitzgerald, and I could barely learn one standard song. So, I tried everything. On Honeysuckle Rose, I think I wrote down every moment that Ella breathed in, breathed out. But … I couldn’t sing like her, it sounded so fake. So, I said: No, I’ll never be able to sing jazz, this is not for me. After a year, I told my professors that, sorry, I made a wrong choice, I’m going to go back home. And they laughed at me. They said: What? Youn, you can do your own jazz with your own voice. And I said, no, I can’t. Then they recommended some jazz albums of European jazz singers, such as Norma Winstone, who’s an English singer, and my idol. She has a kind of soprano voice like me, and when she interprets, it’s like a whole new tune. And I said, oh, we can call this jazz too? I didn’t know.

So, I learned to try with my own voice and my own soul, with my Korean background, and the more I used my own voice, the more I did things my own way, the more I felt accepted.

SWAN: What is next for you?

YSN: Well, everyone has told me that this album is not jazz, but that’s what I wanted to do. Herbie Hancock always said that jazz is the human soul, it’s not appearances, so you can do whatever you want to do. We’ll see. It’s been a while that I’ve wanted to do an album of jazz standards, so we’ll continue this tour in 2023 and then we’ll see. – A.M. / SWAN

Youn Sun Nah’s Spring Tour runs March 9 to May 26, 2023, and includes concerts in France, Germany, and the Netherlands.

Delvin Lugo at High Line Nine Galleries in NYC. Credit: A. McKenzie

By SWAN
NEW YORK, Oct 7 2022 (IPS)

For two months over the summer, Caribbean-American artist Delvin Lugo presented his first solo show in New York City, exhibiting large, vibrant canvases at High Line Nine Galleries on Manhattan’s West Side and featuring queer communities in his homeland, the Dominican Republic.

The exhibition, titled “Caribbean Summer”, pulled visitors in with its vivid colours and animated characters and also exemplified the success of alternative art events. The gallery space was provided by non-profit arts group Chashama, which describes itself as helping to “create a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive world by partnering with property owners to transform unused real estate”.

These spaces – including galleries that normally close their doors for the summer – are used for “artists, small businesses, and for free community-centric art classes”. According to Lugo, the organisation’s assistance made his show possible and has also provided motivation to continue producing work.

The 44-year-old artist said he’s particularly interested in portraying LGBTQ activists and in expanding his work to include more countries of the Caribbean. The following (edited) interview took place in Manhattan during the exhibition.

SWAN: How did the show come about?

DELVIN LUGO: So, this exhibition is a response to work that I was doing before. I had just finished a series that was about my childhood, growing up a young, gay man in the Dominican Republic, because I lived there until I was twelve years old. And I’d spent so much time kinda dealing with the past that it got to the point that I was like: you know what, I actually don’t know anything happening with the queer culture and the lives of people in DR right now. Yes, I do go back and visit, but when I go back, I go to see my relatives in the countryside, so this was a way to really educate myself and really connect with the queer community in the Dominican Republic. And in this case, it’s Santo Domingo that I’m focusing on.

SWAN: What steps did you take to make the connections?

DL: Well, I really started by reaching out to individuals on social media that maybe I’d seen stories written about, or things that caught my eye on Instagram… so, I reached out to them, and we kind of started a dialogue first. Then when I was ready to start painting, I decided to go meet them in person, and the theme that I had in mind was “chosen family”. I had a few ideas about what the situation was like there, but I really, really didn’t know.

It wasn’t until I started meeting people and they started telling me that basically they had no rights… and so I wanted to focus on artists and activists – people I really admired, people that are doing the work and doing the fight. That’s really how it started. I went there, I told my contacts to bring their chosen family, and we hung out and took pictures, and I came back here and that’s how the paintings were formed, from all the information that I had. And I usually don’t just work from one picture, I do a collage of many photos, and then I paint from that collage.

Credit: A. McKenzie

SWAN: So, there’s no painting that comes from just one photo?

DL: Well, in some cases, I borrowed pictures from an association that hosts Gay Pride marches, and I used the people pictured, but I added myself, or the car, or different aspects. With these images, I was inspired by the spirit – the spirit of celebration, the spirit of individuality… and I kind of just worked around the image, adding myself as the driver and so on.

SWAN: The paintings are super colourful, really striking – was that the intention from the start?

DL: I’ve been working with vibrant colours recently, and I knew that it was gonna be very bright… the Caribbean is bright, colourful, and also I wanted to make the paint symbolize the heat, the climate in DR as well. It also feels like summer with the hot pink. But I really do know most of these individuals. Except for some young people in one picture, I know everyone, like Agatha, a trans woman and gay activist from the Bahamas who lives in the Dominican Republic.

SWAN: Can you tell us about your own journey – have you always wanted to be an artist?

DL: I did, you know. It was one of those things that when I was done with school, I really needed to work to survive, so I took jobs and somehow I was always able to get jobs in fashion, and that really kept me busy for a long time.

“Seba’s Ecstasy” by Delvin Lugo. Credit A. McKenzie

SWAN: What did you do in fashion?

DL: When I started, I did sales, like showroom wholesale, but most of the time I was working as a fashion stylist, being an assistant and then doing my own work. And that’s a fulltime job. Then slowly but surely, I started doing my own projects, like ink drawings, just things for myself, to be creative.

And that developed into my drawing more and playing with oils, which is something I had done before. To get back into it, I went to continuing education classes. I needed to be reintroduced to oils because I’d forgotten so many techniques and things that you need to know.

From then, I kept painting, praying for more time to work at it. Then Covid happened, I was let go from my job, and, in the beginning, I kept thinking that they might call me back any minute, and I truly worked around the clock on my painting for the first two months. The job didn’t call me back, but at that point it was great because by then I’d got used to an everyday practice. I can tell you that from the beginning of 2020 to even now, the way that I’ve seen my work grow and even the way that I think, and the way that I approach painting, it has been quite a learning experience.

SWAN: So, this is your first real solo show?

DL: Yeah, it really is. I’ve done a number of group shows, but this opportunity came with Chashama and I applied for it. I was already working on all these pieces, so this was the right time. It’s an introduction to my work, it’s not like a full solo show in a way.

SWAN: How long have you lived in New York?

DL: So, my family left DR in 1990, when I was twelve, and we lived in Rhode Island and then I made my way to New York in ’97 and I’ve been here ever since.

SWAN: Where next, with the art?

DL: I want to continue painting, because it’s such a privilege to have a studio, to have a full-time practice, and I really do want to continue that. I’ve been painting from home up until October last year, and when I got my first studio – even though it’s the size of this table here – I couldn’t wait to get to the studio.

I was there to do my own thing. Still, I actually get annoyed when people tell me: “Oh, it must be so wonderful, you’re in your studio, doing your art…” It is great, but it’s also really frustrating because I’m hitting my head against the wall many a day, or leaving angry because something didn’t go right. It’s a fight.

So, for me, it’s truly just to continue creating, to continue painting, following my instincts, following the stories. I really want to continue in the same path of representing and bringing a focus to the LGBTQ community, not just in DR, but in any other parts of the world. I think it would be an interesting project actually to go elsewhere to meet the queer culture and showing them in the painting, even like in other places in the Caribbean, like Puerto Rico, Cuba, Jamaica. That would be really interesting. – AM / SWAN

Ukrainian artist Mykola Zhuravel has used art to communicate the horrors of war since Russian’s occupation of Crimea in 2014.

By Sania Farooqui
New Delhi, Sep 6 2022 (IPS)

“I must say that I had a premonition of a war with Russia in 2014 when Russian troops had started to occupy Crimea,” said Mykola Zhuravel, a contemporary painter and sculptor, in an interview with IPS. Zhuravel, with his partner, Daria Tishchenko-Zhuravel, have used art to communicate and express the horrors of the war since 2014.

Their work has been presented at the Viennese Biennale, and they have exhibited a multimedia project titled Invasion Redux, which is poignantly used to transform their memories of the 2014 uprising and its aftermath into vivid abstract portrayals – artworks, sculpture, photography and films.

Artists Mykola Zhuravel and Daria Tishchenko-Zhuravel

For many, war and displacement in Ukraine began almost eight years ago, when Russia first started to invade Crimea, warning of a full-scale war and vast troop buildup near the Ukrainian border. They use their art as a mirror of Ukrainian resistance, “the invasion project is my reflection, as an artist on the tragic events associated with Russian aggression, where I showed the true image of the occupier through an artistic lens,” said Zhuravel.

Invasion Redux was first presented in 2016 in New York at the Ukrainian Institute of America, showcasing surreal images of “an invader and an occupier”, their aim to show a mass audience “the truth and warn them of the imminent dangers not only to Ukraine but the entire western world with a nuclear strike,” said Tishchenko-Zhuravel.

“Until this terrible war that began in 2022, I lived with my family in Kyiv, we had a studio in the city centre, and as a photographer, I regularly held photo shoots and worked on art projects. But in just one moment, our whole life seems to have turned upside down. The war took away our dream, everything that we built,” Tishchenko-Zhuravel said.

On February 24, 2022, the world watched as Russia started its invasion of Ukraine, attacking the country from the north, south and east and surging troops towards the capital Kyiv making it Europe’s worst conflict since World War II. Almost 193 days later, the magnitude of the ongoing conflict has “wrought death on a mass scale, displaced hundreds and thousands of Ukrainians and forced millions to leave the country.”

Zhuravel said the morning of February 24 was a day when he and his family went into a state of shock, something they are yet to recover from. They had little time pack their bags and move to a safer spot.

Artwork by Mykola Zhuravel and Daria Tishchenko-Zhuravel.

“It was a horror. That morning there were cannon shots being hit on Kyiv, sirens echoed through the city, and people were rushing to hide in bomb shelters,” Zhuravel says. “We had less than an hour to pack our lives in one suitcase and leave. We started by heading to the west of Ukraine, and from there on, it has been quite a journey till we found our way to Canada.

“We didn’t know how to react, but the instinct of self-preservation worked, and we then left for the west of Ukraine, crossed the border with Poland and then flew to Canada. All I took was a small suitcase, a camera, years of experience and faith that everything would be fine,” added Tishchenko-Zhuravel.

From the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Ukrainians have found ways to respond to the war, as reported here by TIME. The opposition included mass protest rallies with blue and yellow flags in the cities where Russian forces had already entered; unarmed civilians blocked roads and lay on the ground in front of Russian tanks, and girls threw Molotov cocktails at Russian military vehicles from car windows. Women hit enemy drones with jars of pickled tomatoes, and civilians united to help Ukrainian soldiers and their fellow citizens affected by the war. The steadfastness of Ukrainians in defence of their country surprised many, and their resistance continued even when they had to leave the country.

In April 2022, the Zhuravels held their first exhibition in Canada to continue telling the Ukraine story. The Canadian National Exhibition Association presented Invasion Redux at the CNE’S Withrow Common Gallery in Canada, through which Zhuravel says he will “continue telling the world truth about the military conflict through his artistic images and means as well as continue to glorify Ukrainian culture in Canada and rest of the world.”

Dasha Smovzh, designer and founder of Virna.

The war also threatened another artist’s life, a fashion designer working with her team in Kherson, a port city in the south of Ukraine. Dasha Smovzh, the founder of Virna, a clothing brand that employed many local Ukrainians and designers, had to flee when Russian troops bombed her city.

“We lost everything, Kherson, which is now almost occupied by the Russian army. We simply had to leave. We just packed our bags, kept our work documents, took cash and ran away as far as we could from the war,” Dasha Smovzh said.

According to this report, until the war in Ukraine began, a generation of Ukrainian brands flourished in recent years as trade with Europe had eased. However, The World Bank has now estimated the Russian invasion to shrink Ukraine’s economy by 45 percent this year.

Like many others, Smovzh had to pause production as many factories were destroyed and shipments were delayed.

Dasha Smovzh with her team at Virna production house.

“All our family, relatives, and employees are still in Kherson. They have no work. They are struggling due to the ongoing bombings and attacks; sometimes, they have to turn off water and electricity. We did move a few of our clothes to storage and are trying to resume selling again now. None of it is easy or done in the usual way.

“My husband and two-year-old son are safe here in Canada, and we are grateful to the country for their support and opportunity. I can only hope that I can bring Ukrainian culture and beauty here in Canada. Kherson is our home, and I hope we can go back someday.

The uncertainty and fear brought by the war have threatened and impacted lives in ways one can imagine – splitting families and stranding many in Ukrainian war zones. At the same time, others escaped to other countries across or across Europe to seek safety. Human Rights Watch has documented cases of Russian military forces committing laws-of-war violations against civilians in occupied areas of the Chernihiv, Kharkiv and Kyiv regions of Ukraine, including repeated rapes, unlawful violence and threats against civilians.

The large-scale displacements being seen could have lasting consequences for generations to come. By early August 2022, more than 6.6 million refugees from Ukraine had been recorded across Europe, and 10.3 million people, mostly women and children, had crossed borders from Ukraine to the neighbouring countries in the European Union. More than 5 million children need humanitarian assistance. This requires an immediate and steep rise in humanitarian needs. The United Nations estimates that 12 million people inside Ukraine will need relief and protection. At the same time, more than 4 million Ukrainian refugees may continue needing protection and assistance in neighbouring countries in the coming months.

IPS UN Bureau Report

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By External Source
SUVA, Fiji, Apr 7 2022 (IPS-Partners)

The Pacific Community turned 75 on the 6th of February 2022. As we mark 75 years of the Pacific Community’s Service to the region, on the 6th of each month we will feature a key moment in history for the organisation.

At the 48th Meeting of the Committee of Representatives of Governments and Administrations held in 2018, regional leaders stressed that protecting and promoting Pacific culture was a fundamental and ongoing role for SPC and new language reinforcing the importance of culture was added to SPC’s priority areas. In the words of former SPC’s Director-General Dr. Colin Tukuitonga, “the cultural heritage of the Pacific is an invaluable treasure, bound up with SPC’s history, and key to our region’s future.”

SPC’s connection to Pacific culture traces it’s roots back to the founding of the organization, but its most visible efforts can been seen through the history of the Festival of the Pacific Arts and the establishment of the organizations Regional Media Centre.

In 1968, Pacific Leaders were becoming increasingly concerned about the erosion of traditional customary practices. In response, at the 8th Pacific Conference, a proposal was made to convene a Pacific arts festival. The idea was enthusiastically embraced and plans for the first South Pacific Arts Festival began.

The 11th Conference in 1971 expressed support for the Festival, with delegates emphasising ‘the importance of making it a Festival of Pacific culture without the intrusion of Western culture’. They wanted the peoples of the region to share their cultures and establish a deeper understanding and friendship between countries. The first festival was held in Suva in 1972 with more than 1000 participants from 14 Pacific countries and territories, making the event a resounding success.

To ensure it became a permanent event, a Council of Pacific Arts was formed at a meeting organised by SPC in 1975. Its mandate was to provide the SPC Conference with specific information about the Festival and, more generally to advise the Conference on cultural affairs. With the second Festival of Pacific Arts (FestPac) held in Rotorua, New Zealand in 1976, the event become firmly anchored as a permanent regional event. Since then, there have been 12 FestPac’s held in locations across the region, with the 13th currently planned for 2024 in Hawaii.

One of my great joys, if present in America on Independence Day, has been being out at the fireworks on the Fourth of July with my daughter, son-in-law, and my two grandchildren. The glorious denouement of the event has often been a final spray of brightly lit colours against the azure sky, with delighted crowds cheering along with the resounding crescendo of the volley of cannon-fire, the flamboyant finale of Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture! Can those happy moments of such experience be at the risk of being altered or even eliminated from our lifestyle?

Dr. Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury

Incidentally, this is not the first time Tchaikovsky has been banned. It happened once before: By the Nazis in Hitler’s Germany. Understandably this blatant weaponization of music drew immediate flak. The former British Member of Parliament George Galloway called it “fascistic book burning. The Bloomberg commentator Martin Ivens said: “Banning Tchaikovsky is not the way to win a war! “The Cardiff Orchestra authorities did offer an explanation though, about a member of their team having family directly involved in the Ukraine war, which was perhaps factually correct but lame as an excuse for the action. It is somewhat ironical that Tchaikovsky himself was a critic of this overture, whose fame reflected public fascination for the theatrical over quality. The composer had remarked thus about his composition: “very loud and noisy, completely without artistic merit”. But the Cardiff Philharmonic did not base its decision on this account.

Tchaikovsky was by no means the only victim of the cancellation culture that occurred in the wake of the Ukrainian conflict. The Munich Philharmonic dismissed the Russian Valery Gergiev from the position of its conductor on the plea that the artist had failed to condemn the Russian action. Some other Russian artistes are confronting similar fate. As yet, however, things have not reached the level of what the English author, Graham Greene, described at the start of the First World War. It was that in a display of near-comical jingoism and fierce anti-German sentiments, the author’s neighbors in England stoned a dachshund dog in his local high street!

But conflicts have brought out courage among ardent lovers of the arts as well. Also, during that war, the British conductor Sir Henry Wood informed the government that he would continue to perform Richard Wagner whose eulogies to the German blond-haired blue-eyed heroic legend was said to have inspired the ideas of Aryan racial supremacy. This noble spirit has also prevalent among common humanity during periods of stresses. My mother-in-law, a German, left a war battered country as a teenager to find solace and succour in England, among English friends. Years later she would hum the tune of the Marlene Dietrich version of “Lilli Marlene “, a German song about war-time love that had brought comfort equally to both Allied and Axis troops.

Art, music and literature have no nationality. They only serve to provide conduits of connectivity between peoples, even when divided and separated by conflict and war. Yes, unarguably there are products of artistic predilections that can do society harm, but the human intellect must be allowed to separate the wheat from the chaff. John Milton has made this telling point in the golden pages of his “Areopagitica”, an immortal paean of praise to the freedom of expression.

History demonstrates that whenever the political institutions of the polity has sought to intervene to judge the arts nothing good has come of it. Alas, as the adage goes, the one thing we learn from history is that there is nothing that we learn from history. Yet we fervently hope that the day would never come when we must hide our copy of Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” for fear that they may come to take it away from us and burn it!

Dr Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury is the Honorary Fellow at the Institute of South Asia Studies, NUS. He is a former Foreign Advisor (Foreign Minister) of Bangladesh and President and Distinguished Fellow of Cosmos Foundation. The views addressed in the article are his own. He can be reached at: isasiac @nus.edu.sg

This story was originally published by Dhaka Courier.

The African Storybook Project has developed writing and publishing apps that are promoting literacy. Credit: Saide

By Busani Bafana
BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Feb 10 2022 (IPS)

Suwaiba Hassan published an engrossing story. She used digital apps that are giving literacy a boost.

The student from Katsina State in Nigeria, Hassan, won a National Reading Competition for a story she created using the African Storybook reader app and the African Storybook maker app. Saide, an education NGO, developed the apps through its African Storybook (ASb) project.

The apps are easy-to-use storybook development tools allowing children to write and publish their own stories, which can be read and shared without internet connectivity.

‘Titi and Donkey, the trickster’ was written by Suwaiba Hassan, a student from Katsina State in Nigeria. Credit: ASB

Hassan turned to the online apps to help her write and publish her award-winning story – Titi and Donkey. The story is about a girl who narrowly escaped losing her grandmother’s money to a cunning donkey. Hassan wanted to inspire other girls to write and read in writing it. She did more. Her story motivated parents in her home state to encourage more girls to go to school after Hassan won a National Reading Competition and all expenses paid scholarships to cover all her education levels. Northern Nigeria has a high number of out-of-school children.

Conquering literacy one story at a time

The African Storybook Project has created a digital library of open license African storybooks to address the challenge of education inclusion and access to appropriate reading materials for young African children. It has been piloted in 15 African countries.

The applications are helping conquer illiteracy one story at a time by providing reading material in home languages that reflect local content for children to read, says Jenny Glennie, Saide Executive Director.

Saide contributes to the development of new open learning models, including the use of educational technology and open education resources in Sub Saharan Africa.

“We are promoting the idea that you have a publisher in your pocket and a library on your phone,” Glennie tells IPS.

On average, 2000 unique storybooks in 222 African languages have been published online, created mainly by students, teachers and librarians. More than 1.5 million children in Africa benefitted from the storybooks downloaded from the ASb website, especially after COVID-19 hit leading to the close of many schools.

The ASb project works with local educators and illustrators, including children, to develop, publish, and use relevant storybooks in children’s language.

According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), some 40 per cent of the global population does not access education in a language they understand.

UNESCO cautions that literacy promotion should be looked at from a perspective of multilingualism because several international and regional languages have expanded as lingua franca. In contrast, numerous minority and indigenous languages are endangered.

Literacy in local languages encourages reading and writing among learners because they use the material in their mother tongue every day, noted Belina Simushi, Education Programme Officer with the Impact Network Zambia, an education service provider operating schools in Zambia.

In Zambia, she said learners are taught in English, a foreign language.

“Our learners need books to be written in a local language, which I believe can act as a stepping stone for learning how to read and write,” said Simushi. She led a story-writing project in which teachers wrote over 300 storybooks they uploaded online using the ASb Storybook Maker and guide.

“I also believe that by accessing books written in Cinyanja [a language widely spoken in Zambia and Malawi], our learners can read about stories, cultures and other topics that can help them enjoy reading books and develop a love for reading books,”.

Righting illiteracy

Reading is an important skill in the development of young learners. At a primary school in Gwanda, Zimbabwe, pupils enjoy a reading moment. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

According to the Lost Potential Tracker, nine out of 10 children in Sub Saharan Africa miss the age ten basic literacy milestones, according to the Lost Potential Tracker, an interactive analysis tool measuring the scale of the global learning crisis. The tool jointly created by the One Campaign, the Global Partnership for Education and Save the Children in 2021, shows the depth of the global learning crisis.

Alice Albright, CEO of the Global Partnership for Education, says reading and writing are essential building blocks for children to succeed.

“This tool shows the depth of the global learning crisis – and what a critical situation the world faces if we do not prioritise education.”

While Inger Ashing, CEO of Save the Children International, warned that the world faces an unprecedented education emergency worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic. Children in some of the poorest and conflict-affected countries are the most badly affected.

“If we are to live up to our commitments to achieving the full range of Sustainable Development Goals and the children’s right to education, then improving literacy levels is a must,” Ashing noted, emphasising that being able to read was a foundation skill that enabled children to realise their full potential.

The ASb apps have also opened new opportunities to promote and preserve some of Africa’s least spoken languages, which are on the verge of dying off because they are not written down, said Dorcas Wepukhulu, the East and West African Storybook Partner Development Coordinator at Saide.

“The apps have enabled a different learning process that goes beyond the usual stringing of words. It is motivating. The fact that the stories they have written can be published and read by others is something children are very proud of and want to do,” said Wepukhulu. She explained that they are encouraging many people across Sub Saharan Africa to use the apps while helping the marginalised talk about their experiences and boost languages that have not been published in creating reading materials.

Smangele Mathebula, African Storybook Partner Development Coordinator for Southern Africa,  noted that the apps had given children a chance to be fully present as they interact with technology in sharing their experiences.

The African Storybook Story Maker App won the 2021 Tech4Good Awards in Education given by UK-based Tech4Good Awards. The awards celebrate fantastic businesses, individuals and initiatives that use digital technologies to improve the lives of others and make the world a better place. Saide was also voted the Winner of Winners in the virtual awards ceremony.

“Emerging as the Winner of Winners in this year’s awards reinforces our efforts to continue promoting the use of the Story Maker across Sub-Saharan Africa as a way of empowering children to tell their own stories and for communities to self-publish,” Glennie said.

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The Rastafari movement, which began in Jamaica during the 1930s, has become internationally known for its contribution to culture and the arts, as well as for its focus on peace and “ital” living. Major icons include reggae musicians Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, Bunny Wailer and Burning Spear, with the movement overall projecting a very male image.

But women have contributed significantly to the development of Rastafari, as Jamaican-born historian Daive Dunkley has shown through his research. Rastafari women were particularly active in the resistance against colonial rule in the first half of the 1900s, and they created educational institutions for young people and helped to expand the arts sphere in the Caribbean, among other work.

Dr Daive Dunkley (courtesy of the University of Missouri).

These contributions are highlighted in Dunkley’s latest book, Women and Resistance in the Early Rastafari Movement, an essential addition to the history of Rastafari – which scholars generally see as both a religious and social movement. US-based Dunkley, an associate professor in the University of Missouri’s Department of Black Studies and director of Peace Studies, spoke to SWAN about his research, in an interview conducted by email and videoconference.

SWAN: What inspired your research on women’s role in the early Rastafari movement?

Daive Dunkley: There is a story here. My inspiration for writing about women’s role in the early Rastafari developed from research I had been doing since 2009 on Leonard Howell, one of the four known founders of the movement. I quickly realized that women were a significant force in the group that became known as the Howellites and were critical to all their considerable initiatives. These included developing the first self-sufficient Rastafari community, known as Pinnacle.

Hundreds of women joined the estimated 700 people of the Pinnacle community in 1940, located in the hills of St. Catherine, Jamaica. I realized too that the women had been part of establishing the Ethiopian Salvation Society (ESS) in 1937 and were members of its governing board. They were secretaries and decisionmakers, including Tenet Bent, who married Howell. Bent was one of its leaders and financial backers. She also had connections in middle-class Jamaica that proved critical to the development of the ESS as a benevolent Rastafari organization.

Women have contributed significantly to the development of Rastafari, as Jamaican-born historian Daive Dunkley has shown through his research. Rastafari women were particularly active in the resistance against colonial rule in the first half of the 1900s, and they created educational institutions for young people and helped to expand the arts sphere in the Caribbean, among other work

Interestingly the ESS created a constitution written chiefly by women who called it a “Christian charity.” And some of its first outreach programs were also clearly determined by women, such as providing relief in the form of food and clothing to survivors of natural disasters in several parts of Jamaica in the late 1930s. In 2014, I decided to focus my research on the activities of the early women, who came predominantly from the peasantry. The colonial government and newspapers largely ignored the activism and leadership of these women in the development of the Rastafari movement.

SWAN: Were you surprised by the information you discovered?

D.D.:  I was not surprised by my information about women’s political, economic, and cultural activism within the early Rastafari movement. My earlier research on the antislavery activities of enslaved people included research on women. Despite slavery, these women remained active in the resistance – undermining, escaping, or abolishing slavery altogether. I found out that women’s role in the early Rastafari encountered silencing by the colonial system. We helped maintain this silencing in later writing about the early movement. What I read in terms of secondary scholarship was largely androcentric. I learned the names of the four known founders and some other prominent men. They engaged the colonial system unapologetically as Rastafari leaders. I read nothing similar about women, which I found pretty strange.

Moreover, when women were portrayed, including by British author Sheila Kitzinger in the 1960s, it was essentially to reflect on how marginal they were in the movement. By the way, for me, the early Rastafari movement dates from the 1930s to the end of the 1960s. Women in the 1960s were members of the early action, and many joined from the 1930s through the 1950s. In other words, early women were members of Rastafari during and after the colonial system. This system was far more devastating in its attitudes towards Rastafari than the early postcolonial government of Jamaica that took over with the island’s political independence in 1962.

Rastafari obtained a male-dominated image from the mid to late 1950s with devastating consequences for all the movement’s women. The colonial system successfully imposed a veil of silence on women, resulting in our ignorance of these women. More research using interviews with and about women and closer reading of the colonial archives, including the newspapers, helped me uncover some of the hidden histories of the women in the early movement. I was inspired to continue searching for these stories because I knew that Black women were never silent in the previous history of the Caribbean or before the genesis of Rastafari in 1932.

SWAN: What was the most striking aspect of this story?

D.D.:  This question is a difficult one to answer because all these stories involving women were fascinating or striking. But if I were to venture an answer to the question, I would say that the story about the women who petitioned the government for fairness and justice in 1934 stands tall among the most striking. I’ve written elsewhere about this story in a blog for the book published by LSU Press. I said that the women who petitioned the government for justice and fairness showed their awareness of the power of petitions in the history of the Black freedom struggle in Jamaica and the Caribbean.

These women organized themselves to defy the colonial police, justices of the peace, and resident magistrate. These entities had dedicated themselves to silencing Rastafari women and men. The women submitted their petitions to the central government. They did so in a coordinated fashion to ensure that the colonial officials did not ignore the pleas.

You will have to read the book to get a fuller sense of what happened due to these petitions. I will say that engaging with the government showed an effort not to escape from the society but rather to transform colonial Jamaica into a just and fair society. The women wanted the island’s Black people to see themselves improving. They wanted Jamaica to reflect their aspirations. The activities aimed at accomplishing this wish were among the most significant contributions of early Rastafari women. They were not escapists. They were radical transformationalists if we want a fancy term.

SWAN: How important is this particular segment of history to Jamaica and the world, given the international contributions of the Rastafari movement?

D.D.: Rastafari’s early history is critical to understanding both the history of Jamaica and the African diaspora at the time. People like to think of the internationalization of the Rastafari movement as starting from the 1960s and growing from there. However, my research on early Rastafari women has confirmed that this is not true. Rastafari was formulated with an international perspective and established ongoing connections with the global Black freedom struggle from its very beginning. The women also helped establish relations with Ethiopia on a political level that included fundraising, organizing, and participating in protests against fascist Italy’s aggression and subsequent occupation of Ethiopia in 1936-1941.

In addition, women protected the Rastafari’s historic theocratic interpretations of the coronation of Emperor Haile Selassie I and Empress Menen Asfaw in 1930. The coronation event was critical to inspiring the genesis of the Rastafari movement. Women such as the previously mentioned Tenet Bent maintained the correspondence with the International African Service Bureau (IASB) through one of its founders, George Padmore, the Trinidadian Marxist based in London. The women knew that the organization evolved out of the International African Friends of Abyssinia formed in London in 1935 to organize resistance against Italy’s attempts to colonize Ethiopia.

In 1937, Padmore created the IASB with help from other Pan-Africanists from the Caribbean and worldwide, including CLR James, Amy Ashwood Garvey, ITA Wallace-Johnson, TR Makonnen, Jomo Kenyatta, and Chris Braithwaite, the Barbadian labor leader. The early Rastafari women preserved the history of Rastafari’s attempts to engage with the global Garvey movement from 1933, though disappointed by Garvey’s unwillingness to meet with Rastafari founder Leonard Howell.

Women, however, helped preserve the movement’s links to Garvey’s Back nationalist ideology to maintain the Pan-African political consciousness of the African diaspora. Women also read and discussed the literature of Pan-Africanist women writers such as Amy Bailey. The newspapers of Sylvia Pankhurst, the British socialist and suffragist, also kept the early Rastafari women abreast of developmental initiatives in Ethiopia.

Undoubtedly, the 1960s onwards brought further development of this international focus, especially with the development of Reggae and primarily through the touring by Bob Marley and the Wailers in the 1970s. However, much of the success of Reggae was due to its Rastafari consciousness developed in the 1930s. This consciousness centered on the African origins of humans and empowered Reggae with a message of morality, peace, and justice that appealed to people worldwide.

SWAN: From a gender standpoint, how significant would you say the research is for Jamaica, the Caribbean?

D.D.:  The early history of Rastafari women revealed some crucial developments in the story of gender and its dynamics in the modern history of the African diaspora. The early women challenged gender disparity inside and outside the movement from the 1930s’ inception of Rastafari. Many of these women had been part of empowered women congregations in the traditional churches, namely the Baptist church.

Still, they felt that Rastafari focused more on their African ancestry and therefore was more relevant to their social uplift. Among the gender discussions initiated by women was equality between the emperor and empress of Ethiopia, whereas men saw the emperor as the returned Messiah. The women proposed that the empress and emperor were equal and constituted the messianic message of the coronation event in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in 1930.

Women also ensured that they participated in preaching the Rastafari doctrine on the streets of Jamaica from the early 1930s. They defended men arrested and tried for their involvement in Rastafari. Many women also ended up imprisoned for their defense of the movement and its use of cannabis. Women were present during the court proceedings as witnesses and supporters. Their willingness to engage the justice system revealed to colonial officials that the male focus in suppressing Rastafari would continue to fail unless they paid attention to women.

The women carried on the Pinnacle community in the 1930s through 1950s when the police arrested the men. As my book discusses, women were at the center of initiating the most significant Rastafari organization of the late 1950s, the African Reform Church of God in Christ. One of its two founders was Edna E. Fisher. She was prosecuted for treason-felony and did not attempt during the trial to hide the fact that she was the owner of the land on which they built their organization. Fisher considered herself the brigadier of the movement. However, scholars have named the events and the trial after her partner and future husband, Claudius Henry. Still, Fisher was instrumental in the leadership and creating the organization’s cultural and political objectives.

SWAN: Why did the Rastafari movement become so male-oriented in later decades?

D.D.:  My research has shown that Rastafari became male-oriented mainly in the 1950s. This change was primarily a response to the attempts of the colonial regime to suppress the movement. Its male leaders and many male followers decided they needed “male supremacy” to fight “white supremacy.” Scholarship on the Black freedom struggle in the United States has also disclosed this decision. Despite this reorientation towards male centrism, women continued to play pivotal roles inside and outside leadership positions.

Initially, it made sense for many women to capitalize on the image of male power to protect the movement because of the targeting of male members by the government.

However, state officials eventually recognized that targeting men could not end Rastafari. They needed to take a gender-equitable approach to suppress the movement. That recognition would lead to the detention of many women by the police on charges of disorderly conduct, showing animosity towards state officials, such as police and judges.

Of course, many women also faced cannabis charges. The male orientation of the movement continued into the independence period of Jamaica primarily due to the men seeking to consolidate power. Many cultural and philosophical attitudes developed around this male-centered identity that started in the 1950s. The male focus continues within the movement despite women challenging these attitudes using notions of gender equality inherited from earlier women.

SWAN: How did the book come about?

D.D.: I started to write chapters for the book in 2014 and revised them over the next seven years. One of the strategies I used was to return to some of the women and men I interviewed to ensure that the information was consistent with what they had told me previously. I also expanded the archival research to include Great Britain and the United States materials. Regarding research materials for the book’s writing, the most important sources were the Jamaica Archives, the British Archives, the Smithsonian, and the newspapers, particularly Jamaica’s Daily Gleaner.

SWAN: What do you hope readers will take away from it overall?

D.D.: One of the things I hope will happen with this book is that it stimulates further research into women’s role in founding the Rastafari movement. That part of the history needs analysis that I think will expand our understanding of how Rastafari came about and give a complete picture of the critical figures in founding this movement. I believe women were vital to both the genesis and initial development of Rastafari, who had been articulating its consciousness before the 1930 coronation of the empress and emperor of Ethiopia.

It is clear from my research that women read the same materials men read and gradually developed their ideas about Rastafari consciousness independently of men. I also hope the book will inspire people to see poor Black women as agents of historical, social changes in the history of the African diaspora. These women had meaningful conversations regarding materializing social change for the greater good. I’m hoping readers see these women as intellectual catalysts and activists who helped shape the evolution of the modern African diaspora. These women were critical to the decolonization process, for example. – AM / SWAN

Women and Resistance in the Early Rastafari Movement is published by Louisiana State University Press.

By Jan Lundius
STOCKHOLM / ROME, Dec 3 2021 (IPS)

In these times of COVID isolation, social distance get on the nerves of several of us and the effects may be long-lasting, even endemic. Many schoolchildren have interacted and still meet with their teachers through computer networks, while the same phenomenon applies to their contact with others. Technical devices are with an ever-increasing scope becoming an integral part of all communication, teaching, and entertainment, in short – of social interaction. When it comes to education, given all the poor and even harmful educators we are forced to encounter during our lifetime, mechanization of education might be perceived as a step forward. Nevertheless, too much dependence on the internet might undoubtedly have its pitfalls; contributing to an abstraction of our existence where real adventures and life-changing encounters with other human beings become all the rarer. The world may be demystified, losing its wonder and magic.

A past closeness between storytellers and listeners is being forgotten and the spellbinding experience of listening to a good storyteller within a fascinating environment is something that many children currently are being denied. Even storytelling in the form of books and movies are becoming rarer, being replaced by video chats, podcasts, twitter and Instagram. Admittedly some video games offer a certain degree of excitement, imagination and storytelling, though most of them provide a one-way communication, which unfortunately is characterized by unbound commercialism, questionable role modeling, crude violence, nutty conspiracy theories and a glamourization of luxury and greed. Dependency on electronic “entertainment” may be even be more mind-numbing than that, for example by inducing its users to sit hour after hour trying to complete a meaningless puzzle, directing a ball through a maze, or ride a virtual motorbike across artificial hills and vales.

I came to think about this while remembering evenings I spent in isolated places. Some of the communities found there lacked electricity and within a circle lightened by a fire, or a kerosene lamp, with darkness around and the starry sky above, I had the pleasure listening to old women and men telling stories about their surroundings and way of life. Such places might by an outsider be perceived as confined and desolate, far as they are from the big city lights, crowds of strangers, stress, hustle and bustle. Nevertheless, locals may feel they are surrounded by strange creatures, by domains of powerful, spiritual forces. After days of hard work in fields and garden plots, or roaming through jungles and mountains in search of prey and food, families and friends gather on porches of ramshackle huts, or under a tree in the middle of the village, where stories are told about otherworldly inhabitants of mountains and jungles, deserts and oceans.

Narrators convey the vastness of another, though still present world, which occasionally may be manifested in what we are accustomed to call “reality”. Discrete and gentle spirits rise from springs, caves and streams to dance in the moonlight, or sinister forces sneak upon lonesome wanderers, whispering in their ears to lure them astray, to kill and devour them, or to take them away to graves and abodes of the dead, the realms of ghosts, monsters and demons.

Of course, as an educated, modern person you do not believe in those stories, but … among believers, in worlds which in spite of mundane worries seem to be alive with uncanny creatures and unknown mysteries, it may anyway be hard to remain unaffected. Old people tell us about their world and before they reminisce marvelous tales that once were told to them, they might look around and state:

“Listen to the dog howling out there in the dark. I tell you, that is no dog. Oh no, it is a human who has been turned into a dog, or maybe … a Loup Garou, a werewolf. The butterfly you saw in your room last night, that was no butterfly … it was your beloved who dreamt about you, far away in another land, while her dream turned her thoughts into a butterfly. The fireflies you see over there are no flies, they are souls of dead ancestors. All around us; up in the air, in the earth below us, in the springs and the trees are mysteries alive, creatures of the night and our dreams. All around us are living beings that are commonly unknown, most of us cannot see them, nor touch, nor understand them… at least not when we are awake. In our dreams, when our soul leaves our mind behind, when we in the spirit are visiting an unknown world, we might see and experience, but not understand the uncanny. What we believe to be our world is only a fraction of something else, something much, much bigger.”

Participating in such enchanted moments make us feel alive. Even if it all might be lore and illusion we feel amazingly present, the world comes closer. The realms conjured up by storytellers, the myths, legends, and fairy tales enchant and scare us in an engrossing manner. A child listening stories about and thus enters fantastic dimensions realizes how vast the world is, how it includes both fiction and reality.

A computer programmer might call this immensity the “Cyber World”, an astronomer the “Universe”, a biologist the “Biosphere”. These scientists are actually knowledgeable of only a fraction of human existence and the laws of nature governing it. Realizing this does not mean that you are a science denier. That you are not abhorred by flat earthers, anti-vaxxers, coronavirus truthers, literalists, chauvinists, misogynists and other zealots who do not believe in climate change, empathy, love and solidarity, but cling to unfounded myths and conspiracy theories as if they were the “plain truth”. People like that live in a bubble, a delusive environment in which they want others to join them. They assume they know the truth, while they actually defy reason.

In the16th and 17th centuries modern science developed in Europe A process during which a notion was created that might be described as a realization that the world is governed by natural laws and forces can be perceptible, even understandable and possibly controlled. All phenomena are part of nature and can thus be explained by natural causes. A conviction meaning that also human cognitive, social and moral phenomena are part of a comprehensible world where human and social problems can find solutions if supported by a cosmopolitan worldview that revere science and reason, eschews magic and the supernatural, while rejecting dogma and repressive authorities.

However it was far from being a unified movement. Many scientists defended the reality of supernatural phenomena, while skeptical humanists, inspired by ancient authors, mounted a critique not only of orthodox religion, magic and other forms of superstition, but also demonstrated their skepticism of hard-line “experts” who simplified human existence to a set of “natural laws”. Even if the religious heterodoxy of such men tarnished their reputation and postponed a general acceptance of anti-magical views, change came about. This “enlightening” revolution in human notions actually owed less to the scientific testing of magic notions, than to the growth of confidence in a stable world in which magic no longer had a place.

Since then, in almost every realm of human existence, progress has been breathtaking, principally by a scientific naturalism which has been used to solve problems, from engineering bridges and eradicating diseases, to extending life spans and establishing human rights. However, this does not have to mean that a” scientific thinking and approach” unilaterally ought to dominate all human reasoning and be allowed to despise, forbid and deny the right to make things up, to dream, fantasize, telling about and creating wonderful things. We have to make room for music, art and literature and allow ourselves and others to be entertained and stimulated by these human expressions. We need to provide depth and relief to our short life spans, our human existence.

These reflections emerged when I as a teacher experienced how art, music, philosophy, history, and comparative religion, as well as gymnastics and handicraft became limited or entirely disappeared from curricula. This was done in favour of more practical purpose-oriented subjects like math, physics, chemistry, business administration and computer science. Of course, these topics are essential for obtaining a solid education and be attractive for the labour market. However, humans do not live on bread alone, our brains are stimulated by inputs like art, music and entertainment. Humanities enrich human interaction and allow us to take part of the dreams, visions and fantasies of others. Let us not deny our children the pleasure of becoming familiar with storytelling; with fairy tales, fantasies, myths and legends, preferably told in communion with others and in harmony with our surrounding world. Not only within realms that is electronically created, but a real world consisting of tangible, impressionable and caring individuals.

The stimulus and pleasure of partaking in storytelling might learn us to look at and perceive human existence from several angles and thus develop into critical thinking individuals able to avoid falling into traps set by Pied Pipers who through the World Wide Web invoke narrow-mindedness, cold-heartedness, prejudices, and greed.

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Korea is one of the world's top economies. Yet, behind the success, many feel alienated. Does the recent hit show Squid Game, reflect the underbelly of the society's success? Credit: Ori Song/Unsplash

By Ahn Mi Young
Seoul, Nov 16 2021 (IPS)

Immediately after its release, the Squid Game went viral, grabbing the attention of the world’s entertainment stage. The grotesque and hyper-violent thriller has reportedly become Netflix’s biggest show, the world’s most-watched and the most-talked-about streaming entertainment. Is it a case of art imitating life?

The global rise of Korean entertainment is reminiscent of South Korea’s rags-to-rich story. The once war-stricken country with per-capita GDP of 67 US dollars after the 1950-53 Korean War has become one of the world’s top economies with a per-capita GDP of 32,860 US dollars in 2020.

South Koreans enjoy high-tech conveniences, and many of their enterprises are sought after internationally, including home electronics, vehicles and ships.

Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, success stories abound about its business, technology or entertainment industries.

K-pop BTS is now a global star who often tops the Billboard charts. A few years ago, it was unthinkable that Korean entertainment could surpass the content produced in the United States.

Squid Game has become a global success. Is it a case of art imitating life?

“The Squid Game has become a hope for our students to go to the global stage,” Kim Sang-Hoon, a professor at Cheju Halla University who teaches future talents video-making or filmmaking or broadcasting, told IPS.

However, the storyline suggests that success is not the only parameter with which to measure Korean society. Squid Game is a story of the “losers” who dropped out from the success story.

The hero, Gi-Hoon, was in debt after losing his job and squandering his money on a horse-racing game. He got divorced and missed his ten-year-old estranged daughter. Sang-Woo was once a brilliant stockbroker but went broke after gambling away his money.

The drama director Hwang Dong-Hyeok told local media: “In fact, I used to be one of the losers.”

He elaborated that “as a boy of a single-mother at the backstreet of Seoul, I used to be a boy at the back street spending almost the whole day playing the games (all of which) appear in the Squid Game”.

Although many more South Korean people live the “most affluent life” ever in the country’s history, many people feel like they are playing the squid game, where a few winners take all at the expense of many losers.

In the Squid Game, an elderly character Ilnam said to another character, Gi-Hoon, while playing marbles: “Cheating on others is OK, but being cheated, is not OK?”

This soundbite is one that many South Koreans identified with.

“I felt thrilled when I heard this because it sounds like our reality,” said Ko June-Ho, a South Korean fan and a university student told IPS. He added he identified with so much in the story. “When the elderly character Il-Nam met Ki-Hoon after the squid game, Il-Nam said: ‘Life here (outside the game) is more hellish (than the life I spent in the squid game)’.”

In the death game, the losers are separated from their family, friends and community. Like Sae-Byok, a North Korean woman defector struggles to rebuild her lost family connections but all in vain. Or, Ali, a worker from Pakistan, is in debt because his Korean employer didn’t pay him. Even the elderly character Il-Nam, the Squid Game host, is wealthy but misses his old family ties. He tells Gi-Hoon: “I used to live with my family”.

Some experts say that the squid game losers are like South Korean losers, who feel isolated from the glory story.

Ironically, South Korea, one of the world’s most affluent countries, records one of the world’s top suicide rates. South Korea’s suicide rate in 2020 was the average of 25.7 suicides per 100,000 persons, compared with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries average of 10.9 suicides.

While technology businesses, like the online selling platform Coopang, have become successful during the COVID-19 pandemic, restaurant owners were forced to shut down because of regulations. The impact is clear.

Dr Park Chanmin, Seoul Central Mental Health Clinic, reflects this in a recent interview here.

“Since the start of the pandemic, people have become more and more worried about their jobs, they are seeing their incomes falling, and that is having an impact on their day-to-day lives.”

Asia Nikkei reported that a study by the Korea Economic Research Institute found that sales by independent merchants were down 78.5% in the first half of the year from the same period in 2020, with 58% of respondents attributing the decline to COVID.

Sanjog Lama, a Nepali student who studies hotel management in South Korea, believes the show was excellent.

“The cast and crews have done such an outstanding job. On top of that, the content of the series is just superb. It is thrilling, many scenes are gruesome, yet there is meaning in it.”

Another South Korean fan, Lee Ji-Hyeon, said: “The drama was like a puzzle game. I felt thrilled as I was putting the pieces of actors’ talk and each scene together so that I kept thinking about what it means and how it will be related to the next move.”

However, even in the extreme death game, the underlying warmth of the South Korean traditional culture is reflected.

The thriller’s punch line, with “Kkak-Ttu-gi” or “Kkan-Bu”, demonstrates Korean culture. The elderly Il-Nam says to Gi-Hoon: “Let’s make ‘Kkan-Bu” friendship between two of us.”

Kkan-Bu is a life-long friendship that lasts unchanged regardless of whether a person is a loser or a winner. Some characters made decisions that touched the heart of the fans.

Gi-Hoon did not give up their heart even in the live-or-die moment. Ji-Young gives up her life to let her game partner Sae-Byok can win the game. Even the hardened heart of the elderly Il-Nam softens as the senior and becomes friends with warm-hearted Gi-Hoon.

Another female character Mi-Nyo said: “They call me Kkak-Ttu-gi” In Korean children’s games.”

Kkak-Ttu-Gi shows how Korean culture values human connection. Even though the player is poor and cannot contribute, the team won’t kick them out.

There is irony in the money matters. Even though Gi-Hoon emerges as the winner of the game, grabbing $40 million, his life did not change. When he returns home after the game, he finds his mother dead. He remains a divorced, lonely man. Even though he has the prize in his bank account, he doesn’t spend it. Instead, he borrows Won10,000 from a banker and gives it to a street flower-selling woman.

“The drama makes me think about what matters in my life. People risk their lives for money, which turns out to be no solution,” said South Korean fan Lee Ji-Hyeon.

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Claude McKay is having something of a rebirth in France, thanks to independent publishers and to translators such as Jean-Baptiste Naudy.

Naudy is the French translator of McKay’s novel Amiable with Big Teeth (Les Brebis noires de Dieu), one of two translations that have hit bookstores in 2021, generating renewed interest in the work of the Jamaican-born writer (1890-1948). McKay was a key figure in the Harlem Renaissance, a “cultural nomad” who spent time in Europe during the 1920s and 30s, and the author of the famous poem “If We Must Die”.

The first of the two recent translations – Romance in Marseille (Héliotropismes) – was published under its English title last spring, while Naudy’s Les Brebis Noires de Dieu came out at the end of summer during the so called rentrée, the return to routine after the holidays.

A third McKay novel, Home to Harlem (Retour à Harlem, Nada Éditions), has meanwhile been newly translated and is scheduled for publication in early 2022.

This feast of McKay’s work has resulted in profiles of the writer in French newspapers such as Libération, with Naudy’s expert translation receiving particular attention because of the intriguing story behind Amiable with Big Teeth.

The celebrated “forgotten” work – a “colourful, dramatic novel” that “centres on the efforts by Harlem intelligentsia to organize support for the liberation of fascist-controlled Ethiopia,” as Penguin Books describes it – was discovered only in 2009 by then graduate student Jean-Christophe Cloutier while doing research. His discovery came 40 years after McKay had completed the manuscript.

Cloutier and his advisor Brent Hayes Edwards went on to confirm the authenticity of the work, and it was published by Penguin in 2017. Fully aware of this history, Naudy said it was “mind-blowing” to translate the novel, and he drew upon his own background for the rendering into French.

Born in Paris, Naudy studied Francophone literature at the Sorbonne University and design at the Jan van Eyck Academy in the Netherlands. He describes himself as a publisher, translator and “text experimentalist”, and he coordinates “Déborder”, a book series published by independent publishing house Nouvelles Éditions Place. Within this series, he has translated African Journey by Eslanda Goode Robeson (2020) and now the McKay novel.

As a writer, Naudy, under the name of Société Réaliste, has himself published two books, in addition to essays and experimental texts in journals and reviews; and as an artist he has exhibited work in both solo and group shows internationally. One can find examples of his public art pieces around Paris.

Jean-Baptiste Naudy in Paris (photo by AM)

The following edited interview with Naudy, conducted by email and in person, is part of SWAN’s series about translators of Caribbean literature, done in collaboration with the Caribbean Translation Project.

SWAN: How did the translating of Aimable with Big Teeth come about?

Jean-Baptiste Naudy: In 2019, Sarah Frioux-Salgas and I were invited by Cyrille Zola-Place, director of Nouvelles Éditions Place in Paris, to curate a book series dealing with unclassifiable texts, overreaching genres, intertwining topics. Our common interest for the internationalisation of political and poetical scopes in the 20th century, via the publication of books largely ignored by the classical Western frame of reference, gave birth to this book series, entitled Déborder (To overflow).

The first book to be included was a reprint of Negro Anthology, edited by Nancy Cunard in 1934, a massive collection of poetry, fiction and essays about the Black Atlantic, for which she collaborated with paramount artists and scholars of those years, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, George Padmore and dozens of others.

Since then, we have published five more books in this frame, like the first French translation of Eslanda Robeson’s African Journey, or Sismographie des luttes (Seismography of Struggles), a kind of world history of anticolonial journals, amazingly edited by art historian and writer Zahia Rahmani.

At the beginning of 2020, Sarah told me the story of a newfound book by Claude McKay, Amiable with Big Teeth, edited by Brent Hayes Edwards and Jean-Christophe Cloutier for Penguin Books in 2017.

Searching the archives of a rather obscure New York publisher, Cloutier had found the complete and ready-to-be-published manuscript of a completely unknown novel by McKay. The very fact that such a story was possible – to find out of the blue a full book by a major writer of the 20th century – was unfathomable to me. Nouvelles Éditions Place immediately agreed to the idea of publishing the book in French.

SWAN: Including your translation, there will be three novels by McKay published in French this year and next. Can you explain this surge of international interest in his work?

JBN: The renewed interest in Claude McKay’s oeuvre is global for sure, but also at times pretty local. The critical deconstruction of the Western ideological frame of thought has called for the exposure of another cultural grounding, a counter-narrative of modernity, other stories and histories encompassing the plurality and complexity of dominated voices, visions, sensibilities, positions on their path to liberation.

What was interesting for me was to try to understand or feel what the colonial condition was doing to the language itself. How writing or expressing oneself in a foreign language, an imperial language imposed upon a great variety of cultures, was transforming the language in return

To that extent, McKay is an immense writer, whose very life was bound to this intertwining. Like most of the key figures of the Black Atlantic, he has been largely ignored or under-appreciated by the 20th century literary canon. More than ever, he is a lighthouse for those interested in the interwoven problematics of race, gender, sexuality, and class.

But he is as well a singular figure of displacement, a critically productive internationalist, being at first a Jamaican in New York, then a Caribbean from Harlem in Europe, then a Black writer from France in Morocco, and finally back to the United States, a Black Atlantic wanderer.

Which is also the point of his renewed presence in the French contemporary cultural landscape. The very fact that one of the most preeminent actors of the Harlem Renaissance was, first, a Jamaican, and second, writing from France about the Americas and the global Black diaspora is irresistibly intriguing.

Another important factor is the crucial influence that McKay’s writings had on a number of Francophone literary figures of the 1930s, including the founders of the Négritude movement, the Nardal sisters, Aimé and Suzanne Césaire, Léon Gontran Damas, René Ménil, and many others.

In a nutshell, I would argue that McKay captivates nowadays for all those reasons at the same time. He epitomizes the Black international radical current that rose in the 1920s and 1930s, his critical scope is extremely contemporary, and he is representative of a certain blend of political and cultural cosmopolitanism that happened to exist in the French imperial metropole during the interwar years.

It is interesting to notice that the three books being published now in France deal with different periods of his life: Home to Harlem, his 1928 bestseller (translated Retour à Harlem in the new French translation to be published by Nada Éditions) is a luxurious portrait of Harlem in the 1920s, written while he was in France. Romance in Marseille, released last April by Héliotropismes, another previously unpublished novel from the early 1930s, revolves around the central themes of his most famous novel also set in Marseilles, Banjo. And thus, Amiable with Big Teeth, dating from 1941, being his last fiction and only novel ever written in the United States.

SWAN: In addition to your native French, you speak English and Spanish. Where and how did you begin learning other languages?

JBN: Where I grew up, English and Spanish were mandatory at school. So, I grasped some elements there, quite poorly. Then I had to travel. So, I learned most of my English with Ukrainian artists in Lisbon and bits of Spanish with Brazilian anarchists in Athens. How romantic…

SWAN: How did your interest in translation start?

JBN: My first encounter with the need to translate something happened I guess when I went to London for the first time, in 1997. Following a totally random move – because I liked his name – I bought a washed-out copy of Kamau Brathwaite’s Middle Passages. I had never read anything like that. For sure it sounded like street music to me, half a drunkard rant, half an esoteric psalmody, but the polyphony at work in this single text, the sound and visual poetics of patwa mesmerized me.

So, for the last 25 years, I have been trying to translate exactly that, the very sensation I had in front of this palimpsest of languages. A rant that would be a psalmody, at times unintelligible, at times neat as a scalpel slice. How language can be haunted by the spectre of the past while echoing potentially emancipated futures. What Rimbaud called “the long, immense, rational derangement of the senses”, inscribed on a page where words are sounds are signs are ciphers are colours are noises are tastes are notes and nevertheless, never more than words.

SWAN: Can you tell us more about other works that you’ve translated and how you selected these?

JBN: Last year, I translated African Journey by Eslanda Goode Robeson, and it was a delight. I have an intense admiration for Eslanda Robeson, an amazing transnational feminist networker and anticolonial advocate.

This book was a great success in the USA when it was published in 1945, the first popular book about Africa written by an African American writer. It is a travel diary, at the same time complex and honest, but I particularly liked how Robeson used this genre to create commonality between Africans and Americans.

For the anecdote, Eslanda Robeson and Claude McKay really disliked each other, their writing styles are almost opposite, as well as their social backgrounds and cultural framings; however, I think they were aiming at the same liberation and I love them both!

SWAN: How important is translation for today’s world, especially for publishing underrepresented communities? In the Caribbean, as in other regions, it sometimes feels as if countries are divided by language. How can people in the literary and education spheres help to bridge these linguistic “borders”?

JBN: When I was a student, I had the opportunity to study what we call in my country “Francophone literature”, so literature written by former and present subjects of the French colonial project. Or raised in the postcolonial remains of the French empire.

What was interesting for me was to try to understand or feel what the colonial condition was doing to the language itself. How writing or expressing oneself in a foreign language, an imperial language imposed upon a great variety of cultures, was transforming the language in return.

At its core, Francophone literature has a poetical abundance and a political tumult that always seemed to me in synchronization with the modern condition. Whatever be the scale and the observation point. What people from my neighbourhood in Paris, coming from all corners of the world, were doing via the vernacular popular French slang we were talking every day, the “Francophone” writers were doing the same to literature itself.

Upgrading it to a world-scale. As any other imperial language, French does not belong to French people, fortunately, and that is the main source of its current literary potency as well as the only sound reason to continue to use it.

The political side effects of this linguistic colonial and then postcolonial condition astonished me as well: how this shared imperial language allowed Caribbean peoples, Arabs, Africans, Indochinese, Indians, Guyanese, to relate and elaborate a common ground.

This tremendous poetic force and its radical cosmopolitan perspective bound me to translation, especially when I experimentally realized that the situation was exactly the same with all the other imperial languages, English, Spanish, etc. Suzanne Césaire was maybe one of the first poets to see the Caribbean not so much as separated islands (divided by bodies of water, empires, languages, political status) but as an archipelago, an extremely complex panorama whose unity is undersea and underseen. I consider that my task as a literary translator working on the Atlantic world is to help languages undersee each other. I aim to be a pidginizer.

SWAN: What are your next projects?

JBN: I am working on several translation projects. First of all, an amazingly powerful collection of short stories by South African wonder writer Stacy Hardy. Then, a beautiful and crucial book by Annette Joseph-Gabriel, Reimagining Liberation, dealing with the key role played by Black women in the decolonization of the French empire.

Finally, I will work on the first French translation of The Practice of Diaspora, an essential book by Brent Hayes Edwards, focusing on Paris as a node of the Black Atlantic culture in the interwar years. Its subtitle says it all: Literature, translation and the rise of Black internationalism. This masterwork constructs an analytical frame to relate together René Maran, Alain Locke, Paulette Nardal, Claude McKay, Lamine Senghor, George Padmore, Jessie Fauset, Langston Hughes, C.L.R. James, Tiemoko Garan Kouyaté, and so many more. As you can easily imagine, it is a mind-blowing book, and I am extremely proud to work on it. – AM /SWAN

How does injustice make you feel? Do you see yourself as a perpetrator, or as a victim? Is there any such thing as neutrality? These are some of the questions that Dorian Sari asks through artwork, which includes blurry photographs with violently shattered glass frames.

The award-winning Turco-Swiss artist – who uses the pronoun they – has a solo booth at the current International Contemporary Art Fair in Paris (FIAC), and their work invites viewers to  question reactions and stances when it comes to societal norms. Who, for instance, has thrown the stone that is glued to the cracked glass?

“When people look at this, they rarely see themselves as the perpetrator, but we all do things that exclude others,” says Sari, who is represented by Turkish gallery Öktem Aykut, one of 170 galleries taking part in FIAC this year.

Dorian Sari with artwork at FIAC. Credit: AM/SWAN.

On from Oct. 21 to 24, the annual fair did not happen in 2020 because of Covid-19, and its return sees a range of artwork addressing global political and pandemic issues. Sari, who studied political science and literature before art, wonders however if the world has learned anything from the events of the past two years.

The works on display – a tiny chewed-up whistle, a retractable “wall” with spaces for communication if one wishes, two large photographs and a book titled Texts on Post-Truth, Violence, Anger are meant to spark even deeper reflections about identity and affiliation. (The book was published by the Kunstmuseum Basel when Sari had an exhibition earlier this year, after winning the Manor Art Prize – an award that promotes young visual artists working in Switzerland.)

The intended discomfort is even evident in Sari’s choice of title: “Ding-dong, the itch is back!”, and countries aren’t exempt. Can a nation claim neutrality when they sell arms, the artist also asks, through an illustration showing a gun emitting a red flag that has a white “x” in the middle.

Sari took time out from their busy schedule at FIAC to discuss these concerns. Following is the edited interview.

SWAN: What inspires your work?

SARI: My latest research was on the topic of post-truth, a political adjective for what’s happening in the 21^st century. It means that we’re bombarded with information every day, but at the same time nobody knows if this information is true or not. We also live in a technological period where algorithms … just want people to consume more. To keep you on the platform, they show you something that you like, then a more radical version, and then something even more radical. There is so much polarisation and separation in the world, and this is one of my biggest interests. At the FIAC, I’m showing some of the works I showed at the Kunstmuseum in Basel and also at Öktem Aykut in Istanbul. With this series of photographs, I was interested in seeing the relationship between the victim and the perpetrator because we always think that what we do is the right thing, and it is always others’ fault. I wanted to change this position. Whoever is looking at the photograph is the stone-thrower but even though I give this position, people still prefer to identify as the victim. But even if you’re neither, and you’re just watching and being silent, that third option is also problematic.

The exterior of the art fair venue in Paris. Credit: AM/SWAN.

SWAN: What is behind the “itch” in the title of the photograph series?

SARI: It’s a series of 10 photos, and the “itch is back” means there’s an uncomfortable feeling inside, so you scratch your body. Maybe this discomfort comes because there’s something that the stone-thrower doesn’t want to know, doesn’t want to see. It can be anything.

SWAN: So, the aim is to make us question our own itch?

SARI: Exactly. And to question what we reject, what we throw stones at in daily life, because we do it so much. We exclude so many things. I always believe we’re separated through the adjectives: the moment we’re born, they tell us our gender, they tell us our nationality, they tell us our religion, they tell us our social class, language, everything. Everything is automatically put on us, and it’s already part of our separation because one group doesn’t want the other group, and di-di-di-di-di-di. But after all, I believe in love, and I believe love doesn’t have a gender, race, social class. Love is love.

SWAN: And the whistle?

SARI: There are so many people who wear a whistle as a necklace, or carry it on a keychain or in their bag, so that in case of something violent in the streets, they can raise an alarm, make their voices heard. Or, in case there’s an earthquake… I was thinking that someone could have so much fear and anxiety, waiting for something to happen. And the whistle could be like a pencil – when you don’t use it, you chew on the end. And I thought that someone waiting for something bad to happen would chew on the whistle. So, it’s like auto-destruction: you eat your own voice in order to be heard because of fear.

Maru Aguzzi at the exhibition in Paris, in front of works by Alejandro Magallanes (photo by SWAN).

By SWAN
PARIS, Sep 27 2021 (IPS)

So, what’s the difference between illustration and “art”?  When asked this question, Maru Aguzzi replies with a wry smile: “Perhaps the price?”

Aguzzi is the curator of Gran Salón México-Paris – Contemporary Mexican Illustration, an exhibition taking place at the Mexican Cultural Institute in the French capital until Oct. 26. The show brings together some 40 illustrators, whose work includes painting, drawing, print-making, video and other genres.

‘Autorretrato’ by Rocca Luis Cesar, photo courtesy of Gran Salón México.

The pieces are strikingly artistic, even if they’re being presented as illustrations. All are “original” works created especially for this exhibition, which is the first in France from Gran Salón México, an annual art fair that Aguzzi created in 2014.

The fair’s mission, she says, is to offer a glimpse into the country’s growing illustration “wave”, and to bring to the public some of the best contemporary works in this category – a field that actually “plays” with the limits of art.

“Saying that price makes the difference is perhaps the funny answer, but you can go deeper and see how illustrators choose to explore content or not,” Aguzzi told SWAN. “The way the work is presented, viewers don’t have to dig for content or meaning as with contemporary art, where the work requires some kind of engagement from the viewer for completion. Illustration has an immediate impact, and viewers can like what they see or not. It’s that simple.”

Gran Salón’s participating illustrators use a variety of media just like their “artist” peers, she said. Works in the show range from oil and acrylic paintings on canvas to charcoal drawings on paper. In between, viewers can enjoy watercolours, collage, animation and digital art.

In fact, some of the illustrators do exhibit in art fairs as well, further blurring distinctions, Aguzzi said. They draw on a long tradition of Mexican artists working in various genres, as did renowned painters Diego Rivera and Rufino Tamayo – whose influence can be felt in the current show, alongside that of multi-genre Spanish artist Pablo Picasso, for instance.

‘Creciendo juntos’ by María Ponce, photo courtesy of Gran Salón México.

Picasso and his paintings of women are evoked with a twist in the illustrations of Rocca Luis Cesar (born in Guadalajara in 1986), while the more “veteran” Carlos Rodríguez (born in La Soledad, San Luis Potosí, 1980) draws upon images – such as the watermelon – that appear in the paintings of Tamayo.

Both illustrators convey a strong artistic sensibility, with Rodríguez in particular being inspired by “classical painting, mythology, naïve art and porn” – as his bio states. His two vibrant, erotic paintings in the show were created specifically to conjure a Latin American ambience in Paris, Aguzzi said.

Another notable aspect of the exhibition is its sense of humour or satire, in addition to the addressing of serious topics, such as climate change and language rights. One of the youngest illustrators, María Ponce, born in Oaxaca in 1994, exemplifies this with her colour drawings about daily life and with her “Creciendo juntos” piece, which conveys the message that we have to take care of the environment and trees if we too wish to keep thriving.

Meanwhile, illustrator and filmmaker Gabriela Badillo (born in 1979) uses her work to highlight Mexico’s indigenous languages through her 68 Voces project, a video series with stories told in these languages. Badillo co-founded audiovisual production company Hola Combo with a belief in the social responsibility of media, according to the exhibition, and she and her colleagues have worked with indigenous groups, including children, on creative initiatives.

Her videos, and other film clips and works of animation, add to the unexpected scope of the Gran Salón show.

“The work that illustrators are producing in Mexico includes numerous genres, and I really wanted to show this range,” Aguzzi told SWAN.

Additional information:

https://icm.sre.gob.mx/francia/index.php/fr/ & https://gran.salon/ 

When Turkish- Norwegian writer and filmmaker Nefise Ozkal Lorentzen heard about Seyran Ates’ mixed gender mosque in Berlin, Germany, she immediately decided to make a film on Seyran’s life. It took three years to produce the film, ‘Seyran Ates: Sex Revolution and Islam’ a portrait of a female Imam and her struggles in activating revolution within Islam.

In an interview given to me, Nefise says, “Gender” was the key concept in her quest into the mystery of Islam as a religion. “Seyran Ates is a very powerful woman, but besides being powerful, she is so real, and I found that so fascinating. This film is a journey through Seyran’s life from her humble beginning as a Muslim girl in Turkey’s slums to a female leader daring to challenge her own religion.

“It took me some time to penetrate through the fortifications of bodyguard protections and the thick walls of media interest in her work and to really bring her into “our living room”. Seyran is one of the most police-protected civilian women in our time. Therefore I chose to portray her as a daughter, sister, mother, aunt and also as a good friend,” says Nefise.

Seyran Ates is a human rights lawyer, founder and imam of the Ibn Rushd-Goethe mosque in Berlin, where both men and women pray together, where headscarves are not mandatory and members of the LGBTQI community are welcome. Seyran has been unable to move freely for almost 15 years because of death threats, and has been under police protection from Muslim fundamentalists, turkish-kurdish nationalists and rightwing extremists. One of the main reasons for her attacks, is Seyran’s activism for gender equality and LGBTQI inclusivity in Islam.

“We are living in the 21st century but we are teaching Islam like in the 7th century. Islam needs a sexual revolution,” Seyran says in the film.

Over the past two decades, nefise has produced and directed several documentaries related to Islam. Her trilogy of films entitled, Gender Me (2008), A Balloon for Allah (2011) and Manislam (2014) have covered various topics from islam and homosexuality, women and Islam, power privileges and burdens of masuclinity in Islam and more.

“As a filmmaker, my honesty towards understanding people that I don’t agree with, it gives me an opportunity to build bridges between them and myself. As an artist I have been curious about searching for what is hidden behind reality and how it is interpreted. My cinematographic vision seeks the thin organic lines between reality and memory.

“If Seyran, a girl from the Turkish ghetto in Berlin, becomes the woman who can change the political narrative in Germany, then anyone could make changes in their community. I believe Islam can have a sexual revolution because the youth today can see through it, and they want their freedom, they want to be the drivers of their own lives,” Nefise says.

Nefise’s films have often created a stir because of the topics they has covered, but one can easily say they also opened up discussions, conversations and provided comprehensive treatment to often controversial subject of women, gender, homoseuxality, masculinity in Islam. Religion based social norms and values often go unchallenged and create neverending inequality producing mechanisms, often stemming from deeply rooted patriarchal beliefs.

The struggle in today’s Islamic society is torn between fundamentalists and extremists, often speaking their own narrative or interpretations on Islam and on behalf of Islam, and a pluralist faith which is undergoing its own set of revolutions and changes, most often quietly. “The problem has never been with the text, but with the context.”

By choosing to tell the story of a female Imam living in Germany, Nefise has managed to give a glimpse into the world of revolutionaries, what it takes to not just call for “sexual revolution” in Islam, but also what it takes to stand up for human rights, for gender equality, for LGBTQI rights in conversative and often extremist societies of the world – which are not isolated to just one practise or religion.

Seyran Ates in the film says she does not reject Islam, but she decided to change it from within. The challenge is, can a woman, a woman who fights for inclusivity of the LGBTQI community, who wants men and women to pray together, who believes that women have the right to lead prayers, who is also an Imam, can she act as a bridge between a more compassionate religion and victims of religious extremisms, which also includes racists, white supremists and others.

Reforms take time, and it takes much longer when you are also trying to challenge the given and taught notion of what your religion allows, expects and wants from you. Progressive Islam, in many mainstream Islamic countries is not considered Islam, as it brings about changes and that makes many religious heads uncomfortable. When Seyran Ates as a woman and also as an Imam calls for a sexual revolution within Islam, it definitely triggers Muslim fundamentalists as she has bullet scars to prove that she was attacked for trying to bring these changes.

“It is not only conservative right-wing people who have created many hindrances for progressive Muslim women, but also the left-wing intellectuals who do not dare to take the problems within the Muslim communities seriously. The gender revolution within Islam is highly necessary. I really believe that our film on Seyran Ates will trigger it,” says Nefise.

The author is a journalist and filmmaker based out of New Delhi. She hosts a weekly online show called The Sania Farooqui Show where Muslim women from around the world are invited to share their views. You can follow her on Twitter here.

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By Jan Lundius
STOCKHOLM / ROME, Apr 27 2021 (IPS)

The World Press Freedom Day on the 3rd of May is an occasion for celebrating humanity. Language enables us to transmit our thoughts in sound – a means of communication developed through our unique brain, combined with our capacity to control lips, tongue and other components of the vocal apparatus. Over time, humans have also acquired skills to commit our language to writing.

Since language is the basis for human existence, it is particularly painful when we are denied expressions of thoughts and feelings. Not being listened to, abused and told to: “Shut up!”, make us suffer from being denied equal access to human fellowship. We are herd animals, a sense of belonging and freedom to express ourselves is essential for us all. This is probably the reason to why words in so many cultures are considered to be sacred – worthy of respect and even veneration. Several societies condemn verbal abuse and most religions consider lying to be a grave sin.

Generally, it is written words which are considered to be particularly sacred. However, these sacred words have often a spoken tradition behind them. Several sacred scriptures have been recited long before they were written down. In 1960, the Malian author Amadou Hampâté Bâ stated in a speech at UNESCO’s headquarters in Paris:

“It is our duty to safeguard our inherited oral tradition, to try to transmit whatever we can of it before time and oblivion cause it to disappear from human memory. […] I concede that several of the world’s human inhabitants are illiterate, but I do not concede to you that they are ignorant. […] I remind you that in my country, every time an old man dies, a library has burned down.”

This respect for the spoken word, particularly in the form of recitation, is reflected in many of the world’s sacred texts. For many Muslims the sound of Qur’anic chant is an immediate means of contact with the Word of God. The sound itself is considered to have a divine source. Participation in Qur’anic recitation as reciter, or as listener, becomes an act of worship. This respect for the spoken and written word may be one reason to why so many religions condemn lying. The Lebanese scholar Al-Ḥurr Al-cĀmili (1624-1693 CE) accurately stated “All the evils have been locked in a room and its key is lying.” In the Christian Bible, Jesus is quoted as saying: “But let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes’ and your ‘No’ be ‘No.’ Whatever is more than these is of the Evil One,” while Buddhist scriptures proclaim that the path to bliss and righteousness contain:

“Correct speech: Refrain from lying. Do not engage in gossip, misleading, hurtful, or loose speech.
Right intention: Your intentions should be based on kindness and compassion. Proper action: Refrain from harming living things. Do not take any statement for granted.”

Honest and exquisitely expressed words might slightly open the gates to an otherwise incomprehensible core of existence. Like art and music, words may enable us to glimpse the greatness of the Universe and perhaps even grasp some of its inner meaning.

In the Bible, God creates the world with words:

“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.”

Most of us have a quite laid back attitude when it comes to expressing ourselves. After having used our words we tend to forget what made us utter them, that is if we do not consider them to be so significant that we decide to write them down. When such writings become “sacred” it means that they have gained an existence far beyond what one single person happened to say to another at a given moment. Such words often become Law, a solid foundation for a society’s existence and thus they obtain a decisive significance for an individual’s perceptions, thoughts and actions.

Apparently did writing develop independently in at least four ancient civilizations. Sometime in 3400 BCE in Mesopotamia, in Egypt 3200 BCE, in China 1200 BCE, and in the present Southern Mexico and Guatemala 500 BCE.

Written words were extremely important to ancient Egyptians. The Greeks called Egyptian characters hieroglyphs, sacred signs. Scribes were considered to convey the language of the gods and Thoth, the god of wisdom and maintainer of the Universe, was believed to possess a book that included the entire set of rules governing Cosmos. Written and carefully recited words empowered objects and sacred actions. Words were believed to enable the deceased to awaken to a new existence beyond death. Every sacrificed object – water, necessities of life, incense, and ornaments – was through sacred words charged with power. It was not only objects that through words were filled to the brim by force, the words themselves were also loaded with power, meaning that so called “word plays” endowed words and sentences with a wide range of meanings and allusions. A single word could thereby allude to objects, the deceased, gods and demons, forces and a large variety of powerful concepts and ways of thinking.

Mastering all this knowledge made the art of writing extremely difficult. Becoming a scribe required a long, tough education, which not only meant mastering the complex depiction/writing of words, the difficult grammar and underlying allusions, it also included learning rituals by heart, mythology, accounting, mathematics and geometry. All that was required not only to master religious obligations, but also administrative tasks. However, the reward was worth it. An Egyptian scribe escaped hard work under a scorching sun, did not pay taxes and reached high positions. Sometime 3,200 years ago, someone wrote on a papyrus a text he called The Happy Scribe:

“Is there anyone here like Hardedef? Is here another one similar to Imhotep? There is not in our time a Noferti, or a Cheti, foremost of them all. I ask you to remember a man like Pathemdjehuti, a Chacheperrasonb. Is there perhaps another one like Ptahhotep or Kaires? The gates and halls that were built for them have fallen into disrepair. Their mortuary priests do no longer exist. Their resting places are forgotten. But their names are still mentioned due to the books they wrote, because they were so beautiful. Those who wrote them, their memory lives on forever. Become a scribe! Put this into your mind, so that your name might become like theirs. A book is better than a burial chamber covered with writing, than a burial chapel never so well built. Become a scribe and live forever.”

For many later authors writing became a life-absorbing vocation, while several of them spent a lifetime searching for the right word. One of them, Gustave Flaubert, wrote:

”Whatever we want to convey, there is only one word to express it, one verb to animate it, one adjective to qualify it. We must therefore go on seeking that word, verb or adjective, until we have discovered it and never be satisfied with approximations, never fall back on tricks, even inspired ones. Or tomfoolery of language to dodge the difficulty.”

The right words have been found by vociferous writers and speakers, enabling them to inspire and empower people. You might think of Martin Luther King’s rousing speech:

”I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.”

Bold journalists have with beautiful and adequate expressions dared to pinpoint injustices. Like Émile Zola when he in 1898 accused the French establishment of punishing the innocent Alfred Dreyfus:

”What they have dared, so shall I dare. Dare to tell the truth, as I have pledged to tell it, in full, since the normal channels of justice have failed to do so. My duty is to speak out, not to become an accomplice in this travesty. My nights would otherwise be haunted by the spectre of an innocent man, far away, suffering the most horrible of tortures for a crime he did not commit.”

However, many of these outspoken heroes of well-written and just words have had to pay for their honesty with their lives. Like the poet Osip Mandelstam, who under the bloody tyranny of Josef Stalin with a great poem dared to break the fearful silence of many of his fellow citizens:

Dictators hate to be disclosed in all their nakedness; their stupidity, fears, disdain for others and raving violence. However, it is not only in dictatorships that unsung heroes of free speech are silenced, and even killed. In 2020, nearly seven out of every ten journalists killed lost their lives in countries “at peace” and an unaccounted number were threatened and abused, often due to investigations into cases of local corruption, organised crime, misuse of public funds and environmental misdemeanour. In 2020, Reporters Without Borders revealed that to their knowledge 50 journalists had been killed, 387 had been detained, 54 held hostage and four were missing. So, not only on the 3rd May let us pay homage to the guardians and heroes of the sacred word and express our disdain for all those who do not respect words; who cheat, lie, abuse, maim and kill to keep us all in ignorance and fear.

Jan Lundius holds a PhD. on History of Religion from Lund University and has served as a development expert, researcher and advisor at SIDA, UNESCO, FAO and other international organisations.

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Excerpt:

Oscar Wilde in the 1880s. Photo: wikipedia

By Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury
SINGAPORE, Jan 29 2021 (IPS-Partners)

So, who or what was Oscar Fingal Flahertie Wills Wilde? Was he a poet, a prose-smith, a playwright, a classicist, a raconteur, a poseur, an aphorist, or simply a sensation for his, or may be for all, times? He was all of those, and much else besides. He was a lord of language, known for his bitingly witty dialogue and epigrammatic banter, flamboyant dress and glittering conversation. To London’s Victorian society he was both a bright boy in a man’s body, albeit with an intellect of stupendous heights, as well as a thoughtful prophet wrapping profundity in dazzling verbal giftwrap. To discuss his writings, the Dhaka -based “The Reading Circle” held a Webinar ably moderated by Professor Niaz Zaman. The participants -Syed Badrul Ahsan, Tazeen Murshid, Nusrat Haque, Ameenah Ahmed, Tanveerul Haque, Zakia Rahman, Zobaida Latif, and myself -all of us drawn from such different corners of the globe as London, Brussels, Singapore and Dhaka, made presentations. This article is based on my remarks made on that occasion.

Born Irish in 1856, Oscar Wilde had made England famous in America, where during his lecture tour he took the new world by storm. He regaled the Americans with his wisdom and wit, evoking laughter everywhere he went, with such quips as that there was everything common between England and America, except of course, the language!

From Trinity College in Dublin Wilde went to Magdalene at Oxford. The University was to acknowledge him as among its brightest alumni. He graduated with First Class Honors, and moved to London, first conquering the salons of the West end, and then its theatre. He believed that a man who can dominate a London dinner-table could dominate the world. He mocked the flippancy of the upper classes through his plays, poems stories, and his novel “the Picture of Dorian Gray”. He ridiculed them by noting how the hair of a socialite, after the death of her third husband, turned quite gold with grief! Yet it was to their ranks that he also yearned to belong. To him, if being in society was a bore, to be out of it was a tragedy!

What was to finally destroy him, and spell his doom, was his admiration of one young member of this nobility, Lord Alfred Douglas, whom he endearingly called Bosie. Bosie was breathtakingly beautiful, and to Wilde, the visible perception of absolute perfection. This love that dared not speak its name was unrequited. It pulled Wilde down to abysmal depths of degradation, and eventually to prison, where he spent two years in hard labour as a price for consorting with this younger object of his adoration. His was a life in which he seemed to be unable to reconcile his precocious intellect with his immature emotions.

Wilde baffles us by freely mingling profound wisdom with mere frippery. He often played with words, toyed with ideas, and struck poses. His writings that featured in the Webinar were all part of his efforts to create verbal works of art. Critics were not always kind to him. Particularly his morality or rather the lack of it attracted social opprobrium. Yet he persisted, undeterred. He often said he himself disagreed with much he wrote. He held that in art there was no such thing as universal truth. A truth in art was that whose contradictory was also true.

Frank Harris, whose work on Wilde was the first biography on him that I had read in my mid-teens , said that Oscar Wilde’s greatest play was his own life, a tragedy with Greek implications , of which he himself was the most ardent spectator. Wilde once observed to Andre Gide that ‘’ I put my genius into my life and only my talents into my works”.

His sole novel, “The Picture of Dorian Gray”, a dark story of split- self amidst corruption in the heart of the city, belongs to the genre of late Victorian Gothic literature. Some have seen it as a fantasy autobiography of Wilde himself, a moral cautionary tale of the era. It revolves around a Faustian deal that the principal protagonist Dorian Gray makes with the devil by selling his soul for the gift of eternal physical beauty. Names have deep connotations in Wilde; remember “The Importance of Being Earnest”? Dorian Gray’s name is both important and ambiguous. It derives from the combination of the sea-nymph “Doris” in Greek mythology, and the French word “D’or” meaning gold or golden, signifying beauty. Gray means morally he is neither black nor white. As for his fiancée, Sybil Vane, who kills herself upon being rejected by Dorian, ”Sybils” were oracles in Classical Greece through whom the gods spoke. Vane reflects her life with Dorian which was in vain.

Wilde’s “Ballad of Reading Gaol” is a fascinating narration of prison experience. Structurally the poem comprises 109 stanzas, divided into six sections, maintaining the same rhythmic scheme, rendering it consistent and regular. His use of the literary devices included alliteration, enjambment and repetition. In this long and plodding iambic tetrameter, and use of repetitive parallelism , the reader is made to feel the grinding restlessness of prison life. The central theme of the poem was the execution of one Charles Woodridge for the murder of his wife. Around this core, whose genre was Gothic Realism, Wilde built a meditation on the paradoxes of morality. The ballad was also an indictment on the death penalty, and the harsh conditions of the Victorian prison-system.

While in prison, Wilde produced another deeply Gothic construct, “De Profundis”, Latin for “Out of the Depths”. In this, which refers to Psalm 130 (“From the depths I cry to thee, O Lord!”), Wilde’s spiritual awareness is manifested. It is a petulant, sad, and riveting memoir of his life, in the form of a letter to Lord Alfred Douglas, the focus of his largely unrequited affections. The letter also reflects his metaphysical side, for here he looks to find within himself and not outside, some form of self-realization. He was to say of his faith: “I believe that God made a separate world for each separate human being, and it is in that world within us that we should seek to live”. It was in such a world that he lived and died himself, both shocking and dazzling his fellow humans inhabiting their other worlds.

It has been aptly said that talking remained his vocation, writing his evocation. Writing was merely a vehicle propelling him towards his real goal which was the dramatization of Oscar Wilde. In his description of self, it was often difficult to make out whether he was speaking in self -deprecation or self-praise: As when he said “I am so clever that sometimes I don’t understand a single word that I am saying”; or , his simple statement to the American Customs official, upon arrival in New York, that : “I have nothing to declare but my genius”. The compilations of the sayings he left behind for posterity are often fondly called “Oscariana.”’

This coruscating kaleidoscope of colors that was the life of Oscar Wilde lasted only 46 years. Oscar was ahead of his time. His disdain for conventional morality and relentless pursuit of new and amoral experiences broke ground, to be later tilled by others. He was an apostle of the Aesthetic Movement- admiring art and beauty for their own sake which stemmed from Keats, Shelley, Whistler and Walter Pater.

Wilde was the advance herald of existentialism, and the intellectual godfather of the flower children of our younger days, in the 1960s. For all his love of Classical Greece, there was a striking simplicity in his spiritualism (he had converted to Catholicism), as when he proclaimed in his inspirational poem, Santa Decca, referring to the Greek god that “Great Pan is dead, and Mary’s Son is King”. His writings will endure in the great pantheon of English literature as the work of an incomparable language-wrangler.

Oscar Wilde, I believe, must have been convinced, that like Christ’s, his life would someday be resurrected, only metaphorically, of course. If he were to be aware of a Webinar on him a century and a quarter down the line by a Group of Bangladeshis, he would be amused, and pleased. But not, I believe, given his ego, surprised.

Dr Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury is the Honorary Fellow at the Institute of South Asia Studies, NUS. He is a former Foreign Advisor (Foreign Minister) of Bangladesh and President & Distinguished Fellow of Cosmos Foundation. The views addressed in the article are his own. He can be reached at: isasiac@nus.edu.sg

By KJ Ong
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Oct 15 2020 (IPS)

In the glitzy Dolby Theater in Hollywood Heights, with stars dressed in hundred thousand-dollar garbs, Parasite—a film about inequality, class tension and the fault lines of capitalism—won big. I couldn’t help but recall South Korean director Bong Joon-ho’s earlier 2013 film, Snowpiercer.

KJ Ong

All is not well in the train—the haves, living at the front of the train, eat sushi and attend fancy dress parties while the have-nots, in the slum-like conditions at the back of the train, eat insect protein and toil in grease, sweat, and blood. A rebellion breaks out, and the have-nots, carve a bloody path to the head of the train.

There, the movie twists. The leader of the have-not rebels uncovers the source of the train’s power: its Eternal Engine has been breaking down for years. Children, small enough to fit through a tiny engine compartment, are kidnapped to manually keep its parts in perpetual motion.

Behind the sparkling clean fluorescent walls, what we believed all along was automated was powered by exploitative labour all along.

In many ways, the tech world today isn’t so different.

At Foxconn Shenzhen, where as much as 40% of the world’s consumer electronics are made – including iPhones, Playstations, Nintendo XYZs, and Microsoft products – Chinese workers similarly live in overcrowded dormitories and are forced to endure horrid working conditions.

Many workers have reported that they were promised free housing but made to pay exorbitant utility bills. Investigations have revealed that suicides are common, with many driven to despair by no overtime pay, deceit by employers on living conditions, 7-day work weeks with 12-hour shifts. In 2012, 150 workers threatened to jump to their death if conditions were not improved. In 2016, a smaller group repeated the threat.

It seems like not much has changed since 2016. In September 2019, Foxconn was once again the media spotlight for employing 50% of its workforce as temporary workers, blatantly flaunting Chinese laws that limit this number to 10%.

Temporary workers don’t receive the benefits and rights full-time employees receive,such as paid sick leave or social insurance, placing them in precarious positionswhere an illness or unforeseen accident that puts them out of commission can wreck entire lives. Foxconn has frequently defended itself by claiming simply to be a service provider to tech companies, an arrangement that requires flexibility to cater to the demand cycles of the industry.

Such arguments from a manufacturing giant echo that of hegemonic tech companies and their “platform defence.” A familiar argument goes: “We are just a platform. We are not really an employer. We provide a service to cater to the on-demand nature of customers.”

Following such a logic then, these “platforms” have no obligation to provide insurance, social protections, or many rights afforded to full time employees for their “gig workers”. At times, in the case of Foxconn, it can cost lives.

In Brazil, Uber-related crimes increased tenfold after the company introduced cash payments in July 2016, in what is now referred to as an instance of “Uber roulette”. Initially, the app didn’t require any identity verification for passengers: anyone could create a fake account, hail a car, and “try their luck” in the hopes of nabbing a driver carrying lots of cash. Vehicles were stolen, drivers were robbed, and in many cases injured. At least 16 drivers have been murdered.

In response, Uber denied any problems with its cash system or lack of security, up until international media and protests by NGOs and informal driver unions began highlighting the issue. It finally introduced ID verification in February 2017.

This “platform defense” often obscures the fact that many of the “advanced” features that we use are, in truth, powered by gruelling manual labour. Take for instance Youtube and Facebook’s content moderation: what many believe to be censored by machine learning is in fact enforced by tens of thousands of contract workers across the world, with the vast majority in the Philippines.

Picture by picture, video by video, these moderators must decide if the content violates community standards. Exposed to violent and disturbing material everyday for hours, many of these moderators develop PTSD-like symptoms: the mental trauma can follow them for years—insomnia, panic attacks, with many driven to drug abuse and suicide.

Whether it’s the gig economy, platform-based businesses, or temporary work, across the world we are seeing an increasing reliance of “high tech on low labour” practices. Undoubtedly, there have been benefits to consumers such as increased flexibility and convenience, but it has also come at a cost to millions of workers who find themselves in precarious and exploitative situations.

This is not to deny the quality-of-life improvements such technological advancements have brought. However, as citizens and consumers, we must begin to ask: at what cost? More importantly, how can we mitigate the human costs of such “progress”?

This is where employee and consumer advocacy has been critical in pressuring governments and corporations to devote resources to addressing these issues. In the case of Brazil, successive strikes have pushed Uber to consistently increase its security measures and social benefits.

In Malaysia, last year’s Foodpanda protests highlighted the anxiety of drivers over how easily their livelihoods could be affected by changes in their payment scheme. As more and more workers enter the “digital economy”, accelerated by the global pandemic, governments must craft policies that are cognizant of the social consequences of such digitization and not simply act as cheerleaders for the tech industry.

A poem written by a Foxconn worker comes to mind:

A screw fell to the ground
In this night of overtime
Falling straight down, lightly clinking
Not attracting anyone’s attention
Just like last time
On a night like this
When someone fell to the ground

-Xu Lizhi, 9 January 2014 (Translated by the author of this op-ed)

Xu Lizhi took his own life eight months after he wrote this poem. He was 24 years old.
When will we pay attention when the screws fall to the ground?

Excerpt:

The members of Megative, with Gus van Go (far left). Credit: Daviston Jeffers

By SWAN / A.D. McKenzie
PARIS, Sep 2 2020 (IPS)

Even as their income dries up and their touring opportunities disappear because of the Covid-19 pandemic, some artists are using their work to call out injustice, criticize inept leaders and spark social change.

The members of Megative – a Brooklyn-based, reggae-dub-punk collective – are among those aiming to fight negative global currents, and they’re doing so through edgy, scorching music.

“I think activism is the most important thing we have right now in 2020. It’s do or die right now for humanity. The injustice absolutely must end, and it will not end with silence,” says music producer Gus van Go, leader and co-founder of the group.

In a year of uncertainty and division, Megative stands out for its multicultural composition as well as its fusion of styles and thought-provoking lyrics. This past July, watching the incompetence of certain heads of state in the face of the pandemic, the group released the song The Lunatics Have Taken Over the Asylum, a cover of the Fun Boy Three hit from the early Eighties, combining dub and punk music.

The original was a critique of the Ronald Reagan-Margaret Thatcher era, and Megative thinks the track is just as pertinent in 2020, with the current presence of problematic leaders on both sides of the Atlantic.

“We still believe the message is important, and it’s almost more relevant now,” van Go told SWAN in a telephone interview from Montréal, Canada, where he grew up, and where he has a studio along with one in Brooklyn.

The group was due to take their songs on the road – scheduled to perform at “five or six festivals” in France, for instance – but the pandemic has caused all these events to be cancelled. The musicians now find themselves, like so many other artists, struggling to maintain an income and to keep their overall work going.

“I think Covid-19 is exposing something that I’ve always thought about in the music industry,” said van Go. “So much inequality. We’ve always had this one percent of artists who have been insanely rich … and the rest of us are working our asses off, in order to eke out a living.”

“The universe took away the one single piece of the pie that the artist still had. All of a sudden, nearly every single musician cannot make a cent. One day, the universe just said ‘no you cant have that’. There is no income for all these artists. You see how dangerous it is to have just one source of income? Do we not need music in this world?

He explained that with the massive decline in album sales over the past decade, musicians had turned to touring in order to “just barely make a living – travelling together in a shitty old van”. But now even that has dried up with the global health crisis.

“Covid has shone this giant light on it,” he added. “The universe took away the one single piece of the pie that the artist still had. All of a sudden, nearly every single musician cannot make a cent. One day, the universe just said ‘no you cant have that’. There is no income for all these artists. You see how dangerous it is to have just one source of income? Do we not need music in this world? What if Covid continues for two or three years, what if this goes on for multiple years?”

He said it’s time for artists to band together and demand change – in their industries, communities and countries. “Megative supports activism,” he declared.

Discussing the origins of the group, van Go said the idea for the collective grew out of an overnight drive from New Mexico to California that he took with fellow musician Tim Fletcher 10 years ago. There were only two CDS available in the car – Combat Rock by The Clash, and More Specials by the 2 Tone and ska revival band The Specials, both English. The sounds got van Go thinking about the “conscious lyrics” and the history of the musical styles and their influences.

“We have a love for Jamaican reggae and dub culture of the early Eighties with bands like Steel Pulse and The Clash. But reggae in North America, where we are from, is associated with vacation spots, coconut trees and irie vibes. We were lamenting the darker reggae of the early Eighties. Our Clash discussion morphed into how a reggae band would look in 2018,” he said.

Back in New York, they invited a producing-engineering duo called Likeminds and Jamaican MC Screechy Dan to join the conversation. The enthusiasm for the project was so strong that they recorded three songs which almost immediately led to a signing with Last Gang Records and the subsequent release of their debut album in summer 2018.

The collective now brings together disparate artists including the Grammy-nominated Likeminds (Chris Soper and Jesse Singer); Jamaican-born singer, MC and dancehall veteran Screechy Dan; singer-guitarist and punk rocker Alex Crow; percussionist-DJ-singer JonnyGo Figure; and the rising Brooklyn drummer Demetrius “Mech” Pass.

All the members have their own individual projects but contribute their respective skills to create the Megative sound – a fusion of UK-style punk, Jamaican dub and reggae, and American hip-hop. The music is a response to today’s world, to everything that’s happening including the “hyper-noise of incessant information”, according to the collective.

The overarching theme is existentialist angst amidst precarious conditions. Tracks such as Have Mercy, Bad Advice and More Time call upon listeners to take control and rely on their own sense of what’s right, with lyrics set against dub beats and a punk vibe, and skilful singing mixed with mindful rapping.

For van Go, born Gustavo Coriandoli in Argentina and raised in Canada, the historical alliance between punk and reggae was central to Megative’s formation. He recalls growing up in Montréal in the late 1980s and early 90s, when the “punk rock movement was taking hold” among the youth.

“The shows had trouble finding venues, so they always tried to rent space … and sometimes that would be at Jamaican community centres. All these punks would be at these shows, but also the Rastafarian community. So, dub music was playing. I was 16, had never heard dub, had never been been to a punk show, so it fused in my brain,” he told SWAN.

Similar congregations or collaborations in the UK had led singer Bob Marley to release Punky Reggae Party in 1977, a reflection of the bridging of cultural divides; and punk-dub pioneer Don Letts wrote about the movement in his 2006 autobiography Culture Clash: Dread Meets Punk Rockers.

“It’s all about social message – in punk and reggae, so they’re natural allies or they should be,” said van Go. “There’s a positivity but also a dark side. I love the energy that this creates, in punk and reggae and in early hiphop.”

When asked about Megative’s views on the current discussion around cultural appropriation in the arts, van Go answered: “This is an ongoing discussion with us, and we really encourage dialogue on the subject.” He added that the group takes a multicultural approach to creating music, as can be seen from their output so far.

Regarding the future of the collective, van Go said Megative planned to continue producing music with a cause, and to get back to touring when possible. They are currently “writing new material” but aren’t certain in which format(s) it will be released.

“Like nothing else can, I think music can definitely help heal,” van Go told SWAN. “We have to topple these terrible people who are in power right now. We have to find concrete ways to end systemic racism. Music has to play a part as it did in the Sixties. It needs to.”

Artist Ayushi Chauhan’s painting on the Fuzia website. Credit: https://www.fuzia.com/

By Fairuz Ahmed
NEW YORK, Sep 1 2020 (IPS)

Eight years ago, at the age of eleven, Fuzia co-founder Riya Sinha decided to start a writing club for school girls. Stemming from this initiative a few years later Sinha, along with co-founder Shraddha Varma, decided to start the online platform for women. Their story and Fuzia’s DNA are intrinsically wrapped around each other – and highlight how even in the age of feminism where women’s voices tend to be drowned out, a platform for them can become a global success.

Sinha in an exclusive interview with Inter Press Service explains that Fuzia, with 4-million majority-female followership, was started after she published a book.

“We wanted to give girls a voice. I had written my first book: Runaway Twins when I was 11 and sold it over Amazon and through the local Palo Alto bookstore, Books Inc. in the United States,” she said. “This got me into thinking that every girl, in each corner of the world, needs to be given a place to express and engage. Each has a story, and what better thing can there be other than providing them with a platform? This is why we launched Fuzia.”

The website, which started primarily as a writers’ club, has broken barriers in an age of so-called women empowerment but where men still outweigh women in their impact in the publishing world.

More than 80% of the 100 most popular novels were written by men, according to an interactive infographic by Wordery published in 2019. A year earlier, a study found that three leading literary publications devoted less than 40% of their coverage to women authors.

Other factors set boundaries for female writers. Women, in developing countries, but their hobbies and creative talents at the backseat focusing on building a family first, then a career, and lastly express her creative side. A piece, if published, is then scrutinized by society and family. The scene is a bit different in countries like the United States and Canada – but there, creativity is overshadowed by the prohibitive costs of publishing.

Like many institutions, the publishing industry stands accused of gender bias. Every year, Women in Literary Arts (VIDA) Count goes through literary journalism outlets and tallies the genders of the writers whose works are featured and reviewed in those outlets.

According to their most recent study, in 2015 books by women made up less than 20% of books reviewed in the New York Review of Books, 30% in Harper’s Magazine, 29% in the Atlantic, and 22% in the London Review of Books.

Fuzia, however, is breaking these barriers for women and has rapidly become one of the topmost ‘liked’ communities on Facebook.

Young artist Ayushi Chauhan is inspired and supported by the Fuzia community. This is a quote from her published there.
Credit: https://www.fuzia.com/

Sinha says she is proud to bring together hundreds of thousands of women from Bangladesh, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Nepal, Pakistan, Philippines, the U.S., and other places. Fuzia followers across the globe drive women empowerment and creativity through their fusion of cultures and ideas.

Central to Fuzia’s philosophy is to give women a voice. Women play a crucial role as daughter, sister, mother, and wife, supporter of the community as a friend and caregiver – but often, her voice is numbed. If her voice is given a platform, and she is encouraged to make her point come across and delivered to a greater audience, then, this will help solve a lot of underlying issues. Critical topics like domestic violence, domestic abuse, when, why, and how, methods of coping, strategies for help, the root cause of bullying, gender differences, treatment of sexual orientation, and many other disparities will surface, and with accurate reporting could provide solutions and support.

During this critical time, when the world is dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, Fuzia adapted its programs to support women.

“We prioritized by looking at what is most needed in the world today. For example, in the time of lockdown, we began developing Fuzia Wellness more rapidly, as people may need more access to mental health help when isolated at home,” Sinha said.

The platform, having just celebrated its 8th anniversary, has been recognized globally with the team awarded by the World Economic Forum “Young Leaders Creating a Better World for All” in 2018. Sinha has been invited to the TEDx stage, where she talks passionately about the role youth have in changing the world.

Sinha says Fuzia plans to continue to stay relevant.

“Our goals for the future are to be self-sustaining and generate revenue, expand the brand of Fuzia to become like another social media platform in its influence,” she says.

“We already link up talents, groom them, and offer career training. Many girls, from all over the world, have been using our platform, and they have become entrepreneurs, they have become small business owners, tech start-up founders, and more.”

The website and its underlying philosophy could also encourage female authors by supporting them and giving them the means to sustain this career choice. Fuzia supports its users with engagements of many, where anyone can publish, get noticed, and get constructive reviews. They also hold period writing contests and the winners are presented with acclamations, financial benefits, a pre-start to career, and mostly an audience of millions.

College student and Fuzia top user Ayushi Chauhan (22) said her experience on the platform had been positive.

“I believe that everyone has a unique talent, and Fuzia is a great platform to have your talent and skills showcased. It is free to express and share the platform, and I share my ideas on various topics here. I also get to meet many more talented women who inspire me and appreciate my artwork. I appreciate all the Fuziates for their love and support.”

With women empowerment platforms, like Fuzia, where technology meets creativity, it is hoped that more women can devote their time to writing and creating undampened by social boundaries. The supportive nature of the website means that barriers to creativity – where a woman may find herself scrutinized by family and society are broken down.

The Artists of Fuzia, Writers of Fuzia, Photographers of Fuzia identify talents and showcase them in front of a broad audience.

“I’m currently in my 2nd year of graduation in commerce. I began my craft four years back and still find myself sketching, painting, making some craft, or just doodling. I have kept my zeal to polish my skills intact, and I believe in taking inspiration from my flaws,” Chauhan said. “It is because of my passion that I challenge myself every day to learn new skills and Fuzia has been the best platform to help me do this. I showcase my artworks and creativity at Fuzia, and I grow better each day.”

With challenges like user visibility, retention, and coping with an ever-changing face of the digital media and publishing scene, any company wishing to make an impact needs grit.

Fuzia aims to hold on to their vision of empowering creative women through the fusion of cultures and ideas and have the open company culture of accepting and embracing change so that everyone can have a voice and make it heard without any barriers, said Sinha.

“Overall, what we give them is a playground where they can express, speak, and thrive. And that too, without any judgment. We give them a voice,” Sinha said.

COVID-19 made some of us aware of how dependent we are on one another, this is why so many of us become upset when confronted with the reckless behaviour of those who do not respect rules, like social distancing and the wearing of face masks. Lack of empathy appears to be spreading throughout our global society. ”Why do I have to care about others? The most important thing is my own well-being and success,” a way of reasoning that fosters contempt, misogyny and racism and worst of all – disdain for those who are old and weak, and/or for various reasons have been bodily incapacitated, making it hard for them to participate in the rat race for beauty and success.

It is becoming increasingly common to be transfixed by the idea that character is reflected by appearances and thus many individuals become obsessed with obtaining, or maintaining, an aesthetically pleasing appearance. An entire business has developed around our cult of bodily beauty, as well as the youth, glamour and success assumed to be connected to it. Beauty contests, fashion shows, cosmetic surgery, fitness studios, make-up products and a host of other phenomena profit from this craving for human beauty.

The United States of America even has a president who made a fortune from organizing beauty pageants and appeals to people´s desire for glamour and success. He even made his own name into a brand equivalent to his shallow ideals. However, that same man has through speech and actions made us aware of the abominable backside of the beauty cult — ”the ugly”, ”the fat”, ”the old and decrepit”, ”the deviants”, ”the others”, ”the aliens”, i.e. all those who do not correspond to an image of perfect beauty are by him labeled as ”losers”, or threats to ”our way of being”. One of the worst displays of the mindset of this powerful bigot was when he in public made fun of a disabled man and to the approving cheers of his followers imitated his difficulties to coordinate his body movements.

Among children, it is common to make fun of other kids with mental, or physical difficulties, happily ignoring the fact that victims of such jokes may become traumatized for life. What attract the mockery may even be quite insignificant and not even a disability – a limp, a birthmark, small stature, obesity, dark skin, big ears – you name it. Seldom have these ”pecularities” anything to do with the victim´s character.

The disdain of people with physical disabilities may result in a denial of their rights to live a decent life. On top of that comes the discomfort, or even revulsion, which several of us demonstrate while being confronted with severe ailment and disfigurement. One particularly painful stigma is facial disfigurement, something which is described in Kobo Abé´s novel The Face of Another and The Monster, a short story by Stephen Crane.

The Japanese novel describes how a man´s face is burned and disfigured in an industrial accident and how his wife becomes nauseated by his new appearance. He succeeds in undergoing a plastic surgery that alters his looks. After experiencing how his life was before his disfigurement, during it and after he had obtained a ”new” face, the main character becomes acutely aware of how his own personality is affected by how other people react to his appearance. In the end he becomes a stranger to himself.

Abé´s novel deals with several aspects of how we and others perceive us, based on our outer appearance. Among other examples he describes the awful experiences of men returning from wars with their faces disfigured from burns and head wounds and how the first question of severely wounded soldiers tend to be: ”What about my face? Is it intact?” a worry that often is greater than their concern for limbs and organs.

Crane´s short story was written in 1898 and is even more tragic. It deals with a black coachman in the southern states of the U.S., whose face became horribly disfigured when he saved the son of his employer from a fire. The boy´s father is a well-liked surgeon in a small town, and he feels obliged to take care of his son´s saviour. However, the coachman´s face looks so horrible that people become afraid of him, in spite of the fact that he remains a nice man and furthermore is a hero. That the doctor takes care of a man with such an awful complexion makes him a victim and pariah, forces him out of his practice and turns him into a wretch as well.

Apart from a deep-set aversion to other people´s disabilities we have a tendency to grade misery. For example, I once had a colleague who was severely hearing impaired. He told me: ”I often wish I had been blind instead of deaf. People feel sorry for blind people, but I am generally treated like an idiot, because I talk in a peculiar manner and people have to make an effort to make themselves understood by me. I am a nuisance to myself and everybody else.” This may be the reason for the English expression ”deaf and dumb” and the fact that not so long ago hearing impaired people were assumed to be mentally retarded and even ended up in asylums.

A slight problem might have huge consequences. A popular Swedish author and entertainer, Beppe Wolgers, suffered from stuttering. In his autobiography Wolgers described a life-long suffering from stuttering, which he at the same time acknowledged to be the reason for his success as a comedian and author – it made him aware of the extreme importance of language and to think carefully about every utterance he made. However, he did not deny that his stuttering had been an incapacitating affliction.

Late in life he met with other stutterers, who also happened to be authors and actors. Between themselves they could talk about stuttering, nervousness and fear, about finding different words and tricks to express themselves via detours, a need for finding synonyms, other verbal tools and useful gestures. ”An internal professional talk about stuttering, without inhibitions and lots of laughs.”
Wolgers realised that most of his suffering had evolved from the behaviour of ”well-meaning normal people.” Many of them had avoided talking to him about his problems and during his entire life he had been laughed at, openly or secretly. Words that he never had intended to say had been put in his mouth and made him feel stupid and isolated. In the company with other stutterers Wolgers had felt free to laugh at his problems, but when the ”outside world” laughed at him and imitated his stuttering he suffered from an ever-increasing paralysis and fear.

The current presidential candidate and former Vice President of the United States, Joe Biden has struggled with stutter throughout his life and declared that it is a handicap that people laugh and humiliate others about, often if they do not even mean to do it. Joe Biden is just one example of stutterers who while investing immense physical and mental energy to overcome their handicap have become entertainers, actors and politicians.

However, disabilities seldom lead to success, instead they might isolate you and loneliness devours your self-respect. The worst is when you have a visible physical ”disorder” that is impossible to hide from yourself and others. In spite of their good intentions ”outsiders” might judge physically disabled individuals based on their appearances. Attitudes tend to be embossed by prejudices towards the ”sick” and ”disabled” and thus our actions may be blemished by moralizing and superficial conventions. ”Non-affected” persons might carry with them a self-congratulating, vicarious suffering that prevent several victims of disabilities to be accepted as integrated parts of our society. Our awkwardness is great when it comes to spending time with afflicted indiviuals and we might thus make others ashamed of their illnesses and/or embarrassed about their disabilities. I once had a pupil who tried to explain her suffering to me:

– As you and everyone else can see I am dwarf. No one considers Eve (not her real name) as just Eve, I am always ”Eve the Dwarf”. I have found that the only way to be who I am is to accept that I am a dwarf. I have begun to admire dwarfs who work in circuses and show business. They make others laugh or cry, they make art out of their disabilities, they can even laugh at themselves. If people cannot see me as anything else than just a dwarf, so be it. Let me be a dwarf. I am a good actor, and when I act I feel free. I even applied to the Theatre School, but was not accepted. They told me: ”You´re a good actor and quite funny, but you must understand … your disability is tabú, you cannot laugh at a disabled person. We´re sorry.”

The only thing I was able to tell her was: ”OK, then you have to forget about making a living from acting. You are a good student. I assume you could go to the university and enter academia.”

She started to cry and told me: ”It´s easy for you to say.”

Instead of falling victims to a cult of bodily beauty stigmatizing those who do not meet the standards of what we assume to be ”normal and beautiful”, let us try to find the inner beauty of all those who are judged due to their appearance and realise that empathy and equal rights is something that benefit us all.

Jan Lundius holds a PhD. on History of Religion from Lund University and has served as a development expert, researcher and advisor at SIDA, UNESCO, FAO and other international organisations.

A young and dynamic digital platform, named Fuzia, has attracted millions of women social media followers and 100,000 active global users with its eclectic mix of content. The platform showcases women’s talent and provides a support network.

Riya Sinha, 19 has been an activist for women since her early teens. Credit: Fuzia

“As I have worked on Fuzia, I think my background played a big part in forming my vision for Fuzia. From a young age, I have had the privilege to be able to travel to India and all around the world, experiencing different cultures and types of people. It helped me to create an awareness of my privilege and how life differed in many parts of the world,” Sinha said in an exclusive interview with Inter Press Service (IPS).

The sisterhood is rooted in the fifth Sustainable Development Goal (SDG), which aims to end all forms of discrimination, violence, harmful practices for women. Fuzia seeks to achieve the goal in which enabling technology, especially information and communication, is used to promote women empowerment.

What makes this community different is its belief in yet-to-become-successful women. The founders translate this belief by giving them a platform to showcase their talents. Young photographers, artists, creative and opinion writers, bloggers, and crafters log on and place their bright and distinctive works on the Fuzia website. The website is a conduit to robust debates on significant issues like Black Lives Matter with moving artistic tributes to, for example, a nurse in the time of Covid-19 competing for the audiences’ attention.

Fuziaite of the Week celebrates the most compelling content of that week. Recently, that honor went to a 59-year-old teacher and writer who blogs about her life experiences on the site. She, like many, finds this platform allows her distinctive and exciting voice to shine in a world where it could typically be blurred out.

Shraddha Verma, 31 sees Fuzia as an inclusive platform where women can interact in a non-judgmental and safe space. Credit: Fuzia

Fuzia also fosters women empowerment in the form of job hunting, linking up applicants with proper channels. It arranges periodic competitions, writing and art contests, technology workshops and forums, and live talks from women leaders. It gives women of color a step-up on their career tracks. One success story, Humaira Ferdous from Bangladesh, told IPS about how publishing her work on Fuzia led to her employment within the organization.

“I believe that the more you praise and celebrate life, the more there is in life to celebrate. Fuzia helped me celebrate life to the fullest. I work here as a Graphic Designer now, but it feels like only yesterday when I couldn’t even think of being on this pedestal,” Ferdous says.

Sinha, who has been an activist since her early teens, says she could notice the sexism and inequalities that women faced in their communities where their free will and even thought processes are governed and guarded. Women and young girls from many South Asian countries at times feel suffocated and have no scope to express their voices, she says.

As young entrepreneurs, both Sinha and Varma sought out a solution. They came up with a concept that harnessed the accessibility of the internet, social media, and smartphones and connected the dots with technology.

Surveys show that 90% of teens aged 13-17 use social media. About 75% report having at least one active social media profile, and 51% report visiting a social media site at least daily. Two-thirds of teens have their own mobile devices with internet capabilities. Nowadays, for most countries, even from remote areas, getting access to the internet and social media is considered standard practice.

These women now have an online platform that is inherently inclusive and welcoming. On Fuzia, anyone can post her views, opinion, creative works, and voices safely and securely. The platform allows women to express themselves freely to a global audience in a judgment-free zone. The users are mainly from India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Indonesia, and much of its content represents women of South Asian descent.

Fuzia maintains an active presence over Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, website, and more with subcategories and pages. Initially, in the first year, they gathered more than 1 million supporters, and since then, growth traffic has increased by up to 35-45% each month.

There are no age brackets or geographical location barriers in Fuzia. Anyone can become a user and get their voices heard. Here the users come from various professions, age brackets, and backgrounds. Each contributes, engages, and helps each other as a friend and fellow user. A massive chain of skillful contributors, professionals, and industry movers and shakers are included in an engaging and unified platform. Fuzia empowers women daily by blurring social classes and status—it’s a platform where everyone is a friend and a sister within a massive network.

The authentic and remarkable way Fuzia stands in solidarity with women is key to its success. It provides work-life balance write-ups, has workshops for job readiness in which the values of mutual respect, work ethic, and environmental consciousness are emphasized.

Other platforms include mental health workshops, book clubs, and new releases of books and movies, discussions on current political and global issues, including societal norms, and much more.

Fuzia also has extended its wings to helping and uplifting people regardless of their color and gender. The website supports the LGBTQ community and provides a safe space for them to voice their concerns and seek help. It welcomes people with different gender identities, including male, female, transgender, gender-neutral, non-binary, agender, pangender, genderqueer, two-spirit, third gender, and all, none or a combination of these.

Varma says Fuzia aims to challenge the mindset which forces women into subservient roles and mentions, “I have been brought up in a society where I have noticed a lot of stereotypical mindsets about a woman- how a woman should be, or what she should do. Societal and cultural restrictions have always led to women taking a backseat in everything, and in general, they have lacked the deserved opportunities. And, I think that Fuzia can help by empowering women to share their stories and stand together, giving them confidence in their voice and skill, and help in economic, social, and political liberation and understanding.”

It can be expected that this platform will spark a change in the young people’s mindsets as it is vital to bring people together on a common platform where they could realize their true potential, where they could start believing in themselves, and where they’re accepted.

William Somerset Maugham was already an established author when he began to focus on short stories. His interest in this genre was actually meant to have been a form of relief from novel-writing, but interestingly it was this literary form that rendered him more famous in the East. Though intensely English in attitudes and behaviour, he was not quite a ‘legit Brit’. Born in Paris (in 1874), he learnt to speak in French before he spoke English, spent some time studying at Heidelberg Germany, before continuing further education in England, then settled down in the south of France. Having written a few novels, he turned to short stories. Perhaps due to his cosmopolitan exposure, he was deeply influenced, in his short stories, by foreign writers. In particular, the Russian author Chekov and the Frenchman Guy de Maupassant.

Dr. Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury

Maugham’s style was as ordered as his general plan. His language was simple and mellifluous. He liked to describe at length, almost exasperatingly so, but later corrected himself. His sentences were short. They balanced one another and were balanced in themselves. The wry sense of humour was pervasive, tempered by astringent cynicism. His writings had the requisite elements of character, emotion, and often an interesting cultural milieu. He used minimum of ornamentation in his prose, concentrating unflinchingly on the narrative line. He introduced readers to ‘shades of grey’ in life. His characters have streaks of virtue and vice that interplay in the narrative. His plots were compact. He thought the writer should need to prove nothing. Only paint a picture and leave it before you. You could take it or leave it. Most took it.

His philosophy in life was discernible in his “The summing Up’. It was one of resigned atheism and certain skepticism about the extent of man’s innate goodness and intelligence. In a very English fashion he understates his own profundity. He said: “I have never been anything but a story- teller; It has amused me to tell stories, and I have told a good many”.

Unlike his fellow Englishman, Rudyard Kipling, he held no brief for England’s imperial aspirations. In stories such as the “Rain” he comes through as an incisive allegorical critique of the white man’s colonial impulses. Maugham added a touch of the exotic oriental mystique as a backdrop to this tale of a white missionary’s fallibility. It was in the form of the incessant rain that continued to pour down with relentless force, unlike the light English drizzle ,as the story unfolds, symbolizing a pathetic fallacy that foreshadows a tragedy (the missionary’s suicide). Like many of his ilk in his time in Victorian and Edwardian England, he reached back to classical Greece for some of his techniques. A key one was ‘Anagnorisis’, a Greek word which translated into English means “recognition”. This is a moment in the unfolding of a tale that one character, oftentimes the hero or heroine suddenly recognizes another as being different from how he or she was initially perceived. As can be seen in his “Mister Know-All”.

Maugham first came to Singapore in 1921. He kept on coming back for four decades till a few years before his death (he died in 1965). He lived at the ‘Raffles Hotel’ which is still a landmark in the island Republic. He sat beneath a fragrant frangipani tree in the hotel’s’ Palm Court’ and crafted stories from tidbits of gossip overheard while dining with the local gentry. These men and women lived in rubber plantations of the Malay Straits, and had impeccable manners, afternoon teas, and evening cocktails of gin and tonic and the ‘Singapore Sling’. Often, they had deeply flawed human character, a treat for the observant writer. This was much like in the tea gardens in our parts, in Sylhet or in Darjeeling, which also inspired a contemporary Indian, Mulk Raj Anand, perhaps India’s first prominent English novelist.

In Singapore, British colonialism was spread more by the pen, rather than by the sword. Which is perhaps why, as the city was about to fall to the Japanese during World war II in 1942, Singaporeans made their “last stand” at the ‘Raffles’, not to fight, for they had already surrendered, but to sing the strains of “there shall always be an England, and England shall be free”. Maugham has at times used the term “Bengali” while describing the man on the street in Singapore. However, this “Bengali” was not necessarily a Bengali-speaking person, for those days it referred to anyone in Singapore coming over from Calcutta by ship, mostly Sikhs. The Tamils, on the other hand, came separately from Madras. Indeed, Singapore from 1830 to 1867, with the rest of the Straits, formed a part of the Bengal Presidency and was ruled from Calcutta. This is evidenced even at present in the architecture of many of the older buildings in the central parts, as also in names like ‘Victoria Hall’, ‘Clive Street’ or ‘Outram station’. Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose issued his clarion call for India’s freedom-struggle from Singapore, through his famous address while launching the Azad hind Fauj:“Tum mujhe khoon do , mein tumhe Azadi dunga”! (You give me blood, and in return, I shall give you freedom!)

I want to make an important point here. From the very beginning, as a part of national strategy Singapore has sought to weave its British intellectual heritage with its Chinese-Malay-Indian ethos. This it has done in order to create a cosmopolitan backdrop, and also retain the past western linkages, (one reason why Sir Stamford Raffles rather than a local was ‘selected’ to be the ‘Founder’ of Modern Singapore) to facilitate its current role as a global financial and knowledge hub. To that perhaps, is also owed the fact that the National University of Singapore (NUS) is rated as Asia’s foremost citadel of learning. It has also helped the overwhelmingly Chinese city de-emphasize any ethnic nationalist tendencies, and successfully build a harmonious relationship with the other two communities, the Malays and the Indians. Also to create a separate identity, distinct from the origin of its majority population, which is why, today, as the world is being increasingly dichotomized between the two powers, the United states and China, Singapore is still able to deftly navigate between the proverbial Scylla and Charybdis.

Dr Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury is Principal Research Fellow at the Institute of South Asia Studies, National University of Singapore. He is a former Foreign Advisor (Foreign Minister) of Bangladesh and President of Cosmos Foundation Bangladesh. The views addressed in the article are his own. He can be reached at: isasiac@nus.edu.sg

This story was originally published by Dhaka Courier.

The film Haingosoa had barely made it onto screens in France when the government ordered a lockdown because of the Covid-19 pandemic. Theatres, cinemas, museums and other cultural institutions had to shutter their doors, leaving the arts world scrambling to salvage numerous projects.

While the lockdown rules have now been eased, cinemas remain closed and Haingosoa – like many other films – is moving online. It will be offered via e-cinema and VOD from June 9, and viewers will be able to participate in virtual debates with its French director Édouard Joubeaud.

Haingosoa is ostensibly the story of Haingo – a young, single mother from southern Madagascar who, unable to pay her daughter’s school fees, leaves her family and travels far to join a dance company in the country’s capital. Haingo has only a few days to learn a dance that is totally foreign to her, and viewers follow her ups and downs as she tries to make the move work.

Played by the engaging real-life Haingo, the main character readily gains empathy, and viewers will find themselves cheering her on. Yet, the real star of Haingosoa is the music of Madagascar, as the director mixes drama and documentary to highlight the country’s rich and diverse artistic traditions.

“I wanted to give a different viewpoint of Madagascar, by focusing both on the woman lead and on the country,” Joubeaud said in an interview. “I’ve always been interested in the music, and I wanted to show the range of stories as well as the culture.”

Haingosoa brings together several generations of revered Malagasy composers and musicians, such as Remanindry, Haingo’s father. A leading performer of the music of the Androy, the island’s southern, arid region, Remanindry basically plays himself – and his own music – in the film.

Meanwhile, the Randria Ernest Company of Antananarivo, which provides the fictional dance space for Haingo, represents “in its own way” the dance and music of the highlands of today, according to Joubeaud.

Additionally, one of the composers of the film’s soundtrack is Dadagaby, an icon of Malagasy music whom Joubeaud knew for 10 years. The creator of countless songs popular in Madagascar, Dadagaby died during the making of the film – which is dedicated to his memory.

The movie also features 13-year-old prodigy Voara, who performs two of her songs: Sahondra (accompanied in the film by her father on guitar) and Mananjary. We see Voara singing in a backyard, as Haingo goes for a walk. The scene comes across as being there just for the music, with Voara’s soaring, memorable voice.

There are segments as well showing young musicians casually playing instruments and singing as they sit on a wall, and dancers practising to traditional music – again just to spotlight the distinctive music and array of vocal styles.

So, what about the story, the plot? To be honest, this is fairly simple: Haingo goes away to try to earn enough to pay for her little girl’s education. The boss of the dance company she joins is harsh and puts her to work cooking and washing rather than dancing. But with the help of her friends, including the gifted dancer Dimison, Haingo is able to reveal her true talent.

That is the surface story. The backstory is that the film is based on Haingo’s own life. She had a child at age sixteen and experienced many of the difficulties covered in the movie, and she’s at her most affecting when pleading for her daughter to be able to continue attending school, despite falling behind on the fees.

“You can feel the real emotion here because this is something she really had to deal with,” said Joubeaud.

As a director, he faced a dilemma, however: how much of the film should be about Haingo’s actual life?

“It was a little bit tricky,” he admits. “I didn’t want to expose too much about her life. So, we used her story as the starting point of the film and made a lot of the rest fictional. We wrote it in consultation with her.”

This reticence comes across in the film and may be seen as a drawback. The drama never reaches the high point that viewers expect, and the finale is more of a fizzle than a flare.

The unsatisfactory ending is also due to budget constraints, Joubeaud said. After completing the first half of the film, he ran short of funds and had to make a decision: stop filming or continue?

He decided to continue, especially as part of the reason for the film was apparently to raise money for Haingo’s daughter to continue in school, and for the main character to see how she could move forward. (Now in a relationship, Haingo, 25 years old, is the mother of three children.)

As a French director, Joubeaud could have perhaps accessed more sponsorship by making the film in French, but he shot it fully in Malagasy. He says he has studied the language for many years, after first visiting the country in 1999. The work, however, is not eligible to apply for screening in some African film festivals because of Joubeaud’s nationality.

“I do recognize the limits of a French director going to Africa, and I don’t pretend to give anyone any lessons,” Joubeaud said. “I see this as a personal project, related to my life and to Haingo’s life. I think my responsibility is to respect her consent, to respect all the participants in the film and to avoid stereotypes.”

Regarding what he hopes viewers will take from the film, he added: “My first hope is that viewers will be enlightened by diving into the story of a Malagasy woman, by the richness of her context, and the richness of Madagascar’s diversity – in music, dance, culture.”

Some viewers will indeed feel that they have gained an insight into the diverseness of Malagasy culture and developed a new appreciation for the music, but others will wish that the film had gone further and delved more deeply – into the socioeconomic reasons for Haingo’s situation and into the legacy of French colonial rule on the island. –

Follow SWAN on Twitter: @mckenzie_ale

It is easy to generalize about migration. Populist politicians often portray migrants as strangers and ”our” homeland as a stable entity, rooted in an old agricultural society. When they do so they tend to forget that most of us are in fact migrants who have left that traditional farming community far behind and if it was not we who did so, it was our ancestors.

Another form of generalization is to mirror the general in the personal, something that is done in novels and films. I believe that virtually every country on earth can present moving descriptions of people leaving the countryside for the city. Reading a novel or watching movie describing this process may help us to realize that behind every migrant, international as well as internal, there is a unique human destiny.

I came to think about this when I several years ago was working with The Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida), which at that time had its offices by Sveavägen in the centre of Stockholm. From my window I could look down on Malmskillnadsgatan, which was Stockholm´s most prominent prostitution street and a little further away I could see the twin towers by Kungsgatan. For me, who came from a small rural town, it was a powerful feeling to sit by my desk with a view of Stockholm’s metropolitan heart.

By the beginning of the 20th century the Brunkeberg ridge had been dug and blasted through to make way for a prestigous avenue which was going to be named Kungsgatan, The Royal Street. Derelict houses were demolished and the rubble cleared away while Stockholm was transformed into a metropolis.

Along the 1.5 kilometre long Kungsgatan, impressive buildings were erected and eventually dwarfed by the stately Royal Towers, joined with the Malmskillnadgatan through a bridge spanning across the wide parade street. The 60-metre-high towers were inaugurated in 1925 and were at that time Sweden’s tallest skyscrapers. They became a symbol of modern Stockholm, somewhat excessively advertised as an equal to Berlin, Paris, and New York.

Kungsgatan was lined with luxury department stores, fancy nightclubs and extravagant movie palaces. I mentioned that Malmskillnadsgatan was a prosititution street since I associated that street with Kungsgatan, a novel I read the same year as I ended up at Sida’s offices. It was written in 1935 by Ivar Lo-Johansson, member of what came to be known as the Proletarian Authors. In Lo-Johansson’s novel, Kungsgatan, with its big city pulse, glittering neon lights, cars and well-dressed revellers, becomes a bait attracting rural youth to the growing metropolis.

The peasant boy Adrian and day labourer Marta experience a brief and tumultuous love affair in one of Sweden’s many poor, rural villages, where life had been largely unchanged, generation after generation. Marta’s and Adrian’s delicate relationship is broken when Marta’s dreams urge her to the big city. She does not want to waste her life in the poverty of a dying countryside, subjected to the ever-present interest from people she is forced to share her humdrum existence with. Her dirt poor parents trudge along the same trampled paths, day after day, from cradle to tomb. No, Marta wants to get ahead with her life and spend it in accordance with her own wishes and goals. She wants to make money and hopefully help her parents and siblings to escape their bondage and misery. She wants to come back to her village as a ”successful” person, someone who has become wealthy, urbane and sophisticated.

Marta arrives in Stockholm and gets a job in a café, though her meager salary is not sufficient for her to acquire any of the alluring goods exposed in the storefronts of luxury boutiques. Nevertheless, Marta discovers that her good looks attract the city dwellers. Together with a friend she plans to establish a perfume shop, but lack of capital and the realization that her appearance can become an asset, make Marta join the ”joy girls”, i.e. the prostitutes who haunt the Kungsgatan. She is enabled to send a fair amount of money to her poor parents back home and thus increases their prestige in the eyes of the neighbours. However, Marta becomes increasingly bold and careless. The lurking catastrophe becomes a fact when Marta’s pious mother visits her elegant daughter. During a restaurant visit the truth dawns upon the mother, who in the midst of the dining guests breaks down in tears. Shame and despair befall an increasingly desperate Marta. In the past, she managed to choose her clients with some distinction, but she now loses control over her existence, suffers from a severe sexually transmitted disease and eventually succumbs to her misery and dies.

Adrian had arrived in Stockholm somewhat later than Marta. More reserved and thoughtful than his former fiancée he suffers from alienation and initially lacks the sense of belonging he had experienced in his home village. Neverthelss, Adrian also experience a sense of freedom and the thrill of challenging opportunities. He gets a job at a construction site where he is badly treated by bosses and fellow workers, but he successively adapts to the new living conditions. Despite being disillusioned, defenceless and marginalized Adrian realizes that he has become an adult and can actually stand on his own feet, without the support of a socially enclosed peasant community. He discovers socialism and consorts with bohemians and writers.

Adrian sometimes bumps into Marta, though these are difficult encounters. They live in different worlds and to cover up their uncut rural background both have changed their speech and behaviour. They have become helplessly stuck in their respective roles. Despite their ambivalence Marta and Adrian try to restore some of their lost love, through Adrian becomes infected by Marta’s dangerous STD. Both are hospitalized and their respective convalescence becomes long and painful. Adrian escapes this purgatory, strengthened by his experiences: ”All what I perceive is not without meaning, on the contrary, it is the only capital of a poor man like me.” Both Adrian and Marta get lost, though Adrian finds a meaning with his existence, while Marta becomes a bitter loser who cannot go on living.

Adrian’s pursuit of self-insight, his observations and disappointments are central to the novel, while Marta is gradually transformed into a secondary protagonist. It was Ivar Lo-Johansson´s intention to present a woman’s voice against the backdrop of Sweden´s transformation from a mainly rural society into a modern welfare state. Even if Lo-Johansson had experienced what he wrote about, his story is lost in a common template, in particular through his depiction of the plight of Marta. Most of the famous male members of the Swedish Proletarian ”school” failed to identify with the problems of poor women and only a few female Proletarian women authors gained access to a wide readership.

Almost every country may have authors like Ivar Lo-Johansson, describing the fatal allure of growing cities and the stagnant life in poor, rural communities. We have been confronted with hundreds of films and TV series about innocent rural girls lured into prostitution – like the Canadian-British hard-boiled and disconsolate film Eastern Promises from 2007 and equivalent films made in development countries, like the Mexican Las Poquianchis and Lo mejor de Teresa, both from 1976. Proletarian authors from all over the world have also described a development like the one experienced by Adrian, often influenced by internal migration that at this very moment is taking place in countries like China, India or Brazil.

Two examples, among many others, of the importance migration from rural to urbanized areas has had on a country’s culture are The U.S. Great Migration and the Italian Push to the North. Between 1916 and 1970, six million African-Americans migrated out of the rural Southern states to urbanized areas of the North and West. The exodus was primarily caused by poor economic conditions, as well as racial segregation and discrimination. Prior to 1910, more than 90 percent of the African-American population lived in the South, by the end of The Great Migration, less than 50 percent of them remained in the South, while more than 80 percent of African-Americans nationwide lived in cities. Like the Swedish migratory movement mentioned above, The Great Migration resulted in increased cultural activities, particularly within Afro-American communities. In the field of literature it gave rise to the so-called Harlem Renaissance and the American music scene was radically changed by the influx of Afro-American musicians from the South, who brought with them blues and jazz.

Italy experienced a similar movement from south to north when the Economic Boom of northern Italy attracted large numbers of southerners to the so-called Industrial Triangle between Turin, Milan and Genoa. During a great part of the 20th century, southern Italy suffered from a high rate of poverty, mainly due to the poor fertility of agricultural areas, which due to the fragmentation of land properties no longer could meet the needs of farming families, who additionally often suffered from insecurity caused by organized crime. Millions of Italians were pushed to emigrate both abroad, and to the northern part of Italy. Internal migration reached its peak between 1958 and 1963, when one million three hundred thousand southerners moved north.

Migration from southern Italy to the north still continues, though to a lesser degree than before. The last peak was reached between 1968 and 1970. Only in 1969, 60,000 migrants from the south arrived in Turin. Like in the U.S. it has in Italy been common to accentuate a cultural divide between ”north” and ”south”, a notion internal migration has diminished by fostering cultural exchange in both directions, thus contributing to unifying the nation and invigorating the arts.

Migration is an ongoing process that will never cease, we are all shaped by it, something that is mirrored by individual experiences described in tales told all over the world. Culture is based on shared experiences and openness, meaning that it prospers if human mobility is embraced instead of being considered as a threat.

Jan Lundius holds a PhD. on History of Religion from Lund University and has served as a development expert, researcher and advisor at SIDA, UNESCO, FAO and other international organisations.

By Jan Lundius
STOCKHOLM / ROME, Apr 30 2020 (IPS)

For some time Wuhan in China and Lombardy in Italy were epicentres of the COVID-19 virus, something that has changed when the contagion is spreading fast in the US. A Lombardy in the grip of a deadly epidemic might among several Italians give rise to memories of their school days. For almost a century, Alessando Manzoni’s massive novel The Betrothed (I promessi sposi) from 1842 has been obligatory reading for all Italians during their last primary school year. A quite impressive endeavour considering that the novel is more than 700 pages long.

I assume almost every adult Italian is familiar with the Divine Comedy, Pinocchio and, of course The Betrothed. No Italian novel has been the object of so much veneration, scrutiny and intense scholarship. I have been told by Italian friends that they are surprised that The Betrothed is not more known and appreciated outside of Italy and to my discredit I have often been forced to admit that I had not read it.

While being quarantined in Rome I picked up The Betrothed, thinking ”it´s now or never”. It proved to be an interesting acquaintance. Taking as its point of departure a small Lombardian community during the 17th century the novel described how poor, defenceless people experienced war, pestilence, foreign occupation, poverty, famine, power abuse, religious fanaticism, mafia rule, legal injustice and manipulative, corrupt authorities. These are common themes in other literary works as well, though what made The Betrothed a pleasure to read was Manzoni’s use of language. For being such an old novel it felt amazingly fresh. Alessandro Manzoni made use of a literary device by retelling a story while stating it had been written by another author. This enabled him to keep an ironic distance to his tale and being free to interpose witty comments about events and protagonists. Manzoni also occasionally reminded his readers that his story evolved within a well-documented, historical reality.

With mounting expectations I reached the last and third part of the novel – its famous description of the plague in Milan. Here Manzoni offers a description of a wide variety of reactions to a calamity that befalls an entire society: ”In any public misfortune, in any long disturbance of whatever may be the normal order of things, we always find a growth, a heightening of human virtue; but unfortunatly it is always accompanied by an increase in human wickedness.” ¹

In 1628, the Holy Roman Empire included Lombardy, which became the scene of bloodshed and looting while French troops battled mostly German mercenaries, remunerated by the Spanish branch of the Habsburgs. Soldiers carried with them the bubonic plague. In Milan, the centre of Lombardian industry and commerce, authorities were implementing effective public health measures. However, relaxed regulations during the carnival season in 1630 caused a major outbreak of the plague and by the same time the following year, an even deadlier wave of the plague engulfed the city. Overall, Milan suffered approximately 60,000 fatalities out of a total population of 130,000.

Milan counted upon a Commission of Public Health with far-reaching authority. It consisted of one president, four magistrates and two doctors of medicine. Its decrees were effectively enforced by the police. Milan also counted upon a lazaretto, a quaratine hospital with 288 rooms, founded in 1489, where suspected plague victims were brought for observation and treatment.

Rumours about plague victims in surrounding villages reached Milan in October 1628. The Commission immediately dispatched medical doctors to the village of Lecco. However, they came back reporting that the outbreak of disease had probably been caused by vapours from surrounding swamps. Nevertheless, during the following weeks more plague reports came in from villages even closer to Milan. Two commissioners were sent out and came back with alarming reports that plague deaths now occurred all over the countryside and people were panicking. Milan’s city gates were closed and outsiders allowed in only under extraordinary circumstances, all incoming goods were stored and checked for vermin. In mid-November a patient No. 1 was traced, a certain Pier Paolo Locati had returned home dressed in German military clothing, probably taken from a corpse. Just a few days after his arrival, Locati had fallen down dead in a market square. All persons he had been in close contact with were tracked down and quaratined in the lazaretto, while their former living quarters were sealed off. The health commissioners visited the Spanish governor asking for taxes to be waived and economic assistance offered to shop keepers and others who were making a loss due to the enforced quarantine. The lazaretto also had to be enforced with doctors, surgeons, medicins, food and eqiupment. The governor declared he was desolated by the news, but since a war was waged against the French he could neither lower taxes, nor release any funds and he recommended opening the city for business again, regardless of the risks.

Probably due to efforts by the Commission of Public Health, Milan had so far not been much affected by the plague and people demanded that the quarantine had to be lifted. The City’s Chief Physician, eighty years old Lodovico Settala who had lived through another plague and constantly pleaded for even harsher measures, was almost lynched by an angry mob. When carnival celebrations were planned for 1630 a majority of Milan’s citizens pleaded with the City Council that restrictions had to be lifted. The town authorities gave in. Outsiders were allowed to enter, shops and restaurants were kept open. The commissioners of public health protested and even had a carriage with naked, plagued stricken corpses taken from the lazaretto and driven through the city as a warning of what could happen if people did not stay indoors.

Nevertheless, the Milanese went along with their carnival. A few days later the plague was completely out of control. Soon tens of thousands of plague victims were amassed within the lazaretto. However, most people continued to neglect the Commission’s decrees about social distancing. Instead, rumours were spread that the plague was not a common plague at all, but caused by a French manufactured substance intended to kill Lombardians, vanquish the Spaniards and take control over Europe. The substance was said to have been smeared on walls and doors by French agents, or spread among crowds in the form of a powder. People began to see so called anointers everywhere. Innocent people were lynched being accused of being anointers, even the authorities convicted and executed inculpable persons as anointers, just to prove they were taking measures to halt the plague.”Good sense was not lacking, but it was hiding from the violence of public opinion.” ²

Authorities and medical doctors, who assumed their prestige were dependent on people’s appreciation, adapted their ”expertise” to general perceptions. ”From the inventions of the crowd, educated men borrowed all they could reconcile with their own ideas; from the inventions of the educated, the crowd borrowed as much as they could understand […]. Out of all this emerged a confused and terrifying accumulation of public folly.” ³ The more fanciful these opinions were, the more unreservedly they were accepted: ”poisionous arts, diabolical operations, conspiracies of people spreading the plague by contagious venoms or black magic.” ⁴ Manzoni provided several examples of how ”educated” people to cover up their deficient knowledge of how a pandemic functioned and above all to avoid recommending the unpopular solution of social distancing, invented notions that the plague could not be stopped since it arose from ”cosmological phenomena”, or that it was caused by malevolent ”foreigners” who wanted to gain control over Milan. To combat the plague they recommended worthless medicines and remedies, anything but the unwanted quarantine.

It was Italian city states, depending on international trade, like Venice, Milan and Genoa, which were among the first to realize that the most efficient way to stop epidemics were to quarantine people. The word quarantena means ”forty days”, i.e. the designated period that crew and passengers suspected of being plague carriers onboard ships anchoring in Venice were required to be isolated for, before they were allowed ashore. The Venetian Senate had just in time before the arrival of the Black Death, in 1340 appointed three guardians of public health to control incoming ships and establish whether they carried the plague, or not. In 1403, Venice founded a lazaretto, an asylum for suspected plague victims on a lagoon island housing a monastery called Santa Maria di Nazareth (Nazaretto), which later came to be known as Lazaretto.

Officially supported installations and regulations eventually became a system of state controlled Public Health, of which Milan’s Commission of Public Health was one example. Trough such state entities the science of epidemiology gradually emerged. Viruses and bacteria were still unknown. However, Italian plague doctors like Girolamo Fracastoro (1483-1553) were 300 years before Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch speculating that contagious diseases could be caused by rapidly multiplying ”seed” transmitted by direct contact, through the air, or on contaminated clothing and linens. Such insights meant that lazzarettos and communes as a remedy against infectious diseases fostered health control and general cleanliness. It was agreed that such measures were effective only if implemented by a public heath system, free of charge.

The Betrothed described how common sense propagated by state supported commissions were impaired by populist community leaders. If something could be learned from a fascinating old novel like The Betrothed it is that even four hundred years ago trust in medical experience could have impeded a deadly pandemic. However, in 17th century Milan, leaders responsible for the well-being and security of their fellow citizens had apparently not learned from earlier mistakes. They ignored the dire warnings of the city’s Commission of Public Health and minimized the treats of an epidemic killer with disastrous consequences. Let us only hope that the current cataclysm is not globally repeated to the same horrific extent as in Milan 1630-1631.

¹ Manzoni, Allesandro (1972) The Betrothed. Penguin Classics: Bungay, Suffolk, p.596.
² Ibid., p. 603.
³ Ibid., pp. 600-601.
⁴ Ibid., p. 578.

Jan Lundius holds a PhD. on History of Religion from Lund University and has served as a development expert, researcher and advisor at SIDA, UNESCO, FAO and other international organisations.

By Heike Kuhn
BONN, Apr 29 2020 (IPS)

Do you recognize this man? You do, of course. It is the silhouette of Beethoven, the famous composer and pianist‎, well known all over the world. The year 2020 marks his 250th anniversary and the UN city of Bonn, Germany is very proud of its famous son, born here, next to the river Rhine. The calendar for 2020 shows many festivals, musical events, and exhibitions, attracting tourists and people appreciating classic music from all around the globe. We all immediately recognize his famous Fifth Symphony with the sound known worldwide of ‘da-da-da-daaaa’. As Europeans we honor his Ninth Symphony, this having been chosen as the European anthem.

Whoever is driving through the city of Bonn can see the profile of Beethoven on traffic lights as they turn green. Everyone understands that the message of a green traffic light is “Go ahead, you are free to drive”. For me, seeing the green traffic light connected to the silhouette of Beethoven, I have special reflections I would like to share with you. In a nutshell: Beethoven, being a great composer, becoming slowly deaf, but nevertheless not stopping his composing of masterpieces – a great attitude!

What caused this idea in me? For several years now I have done work in development policy on the rights of persons with disabilities. Persons with disabilities are the biggest majority in the world as about one billion people are counted as living with a disability, with a rising tendency due to longevity. Today we count 80 per cent of persons with disabilities as inhabitants of developing countries, where life is often much harder for vulnerable groups. Since 2006, persons with disabilities are protected by a special UN treaty, the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, signed by 163 countries and the European Union. However, in many places they still have to fight or appeal for their rights. This has to change and all of us have to be part of this cultural alteration – the sooner, the better.

Getting back to Beethoven: His pieces of music are famous, on all continents. His extraordinary musical talent became obvious at an early age and he was intensively taught by his father. Born in 1770 in Bonn, he moved to Vienna at the age of 21, spending the rest of his professional life there. In Vienna, he worked together with Haydn, soon establishing a reputation in the Austrian capital, performing in the salons of the Viennese nobility which offered him financial support. However, when the 19th century started, his hearing began to deteriorate, turning him almost completely deaf by 1814, when he gave up performing and appearing in public.

But his deafness did not prevent him from continuing his work: The famous Ninth Symphony, one of the first examples of a choral symphony, was created by him from 1822 to 1824. This masterpiece is regarded by many musicologists as Beethoven’s greatest work and considered as one of the supreme achievements in the history of western music. The words derive from a poem written by the German poet Friedrich Schiller, the famous “Ode to Joy” with some text additions by the composer himself. This musical masterpiece stands as one of the most often performed symphonies of the world. At an early stage of European integration the Ninth Symphony was chosen as the anthem of Europe. A great choice!

Try imagining – a deaf composer is able to create a symphony this valuable, using nothing else but his existing knowledge of the sound of music and the pure imagination of vocal and instrumental tones. Not allowing deafness to hold up your great talent, but pursuing your way with all your power, creativity and verve, is fantastic!

This is why I have always been impressed by Beethoven. And I am even more impressed these days, when the Ninth Symphony in March 2020 rang out during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic in Italy, Spain and Germany. Women and men, sang out from their balconies, sending out a signal of hope to the world. The choice of this symphony reminds us, in times of crisis, what is most relevant: fellowship and solidarity. Music acts as an effective remedy against despair and loneliness, to counter the crisis. So put on the music and enjoy, despite everything, playing tribute to a talented deaf composer showing us the way out of desperation, simply by staying active and motivated.

So when the green traffic light appears, just take note of the lesson: Whatever occurs in your life, keep on going ahead, as no disability will ever be strong enough to limit your special talent.

Writers who were supposed to be at the now cancelled PEN World Voices Festival. (Courtesy of PEN America)

By SWAN / A.D. McKenzie
Mar 24 2020 (IPS-Partners)

With the spread of the Covid-19 disease, the arts and culture sectors have seen a flood of cancellations and postponements, affecting artists around the world and putting the global 2,000-billion-dollar creative industry at risk.

Concerts, book fairs, film and literary festivals – including the famed Cannes Film Festival – and a range of other events have had to move their dates or cancel outright, while bookshops, museums and cinemas have been forced to close their doors.

The sectors, which employ some 30 million people worldwide, will be among those hit hardest by the pandemic, according to analysts, and individual artists are already fighting to maintain their livelihood.

“Everyone is impacted and suffering,” says American jazz singer Denise King. “As a member of the artist/musician community, I’ve gone from a fairly heavy touring and gig schedule … to nothing. To face this sudden loss of income is devastating. Many artists like myself are scrambling to come up with creative ways to generate income.”

With some 210,000 confirmed cases of Covid-19 worldwide, and 8,778 deaths by March 19 (about three months after the outbreak in Wuhan, China), both wealthy and low-income countries are affected, but vulnerable states are particularly at risk, according to the UN. Along with the health sector, culture and other areas will struggle to recover.

In the Caribbean, several festivals have announced postponements. The popular Calabash literary festival in Treasure Beach, Jamaica, will now take place in September 2020 instead of May, while the national Bocas Lit Fest in Trinidad and Tobago is similarly postponed.

“We watched and waited to make this decision,” stated Calabash co-organizers Justine Henzell and Kwame Dawes, who stressed that there was no other option given the travel restrictions.

Jamaica was among the first in the region to order lockdowns and to restrict travel from several affected countries. The minister of culture, gender, entertainment and sport, Olivia “Babsy” Grange, announced the closure of cultural and sport facilities, including museums, galleries, and stadia run by the government, on March 13, with effect from the following day.

She said the closures were “in keeping with the government’s strategy to prevent the spread of Covid-19 in Jamaica and to minimise the potential health impact on the country”, and she urged those in the cultural, sport and entertainment sectors to “take all necessary precautions and follow the guidance of the health authorities”.

The island had 13 confirmed cases of Covid-19 as of March 19, and the government has been commended by World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus for its response to the pandemic. But officials are aware of the fiscal effects of the crisis.

The Caribbean economy is strongly tied to tourism, including cultural tourism, with the sector representing around 14% of the region’s total GDP, while the arts and culture fields employ thousands of workers.

UNESCO HQ shuttered. Credit: AD McKenzie

According to the United Nations agency UNESCO (which has had to close its doors in Paris), the cultural and creative industry sectors generate annual revenues of US$2,250 billion and global exports of more than US$250 billion.

These industries currently provide nearly 30 million jobs worldwide and employ more people aged 15 – 29 than any other sector, the agency said in a 2018 report, “Reshaping Cultural Policies”. Nearly half of the people working in the cultural and creative industries are women, the report showed.

For states such as France, which is the most visited country in the world with 90 million tourists annually, the shuttering of the cultural sector is unprecedented in peacetime.

The Paris Book Fair, or Livre Paris, was the first major event to announce its cancellation. Normally attracting about 160,000 visitors each year, the Fair was scheduled for March 20-23 and was set to put Indian literature in the spotlight. But when France banned events with gatherings of 5,000 or more people in early March, there was no choice but to cancel.

“Everyone is going to lose a lot of money. Some of us won’t survive,” an independent Paris-based publisher, who asked not to be named, told SWAN. “Those who do manage to keep going will have to push back their planned publications.”

The owners of some bookshops had hoped to stay open, arguing that people need material to read when in confinement, but they too have had to pull down the shutters, although newsagents can remain in operation.

The Louvre, the world’s most visited museum, first closed its doors for a few days at the beginning of March because staffers invoked their right to walk off the job if they felt at risk. It reopened, but soon it and all museums, galleries and cinemas had to close because of the government’s decree on March 16, putting the population in lockdown.

“We’re at war” against the virus, French President Emmanuel Macron said in a televised address, ordering the confinement. Since March 17, only places offering essential services are allowed to be open, and residents may leave their home for brief periods only after filling in a form, on their honour, called the “attestation de déplacement dérogatoire”.

With confirmed Covid-19 cases above 10,000 in France, the organisers of the prestigious Cannes Film Festival said on March 19 they had decided to postpone the event. The festival had earlier announced that American director Spike Lee would head the competition jury – the first person of African descent to have this role – and he is expected to be present for the new dates.

“The Festival de Cannes cannot be held on the scheduled dates, from May 12 to 23. Several options are considered in order to preserve its running, the main one being a simple postponement, in Cannes, until the end of June-beginning of July 2020,” the festival team stated.

The organisers said they would make their final decision known following ongoing consultation with the French government and Cannes City Hall.

In the United States, where the government has been widely criticised for being slow to respond to the Covid-19 pandemic, cultural events are being cancelled one after the other as well.

PEN, the international association of writers, said it was with “heavy hearts” that it had decided to cancel the 2020 PEN America World Voices Festival scheduled for May 6 – 12.

“We were hoping that this awful public health crisis might ebb by May, and that we could emerge with the exciting events we had curated for audiences in New York and Los Angeles. It’s now plain such plans are neither realistic nor safe for our participants and our audiences,” stated Suzanne Nossel, CEO, PEN America, and Chip Rolley, director of the festival.

“We join the ranks of cultural institutions in New York, Los Angeles, and across the country that will temporarily go dark this spring,” they added. “The World Voices Festival was founded in the wake of 9/11 to provide a beacon for writers and audiences from around the world and to build bridges across borders as an antidote to cultural isolationism. As a new and unexpected isolation is thrust upon us, we regret deeply that we won’t be able to shine that light or foster those vital in-person connections.”

The organisation said it was “seeking new means” to bring directly to audiences the “words, ideas, and artistry” of the writers who’d been invited, including Arundhati Roy and Colm Tóibín. This might be done “through a variety of digital means”, including a new podcast set to launch soon.

The branch of PEN in England, English PEN, meanwhile said it was “with great sadness” that the organization had decided to postpone or cancel all its events “at least until 30 April 2020 following the latest public health advice from the government”. The group announced the creation of an Authors Emergency Fund on March 20, to “help support authors impacted financially by the growing health crisis”.

In the face of the pandemic, not all is doom and gloom in the cultural sector, however. Singers such as John Legend and Chris Martin have been streaming concerts via their social media accounts, as part of the “Sessions: Together, At Home” series – an initiative launched by the Global Citizen Festival and the World Health Organization.

In addition, some publishers are offering significant discounts on their books, while others have made stories, poetry and textbooks available online. From confinement, one can also view many of the world’s art masterpieces via museum web platforms and see films that festivals have decided to stream for free.

King, the jazz vocalist, said she will present a performance on FB live, and she called on the public to assist at-risk artists in whatever way they can.

“We have to hold each other up,” she told SWAN. “Perhaps this virus serves as way to help us focus on what really matters and to reconnect.”

This article is published with permission from Southern World Arts News and editor A. D. McKenzie.

Fajt, Jiří and Adam Budak (2017) Ai Weiwei: Law of the Journey. Prague: Národní galerie.

By Jan Lundius
STOCKHOLM / ROME, Feb 10 2020 (IPS)

Humans belong to a species that is constantly on the move . Since some Homo Sapiens 125,000 years ago began to move from the African continent, humans can be found all over the world, even in such utterly inhospitable places as the icebound plateaus of Antarctica. By moving, humans have tried to escape inadequate food-supply or otherwise unacceptable living conditions. Natural forces have forced them to leave, or even more commonly – violent actions by other humans. With them migrants have brought their means of expression and interaction, some of them expressed through their art.

Art can be a language shared between individuals, nations, and cultures. It can restore identities lost or abandoned when people have settled in new places, within new contexts. It may become a means of being heard and seen in an unsympathetic world. Art may also be used to make us aware of human suffering amidst a contemporary ambiance that far too often has become characterized by political dogfights and collective hysteria.

Two years ago, while in Prague I visited the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei´s exhibition Law of the Journey and its strong impact has remained with me ever since. Ai Weiwei had for long periods lived among refugees on the Greek islands, in the Turkish-Syrian and the US-Mexican border areas, where he collected material and stories, filmed and photographed. The Law of the Journey was the last in a series of diverse events concerning the European refugee crisis, which Ai Weiwei in his witty, provocative and often aesthetically pleasing manner previously had presented in Vienna, Berlin, and Florence. On each occasion he had added new objects and activities around the same theme.

To me, the Law of the Journey revealed itself as an epic statement about the human condition – an artist’s expression of empathy and moral concern in the face of continuous, uncontrolled destruction and carnage. It was hosted in a historically charged building, a former 1928 Trade Fair Palace, which in 1939–1941 served as an assembly point for Jews before their deportation to the concentration camp in Theresienstadt (Terezín) where 33,000 met their death, while another 88,000 were re-routed to be gassed in Auschwitz and Treblinka.

In spite of the fact that the country’s population has suffered from both Nazi terror and Communist oppression making several persons flee their country, the current Czech government has opposed the European Union’s refugee quotas. Its prime minister even threatened to sue the EU because the organization tried to force the Czech Republic to accept more refugees. When Ai Weiwei accepted the Czech Republic’s National Gallery’s invitation to stage an exhibition, the country’s official refugee reception had been modest, between July 2015 and July 2017, the Czech Republic had received 400 Syrian refugees.

Ai Weiwei declared that an important reason for his acceptance of the offer to organize an exhibition was his admiration of the Czech Republic´s former president Vaclav Havel, whom he admired as a valiant fighter for freedom of expression and global humanism. In the exhibition´s brochure, Ai Weiwei stated:

“If we see somebody who has been victimized by war or desperately trying to find a peaceful place, if we don’t accept those people, the real challenge and the real crisis is not of all the people who feel the pain but rather for the people who ignore to recognize it or pretend that it doesn’t exist. That is both a tragedy and a crime. There´s no refugee crisis, but only a human crisis. In dealing with refugees we have lost our very basic values.”

In the foyer to the grand hall of the exhibit was a giant snake undulating just under the roof. Upon closer inspection, it became apparent that it was made out of childrens´ life vests. Two corridors led into the large central hall. They were wallpapered with black and white, stylized images. Cold and with sharp lines, they depicted war, destruction, refugee camps, dangerous voyages across the sea, risky landings, followed by new camps and deportations. The picture strips were reminiscent of Babylonian-Assyrian reliefs, associations confirmed by the fact that they were initiated with images of Greek and Babylonian warriors, followed by modern war scenes with city ruins, helicopters, tanks, and robotic fighters. This aesthetically pleasing stylization of war and misery served as a reminder of how war often has been depicted in various forms of propaganda. There were no individuals in these pictures, only standardized templates of human beings, like documentary films depicting war and torment through the cool distance of a camera eye. Like so much in Ai Weiwei’s art, his manner of expression indicated a keen knowledge of aesthetics during various epochs. It could be inspired by the Chinese, as well as European art. Ai Weiwei nurtures a deep respect for craftsmanship.

After this discreet introduction, the exhibition visitor found her/himself overwhelmed by a huge rubber raft, more than seventy feet long, diagonally hovering over the grand hall with 258 faceless passengers on board. The raft shaded a marble floor with inscriptions of quotes from famous humanists, who from Mengzi and onwards have been appealing for compassion while pointing to the importance of helping our neighbour. Visitors moving around in the shadow of the enormous raft became diminished by its immensity. Its presence, the impact of its darkening shadow could not be avoided. As we moved under it, we trampled upon words pleading for understanding, compassion, assistance, and participation.

The impersonal black rubber figures crouching inside the raft were bigger than us and sat tightly packed, with their backs bent. On the shining marble floor, other rubber figures floated in lifebuoys lifting their hands as if to attract attention. The menacingly shadowed cool marble with its quotes reminded us that even if we live a life overcast by bad conscience and fear most of us still seem to be unaware of, or not bothered by, desperate appeals that tell us it would be far better for us all if we shared love and compassion, instead of preventing our fellow humans from enjoying equal rights and freedom. Instead of nurturing feelings of empathy we are inclined to use violence whilst turning our backs to starvation, pain, and afflictions of others.

The walls of the great hall were not wallpapered with aesthetically pleasing drawings but instead decorated with thousands of densely arranged colour photographs depicting boat refugees and those lingering in wretched camps around the world. Their diversity constituted quite a beautiful backdrop to the distressing scenery with the enormous, sinister rubber raft. The wall decorations were similar to mosaic photomontages that have become fashionable in advertising. However, if you approached the walls and scrutinized the photos you could distinguish derelict vessels and rafts packed with people, barbed wired refugee camps, people crowding in rain and mud under plastic sheets, and corpses washed ashore.

I reached the top floor from which, through a glass wall, I could look down on the huge rubber raft. From this viewpoint it turned out to contain hundreds of children curled up in the middle of the vessel, surrounded by adults. The children were also made of inflated, black rubber. When I turned around I discovered that on the floor of the spacious room I was standing in, just like the one in the grand hall below, visitors’ shoes were trampling on text messages. These were not made in marble but laminated in plastic. The entire floor area was covered with messages from the web – this white noise that constantly surrounds us, day and night. The texts consisted of fanatical condemnations of “the refugee avalanche”, day-to-day profane and hateful outbursts, as well as factual accounts of deaths, anguish, statistics and figures, sensible proposals and desperate disclosures.

On this floor there were symmetrically placed racks with hangers holding a wide variety of garments. Each rack had a handwritten note informing what it displayed – “children’s jeans”, “rompers”, “children’s clothes, 0-7 years”, “life jackets, children’s sizes, 0-7 years”, etc., etc. These were garments and equipment gathered on beaches of the Greek Islands. They had been washed and classified according to type and size. There were also lots of shoes and boots in strictly organized rows. Like hair, eyeglasses and similar objects that have been in contact with an individual’s body, the apparel collected by Ai Weiwei’s collaborators awoke thoughts about personal lives. A huge accumulation of such things might serve as a reminder of our own, personal life, as well as the death that constantly threatens it. Seeing all these items was reminiscent of the shock of being confronted with the piles of personal belongings displayed in Auschwitz. These things bear witness to the inconceivable, cold-hearted violence and brutality that once befell their owners.

Ai Weiwei’s provocative installations will probably not have the political impact he might hope for. They will neither change history nor the attitudes of people who want to close their countries´ borders for people in desperate need of shelter, food, and security. Nevertheless, art as an expression of awareness of human suffering and an appeal to our compassion is something that has to be valued, not least because it reminds us of the better aspects of humanity. Humans are naturally social beings. We live in communities, both within our family and a larger society, and such a life is certainly more pleasant, more stimulating and safer if we are caring and friendly, rather than greedy, easily irritated and hostile.

Jan Lundius holds a PhD. on History of Religion from Lund University and has served as a development expert, researcher and advisor at SIDA, UNESCO, FAO and other international organisations.

Ann Kihii (25) spends time with other young women from poor communities in Nairobi and use embroidery to create images that tell a story about the daily challenges they face. They also get a chance to discuss the issues among themselves in a safe space. Credit: Mantoe Phakathi / IPS

By Mantoe Phakathi
NAIROBI, Kenya, Nov 14 2019 (IPS)

While women find it hard to talk about their painful experiences, some have found a way of expressing themselves through art. Women, trained as artists, from Nairobi’s informal settlements Kibera and Kangemi, have produced a beautiful quilt that tells stories about their daily challenges.

Displayed at the Pamoja Zone of ICPD25, the quilt is used to lobby delegates to rally behind girls and women by ensuring that they enjoy sexual reproductive rights and end gender-based violence.

Being able to express yourself through art

While the embroidered quilt is a beautiful piece of work, each square that forms part of it it is sewn by different women who are expressing their sad experiences.

“I live in a community where violence against women is the order of the day,” she told IPS. “Unfortunately, women find it hard to talk about it.” Ann Kihiis (25) is one of the young women who have turned out to be a fine quilt maker. Using small square pieces of fabric, she sewed an image of a woman who was experiencing violence in her marriage.

In the same image, there is a shadow which she says symbolises the anger and hurt that an abused woman carries with her all the time unless she is able to talk about it and heal from the experience. Although she has never been in an abusive relationship, she said observing it from a young age in her family and community has traumatised her.

Ann Kihii showcases the quilt that she contributed in making where she designed an image of a woman in an abusive relationship who always carries the anger and hurt. Credit: Mantoe Phakathi / IPS

“I love art and this is a way of creating awareness about gender-based violence and letting people know that it’s okay to talk about it,” said Kihiis.

She said she is aware that women who are abused end up believing that they do not deserve to be loved, something that is not true.

Art brings women together

On the same quilt, other artists made images depicting crime, drugs and teenage pregnancy. For example, there is an image of a young girl who is sitting on a desk with a baby on her back. This, according to Bobbi Fitzsimmons, a quilter from the Advocacy Project is the story of a young girl who was abandoned by her father after falling pregnant. When she fell pregnant for the second time, she decided to take control of her life and returned to school even if it meant studying with much younger learners.

Bobbi Fitzsimmons, a quilter from The Advocacy Project, trains women groups across the world to express the challenges they face by using embroidery, painting and applique to raising awareness so as to get support in addressing gender-based violence and sexual reproductive health rights. Credit: Mantoe Phakathi / IPS

“Art is a very effective way of expressing oneself,” she said. “What’s more, the women came together while working on the quilt and discussed their issues, in what was a safe space for them to talk.”

The Kenyan women artists are trained by the Kenya Quilt Guild under Fitzsimmons’ directorship.

The United National Population Fund (UNFPA) funded The Advocacy Project to train the women. They also funded the exhibition of quilts from women in other parts of the world. For example, there is a quilt from Nepal on display with squares of paintings through which a group of women from the Eastern part of the country expresses themselves after they were treated for uterine prolapse, a painful condition affecting 600 000 women in Nepal. Another quilt donning the walls of the Pamoja Zone is one from survivors of sexual violence from the Democratic Republic of Congo, while another depicts child marriages in Zimbabwe.

In total, 18 quilts are on display at the exhibition, where delegates are fascinated by the stories.

Karen Delaney, the deputy director of The Advocacy Project believes that through this initiative, women do not only come together to talk about their issues but they also get a lifetime skill for income generation. Credit: Mantoe Phakathi / IPS

In making the quilts the artists are trained to use the following skills: beadwork, painting and applique.

“Apart from the opportunity of bringing together the women, they gain skills that they can use to generate income for the rest of their lives,” said Karen Delaney, the deputy director at The Advocacy Project.

Artist Kehinde Wiley discusses his work. Credit: A. D. McKenzie/IPS

By A. D. McKenzie
PARIS, Oct 11 2019 (IPS)

Fresh from unveiling a huge statue of a black man on horseback in New York’s Times Square, renowned African American artist Kehinde Wiley flew to France this week to “meet” 18th-century French painter Jacques-Louis David.

Wiley – most known for painting the portrait of US President Barack Obama in 2017 – is now “sharing a room” with David, who lived from 1748 to 1825 and was a painter and supporter of French military leader Napoleon Bonaparte.

In an exhibition titled “Wiley Meets David”, the American artist’s massive and colourful 2005 painting Napoleon Leading the Army over the Alps can for the first time be viewed opposite David’s 1800 depiction Bonaparte Crossing the Great St. Bernard Pass (Le Premier Consul franchissant le col du Grand-Saint-Bernard), in a show that runs until Jan. 6, 2020.

“There’s lots of chest beating going on … that’s why when you look closely at my painting, you’ll see sperm cells swimming across the surface,” said Wiley at the Oct. 9 opening of the exhibition. “This is masculinity boiled down to its most essential component. All of this stuff, warfare, is about egos, about nationhood, about the formation of society.”

The two works of powerful-looking men on horseback are presented “in dialogue” at the imposing Château de Malmaison, just outside Paris. This is the former residence of French Empress Joséphine, which she shared with Bonaparte before they divorced in 1809.

Wiley’s painting comprises a reinterpretation of David’s portrait, and it is the first in his series “Rumors of War”, where African American subjects replace the historically mighty in a questioning of warfare and inequality. Here, a model named Williams is on horseback, in the same pose as David’s Napoleon, but wearing contemporary urban gear and a golden cloak. In contrast, David’s depiction was a “symbol of the glory of Bonaparte” when it was produced in 1800, according to the show’s curators.

Wiley stressed that his work was meant to make people of African descent visible in ways that they haven’t been in the history of art. But he added that despite the aura of power in his painting, he was also portraying “fragility”, even amidst certain social advances.

Wiley arrives at the Château de Malmaison with associates. Credit: A. D. McKenzie

“I want to caution us against a facile acceptance,” Wiley said. “These steps that we’re moving forward with, I prize greatly, but I also recognize their fragility. As powerful as that young man looks on that horse, it’s not his power that I’m concerned about, but rather his fragile position within that culture … that relegates artists like myself to even need to make utterances like the ones that I’ve done.”

Before being brought to France, Wiley’s painting had been exhibited for years at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, and the current show is a joint project between this museum and the Château de Malmaison.

After the exhibition in France, both paintings will be on display in Brooklyn, from Jan. 24 to May 10, 2020. David’s work is therefore returning to the United States, where it had spent time in New Jersey in the 1800s as part of the property of Napoleon’s brother Joseph.

“The partnership with the Brooklyn Museum will provide an opportunity to shed light on the current practices of North American museums with regard to groups of artists who have been overlooked in history and the history of art, and their links to audience development,” said Emmanuel Delbouis, a co-curator of the exhibition.

For Wiley, 42 years old, it’s high time for a change in the narrative regarding the contributions of people who have traditionally been excluded from mainstream stories. He said it was not a “trend” or a “movement” that so many artists of African descent are now focusing on historical issues affecting people of colour.

“We have been able and capable of contributing to the larger conversation globally, and now these conversations are happening,” he said during the exhibition’s press opening. “I think perhaps the culture is evolving. So, it’s not a trend … it’s simply another human voice being paid attention to.”

He said his painting was a criticism of colonialism and a challenge to its legacy, but that it was also an “embrace” of French art and David’s talent.

Wiley, who rose to fame with the portrait of Obama, has seen his artistic impact grow, both in the United States and internationally. He has held several exhibitions in France, and before the opening of this latest show, the unveiling of his 27-foot-high statue in Times Square, on Sept. 27, garnered global attention.

That work, his first public sculpture, will be on view at the famed square for several weeks before being permanently installed at the entrance to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, in Richmond, Virginia. It is being shown at the same time as the painting in France, sparking dialogue on both sides of the Atlantic about history and who gets to be celebrated in public monuments.

“We’re standing on the leading edge of story-telling, arguably on the leading edge of propaganda,” Wiley said in France. “Art has for centuries been at the service of churches, of state, of powerful men. And now artists have the ability to take that language and do what they will with it.

“So what am I doing? I’m engaging that language in a way that says ‘yes’ to certain things and ‘no’ to others,” he added. “The culture evolves, but we’re stuck here together, and we have to figure out how we’re gonna evolve together.”

This article is published in an arrangement with Southern World Arts News. Follow on Twitter: @mckenzie_ale

It must be a daunting prospect to sing songs made famous by the incomparable Nina Simone, but performers Ledisi and Lisa Fischer brought their individual style to a BBC Proms concert in London, honouring Simone and gaining admiration for their own talent.

The show, “Mississippi Goddam: A Homage to Nina Simone”, paid tribute to the singer, pianist and civil rights campaigner – a “towering musical figure” – at the Royal Albert Hall on Aug. 21, more than 16 years after Simone died in her sleep in southern France at the age of 70.

This was a celebration to recognise her “unique contribution to music history”, according to the Proms, an annual summer festival of classical music that also features genres “outside the traditional classical repertoire”.

The concert’s title refers to the song that marked a turning point in Simone’s career, when she composed it in fury and grief following the murder of civil rights activist Medgar Evers in Jackson, Mississippi, and the deaths of four African-American girls in the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963.

Performing the song at the tribute, New Orleans-born vocalist Ledisi held nothing back. She put all the anger and anguish that the lyrics required into her rendition, creating one of the high points of the concert.

The composition stood out particularly because of the contrast between the lyrics and the rhythm, and Ledisi – who’s also an actress and writer – emphasized this disparity. While the “tune has an almost fun-filled, pulsating vibe” (as conductor Jules Buckley put it in his written introduction to the show), the message itself is uncompromising.

“It speaks of murder, of dashed dreams and severe inequality, and it shattered the assumption that African-Americans would patiently use the legislative process to seek political rights,” Buckley wrote. Listeners got the full context, and they were reminded that some things have not changed much in the United States.

Conducting the Metropole Orkest, whose members played superbly, Buckley said that in putting together the programme he wanted to shine a light not only on Simone’s hits but also on a “few genius and lesser-known songs”. With the sold-out concert, he and the performers succeeded in providing the audience a clear idea of the range of Simone’s oeuvre.

The concert began with an instrumental version of “African Mailman” and segued into “Sinnerman”, the soulful track about the “wrongdoer who unsuccessfully seeks shelter from a rock, the river and the sea, and ultimately makes a direct appeal to God”, to quote Alyn Shipman, the author of A New History of Jazz who compiled the programme notes.

The orchestral introduction paved the way for Lisa Fischer’s arresting entrance. With her shaved head and flowing black outfit, she moved across the stage, singing “Plain Gold Ring” in her inimitable voice, evoking the image of an operatic monk. The two-time Grammy winner displayed the genre-crossing versatility for which she has become known, using her voice like a musical instrument and hitting unexpected lows before again going high. The audience loved it.

Fischer introduced Ledisi, who wore a scarlet gown (before changing to an African dress after the intermission), and the two women then took turns singing Simone’s repertoire, expressing love for the icon as well as appreciation for each other’s performances.

They both kept topping their previous song, and the temperature rose with “I Put a Spell on You” (Ledisi), “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood” (Fischer), “Ne me quitte pas” (poignantly rendered by Ledisi) and “I Loves You, Porgy” (memorably delivered by Fischer).

Then there was, of course, “Mississippi Goddam”, which followed a haunting, syncopated “Dambala”, a song made famous by Bahamian musician Tony McKay aka Exuma, who inspired Simone. Fischer performed “Dambala” with the requisite mysticism, getting listeners to shake to the beat.

Back-up vocalists LaSharVu, comprising three powerhouse singers, also contributed to the energy and success of the concert. Two of them joined Ledisi and Fischer for an outstanding and moving presentation of “Four Women” – Simone’s 1966 song about the lives of four African-American women that has become an essential part of her artistic legacy.

For other songs, LaSharVu teamed up with the orchestra to provide “percussive accompaniment” through clapping, and the orchestra’s skill on moving from reggae (“Baltimore”) to gospel underpinned the overall triumph of the show.

The concert ended with an encore, as Fischer and Ledisi performed “Feeling Good” to a standing ovation, and to comments of “fantastic”, “fabulous”, “amazing” and other superlatives.

The show was not the only part of the homage to Simone. Earlier in the day, the BBC’s “Proms Plus Talk” programme had featured a discussion of the “life, work and legacy” of the singer, with poet Zena Edwards and singer-musician Ayanna Witter-Johnson interviewed by journalist Kevin Le Gendre, author of Don’t Stop The Carnival: Black Music In Britain.

During this free public event, held at Imperial College Union, the three spoke of the impact Simone has had on their work and recalled her style and performances. They also discussed the abuse she suffered from her second husband and the painful relationship she had with her only daughter, Lisa, whom Simone in turn physically abused.

Witter-Johnson said that Simone had inspired her to feel empowered in performing different genres, so that she could sing and play music across various styles. “Her courage, outstanding musicianship and love of her heritage will always be a continual source of inspiration,” she said later.

In response to a comment from an audience member, a publisher, that Simone had been an extremely “difficult” person, Edwards stressed that Simone had been a “genius” and could be expected to not have an easy personality. Le Gendre meanwhile pointed to the difficulties Simone herself had experienced, with relationships, record companies, and the American establishment, especially after she began defending civil rights.

In an email interview after the tribute, Le Gendre said Simone’s music had had a “profound effect” on him throughout his life.

“There are so many anthems that she recorded it is difficult to know where to start, but a song like ‘Four Women’ can still move me to tears because it is such an unflinchingly honest depiction of the black condition that African-Americans, African-Caribbeans and black Britons can easily relate to,” he said.

“The way she broaches the very real historical issues of rape on a plantation, girls forced into prostitution and the internal battles based on skin shade affected me a great deal because, having lived in the West Indies and the UK and visited America several times, I know that what she is talking about is simply the truth,” he added.

“There is a war within the race as well as between the races, and we will only move beyond self-destruction if we firstly recognise these painful facts. I continue to be inspired by her ability to ‘keep it real’ as well as her great musicianship. Above all else she has made me think, as well as listen and dance.”

The BBC Proms classical music festival runs until Sept. 14 at the Royal Albert Hall in London. A concert on Aug. 29 features “Duke Ellington’s Sacred Music”, with conductor Peter Edwards, pianist Monty Alexander and tap dancer Annette Walker.

(This article is published by permission of Southern World Arts News – SWAN. You can follow the writer on Twitter: @mckenzie_ale)

Inna de Yard, a documentary about reggae music, opened across Germany on Jun. 20. Courtesy: Inna de Yard

By A. D. McKenzie
KINGSTON/PARIS, Jun 24 2019 (IPS)

Dogs barking in the distance. Birds chirping nearby. A man walking through the mist, surrounded by lush vegetation. A distinctive vibrato singing “Speak Softly, Love” over it all.

So begins Inna de Yard, a documentary that can safely be called a love poem to reggae music, or the “soul of Jamaica”, as the film is sub-titled with an obvious play on words.

Directed by Peter Webber (whose first feature was the acclaimed Girl with a Pearl Earring), the documentary comes at a timely moment: reggae was inscribed last November on the Intangible Cultural Heritage List of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

Before opening across Germany on Jun. 20, the film was screened in Paris at the U.N. agency’s headquarters to a full house of spectators, many of whom seemed to know the artists and the songs. Several stood up to dance when the musicians performed after the projection.

Inna de Yard takes us into the lives of pioneer reggae musicians who have come together to record music in a hilltop studio. This is a weathered, old house that offers breath-taking views of the capital Kingston. It is filled with stacks of vinyl records spilling out of their decaying jackets, while an ancient piano sits on the porch.

The man walking through the mist at the beginning is a piano tuner, who tells viewers that the instrument is sometimes infested with insects, but he needs to get it ready for the musicians. We watch as he takes bits of wire and other objects to do just that.

Then the music begins in earnest. We are introduced to the artists – Ken Boothe, Kiddus I, Winston McAnuff, Cedric Myton, The Viceroys and Judy Mowatt – as Boothe’s vibrato accompanies spectacular aerial shots of the landscape.

Kiddus – who appeared in the 1978 cult film “Rockers”– explains in his deep, pleasant voice that the project is “an amalgamation of elders playing acoustic music”, and McAnuff adds that the aim is to capture the music “in its virgin state”.

Mowatt, looking like an urban goddess in her patterned robe, says that the house up in the hills “felt like heaven” when she first visited.

In a previous era, Mowatt performed with the I-Threes, the trio of backing vocalists for Bob Marley and the Wailers. But beyond her presence, the extended Marley clan is not in focus here. This documentary is about the other trailblazers and the source of the music.

“Some countries have diamonds. Some countries have pearls. Some countries have oil. We have reggae music,” says bass player Worm in the film.

With footage from the 1960s and 1970s, the documentary takes us to the beginning of ska and rocksteady, showing how the music developed, influenced by American rhythm and blues.

“We paid attention to what was happening outside our shores and we amalgamated that with what was happening here,” Mowatt tells viewers. “The 1960s was the romantic era, but the 1970s was the conscious era.”

She says that reggae “talked about the realities of life” and that “all of Jamaica was living the songs that were being sung”– songs about political violence, hardships, and police repression of Rastafarians, for instance. It was the “golden age” of the music.

The documentary gives each of the artists space to reminisce even as it describes their lives now. “We miss everything about those days,” says Cedric Myton, a playful, lively spirit in the film who said he’s “going up the ladder” at 70-plus years old.

During one of the film’s most memorable scenes, we see him heading out in a boat and joking around with fishermen as he sings “Row, Fisherman, Row”, in his iconic falsetto. The film cuts from the sea to the studio in the hills, to Myton enlightening viewers on the origins of the lyrics.

Like many of the others, Myton started out in the music business with what seemed a bright future, but troubles in the United States – related to “herb charges”– meant he couldn’t perform there. In addition, all the musicians have had experience with unscrupulous record producers, or “thieves” as Myton calls them.

“We’re not giving up because we know there are better days ahead,” Myton says. “But financially it’s been a struggle.”

Some of his peers have had more personal struggles. McAnuff lost his son Matthew, also a singer, in 2012, and his description of the “senseless” death is among the most moving sections of the film. So is the story of younger musician Derajah, who lost his sister to gun violence. We see them working through their grief via the music.

“It’s a message for healing,” Kiddus says.

The Inna de Yard project puts the pioneers in contact with younger musicians who perform with them in the studio and on tour, and the film profiles these artists as well. “We learn from the younger guys and they learn a lot from us,” Kiddus comments.

Mowatt also records with two younger singers, the fiery Jah 9 and her colleague Rovleta. Speaking passionately, Jah 9 gives an introduction to the history of the island and the role that the Maroons and their legendary leader Nanny played in fighting against slavery.  Then she joins Mowatt and Rovleta in the studio to sing Mowatt’s “first solo anthem”– an intense track called “Black Woman”.

“It’s a love splash,” Mowatt characterises the session, describing the affection and solidarity between the three.

Accompanying individual musicians, the film also takes us through unspoilt areas of Jamaica – waterfalls, natural diving pools, forested Maroon country – but it doesn’t shy away from showing poor sections of the capital Kingston where the music was born, or the environmental degradation of some beaches. We also get a glimpse into eroticised dancehall culture, during a segment in a bar.

Film director Webber was, however, not interested in showing scenes “that would cause eyes to pop in the West,” as he said in an interview following the screening in Paris. Webber added that the restraint in filming certain aspects of the culture was “deliberate” as he didn’t “feel the need to labour the point”.

Because of this approach, viewers get a sense of the love of and respect for the music, unlike some sensationalist portrayals of Jamaican arts.

Webber said he was first introduced to the island’s music as a teenager in London and became “a huge fan of reggae”. Years later, he was working with French producer Gaël Nouaille on a Netflix project when Nouaille told him about the Inna de Yard musicians and recordings.

“I had never been to Jamaica before, partly because I had a Jamaica in my head, and I knew that if I got on a plane, I would have a touristic experience and it wouldn’t live up to what I imagined,” he said. “I didn’t want to spend two weeks on a beach in Negril. But this was a different way to go.”

When he got to the island and met the musicians, he initially wasn’t sure there was a feature film to be made, and he questioned whether he could produce a documentary that would “appeal to a more general audience” than traditional fans of reggae or dub.

He said it was also important to meet younger musicians. “I was wondering: Are these guys like the last of the Mohicans?”

Asked why he was the one to make this film, Webber said: “I did it because of my love and enthusiasm and because I had an opportunity to do it. You may wonder if the world needs another middle-aged white man dropping into Jamaica, but I see myself as a medium. I’m a channel, and I basically put my technical skills and my creativity at their disposal to tell their story. It’s not a film of cultural appropriation.”

He said the documentary developed based on the “spine of the story” – the musicians recording an album “up in this house in the hills”.

The house is indeed at the centre of the documentary, but from there, Webber and the musicians take us on a journey: back to the past, around the island, to concerts in Paris, and into the soul of reggae and Jamaica. And Webber does so with an artist’s touch, reflecting his background as a student of art history.

This article is published in an arrangement with Southern World Arts News. Follow on Twitter: @mckenzie_ale

Minik, New York 1897.

By Jan Lundius
STOCKHOLM / ROME, Jun 3 2019 (IPS)

There are several means to make profitable use of other human beings, an endeavour that tends to turn others into tools by depriving them of their roots and self-respect. This happened in concentration – and work camps, where individuals were reduced to mere numbers.

Another form of objectification of fellow human beings has been to gain money by exhibiting them to paying audiences. The fate of Ota Benga is an example of this. He was a Mbuti man who in 1904, together with other “primitive people”, was exhibited at the Lousiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis and later in the Monkey House at Bronx´s Zoo in New York. Ota Benga had by the missionary Samuel Phillips Verner been purchased from slave-traders in the Belgian Congo, while Verner was searching for “exotic Africans” to be exhibited in St. Louis.

After newspapers had exposed the mistreatment of Mr. Benga, he was after six years released from the zoo. A supervisor of the Howard Colored Orphan Asylum in Brooklyn arranged to have Benga´s filed teeth capped while providing him with basic education and ”decent” clothes. Benga planned to return to his Congolese home, though when the outbreak of World War I ended cross-Atlantic passenger traffic, Benga did at the age of 32 build a ceremonial fire, chipped off the caps on his teeth and shot himself in the heart with a stolen pistol.¹ By the beginning of the last century, Benga´s tragic fate was far from unique, people like him were brought from other continents to be exhibited at museums, circuses, and fairs. During the last decades, several books and movies have paid attention to some of these unfortunate individuals.

One example is the French film Black Venus from 2010. Directed by Abdellatif Kechiche it tells the true story of Sara Baartman, a Khoikhoi woman from South Africa who in the early 19th century was exhibited in several European countries. At that time, as well as after her death when her skeleton and a painted plaster model of her naked body until 1974 were exhibited at Musée de l´Homme in Paris, Ms. Baartman has figured in novels, poems, and artworks. She suffered from steatopygia, abnormally big buttocks, as well as protruding genitals. When she was exposed naked, both alive and as a plaster model, Sara was presented as a representative of the ”abnormality” and ”hypersexuality” of the ”black race”, an outcome of its ”unique physique”. Ms. Baartman died from ”inflammation” at the age of 25. ²

Another representative of abused indigenous people is Minik, who seven years old together with his father Qisuk and four other Inghuits, in 1897 by the US explorer Robert Peary were brought from the village of Uummannaq in northern Greenland to New York, to be exhibited at shows and at the American Museum of Natural History. However, all of them soon died of tuberculosis, except for one man who succeeded to return to Greenland and Minik who was forced to remain in New York.

Minik suffered from his father´s death and pleaded for a proper Inghuit burial. For the benefit of Minik, the museum staff staged a fake burial. Unknown to Minik the coffin had been filled with stones, while his father´s corpse was de-fleshed, his skeleton mounted and publicly displayed together with painted, plaster models. Through his classmates, Minik found out that his father´s skeleton was exposed together with casts of his and his father´s naked bodies. The press got hold of the story and after almost ten years in New York, Minik was brought back to Uummannaq. He had by then forgotten his mother language and much of Inghuit culture and skills. In spite of being welcomed by his people, reintegrated in their culture and becoming a skilled hunter, Minik never felt at home. In 1916 he returned to New York, where he after a few months died of pneumonia.³

Minik had been kept in New York under the pretext of acculturation, a process of social, psychological and cultural change through which a dominant society incorporates individuals from a differing culture. Forced assimilation remains a common violation of minority rights.

A Danish movie, premiering the same year as Black Venus – The Experiment by Lousie Friedberg – deals with the perils of acculturation. In 1951, with the intention of transforming them into “small Danes” by adapting them to “modern” society, Danish colonial authorities removed twenty-two, six to eight years old Inuit children from their parents. The children were “relocated” to Denmark and the movie follows their fate as they lose their original language and culture, while suffering the trauma of being separated from their families. More than half of them died before reaching adulthood.

There are several examples of such tragedies, disguised as benevolent efforts to secure a bright future for “native” children, one was the Canadian Indian residential school system, a network of boarding schools administered by Christain churches. During its hundred years of existence (1869 to mid-1960s) 30 percent of Canada´s indigenous children, around 150,000 individuals, were separated from their parents and placed in residential schools. Due to incomplete historical records, the number of school-related deaths remains unknown, though estimates range from 3,200 upwards of 6,000. ⁴

Acculturation has occurred in the other direction as well. Children and youngsters captured during raids by Native American warriors quite often received the name of a deceased member of their captor´s tribe, receiving his/her social status while becoming a member of the deceased person´s family. White settlers became astonished to find that “rescued” captives often preferred to return to their captors. In 1753, Benjamin Franklin observed:

… when white persons of either sex have been taken prisoners young by the Indians, and lived a while among them, though ransomed by their Friends, and treated with all imaginable tenderness to prevail with them, to stay among the English, yet in a Short time they become disgusted with our manner of life, and the care and pains that are necessary to support it, and take the first good Opportunity of escaping again into the Woods, from whence there is no reclaiming them. ⁵

Captivity Narratives soon became a sub-genre of American biographies, novels and movies. The phenomenon of settlers preferring to remain with their captors is as old as the first encounters between Westerners and Indigenous people.⁶ In his magnificent eye-witness account of Hernán Cortés´s conquest of México, the Spanish soldier Bernal Díaz del Castillo described a meeting between the priest Jerónimo de Aguilar and the former sailor Gonzalo Guerrero.

Eight years before the arrival of Western warriors these two men had been shipwrecked on the Mayan coast of México. Other members of their crew were almost immediately ritually sacrificed, while de Aguilar and Guerrero escaped. After being re-captured, they were instead of being sacrificed turned into slaves. de Aguilar kept his faith and remained a slave, while Guerrero became a ”war leader” in the service of Nachan Can, Lord of Chactemal and married his daughter, Zazil. When Cortés heard about the two Spaniards he paid ransom for them. His Mayan owner freed de Aguilar, who joined the Spanish troops, becoming their translator. When he arrived among the Spaniards, de Aguilar told Cortés that he had failed to persuade Guerrero to join him. Guerreo, who was not a slave, had answered his friend:

Brother Aguilar, I am married and have three children, and they look on me as a Cacique [lord] here, and a captain in time of war. Go, and God´s blessing be with you. But my face is tattooed and my ears are pierced. What would the Spaniards say about me if they saw me like this? And look how handsome these children of mine are. ⁷

Cortés soon learned that Guerrero led Mayan warriors in attacks on Spanish troops and he eventually died fighting his former compatriots. Guerrero´s story is proof of the fact that you are at home where you feel you belong and that no one can force such a feeling upon you.

¹ Newkirk, Pamela (2015). Spectacle: The Astonishing Life of Ota Benga. New York: Amistad.
² Crais, Clifton and Pamela Scully (2009) Sara Baartman and the Hottentot Venus. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press. It was common that indigenous individuals, brought from isolated areas to big cites in the US and Europe, died from contagious diseaes.
³ Cruchaudet, Chloé (2008). Groënland Manhattan. Paris: Delcourt.
⁴ Réaume, Denise G. and Patrick Macklem (1994) Education for Subordination: Redressing the Adverse Effects of Residential Schooling. Toronto: University of Toronto.
⁵ Isaacson, Walter (2005) A Benjamin Franklin Reader. New York: Simon & Schuster. p. 157.
⁶ Turner III, Frederick W. (1977) The Portable North American Indian Reader. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, pp. 310-311.
⁷ Díaz, Bernal (1965) The Conquest of New Spain. Harmondsworth; Penguin Classics. p. 65

Jan Lundius holds a PhD. on History of Religion from Lund University and has served as a development expert, researcher and advisor at SIDA, UNESCO, FAO and other international organisations.

Excerpt:

By Jan Lundius
STOCKHOLM / ROME, May 27 2019 (IPS)

Human existence includes dreams, thoughts, ideas, music, stories, religion, and other immaterial ”things”. They constitute an important part of our habitat, i.e. the dwelling place of any living organism, consisting of both organic and inorganic surroundings. I learned this when I many years ago found myself among the undulating heights of Cordillera Central, which rise diagonally across the island of Hispaniola, shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

After days of hard work in fields and garden plots, peasants of the Cordillera gathered on the porches of their bright-painted houses, or ramshackle huts, to chat and play dominoes with their neighbours. While they, around kerosene lamps, joined friends and families, stories were told about dreams and another sphere, quite different from our everyday existence. On an occasion like that, Julian Ramos, a patriarch more than a hundred years old, told me:

People from your part of the world do not understand that a man like me lives in two worlds. I move between them like someone who walks through sunshine and shadows. I work and toil in one world close to another one that consists of dreams, music and tales; things I cannot see and touch. It is the dwelling place of gods, saints, and miracles. Listen to the dog howling out there in the dark. I tell you, that is not just a dog. Oh no, it is a human being who turned himself into a dog. The butterfly you saw in your room last night, that was no butterfly, it was your beloved who dreamt about you and her dream turned her into a butterfly. The fireflies over there are no insects, they are the souls of dead ancestors. All around us are things and creatures we do not know, which we cannot see, cannot understand. Up in the air, in the earth down below us, in the springs, the caves and the trees, live the mysteries, the luas. What we assume to be our world is only a tiny fraction of something else, something much, much bigger. I know this since I am an old man. Life is a tough and hard teacher and the longer we are forced to encounter him, the more we learn.

Remembering Julian Ramos´s words I realize that a man like me and “people from my part of the world”, actually live in two worlds as well. A sphere of dreams and vodú deities was part of Julian Ramos´s and his neighbours´ habitat, a realm that actually is present in the minds of people all around the world and probably has been there ever since Homo Sapiens developed. However, ”westernized” human beings have for the last thirty years, or so, also become used to live with or even within another habitat, the artificially created, but yet real Cyberspace,¹ which affects our lives to an even higher degree than Julian Ramos´s ”spiritual realm”.

Cyberspace´s enormous digital world is a dream world, an unregulated and uncontrolled domain. However, contrary to Julian Ramos´s spiritual sphere it has been created by machines. Cyberspace exists and is accessible to individuals from all over the world. A place both beyond and within everyday life. We enter Cyberspace to interact with others; exchange ideas, share information, provide social support, conduct business, gamble for money and play games, make contact with future spouses, create artistic media, discuss politics and direct, create and influence a wide range of actions in real life. Cyberspace is used and misused for money transactions, purchasing goods and product promotion. It benefits technology strategists, security professionals, entrepreneurs, government, military – and industrial leaders, as well as fanatics and criminals.

As the dream world, Cyberspace is a make-believe environment, visited by cybernauts who may appear to be real, but do not exist in reality.² In 2017, the Scottish writer Andrew O´Hagan wrote a book in which he decribed how he created a fictive character who through the Internet gained a life of his own.³ He called him Ronald Pinn and received a Facebook account in the name of his invented character; complete with a profile, interests, and hundreds of fake friends.⁴ Soon Ronald Pinn gained real ”friends” as well, contacts enabling him to enter a vast market place.

O´Hagan became obsessed with his own creation – his Frankenstein monster and while being a novelist O´Hagan experienced how the character he had created began to control him. William Faulkner once said:

It begins with a character, usually, and once he stands up on his feet and begins to move, all I can do is trot along behind him with a paper and pencil trying to keep up long enough to put down what he says and does.⁵

Tellers of tales, people who like Julian Ramos, are able to enter spiritual spheres where they do not only meet gods and angels but also encounter monsters. O’Hagan created his own Mr. Hyde, a dangerous doppelgänger. He made Ronald Pinn into a young drug addict, political extremist, and gun fetishist. In Pinn´s name, O´Hagan rented an actual apartment and through the web he purchased white heroin, arriving in vacuum packs costing £ 39. He also bought bundles of counterfeit money that was easily accepted in various London stores. For his web purchases the fake Ronald Pinn used cyber-currency, bitcoins, and as long as he paid he was welcome everywhere in Cyberspace, his real identity was never checked. Ronald Pinn could have been a mercenary, a terrorist, a psychopath – no one cared. He bought false identity documents, as well as several weapons, which arrived in parts to the apartment of a non-existent Ronald Pinn.

The so called Dark Web is a criminal´s paradise made real. O´Hagan found that it is a place governed by ”an anti-authoritarian madness. A love of disorder as long as your own possessions aren´t threatened.”⁶ The monsters and trolls created in the ”spiritual sphere” of traditional storytellers might not be real, though those inhabiting Cyberspace do exist. The fictitious Ronald Pinn contacted Cyberspace monsters who sold him drugs, weapons and means to contact pimps and killers. Cyberspace is a parallel universe with a potential to cause a lot of damage. We have to be careful not to fall in its traps and have to find means to check and shun the lies and deceits thriving there. We also have to try to help our friends and children to avoid being engulfed by the Dark Web.

¹ The concept became common knowledge after the Canadian-US writer William Gibson 1982 introduced it in the short story Burning Crome, developing it further in his 1984 novel Neuromancer, where he described it as a “graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data,” Neuromancer (2016). New York: Penguin Classics, p. 52.
² From October 2018 to March 2019, according to its own reports, Facebook took down more than 3 billion fake accounts. https://transparency.facebook.com/community-standards-enforcement
³ O´Hagan, Andrew (2017) The Secret Life: Three True Stories. London: Faber & Faber.
⁴ Fake followers and friends (bots, spam accounts, inactive users, and non-real/invented persons) are common in political propaganda and consumer surveys. For example, Twitter Audit did in 2017 find that of 31 million followers of Trump´s Twitter, 15 million were bots and fake accounts. It was also recently established that 63 percent of Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro´s more than four million twitter followers were fake.
⁵ Fant, Joseph L. and Robert Ashley, eds. (2002) Faulkner at West Point. Oxford MS: University Press of Mississippi, p. 101.
⁶ The Secret Life, p. 122.

Jan Lundius holds a PhD. on History of Religion from Lund University and has served as a development expert, researcher and advisor at SIDA, UNESCO, FAO and other international organisations.