Sean Jacobs's Blog, page 424

Did I ever tell you about that time a guy followed me in the NYC subway and offered me $40 to touch my leg?

Real talk: Who else is tired of gender/race swapping to make a point about racism/sexism? I know I am, especially about gender swapping. 

I’m not sure it makes much of a point to men about male privilege or male sexual entitlement. As a black, queer, mostly masculine, cisgender, middle-class man, I love it when I’m cat-called, eye-fucked or sexually prepositioned, whether by men or women, lecherous or not. Love. It. It makes me feel like a million and two bucks. At the absolute worst it gives me a great story to tell my friends — like, did I ever tell you about that time a guy followed me from the 6 to the E train in the New York City subway and offered me $40 to touch my leg?

In no way and at no point do I feel dehumanised by these things because at no point have I ever felt (or have ever been in a situation where) my personal safety was not guaranteed. At no point have I wondered whether someone would unilaterally take objectifying me into the physical realm without my consent, because these things are governed by social codes that prescribe whose sexual autonomy may, and whose sexual autonomy may not, be snatched away. I happen to fall among the group whose sexual autonomy — generally speaking — is seldom in question.

Having never experienced (over and over again) someone else’s feeling of entitlement to my body in synchronous combination with that person having the power/privilege to act unilaterally on that entitlement makes me think, when I watch the litany of gender-swap videos out there: What’s so bad about that?

I have to make the conscious choice to disconnect from my own experiences to understand what’s so bad about it.

And I imagine what I feel is a fraction of what those with fewer oppressions and more privilege must feel when they experience or watch the same things.

Now I could have just missed the point entirely or I could just be a shameless sex fiend, both of which are distinct possibilities, or it could be that a gender swap does little to make men understand what it’s like for women in the white supremacist capitalist patriarchy.

Image: Sean Jacobs

In gratitude to Stuart Hall, a socialist intellectual who taught us to confront the political with a smile

Stuart Hall was the most important public intellectual of the past 50 years. In an age where having a TV show allegedly makes someone a public intellectual and where the status of the university you work at counts for more than what you have to say, Hall’s work seems even more urgent and his passing, somehow, even sadder. 

But for Hall I wouldn’t have become an academic. There was no space for someone like me before Hall. Discovering the field of Cultural Studies as an undergraduate, I found validation and recognition. Suddenly, my background and way of life as a working-class black kid mattered and was important beyond the confines of south London. It’s taken for granted now that culture matters, that popular culture is a site of politics, that politics saturates everyday life, and that these things can and should be studied in a serious manner. But despite their claims, it was not Sociology, or History, or Economics, or even Anthropology that created this space. It was Cultural Studies. Most intellectuals are known for contributing to our knowledge on a particular topic or specific theme. Hall was different. He created an entire new academic discipline, and then mentored just about every significant scholar that came through Cultural Studies in the 1970s and 80s.

Hall did not give me my voice, but he created the conditions under which it was possible for me to speak, be heard and to do so with an enriched conceptual vocabulary. This is the point that pompous French sociologists and supposedly leftist Anglo-American scholars fail to understand when they dismissively disparage the irrelevance of “Cultural Studies” or “multiculturalism” (sometimes used as code words for Hall himself) as mere marginalia. He made it possible for at least two generations of black British scholars to see ourselves as “thinkers” and not mere objects of sociological curiosity. In so doing, Hall forever transformed white academia and intellectual life in Britain and elsewhere.

Hall is also the figure that most makes apparent the critical distinction between being a professional academic committed to career advancement and an engaged intellectual who tries to make a difference through political work. For Hall, the university was always a location but not the destination for the production of ideas. Yet despite this, and the ever-present temptation for self-aggrandizement and inflated self-importance, conditions that afflict contemporary academia, Hall was incredibly generous.

I did not know Hall well but I heard him speak many times and we met on a few occasions. I remember the second time I spoke with him. I had recently taken up my first position as a lecturer at Brighton University. I reintroduced myself and reminded him that I worked on sports and race among other things. Hall gently replied, “I know who you are Ben, I like your work.” I could have happily retired from academia then and there, in my late 20s: “Ben Carrington, author of a few pieces, Stuart Hall knew of him.” At the time I mentioned this story to friend of mine, Garry Whannel whose father, Paddy, had co-authored Hall’s first book The Popular Arts. I assumed that Hall was just being polite; I couldn’t imagine he really knew my work but I appreciated the gesture none the less. Garry immediately corrected me: Hall would have read my work, he wouldn’t have engaged in such false niceties, and if he liked my work he meant it. I felt a sense of embarrassment at projecting my own shallowness onto Hall and a renewed confidence that my own thoughts could matter too. Hall had that affect, a point often lost in commentaries about him. His impact should not just be measured (and remembered) in relation to his own writings but in terms of what he has made possible in the work of countless others.

A few years ago I wrote a piece on black British intellectuals for South Atlantic Quarterly. I emailed Hall a copy. A couple of months later Hall replied. He apologized for the delay saying that he was finding it hard to sit and write because of his health but that he had enjoyed my essay and offered some thoughts on what I had written. In the midst of his deteriorating health, he’d taken the time to respond with a lengthy email. And not just the usual “Thanks for the email Ben, good luck with your work” but with a measured and thoughtful engagement. I can’t think of many (any?) leading intellectuals who would give such time to someone that they barely knew or to someone who couldn’t do something in return for them.

My stories are not unique. I’d guess there are hundreds, likely thousands, of scholars with similar accounts. But what I take away from such memories, in this moment, as sadness threatens to overwhelm, is the deeply committed, deeply humanistic, deeply caring nature of an intellectual who made mentorship and collaboration a defining characteristic of what we should all strive for.

Right now I can see those who have been impacted by Hall’s work rushing to organize symposia and special issues of journals in his honor. That is all fine. He deserves to be remembered within academic spaces. But he was first and foremost an intellectual and an educator committed to socialist politics. Truly wrestling with and celebrating his life’s work means recognizing that truth. Ultimately, like the tradition of radical intellectuals of the left to which he belongs and to my mind now stands above, Hall’s legacy is one that implores us to always confront the political … and to do so with a smile and a generosity of spirit.

Ben Carrington, February 10th, 2014

How to deal with reporters like Alex Preston

So journalist Alex Preston jetted into town from a posh Western capital. Alex Preston went to a Nigerian city of eerie silence, billowing clouds of dust, darkness and war. Alex Preston wrote a sexy story about a not-so-sexy subject for a sexy magazine. Alex Preston is white. 

It is important not to think too hard in dealing with the above scenario. Thinking is a terrible waste of time when there are people to do it for you. In times of battle for example not everyone goes to war. That is why we have armies. In the same vein although in democracies, government is of the people and by the people, we cede our powers to elected representatives who act on our behalf. The above situation has already been covered by some of the brightest writers from our continent. Binyavanga Wainaina wrote a brilliant essay called How To Write About Africa dealing with stereotypes in writing about Africa. Teju Cole wrote about the White Savior Industrial Complex where he found fault with a young white man who tried to save an African country without first understanding the basic issues. And of course one of our brightest writers Chimamanda Adichie gave the moving, now Beyonce-canonized TED talk, The Danger of a Single Story, challenging one-sided narratives, especially about Africa. God bless them for opening our eyes.

So the next time a white journalist shows up on our shores with a local cameraman (because bringing in his photographer colleague from London would be too expensive) and reports however factually, a rotten situation in our country, we must look first to his skin. White people should not jet into Africa to talk about our dark sides. It doesn’t matter that there is actually a war going on and apart from figures, no one knows anything about it. That is our business. It doesn’t matter if our army is whitewashing the sordid war with tales of successes and our journalists are too poorly paid to risk verifying the press releases they get. It doesn’t matter if the said white journalist writes an honest story and stays true to the facts. Any journalist who writes negative truth while being white will be rightly splashed the colors of racist Conrad. And trust me, nobody wants to be Conrad. Not after Achebe exposed his dark heart. Such a journalist will be set right on social media by Africa’s growing online population most of whose middle-class sensitivities will be hurt by stories such as those written by Preston.

And really if you think of it, what is a Borno war to someone with an iPad in Lagos? What is thousands of villagers caught in crossfire between Boko Haram and heavy handed JTF soldiers to a young guy working for a nice international organization in Abuja tweeting from a Samsung Galaxy S4 in one hand and holding a DSTV remote control in the other? Why does Preston think it is ok to shove in our faces the thousands of people that die in Nigeria’s tucked-away northeast war and ruin our exquisite middle-class dinners? So what if most of the body count goes unreported? Isn’t there transformation to report? Surely white people can utilize their impartial accuracy (upon which we heavily rely) in reporting the good stuff. Like economic growth. Like our brand new airports. Our winning the African Cup of Nations. Dangote’s Forbes listing. And his sexy yacht Mariya. Surely.

So how do we deal with guys like Alex Preston when they write shit about us? Simple. Attack him on Twitter. For reporting while white. Trust me, there is no comeback when you bring race into it.

The #BullshitFiles: Tsunami and the Single Girl — One Woman’s Journey to Become an Aid Worker and Find Love

Every side-eye, cringe, SMH and WTF in the world has gathered for a family reunion in the title of this book. It is the perfect set-up for searing satire, which is what I hoped was on offer when I clicked the link forwarded by my sister with a “hahahahahahaha” subject line – although she did mention something about tragedy giving way to farce…

“Set in humanitarian disaster zones around the world Tsunami and the Single Girl is the story of Krissy Nicholson’s journey to become an aid worker and her (seemingly) never-ending search to find a soul mate.”

Set in where, to find what? I now began to suspect that I was journeying into a literary disaster zone. My suspicions were swiftly confirmed.

“As a free-spirited traveller, Krissy – now almost thirty – needs her life to start taking shape. So how does a wild night on a dance floor in Vietnam land her a sought-after role in Oxfam working in emergency relief? And how does the excess of the expatriate scene, a string of Mr Wrongs and failed romances lead to self-discovery and ultimately self-fulfilment? ”

Speaking of self-discovery. A while back I wrote satirically on the related topic of Altourism – Where Altruism Meets Adventure. With one small blurb, Krissy has shown me not only how weak and inadequate my effort was, but more importantly, how redundant. So you think you’ve got jokes? Take a seat. The white saviour industry is infinitely more capable of (inadvertently) satirising itself. Imma let you finish, Krissy.

“Against the backdrop of adrenaline-fuelled disaster response, Krissy begins… ”

Actually, no, I’m not. #Bye.

British Nigerian Me?

“British Nigerian Me?” is a short documentary I made about people born of Nigerian parents but raised in the United Kingdom without much knowledge of their heritage, culture or understanding of their mother tongues. It looks at one of the issues faced by people of dual heritage who are torn between two different cultures and are confused about their identity. Hence, the reason for the question mark in the title.

The film was inspired by my first trip to Nigeria 18 years. Few days into my visit, I started to realise how different things were compared to London and how little I actually knew about the country and my family’s culture. An experience that really saddened me was meeting an elderly aunty of mine for the first time and being unable to communicate with her as she only spoke Yoruba, which I barely understand.

On returning to London, I started to wonder how many other people are in similar situations like me and decided to explore this further. There are multiple reasons why: parents not teaching their children about their culture; children are simply not  interested in learning their language or knowing about their culture; and parents not valuing their culture and heritage.

Looking back, I myself was not interested at all while growing up, despite my parents’ best attempts, and I was not even proud to be a Nigerian. I think this was probably because of the bad perceptions presented of Nigerians at the time (corruption, 419 etcetera). I regret not having an interest then…and I am still struggling to understand my language.

Here’s my short documentary:

Football, Art, and its Many Intersections: An Interview with Franklin Sirmans

Shortly after the opening of Fútbol: The Beautiful Game at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) I had the opportunity to speak with the exhibition’s curator, Franklin Sirmans. It was actually three days after the exhibition opened to the public, to be precise, and I’m grateful to Sirmans for scheduling a walkthrough with me during what is a busy time in the life of a curator.

After reviewing the exhibition for Africa Is A Country there remained a number of questions I had about the position of politics, money, and representation of race, nationality, and gender in the game and the exhibition. The following transcript of my conversation with Sirmans is illuminating on these and many other issues related to the practice and pleasure of football, art, and its many intersections. The interview has been edited only for clarity and (when possible) brevity. Note: you can click on all images, courtesy of LACMA, to enlarge.

My first question is an obvious one – what was the impetus behind the exhibition?

Franklin Sirmans: Really, thinking about the World Cup coming up and the opportunity that it represents, thinking about that space as being, well, it’s one of the few spaces… I don’t hear, at least in my world, not everybody is talking about Sochi. In my world, people are waiting for Brazil! For me, as far as what we do here with contemporary, it’s contemporary [art] within an encyclopedic museum. So, we’re always thinking about other departments, other points of time, and how do we speak to our audiences in different ways? It felt like this space, this space of an exhibition that pulls its theme or subject from something that is usually outside of the museum, it felt like a really fertile space to think about it.

And then on a personal level I had been interested for a long time in any artwork that happens to touch on football. I just keep a kind of mental directory of that sort of stuff, and really had certain things in mind from the very beginning and that’s what I pitched to my colleagues. Things like the piece on Zidane by Philippe Parreno and Douglas Gordon’s Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait (2006) – they are two artists that we talk about a lot. We just acquired a piece by Parreno called Marilyn (2012) last year, so he’s an artist we’re talking about. Or even the Warhol at the end [Pelé, 1978] – these are anchors I could see that make at least an outline, and then you’re amazed by what keeps coming up and what we keep seeing. And I think there’s always something new. Every four years there’s a different way of addressing [football]. So then it comes down to, ‘well, if you have those anchors like Nelson Leirner,’ which we’re here in front of now, then you also can look deeper and think about younger artists who have made things in the last few years.

So the impetus was on the one hand thinking about Brazil, on the other hand thinking about us in contemporary art and what we can offer from this encyclopedic museum.

In that vein, there’s been a lot of praise for the inclusion of the Self Help Graphics & Art work, commissioned by Evonne Gallardo, and featuring local artists – there are other local artists in the exhibition as well – how did the idea come about to collaborate with Self Help Graphics on this?

I’ve known Evonne for more than 20 years so it seemed too perfect! [laughs] I don’t even remember exactly how it came up. We had met for breakfast maybe, not so long ago, and I told her about [the exhibition]. It seemed too easy and too obvious. I think when I was in the studio, I had seen something of Dewey [Tafoya]’s that related to the game in some way, so that was a big trigger. Evonne came up with five prints altogether, and it just made it perfect.

Also, the sense of… graphically, there’s a language that’s about prints and about the process of printmaking. It’s about the multiplicity of images that are drawn from that first artwork, and the way that they’re distributed as a multiple that is important to this space. There’s always an icon or poster that’s associated with the World Cup. For us, these are those in some ways. You can see the graphic character that comes out of that relationship. Particulary in the case of Nery Gabriel Lemus’s piece [Thank You for the Game, 2013], which has that this black and green ‘70s aesthetic and then the ball made out of leaves. It’s a political statement at the same time. The tradition of printmaking and posters has lent itself well to that idea. It was perfect.

Ana [Serrano]’s piece here – this is something that isn’t absent but perhaps isn’t as highlighted as it could be as frequently – is portrayals of the women’s game and women in the game.

Yes, yeah.

Could you talk about representation, the thought you put into who is showing and what particularly is showing?

It was more so who was in the exhibition, and Evonne did an incredible job with that. For me, those past works – what were they? I think what I was trying to allude to in the beginning was not only are there artists that we’ve been looking at for a long time, artists we’re collecting, but a certain familiarity with the subject matter. I think we have some artists who are addressing soccer for what could be their first time, and you have others who have made 10 works about the same thing. So in terms of thinking about representation, it was about the work first and foremost, and then about what you’re bringing to the table – ‘what I know.’

So I would say the other thing that centered us was the idea that it was for Brazil and for the coming World Cup in particular. There could be more of a lot of things, you know? I think someone was saying the other day “Oh, there’s no Orozco in the show” and I’m like, “No, there’s not! You’re right, and he has done a lot of work in the game.”

In a way it’s refreshing to see a lot of work coming from artists who aren’t canonized within what is still a small genre of work on football.

Absolutely – I mean hear we have Nery and Ana, here’s Ami’s [Amitis Motevalli] piece –

I love Ami’s piece!

– Oh yes, it absolutely brings in other elements. And then Dewey [Tafoya]’s piece [Olmeca 1370 BCE, 2013, pictured above], I think particularly in the relationship with the Leirner stadium, the nationalist treasure stadium of Brazil, and then the national reference [in Tafoya’s piece] to Mexico 1970 when the final was in Azteca stadium.

Something Africa Is A Country and Football Is A Country contributors and readers are really critical of despite their love of the sport is of course the political dimension – the commodification that George Afedzi Hughes’ work addresses, but also the violence that’s inherent in the sport.

You know, it’s funny, for the first time I had a feeling walking by this [Andreas Gursky, Amsterdam, EM Arena 1, 2000] because I had to look back at exactly when it was. It’s a Euro qualifier from 2000 and the Dutch ended up winning this match against France in Amsterdam. It just reminded me of some of that sense of diversity of nationalisms. Of course these are the national teams but some of these guys play for clubs together. [Dennis] Bergkamp and Sylvain [Wiltord] are playing together, [Edgar] Davids is over there – it’s the team that wins the Euro and then wins the World Cup. And it’s a very celebrated team for its diversity and for its ways of re-examining what’s happening in France at that time. But yes, the two paintings by George Afedzi Hughes are very much about his relationship to the game in Africa, and being from Ghana he is talking about this piece [Parallel] with the striker, with the background lettering referring to what could be the position in the game, but then this sniper rifle and a hint of something else going on, of violence, of a different situation.

The other painting is also quite specific to Africa, in which he’s referring to Pelé saying that an African country should win by the end of the 20th century, and him saying, ‘Well that didn’t happen but I think 2030 is a more realistic kind of timeframe.’ And Satch [Hoyt]’s piece is really about this in many ways – George’s piece is called Made In The Colonies and Satch’s piece [Kick That, 2006] is the presence of Africa in Europe, and some of the issues that have gone along with that. So the commodification of the game, the commodification of people – with the Euro sign on the ball, sitting on these bananas that have been thrown at people. And part of the soundtrack relates to that in some ways too.

Well, in a way an African country did win the Cup in the 20th century if we count France.

Yeah, exactly!

I love the juxtaposition here of Hoyt’s bananas right across from Lyle Ashton Harris’ series, if only because I remember him – a while ago, maybe in 2009? – I saw him speak on a huge painting based on a cartoon of Zidane getting his feet massaged by… who was it? Eto’o? [Edit: I was referring to Harris’ Blow Up IV (Sevilla), 2006) – and the massage is definitely not from Eto’o.]

I don’t remember either.

But it was clear that Harris has obviously observed football but I don’t think he necessarily has a relationship with it because he neglected, in his particular reading, the racial dimensions that Zidane also faces. And here we have Italian fans whom are ostensibly also throwing bananas on the pitch.

Right, and these are in particular – he did the Rome residency – two of the contested images are from Verona, which is well known for its Ultra fans. You get this sort of fascist salute thing happening almost as part of your representation for your team, which is quite… a trippy thing. Also suggested is that sort of military presence or police presence that is also a part of the game. I mean, for me, I lived in Milan for two years at a time when George Weah was there and Ibrahim Ba was there, and they’re world celebrated super stars. Weah goes back and runs for president, right? But having a certain feeling that I don’t know if I’m going to the Meazza to watch that, in that environment, and watching on television and seeing Paul Ince playing for Inter at that time and seeing bananas being thrown at him. How do we reconcile all that? So we know that we call it the beautiful game but it’s not always beautiful.

And then I think there are two video works in here that go back to a sense of innocence that is not in the works we just talked about. Oscar Murillo’s piece from Columbia [Perreo] is really just a portrait of a childhood friend. This guy [in the video] with the kit that says Parreo on the back, he’s an old friend of his, and he periodically does these videos that are extended self-portraits. But it’s also about the vitality of daily life and how the game insinuates itself very casually, just part of living. You have some people that are off to the side, not looking at anybody, talking to themselves. Some people who join the game, play for a minute, and then come off. It’s just part of the fabric of life.

And also with Robin Rhode [Hondjie, 2001], also suggestive of the possibilities of something out of nothing. Like, in Nery’s piece where he’s got the ball cobbled together from natural material, in this piece there is no ball. Robin is making this active juggling by drawing directly on the wall and I think it’s suggestive at the same time of the simplicity of the game and the beauty of that simplicity.

And that’s the most common sight you’ll see in any football loving country – some kid with a ball just juggling by themselves. Or, you know, in downtown LA!

[laughs] Exactly.

That’s something to me, having moved to LA from New York and being part of an Egyptian family, growing up with the game… when I came to LA it was really hard to locate soccer. You know it’s happening, obviously, it’s not as present or as daily – finding a bar to watch a match in is almost impossible.

I know!

So I think this is a big deal in that way, that LACMA would feature a sport that for all intents and purposes is kind of pushed to the side in the city.

That’s the thing that I’m trying to discover after living here for 4 years – there are so many different parts of LA and if you don’t know, you really don’t know! I know it’s there, and obviously, it’s a language. You go to MacArthur Park? It’s there, all the time. You see it in these places, but I agree – it’s not the same as being in the sort of urban space where you’re all bunched up against each other. It’ so much more spread out.

I’ve seen mentions of the show on soccer sites from all over the place. How has the reception from Angelinos been so far?

So far it’s been great. We’ve had wonderful press, people having a good time with the opening, having music there and trying to suggest other possibilities of going to the museum and of what you might see. I think that’s our strength – to be able to walk into Calder and look at mobiles from the 1930s and then come over here to the second floor and immerse yourself in the atmospheres of James Turrell, where you don’t know what exactly you’re looking at so you experience it with your body. And then to come in here and have a different kind of experience through painting, video, photography, print. It’s that sort of balance and thinking about ways in which – you know we came in through the BP Pavilion – a lot of what we think about is how do people go about daily life, like we’re talking about, and use this space as a space for thinking, talking, sharing ideas. I think the game represents that to a lot of us, obviously, or we wouldn’t be talking.

[to Stephanie Sykes, LACMA Communications Manager] Are you a football fan?

SS: I don’t mind it… [laughs] I’m a rugby person! But, I just want to say that I think he’s being very modest, because people who have seen the show are obsessed with it. I haven’t seen so much social media buzz about an exhibition since I’ve been here. I think there’s really this populist appeal to it that people love. And lots of people are on board – like, our relationship to the LA Galaxy, they’ve been sharing it across their network, and Univision… so there’s this huge new constituency that’s been getting more exposure, which breaks down that barrier of elitism that tends to be associated with museums without having been to one. So it’s things like this that bring people in and let them discover that they have a voice here, and trying to serve them as opposed to alienate them.

FS: Exactly, and that’s the thing with the exhibition design, just wanting to suggest something different. The last show I did here was a very sort of austere show of works from the 1980s, and they were made that way with the sort of white cube space in mind and very sterile… but we tried to play with that idea a little bit so that when you do come into the space not only do you have the crazy figurines of the Nelson Leirner piece but you also have these sort of visual design elements that are playing off the walls that reflect the Brazilian flag but not trying to replicate it by any means. It’s not only about looking at painting…

The first thing I think of when I see the gallery space are football banners.

Exactly.

So who’s your favourite team? We can go off the record if you want.

In England, Tottenham [redacted banter]. It gets complicated! I have issues… you know, I was in Milan… I’m complicated. I grew up in New York with a family that was staunch New York Mets fans but I lived within eyesight of Yankee Stadium, so it got complicated. It’s tricky. Brazil is a favourite national team, Netherlands is the other. And I grew up on the New York Cosmos, which is now more or less defunct but they do have a club team in New York. So hopefully they’ll come back into MLS somehow but…

So now we’re here in front of Stephen Dean’s Volta [2002-2003, pictured below] – what has been reverberating since we’ve been in the gallery – which makes it feel like we’re in the game, which is great.

This is another one of those pieces that I knew very well and imagined it as an anchor piece, to be a sort of conversation juxtaposed with the Zidane piece, where the Zidane is that individual portrait and concentrates on him as the artist, and then this piece more about us as the spectator and the collective.

Spectatorship: I like the focus on that in multiple pieces – whether it’s a game with friends or in the stadiums, I think looking at this – getting the excitement of the game, you’re getting that clearly through the show, but there’s also… I’m really captivated by Paul Pfeiffer’s Caryatid (Red, Yellow, Blue). That, I stood in front of at the reception for a while, it was intense.

He’s another one of those artists – he’s dealt with the fanatic many times – and has made work in stadiums in London, and has made several art works that revolve not only around football, but also in other sports and using them as an arena for wider conversation.

The sort of anthems that come through… in a way, being a fan is joining the team. It becomes sort of a choreographed moment and performative exercise for a lot of people. So you understand being a fan in so many ways is not ever really about the team itself but the performance, the social aspects.

Exactly, it’s the ritual!

And you focus on that in the curatorial statement in the front, that’s definitely – it’s very uniting in that aspect. Oh I love the Hassan Hajjaj, I also love him as an artist.

Yeah, he’s great.

You know, but I’m also thinking about what I noted in the brief review that I did for Africa Is A Country that there is maybe a bit of a gap between the celebration of the beautiful game and again, the lead-up to Brazil, which, as with most sports tournaments, is resting on huge social movements in the country that it’s happening in.

Absolutely.

That was an issue in South Africa, that was in issue with the Super Bowl… a lot of the pieces speak to that. And can I just ask – I’m not familiar with the process – from the statement in the front to the exhibition, can you maybe fill in a little bit of that gap?

Sure, I can try to. Which part of the statement, from the philosophical –

I think, the focus on the beautiful game and how it does draw people together from all over the globe, but it also does sort of a wresting apart in some circumstances, specifically around the politics that exist outside the game.

Oh yeah, Absolutely. I mean the Nelson Leirner for me really is very much about that. It’s from 2003 so it’s not a direct commentary on now, but I’m sure some of the things that are happening now could be in the back of his mind when he made the work. What I sense when you walk into that space and that being the first space was this idea of fantasy and this idea of myth and how do we use those things to propel ourselves further in some sort of meaningful way or some sort of meaningful discussion. I mean you look at those things and it’s one thing, the power rangers and the Hulks, you know which clearly comes from a sort of commercial space. But then you look around the stadium and the diversity of human beings is really interesting. And even social spheres among them – you have some who are clearly in a military, some who seem to be from what you could say is a ‘lower class’ by their dress, you have many different colors and all that. So it’s this piece that gives you a lot of different representations and I think could be open to a lot of different interpretations about commodifying effects on people, as well as the way that we look at ourselves in a big world.

But the idea of ‘the now’ and how it relates politically to ‘the now’ is something that we flirted with, and we flirted with the idea of using, like, Facebook images from different people from around the world. I had somebody that was compiling stuff – in Brazil in particular – but it became, like, what part are you illustrating something as a document as opposed to letting the art run the conversation. And at a certain point we let go but it was a big, big discussion. I have a dear friend who is a curator who was in Belo Horizonte and was part of many of the demonstrations that are going on right now and those things are important, and I hope they’re coming up in other discussions. Another piece of that was watching what was happening in Turkey last year and speaking very specifically about how the supporters, as we say – not just fans, but supporters – of the three biggest clubs were coming together all in the name of some sort of political solidarity. Wearing their colours, but declaring themselves to be unified in that moment as a political gesture. And so that happens, and that’s a big part of the beautiful game that opens so much for discussion.

It’s true. I’ve written on the Port Said massacre in Egypt – two of the biggest teams, Al Ahly and Zamalek, they called a truce for the purpose of addressing the situation. I think this comes through the work here, there are a lot of political conversations that are happening between pieces, so it’s interesting to see. And of course, the sort of devotional artwork is still here! Generic Art Solutions [pictured above, left]– these pieces made me laugh.

Yes, these are great. It’s also kind of playing with ideas of Italian nationalism and this more dramatic expression. Also leaving room for interpretation for abstraction to some degree, like with Mark Bradford who is someone known for being a painter and here is more of a maker [Soccer Ball Bag, 2011, above left]– using paper instead of paint. And here, the catharsis in the painting of George Best [Chris Beas, And Number One Was Georgie Best, 2013, above right]. So these are really different, and open up some space. Or even Stephen Dean – you never see a pitch or a player, it’s just the fans. At times the smoke fills the screen and you don’t even know what you’re looking at. Even with Petra Court, this pink blob! So we also have these spaces that are not voids but encourage your eyes to pull back a little bit and feel as opposed to a “this is what it is.” I think that’s a thing we deal with a lot in this museum – is ceding that territory to the artist and letting it be about artist interpretation as opposed to us documenting and trying to interpret events through documentation. And Mary Ellen Carols here is talking about – well, she has a series of work that is about things that aren’t supposed to go together, so the basketball becomes the soccer ball and then I like how that gets refracted or reflected in this piece here by Gustavo Ortiz who did this work on the border where he had two basketball teams from San Diego playing against each other at the same time as two soccer teams from Tijuana, which is crazy! And his way of saying, “yeah, we can coexist, we can do this together if we really want to.” It’s amazing, you see no one gets in any one else’s way. And I wanted to end in a sort of way with a kind of an icon.

Beaucoup compliments.

[walking past Kehinde Wiley’s "Samuel Eto’o", 2010] Made by an LA artist, an LA born artist, Kehinde Wiley.

Well, I think Brooklyn’s claimed him pretty thoroughly.

Yes! Oh, and here is Miguel Calderon making the impossible happen [in Mexico vs Brasil, 2004]– Mexico over Brazil, 17 to nothing. [laughs]

Terri and Michael Smooke Curator and department head of Contemporary Art, Franklin Sirmans beneath Dario Escobar’s Obverse & Reverse XIV, 2013

 

Enough of the liberal pieties on Sochi and gay rights

The Guardian‘s website decided to have a rainbow “G” in its title during the past few days in order to support LGBT rights, and to thumb its nose at Russia (a few other news broadcasters/outlets did, too), just as Google did last week with its rainbow doodle. I’m sure they feel very pleased with themselves. But did they do anything symbolic in support of Nigerians, Ugandans, Malawians, Zambians when they needed support most, when the hate that US televangelists were funding throughout subsaharan Africa was coming to fruition, in tandem with opportunist political manoeuvres by savvy local politicians? Nope. These are powerful corporations. They can do a whole hell of a lot more than include pretty pictures and colours in “support” of causes (this sort of gesture is similar to other inane nonsense like buying red stuff to spread “awareness” of HIV and AIDS). Google and the Guardian: what about doing something substantial, like countering the monies that US evangelical churches siphon to African countries with funding for the LGBT communities in those key warzones?

Russia’s disgraceful treatment of LGBT people has also given US liberals a fake moral premise to take the piss out of Russia (see US internet passim – reporters have even started making stuff up to get hits). These are the same people who have nothing to say about the US’s own anti-LGBT laws, who are uncomfortable saying anything about how political prisoners like Chelsea Manning have been relegated to the rubbish heap of US history, while those whose actions she spoke up against remain quite free to receive my taxpayer dollars as part of their salaries/retirement. While companies with cute graphics project themselves as serious, sophisticated, ultra-modern advocates of LGBT rights (and don’t do “evil”), they are just old-fashioned nationalists who do nice things that don’t cost them politically or financially.

This just in: the Cold War is over, people. And anyway, that war was actually fought in Africa and South/S.East Asia all along. For all the morally superior US Google-liberals, over the weekend one of our readers posed a question for you: “Should other countries boycott if the US hosts an Olympics because of its drone program?”

Kenya’s first mockumentary takes on the NGO world

Anyone working in international development for non-governmental organizations (NGOs) over the past few years has likely had one of the following experiences:

1) Witnessing an external consultant or boss being flown in from abroad to “manage” the field office in [insert any non-Western nation here. Note that field office can just mean the capital city of any country outside the U.S. or Europe]

2) Being shocked at the lack of ethics in workplaces where the aim is “helping other people”

3) Working for or interacting with NGOs (such a broad category that it encompasses all manner of organizations) that serve no apparent purpose.

Finally, a new TV show exists to highlight some of the absurdities of the international aid sector. The slyly named The Samaritans is a comedy about the perils – and pleasures – of the “NGO world”. Created by a Kenya-based production company, it chronicles the work of Aid for Aid – an NGO that, in the words of its creator, “does nothing”:

You’ll recognize the stock characters. The new Aid for Aid Country Director, Scott, who lacks any experience working in Kenya makes his debut in the Pilot with this brilliant introduction, “many of you will be asking who I banged to get this position…I’m not as wet behind the ears as some of you may think, I’ve worked for my mothers NGO since I was six years old.” With two master’s degrees from the U.S. and an internship to his name, why shouldn’t he be running the organization? Then there is the mistreated intern, the pill-popping Deputy Director, and of course a male employee who calls everyone “sweetie”, etc.

We  interviewed The Samaritans creator Hussein Kurji of Xeinium Productions to find out his vision for the series and why rhinos play a part in the comedy.

What inspired you to create the series?

There are over 4,000 NGOs registered in Kenya, and over the years I’ve listened to the stories of friends who’ve worked for NGOs. One day I was asked to pitch a comedy series, and a combination of The Office plus NGOs stuck in my head. Maybe these crazy stories would make good comedy?

What’s the craziest story you’ve heard about an NGO?

I heard from someone in the US that an organization was having a charity auction to raise money for endangered rhinos and the prize for this charity auction was to go hunt a rhino in Namibia. [AIAC note: Yes people, this happened. You can even see it on the Colbert Report and CNN].

There is no end to the crazy stories. I think it kind of dawned on me when I was working at a five-star hotel here in Nairobi a few years ago that NGOs aren’t always what they seem. All these guys were gathered around eating lobster bisque and discussing how to reduce poverty. Something didn’t seem right.

How is the show evolving?

We’ve been developing the show for two years now. We pitched the show at DISCOP an international TV expo that was held in South Africa, and we won. We got good responses from networks and distributors but they all wanted to see a full pilot.

To raise funds, we used Kickstarter. Also an NGO – ironically – contacted us, said they loved the show and wanted to highlight the issues it raised – so they gave us some money for production as well. We went live in October 2013.

Ever since we went live, we’ve had a lot of interest in watching the full episodes, but are still trying to figure out funding the full season and distribution. We may make it available for rent online, but Amazon takes six months to put it online, and Vimeo is expensive and not everyone can access it.

How did you find the different actors?

We had an open casting call, and reached out to friends who spread the word online, as well as by word of mouth. Several of the actors aren’t career actors; for example the person who plays Scott has an NGO background. He’s worked mainly behind the scenes as a documentary filmmaker – he’s originally from England so he’s faking an American accent for us. We do have some professional actresses, such as the women who play Martha (Allison Karuiki), Suze (Sarah Hassan) and Elizabeth (Fridah Muhindi). In fact the character of “Driver” has acted in Out Of Africa.

Why do you feel comedy is an appropriate way to critique the lack of accountability in the NGO sector?

Comedy is comedy – you can make serious situations more approachable and more widely viewed if you do it through comedy. I think laughter is the best medicine, clichéd as that is. The tagline for the show is ‘the Samaritans is a comedy about an NGO that does nothing’; we can exaggerate reality with comedy. Although, I have to say someone from Afghanistan sent me an email and said, We don’t have a Scott in our office but we have an NGO just next door who has a Scott in their office.

Do you think NGOs perpetuate inequality?

I don’t know if they intend to perpetuate inequality but with the international NGOs – the large global ones – they get caught up in so much red tape. Staff members know that some of the policies or structures aren’t working but the machine is so big – how can you change it?

One of the themes captured in the online clips is that some people who work at NGOs have a martyr complex, in that they think they’re doing good but they cultivate habits that perpetuate harm – whether it’s mistreating staff, having unhealthy coping behaviours, and so on. How does this figure into the show?

We explore this martyr or savior complex with Scott from the beginning. His character, of all the characters, doesn’t grow or learn as the series develops. He’s definitely a martyr – he thinks he knows it all.

There’s starting to be a lot more conversation in international development around NGO accountability – how NGOs should have mechanisms that give decision-making power to the people they’re supposedly serving, and to assess their impact that goes beyond donor driven evaluation systems. Does this come out in the show?

In the first episodes we introduce a rival NGO – the guys next door. This NGO is the complete opposite of Aid for Aid – so we show that they have good governance and are actually accountable to their stakeholders. We show how this works well for everyone.

We do explore some of the absurdities of donor driven grant-making, among other things. The major story arc of Season 1 is that Aid for Aid is about to apply for the largest grant that the Nairobi field office has ever applied for. In Episode 2, their first task is to come up with an acronym before figuring out what the grant’s about. As the show goes on, we show the 13 or so steps of the grant process that they have to go through.

What do you hope to achieve with the show?

We’re the first Kenyan mockumentary, and we’re pretty happy with the traction the show has gotten so far. We are aiming at creating local content for international consumption and we hope that we can find co-production partners and networks globally to work with us on this journey.

I’d like to go on for as long as I can. We know we’re critiquing a “big machine”, and we don’t expect the show to change anything overnight – but we’d like to start a dialogue, to get people talking and thinking about in what contexts aid works and for the organizations that are broken, how do you fix them? We’re also going to touch on scenarios and issues in the show that are beyond just NGOs, looking at broader issues around international development.

You can follow Aid for Aid on twitter: @afa_kenya. Xeinium on Vimeo: www.vimeo.com/xen & Facebook: www.facebook.com/xeinium 

 

Jomo Sono’s Wedding Day

There’s a commercial for Bell’s, a popular South African whisky (“Give that man a Bell’s”), that is currently doing the rounds on the Interwebs and has a lot of people weeping on Twitter and Facebook. The ad was released as part of Super Bowl Weekend. No there’s no Super Bowl in South Africa–it was just a marketing gimmick on the part of the creative team. The ad revolves around an elderly black man, clearly of some social standing and means (he doesn’t seem to be poor) who happens to be illiterate and learning to read so he can read his writer son’s book. And have a drink with his son. The whole thing reads as contrived and ridiculous (nothing new, one might say, in the world of liquor advertising), but this one attempts to elide obvious economic realities, idealizing generational upward mobility of black people in South Africa (largely a fantasy if social indicators can be trusted), while propping up other racial fantasies by including some odd racial politics (the people who teach our heartwarming protagonist or give him books are white women). All this sentimentality is trotted out in order to promote drinking.

These kinds of ads that appeal to hopeful but completely unrealistic egalitarian fantasies are a dime a dozen in South Africa BTW. Which brings me to another commercial that also relies on sentiment, but which I found more relatable: an ad for Telecom’s parastatal mobile service, 8ta. The ad features Jomo Somo, the Pele of 1970s South African football (let’s not debate that now) who has had a colorful life as a footballer in the 1970s and 1980s (starred at Orlando Pirates, the most storied club in the country; was a teammate of Pele and Beckenbauer at the New York Cosmos and played for the Colorado Caribous; and bought his own football club in 1980s Apartheid South Africa). Anyway, the ad–one that is up for an award*–reconstructs the story of Sono and his wife, Gail’s wedding day. No need to summarize. Just watch:

* After Jomo Sono came back from playing in the United States, he bought Highlands Park (the club in the video), and renamed it Jomo Cosmos. Yes, the story of Jomo Sono still needs to be told. Other contenders for best ad at the South African Sport Industry Awards this week are a bunch of less striking and more conventional ads, including one for sports channel Supersport featuring the hilarious dad of London Olympics gold medal swimmer Chad le Clos; another of those rainbow sports nation ads for beer Castle Lager; for bank ABSA; and, finally, one featuring wooden acting from members of the national rugby team.

A ‘credible political opposition’ in South Africa

South African writer and journalist, William Gumede, in a contribution to The Guardian this week asserts that “South Africa desperately needs a relevant, credible and non-racial alternative to the dominant ANC” if “the [country’s] infant democracy [is] to fully come of age”. No evidence is given to support the claim of ‘desperation’, or any analysis to uphold the idea of an ‘infantile’ democracy.

South Africans will participate in the country’s fourth national democratic elections on 7 May (not “April” as Gumede asserts); a right many desperately struggled for, and a right that the majority continue to exercise without infantilism or defeatism.

Gumede asserts, without any data to shore up his claims, that “The mass supporters of the ANC… appear to be ready to break their sacred attachment to the party which brought freedom and the vote” but that “opposition parties [are] either too tainted by their record under apartheid to [attract] black voters [or] too small and divided” to capitalize on this apparent boon.

He also implies that the DA-Agang project (the doomed, weeklong proposal to merge the Democratic Alliance and former World Bank Executive Director Mamphela Ramphele’s Agang) had offered the promise of a “credible and non-racial alternative” to the ANC. The failure of DAgang has allegedly dealt “those who oppose ANC rule in South Africa… a blow.”

Then there’s what Gumede offers as an alternative: No “strong and unified opposition that can straddle the country’s enduring racial divide” is likely to emerge from Gumede’s fantasy of a “giant opposition or grand coalition” formed through “the merger of other centre-right and liberal black and white opposition parties – such as Cope [a pro-Thabo Mbeki breakaway from the ANC], the Inkatha Freedom Party [led by the geriatric and compromised Mangosuthu Buthelezi who has led that party since the mid-1970s] and the United Democratic Movement [led by a homeland general and former ANC government minister, Bantu Holomisa]”.

The most recent polls suggest that such a bargain would win between 2.5 and 4.5% of the vote. The DA won more than three times as many votes in 2009.

It is a strange and careless argument, that Gumede – oft quoted in the international press – has toted, without recourse to evidence for some time (in fact entire paragraphs of the article under discussion are reprised from this article also published in The Guardian): The booing of President Jacob Zuma at Nelson Mandela’s memorial service was apparently evidence of a “critical mass of people who say the ANC is not the ANC of Mandela and you’re not betraying anyone if you leave it”; the ANC celebrated its centenary at “a time when anti-democratic leaders and groups appear to have a stranglehold on the party”; and, “Nelson Mandela was the glue that held the deeply divided ANC together”.

On the basis of these claims one would think that the ANC should be disgorging members, representatives and structures at an alarming rate. Perhaps, but perhaps give us some numbers to back it up. Whatever your take of the ANC, even with Zuma as its presidential candidate, the party still has the ability to draw in the crowds, and win elections. The ANC’s retaking of the Tlokwe municipality, in a December by-election, is a case in point.

Gumede is also quick to dismiss Julius Malema’s Economic Freedom Fighters which is building a credible base among not only young people, but within significant segments of the working and unemployed poor. Various polls put potential electoral gains for the EFF at between four and eight percent.

What is more surprising is that he doesn’t even mention the significant disquiet in the trade union movement, where the ANC aligned Congress of South African Trade Unions’ (COSATU) largest affiliate, the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA), has announced that it will no longer contribute dues to COSATU, will play no active organizational role in the ANC’s campaign, and that it is investigating the formation of a “political organization”, potentially in collaboration with the EFF and the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Workers (AMCU), to advance the cause of a “socialist South Africa”. Clearly, Gumede does not credit these events as contributing to the evolution of a “credible” and/or “nonracial” opposition in the country.

Moreover, nothing is said about the wave of protests that is rocking the country in the run-up to the election. In a country where the media is largely complicit in perpetuating a public sphere that patronizes the grievances and aspirations of the poor – reducing the lived experience of failed government and the legacy of apartheid to statistics – these protests are usually characterized as spontaneous and anarchic. But the germ of civic protest could mark the nascent development of a movement – loosely defined – similar to those that have driven successful delivery and rights campaigns in India and Brazil, eschewing electoral politics for more dynamic engagement with the state and political parties.

But for the moment, let them eat ‘credible opposition’, or something.