Sean Jacobs's Blog, page 425

What’s new? Blackface as carnival costume in the Netherlands

By now it should not come as a surprise that in the Netherlands where dressing in blackface is part of the national tradition (read here and here about our December “traditions”) and comes with no consequences, carnival costumes that incorporate racist imagery are also perceived as “normal” and doing good business. However, it still is jarring to see a mail order company, Speelgoed Postorder, advertising for so-called ‘bush negro’ outfits and other completely racist and insensitive costumes; like its blackfaced “Bush Negro outfit for ladies” above.

The descriptions of the various pieces on sale at Speelgoed Postorder, complete with loads of grammar mistakes, are just plain dumb. The ‘bush negro’ outfit is described as a “Zulu” outfit. The bush negro outfits, of which there are versions for men and ‘ladies’ also come with an accessory: a bone.

It is worth noting that since this morning when I first clicked on and shared the “bush negro outfit for ladies” on Facebook, it has been renamed as “African outfit for ladies.” As if that makes it any better. The male version, however, is still that for a “bush negro.”

Another costume depicts an “African tribal chief.” This also doesn’t make sense, because next to the photo the costume is being described as that of an ‘African medicine man.’ Furthermore the mask looks more Polynesian than African, but that’s just a ‘small’ detail. And on and on we go: The blackface “Moroccan man” (complete with Aladdin lamp), and a whole host of costumes to play the role of white colonialist, etcetera.

There is nothing incidental about this. This clearly feeds into a colonial narrative of Zulu’s, but also of other Africans, and of many ‘other’ people around the globe as cannibalistic savages. Specifically, in the Dutch context the term ‘bush negro’ is used for the descendants of runaway slaves who resisted slavery and colonialism and formed independent settlements. A more acceptable term is Maroons. But this is the Netherlands.

An actual person came up with the ideas for the costumes and its “accessories.” And as pointed out at the outset, this is par for the course in the Netherlands. Just last week, the Wall Street Journal reported on a famous Dutch amusement park that profits off these kinds of images. The reviewer couldn’t help notice, amid all the attractions, that:

There was an unpleasant side to Efteling: The way dark-skinned people were depicted. At a carousel-like ride called Monsieur Cannibale, for instance, an enormous figure wore a chef’s hat on his head and a spoon through his nostrils—a racist throwback to the days of the Dutch East India Company that made for more explaining.

So, with carnival season just around the corner, let’s try to explain it one more time, in very basic terms, with the hope someone will get it: skin color is not a costume at your disposal during a festive season for fun. Making fun of people and their culture is wrong. It is even worse when you misrepresent them using racist colonial stereotypes. Saying that blackface is an American thing (everyone now uses this excuse) and therefore not a problem on the other side of the Atlantic makes you look dumb. Saying that by using the costume for something positive like carnival and therefore neutralizing stereotypes and the racist nature of such costumes makes you look even dumber. Just don’t do it.

New short film: John Akomfrah, Stuart Hall and the film essay

In 2013 I had the opportunity to work with frieze, a UK-based contemporary art and culture magazine. Towards the end of my time at the magazine, I co-produced a film on John Akomfrah, which just went live today (film below). For those of you unfamiliar with Akomfrah’s work, he began his practice as an artist and filmmaker as a member of the hugely influential group, the Black Audio Film Collective, who between 1982 and 1998 produced films, essays and ‘slide-tape texts’, which “opened up a new aesthetic and discursive space within the world of British art, experimental film, television and critical theory.”

Films such as Handsworth Songs (1986), Testament (1988) and Twilight City (1989) gave voice to the legacy of the African diaspora in Europe, and Akomfrah’s experimental approach to narrative and structure, following filmmakers like Chris Marker, in no small way paved the way for the re-emergence of the ‘essay film’ today.

Throughout his career, Akomfrah has operated both in the gallery, and in the cinema. This is most evident in his recent project, The Unfinished Conversation (2013), a multi-screen installation exploring the life and legacy of the cultural theorist Stuart Hall. Currently on show at Tate Britain (until 23rd March), Akomfrah and his production company, Smoking Dogs Films, decided to extend – or mutate, perhaps – the piece into a feature-length documentary, which was recently released in UK cinemas, and on DVD. As a film, The Stuart Hall Project assumes a more conventional narrative structure, but the ideas and investigations of the project – how identity is not an essence, but a process of becoming which is continually shaped by history and memory – is reflected in the structural relationship with images, the archive, making some comment on the status of the image, and its relationship to diasporic identity.

The ‘Born Free’ Brand

The Fader (yes, they’re still around) has been putting up a series of posts from Johannesburg (Obey You Collective: South Africa) that focuses on ”artists, trail-blazers, and bright young talents from South Africa.” (The series is paid for by soft drink company Coco Cola.) Much of it seems to be filmed around the part of the city marketed as Maboneng. In the latest instalment, they published an interview with Tarryn Alberts, part of dance crew, V.I.N.T.A.G.E. (If you remember, Zach Rosen interviewed them for AIAC, here; word is Alberts has left V.I.N.T.A.G.E., btw). Anyway, the interview includes this illuminating passage about the Catch 22 for young black people after Apartheid: 

A lot of kids are pushing their own brands, saying, “This is what I stand for.” It’s about being free with who you are, pushing your dreams and chasing goals. A lot of children finish school and they actually feel like, “I can do that thing I’ve always wanted to do.” You have so many kids that are from the ‘born free’ generation, like they weren’t born in apartheid. They have the opportunity to go and study after school, something my parents couldn’t do. They have the opportunity now to earn a living doing promotions, making t-shirts and selling them, doing whatever. I think that’s something that has become big in the last five years — young people doing something for themselves.

Source.

The Question of International Aid

In 2013, Alkebu Film Productions released a 34-minute documentary, Mabele na biso (Our Land), that profiles a community in the Isangi region of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) that has staunchly refused to be controlled by international aid. Within the matrix of extraordinary initiatives organized in this region, the film focuses primarily on the Mabele Community Radio, that not only offers local programming, but is powered by a generator fuelled by locally produced palm oil. Through its programs, the radio has made significant impacts in the domains of education, agricultural production, women’s rights, and health. As such the radio emerges almost as a character of its own in the film’s larger critique of international aid in Africa. Yet, while the radio is an admittedly inspiring example of community empowerment, the analysis of aid policy offered by key figures in the region is arguably the most compelling aspect of this project.

And this is precisely where things get complicated, for this is a project that both criticizes international aid and is–at least in part–funded by it. What follows is a brief reflection on this film and the ways in which the process of its creation and its potential future shed light on some larger questions of international aid. Here’s the film’s opening scene:

The project that became Mabele na biso has two beginnings. First, in 2010 France Expertise International (FEI) and Radio France International (RFI) Monde partnered with Isangi-based GOVA (Groupement des Organisations Villageoises pour l’Auto-développement) to supply a generator that had been converted to run on palm oil. By drastically decreasing dependence on petrol (which is expensive to purchase and must be transported to the remote radio station by small pick-up trucks), the new generator more than tripled the airtime for Mabele Community Radio. As GOVA (founded in 1992) is a program that insists on autonomy and self-sufficiency, this partnership avoided many of the characteristic pitfalls that accompany so many international aid efforts. Indeed, the conversion of the generator was a successful response to a local need that did not involve a foreign organization imposing its ideas and practices on reluctant locals. Instead, this project struck a rare balance in which FEI and RFI Monde applied international technological expertise to support an initiative that had been identified as a real need by GOVA and the local community. As such, this project has many of the illusive qualities of a ‘win-win’ situation: Mabele Community Radio is materially improved by extended operating hours, reduced costs, and self-sufficient products, while FEI and RFI Monde get the satisfaction and publicity of having administered responsible aid.

Except, however positive, radio publicity in a comparatively remote region of Congo does little for the larger constituents of organizations based in France. Thus, through one of its Congo-specific sub-projects (Médias pour la démocratie et la transparence en RDC) FEI decided to support the production of a documentary film about the generator project. According to FEI’s mandate, the film was supposed (1) to profile and thus bring greater international attention to the generator project, and (2) to be directed and produced by a Congolese filmmaker. FEI’s choice to award the contract for this film to Petna Ndaliko Katondolo was, in effect, the second beginning of Mabele na biso.

Selecting Mr. Ndaliko in particular to direct this film has a number of implications.

Mr. Ndaliko is an internationally acclaimed filmmaker and activist who is best known for his potent social critiques, his insistence on a new paradigm of representing Africa, and for creating a growing movement of artist-activists in the east of Congo. As a steadfastly independent filmmaker with a reputation for refusing any funding that comes with editorial control, associating Mr. Ndaliko with this story not only yields a specific aesthetic language, but also, to some extent offers FEI greater legitimacy by association. Without retreating too far into cynicism, it is clear that in this circumstance, Mr. Ndaliko’s history of insisting on independence amounts to cinematic capital of a sort for FEI as a foreign organization.

At the same time, this story provides a platform for Mr. Ndaliko as a ‘local’ director to offer a rare perspective and alternative to some of the increasingly urgent problems associated with international aid. That this latter possibility was enticing enough to prompt Mr. Ndaliko to accept FEI’s contract speaks to the personal nature of his interest in making a film exposing a different view of aid. Indeed, in his Director’s Statement he says,

Growing up in Goma, North-Kivu, I have had occasion to witness the hegemony of aid organizations on local communities and the devastation that over-dependence on aid can leave in its wake. This story has the potential to not only stand as an example of the possibilities that can come of resisting aid, but also to serve as a model for a larger dialogue. My hope for this film is that it contributes to providing a different perspective on the relationship between aid donors and recipients, a perspective that will challenge both groups to develop new policies.

The aim to provide a different perspective on aid and thereby effect policy is, for Mr. Ndaliko, a multi-directional goal. Indeed, beyond the obvious issues of challenging the conception and implementation of many projects, Mabele na biso also shifts the dialogue by offering a concrete and well-substantiated example of international aid within a grounded and specific context. This approach itself stands in stark contrast to the more abstract ethos of popular criticism that generates such a flurry of social media buzz and such a clear absence of anything else.

Clearly, for Mr. Ndaliko this film has the potential to make a significant social contribution in one of the more fraught aspects of life in ‘developing’ nations. Yet, working with him in my capacity as a primary researcher for Alkebu Film Productions, we became increasingly aware of deeper ironies at work in this project. For instance, while it is perfectly logical that FEI would choose to focus the film on their own contribution to the region (the generator), within hours of arriving in Isangi, we began to discover a host of other GOVA projects that were frankly even more compelling and would better make the point about international partnership with rather than dependence on foreign organizations. Yet, because the generator had the backing of a larger international organization, its story superseded mention of, say, GOVA’s higher education program that has paid university tuition and housing for over forty young men and women since 2002, or the locally funded network of medical services that includes the construction of hospitals, the training of medical staff, the collection of medical supplies, and the recent addition of an emergency transportation system. So, while on the one hand we were able to push the boundaries of our contract by going into greater depth about the programmatic and historic content of Mabele Community Radio than about the generator itself, all the while we were painfully aware that numerous other projects that rely exclusively on local organizing and funding do not have the means with which to bring their achievements to a broader audience. In short, despite the comparatively positive stance FEI takes toward foreign aid, even when doing ‘good’, the power of international funding is still a double-edged sword at best.

A second irony we encountered with this project was the time limit FEI put on the film. While it is in some senses a minor detail, this limitation in format diminished the film’s potential to serve as an educational document and increased its salience as a fundraising tool for an already powerful organization. This is, of course, a known risk with any commissioned film and did not come as a surprise. It remains, however, an indication of the subtle ways in which foreign institutional policies have the power to shape global narratives without committing the kinds of major transgressions that bring bad press. In this instance, limiting the film to 30-minutes not only limited the focus to the radio, but also indirectly elevated FEI’s role in the region by giving it proportionately greater attention than it would have received had we had the freedom to discuss GOVA in greater length. For, placed side by side, the accomplishments of FEI would not compete with those of GOVA, yet, as the proverb tells us, the hunt will always glorify the hunter until the lion gets his own griot. Or, in other words, access to the financial means with which to make a film allows for control of narrative and thus of global opinion.

A third irony arose at the very end of post-production, when, upon final review of the film, FEI instructed us to include a standard disclaimer at the end of the film stating that all content and opinions were strictly those of Alkebu Film Productions (and not of FEI). While on the surface this statement is in fact true (we did not include anything that was not our opinion), it does not account for the significant omissions, which shaped the film as profoundly as the material that was included. Among the most salient omissions was a powerful interview with Samuel Yagase, founding member of GOVA, in which his analysis of international aid policies positions him as an expert on foreign organizations. When he states, for example, that part of GOVA’s objective is to “aider les européens à arrêter leur aide” (to help Europeans stop giving aid), he shifts the traditional power dynamics that designate ‘givers’ and ‘receivers’ and threatens the established dominance of aid organizations. Indeed, it is one thing to insist that foreign organizations need to listen to the local people when administering aid, but it is another thing altogether to insist that local people ought to have a voice in determining how international organizations function in their Western countries of origin.

Beyond ignoring omissions, the disclaimer mentioned above also obscures the motivations and roles of all participants involved in the film. By simultaneously designating the generator as the focus of the film while also suggesting the film exclusively represents the opinion of Alkebu Film Productions, FEI subtly capitalizes on Mr. Ndaliko’s existing reputation as a champion of local autonomy. For if he has made a film celebrating Mabele Community Radio and thereby endorsing its international partners, then they, FEI and RFI Monde, must indeed be enlightened practitioners of responsible aid.

And, to a certain extent they are. But one of the more powerful lessons from behind the scenes of Mabele na biso is that even projects about autonomy, even projects supported by comparatively non-invasive funders are, at the end of the day, still controlled (at least in part) from outside. This fact in no way diminishes the potency of Mr. Ndaliko’s optimism. Indeed, having worked on this film for nearly two years now, I believe his optimism is well warranted, as, in the final analysis of this project, there are significant gains. For if nothing else, this project (like any relatively successful instance of aid) has been a kind of mutually beneficial dance in which we each gradually advance our own interests while performing the requisite rituals of mutual appreciation. The final score: GOVA has its first international cinematic profile, FEI has a compelling documentary by an acclaimed Congolese filmmaker that confirms their relevance and uniqueness as a ‘good’ foreign donor, and Alkebu Film Productions has not only released a powerful film about an inspiring local project, but has gathered an arsenal of material with which to tell ‘the rest of the story.’ In this tally, GOVA and Alkebu are ultimately ahead, because the connection of two like-minded organizations working towards autonomy in Congo is an irrefutably strong platform on which to build future work. Furthermore, audience reception at the handful of screenings Mabele na biso has had indicates a clear appreciation for the film and interest in an extended version thereof. It seems scholars and students of Politics, International Studies, African Studies (to name a few fields) are hungry for narratives that complicate the standard critiques of aid through compelling and sustained examples. Beyond the story of the Mabele Community Radio, are there many among us who wouldn’t want to also know about the women who so powerfully control the local economy, have built houses in Kisangani to support the higher education initiative, and have challenged and ultimately overthrown gender-biased traditions? Or what about the growing trend of highly educated young people – men and women – breaking the ‘brain drain’ pattern and returning to the village to implement the fruits of their education? Or the network of locally sustained modern medical services developed in response to Doctors Without Borders’ failure to address sleeping sickness (among other diseases) in the region? Clearly, among both enthusiasts and skeptics, there is a market for such a film.

But even in the winning score there is another irony: precisely because they are dedicated to autonomous community development neither GOVA nor Alkebu has the financial means to produce the ‘rest of the story.’ So in a certain way we ended up in a strikingly similar place to where we began: we have identified a real need, we have the skills and capacity to meet that need, and are, alas, without precisely the sort of means offered by the very organizations whose participation in a narrative like this is likely to dilute its potency.

“Happy Africans”

It’s unclear how big the Gun Owners of America are (the NRA predominates in the numbers and in terms of influence), but it’s important enough that the organization’s lobbyists write bills for congressmen, calling for no gun control, and these usually get passed in the US House of Representatives. We’re also not all that surprised when GOA leaders say dumb things, but there are times when we’re left speechless. Take these latest random comments by the group’s executive director, Larry Pratt (that’s him in the pic above taking aim), on a radio broadcast. The show, “Gun Owner’s News Hour,” was discussing the “differences” between Africans and African-Americans, the passing of Nelson Mandela, South African Apartheid, and how George Zimmerman is being persecuted in a way comparable to Apartheid South Africa. The show’s host is Selwyn Duke.

You can listen to them talk this offensive nonsense, here and here.

But here’s the gist in summary form. First, The Rawstory with those comments about “Africans from Africa”:

“… Generally the African from Africa is a very pro-American person, a very happy person,” Pratt opined. “I know several. And they are always just happy with a joke, pleasant smile on their face. And they clearly don’t identify with the surliness that’s all too frequently the attitude of their fellow African-Americans here.”

“And they’re very conservative politically,” he continued. “The country of Ghana, it’s still illegal to commit an abortion, it’s illegal to be a homosexual. Very conservative social laws and very free market oriented as well.”

Duke agreed and pointed out that the types of Africans that could afford to come to the U.S. were of “a better stripe.”

“They tend to be educated, they tend to be a little more upper class than a lot of the Africans who can’t get here,” Duke said.

“It’s the way we used to run our immigration system altogether,” Pratt replied. “These are folks that stand apart and hopefully they can approach some of their fellow blacks and say, ‘Hey, buddy, you got this all wrong, let me explain to you how the world really works.’”

They also discussed Apartheid South Africa (this summary from Right Wing Watch):

The two also touched on the issue of apartheid in South Africa, which both claimed wasn’t all that bad. Pratt lamented that Dutch and English settlers “neglected to evangelize the blacks,” so that now “there aren’t common values, there is certainly no Christian ethos in that country.”

Duke, for his part, equated the “supposedly racist” apartheid regime with George Zimmerman. “South Africa was sort of the George Zimmerman of the geopolitical stage,” he said. “It was a situation where you had black on black crimes that were rampant and brutal that the media ignored, but this white-on-black so-called crime was disseminated far and wide … simply because it accorded with the politically correct agenda.”

It felt like hanging out in the comment sections of News24 posts.

Zoran and his African Tigers

Every new nation (or with claims to nationhood) wants a national football team otherwise you may as well not exist in the first place. Palestine and Taiwan are recognized by FIFA, but not so lucky are Kosovo (who can only play friendlies), the Sahrawi Republic (Morocco objects) or Northern Cyprus. Gibraltar is now a member of UEFA, despite Spain’s objection (they will never be put in the same qualifying group). In contrast, the application of Africa’s newest independent state, South Sudan, was relatively run of the mill. The country became independent in 2011 (after a 22-year civil war) and, soon after, formed a national football association. But they had no team and no coach. In 2012 Serbian Zoran Đorđević was appointed as national team manager. His first task was to set about building a team. Đorđević succeeded in getting the team to play in a couple of friendlies and a regional tournament. One year later, however, he left. Đorđević’s fateful tenure in South Sudan would normally pass unremarked upon, except that it is now the subject of director Sam Bensteed’s excellent new documentary film “Coach Zoran and his African Tigers.”

First, here’s the trailer:

Đorđević came to South Sudan with good credentials: he had a record of coaching small footballing nations to success. An Indian club side he coached won their first domestic championship and in 2010 he led Bangladesh’s national team to their first-ever gold medal at the South Asian Games. Đorđević, who is a brash, brusque figure soon makes bold promises to his Sudanese hosts: among them that he’d qualify South Sudan for the African Nations Cup and the 2014 World Cup in Brazil (despite the fact that this would not be possible as African qualification was already underway when South Sudan’s national association was formed).

Bensteed trails Đorđević taking minibuses, hitching rides in pickup trucks across the country or walking to makeshift pitches to spot the country’s most talented footballers (the national association and the country’s vice president, Riek Machar, promised him a car, but it never materializes). He pays with his own money for the team’s transport, training ground, goal posts, and even comes up with a team nickname: the “Tigers” (despite the fact there are no tigers in Africa). Later on he purchases a team mascot: a lamb.

Đorđević is definitely the star of the film and some viewers may have a hard time taking a liking to him. He comes across as a mix of Paolo di Canio (he says the worst things about his hosts in Serbian) and the hairdryer version of Alex Ferguson (he treats the players like children). But Đorđević is more than that and Bensteed is talented enough to point to those contradictions. Despite his hard exterior, Đorđević really cares about South Sudanese football and the players in his charge. So we see Đorđević spending much of his time battling the local FA chairman over payment (for himself), equipment (for the team) and for the use of training facilities.

Apart from Đorđević, the film’s other two stars are: Thomas Jacob, a stocky midfielder built like Clarence Seedorf who is at the heart of the team and who left the rest of his family in the north when independence came; and Hassan Ismail, a tall striker, who dreams of a career in Europe. (Hassan eventually gets a trial in Canada.) These two serve as good foils to Đorđević. Jacob, for example, lives with other players in a dormitory when he is not playing, while Hassan weighs feeding his new baby or following his sporting dreams.

But “Zoran and the African Tigers” is also about South Sudan’s new freedom. Zoran’s arrival—because of his track record with smaller nations—reflects the optimism South Sudanese feel about their own country. But he, and his team, soon get frustrated as he comes up against the new, mostly ineffective, bureaucracy, and the doublespeak of local politicians. The team’s prospects are also disrupted by geopolitics—in 2012, South Sudan stopped oil exports to the north, which crippled the economy.

Like the team, the new nation is incomplete and freedom proves frustrating. As Hassan exasperatedly sums up halfway through the film: the end of the independence war only amplified other problems and legacies among South Sudanese that had been postponed until then. Eventually, it all gets pretty depressing.

Finally, “Zoran and his African Tigers” is also a story about how harsh and unforgiving international football can be. It doesn’t wait for new nations to catch up or provide them with Hollywood endings (the ethnologist Christian Bromberger once suggested football is the closest thing to real life). South Sudan first has to show they can play against other teams in the crowded CECAFA (the Council for East and Central African Football Associations) region. This is where, for example, Ethiopia play their football. That means that South Sudan has to get ready—in a very short time—to play in the 2012 CECAFA championship in neighboring Uganda and that’s when things come to a head for the team. The result is that the problem with the football team, though certainly not with the same stakes, portends the crisis inside South Sudan which last month escalated into a full-scale civil war.

Bensteed’s film has been doing the rounds of film festivals, but we hope it gets a wider audience, whether on satellite (how most Sudanese will probably see it eventually) and public television on the continent, where more people can see it.

Muntu Vilakazi photographs the ‘Politics of Bling’ on Johannesburg’s East Rand

Muntu Vilakazi is an up-and-coming photojournalist currently employed by City Press in Johannesburg. Today marks the opening of his first solo exhibition, which runs through March 16 at Goethe On Main in the trendy and controversial Maboneng Precinct. The show is titled “The Politics of Bling: An East Rand Culture Quest” and examines the flashy lifestyles of young people in the East Rand townships of Katlehong, Vosloorus, and Kwa-Thema (just east of Johannesburg) on the eve of South Africa’s twentieth year of democracy.

Bula Sekele. Young partygoer shows off his dancing skills. Hurricanes, Katlehong. February, 2013.

All of the 21 photographs on display were taken between 2009 and 2013. Vilakazi has a wonderful eye for detail and the series shows scenes of people performing and showing off a level of decadence and consumption that is often at odds with the conditions of their surroundings. His images have a way of drawing out small facets – the design of a woman’s heels, the individual elements of a man’s outfit, the leather of a home-made matchbook holster – of each of the larger scenes he captures.

Stilettos. A group of ladies identify a spot to lay their alcohol and stand. They surround their goods and enjoy the music. Hurricanes, Katlehong. February, 2013.

Most of the shots were taken at local drifting events, street parties, or motorcycle rallies. According to Vilakazi, the thread connecting it all is the omnipresence of house music around which everyone gathers. The collection as a whole gives an intentionally superficial look at the extravagant social scenes of youth living amid rampant poverty.

Red Dress. A lady displays her fashion sense in the form of an extreme hairstyle and dress sense. Many of these partygoers dress to the nines and make a bold statement. Hurricanes, Katlehong. September, 2012.

In our conversation, Muntu Vilakazi was careful not to offer his own opinion on the culture; he was very emphatic about wanting people to come to their own conclusions. Born in Soweto, but raised in the East Rand, Vilakazi claimed he simply wanted to bring exposure to an area he has access to that is often overlooked. He saw his work as photojournalism first and art second, asserting that deep analysis of each image, while perfectly acceptable, was not necessarily the point.

U Wish. A popular way of showing off is customizing your vehicles plates, as well as “pimping your ride”. Hurricanes, Katlehong. February, 2013.

However, it seemed apparent that his role as the father of a young child influences his feelings about his subjects and their lifestyles. Indeed, the last photograph of the series is that of a group of young boys watching in awe as the older folks around them party, drift cars, and show off their bawdy consumption. While showing me this final picture, he talked extensively of having to be aware of one’s behavior in public, since there are always those who look up to and inevitably emulate such lifestyles.

Donuts. A BMW spins at a popular intersection in Vosloorus and quickly gathers a crowd from the sound of screeching tyres and a ravving engine. This form of show-off is illegal on public roads. Sotho Section, Vosloorus. November, 2009.

Muntu Vilakazi himself has previously worked for The Sunday Times and Mail & Guardian. He has been mentored by the likes of Nadine Hutton and Greg Marinovich. All of this leaves him with some pretty solid credentials to begin with, but he has also undoubtedly managed to carve out his own niche and develop his own style.

The exhibition opens today, Thursday (6:30 pm), and runs through March 16 at Goethe On Main, 245 Main Street, Maboneng Precinct, Johannesburg. Details here.

Ponte City: A Photobook

Mikhael Subotzky and Patrick Waterhouse’s ‘Ponte City’ will be familiar to many. The photographic project began in 2008 and won the Discovery Award at the Rencontres d’Arles festival in 2011. This month, Steidl published the project as a book, and an accompanying exhibition runs at Le BAL in Paris until April 20th, 2014.

The work takes its name from the 54-storey apartment building in Hillbrow, Johannesburg, built in the 1970s, the tallest residential building on the African continent. Post-apartheid, the block became a home for those who moved from townships, and later for migrants from other African countries. In 2007 developers evicted half of the tenants from the now decrepit Ponte City but the ambitious planned refurbishment never took place. Since then, Subotzky and Waterhouse have been documenting and collecting at Ponte, “photographing the life of the half occupied block” – the inhabitants, objects and the building itself. Subotzky’s photographs include tableaux of all the internal doors, windows and television screens of the skyscraper. In addition the two have gathered material abandoned by inhabitants and from archives, including letters, postcards, architectural plans, newspapers clippings and promotional leaflets.

This is a body of work which seems suited to large-scale reproduction and showcase in a gallery. The windows, doors and television series have been displayed previously as a triptych of tall lightboxes.  For the show at Le BAL, the accompanying texts are piled into waist-high towers spaced throughout the room. Ponte City proves to be equally well suited to its new photobook form, however. The hardback rectangular book is the shape of the tower. In a ‘User’s Guide’ on the first page we are told that it is accompanied by 17 pamphlets of “written and visual essays”. Each of these pamphlets fit inside the main book, with the image on the cover matching an image from the book’s inside pages. Thus the reader becomes a participant in the acts of matching, collaging, and layering which are at the essence of the project.

© Mikhael Subotzky and Patrick Waterhouse, Ponte City

The photographs are powerful enough to stand alone, in particular the portraits – of a woman dressed in pink in the elevator, a boy squinting through falling white debris, or a girl on tiptoes in her kitchen. They work even better as part of this unfolding collage. Shapes reappear on successive pages; circles and grids constantly refer to the shape of the building. A view from the ground floor looking up at the expansive circular core of the building is followed on the next page by an architectural plan of the snail-shell layout of the apartments, and on the next by a grey aerial view. Turning the pages we zoom out from a shot of one window, then six, then sixteen, then a double page filled with thumbnails. The grids of windows and doors are also subtly echoed in a poster of African flags, among Subotkzy and Waterhouse’s found material, and a table of numbers pencilled onto squared paper, corresponding to we know not what.

The book’s success comes from the complementarities of the photography and the found material, as on one double page where the back of a postcard, with tack marks still visible, is overlaid on a view down into the building’s empty centre. In one of the accompanying essays, novelist Denis Hirson writes that the Ponte city project is “a conversation between composition and chaos”. It is, moreover, a book that shows the detail and texture of both life and decay at the same time.

© Mikhael Subotzky and Patrick Waterhouse, Ponte City

The book opens and closes with portraits of the building’s residents taken in its elevator, as though we are accompanying them up the 54 storeys and then back down again. In between we are shown what Ponte City looks like and perhaps some of what it means. Ivan Vladislavić writes in his introduction that the building “remains a focal point of the city’s dreams and nightmares, seen as a refuge or monstrosity, dreamland or dystopia, a lightning rod for society’s hopes and fears.” Fortunately though, this heavy symbolism does not extend into a reductive portrayal of the people of Ponte City. The building and the view are grey or brown; the colour in the book comes from the inhabitants and their belongings.

What’s it like to be an artist in Egypt right now

On the last Sunday of January, an Egyptian musical theatre group performed a bare-bones rendition of Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables in colloquial Arabic to a standing room only crowd in New York City’s Leonard Nimoy Thalia. In fact the venue, part of Symphony Space on the Upper West Side, was so packed that following the first act, the audience was requested to try to find room for those who had been waiting outside the theatre doors to enter. The crowd, although predominantly Arab, had a respectable smattering of English speaking attendees, their presence perhaps in part an affirmation of the creative choice. Les Misérables, as well known as it is, has a certain resonance with the current political and social climate in Egypt. The choice was no error. And as evidenced by the success Fabrica has seen both in Egypt, and throughout their just-finished US tour, it worked.

The group was brought to the US by the New York and Vermont based artistic exchange nonprofit Izdahar, in cooperation with the US Embassy in Cairo and Meridian International. Fabrica’s US tour is only Izdahar’s second project. In fact, the group was part of the inspiration behind the organization’s establishment. Founder Yasmin Tayeby, having recently left her music management job in New York, wanted to bring her Egyptian roots back into her next endeavour. After seeing Fabrica perform on the popular, and currently suspended, Egyptian political satire program , Tayeby decided she wanted to bring them to the US.

“When I watched the Bassem Youssef show, it was so passionate and emotional. It was during the time that the Brotherhood was cracking down on the arts. They replaced the head of the Opera with their own guy, and they would say: ‘We’re going to do away with ballet and all these Western art forms that aren’t representative of Egypt…so it was right in the middle of all that.”

Two weeks later, Izdahar was born.

For Fabrica the US tour was their first time performing outside of Egypt. Any initial reservations about how an Arabic translation of Les Mis would be received in the US quickly dissolved with the overwhelmingly positive response they received during their performances in DC, Boston, and New York. When asked what he hoped to get out of the US experience, Hany Mustafa, who plays Jean Valjean in the production, replied:

“Of course a little recognition would be nice, but [above] anything else, the respect. The respect for this particular notion of art; that you are coming from Egypt, going all these miles to do something that has already been done here a million times – but in a different way. We don’t have a big budget of course, we don’t have many clothes, we don’t have props, so we did it in our own little way…if anything I just want the appreciation, this kind of respect that people are coming from different places [to watch] and realizing how much talent Egypt has.”

Fabrica itself is a relatively new undertaking. And as the founder and members of the group will tell you, musical theatre is all but non-existent in Egypt. Founder and conductor Neveen Allouba, an opera singer and teacher with a career spanning over 30 years, started the organization a few years ago.

“I was worried about the fact that at home in Egypt, we don’t have musical theatre…you teach these students and they’re wonderful talents and then in the end they have nowhere to go. That’s why I dreamt of making an organization that could help them, launch them on stage, and give them a chance to show what they can do.”

Fabrica’s first performance, an Egyptian colloquial rendition of The Magic Flute, took place just days before the start of the Egyptian revolution of January 25, 2011. After that, Allouba explained, things quickly changed.

“When the revolution happened, of course we didn’t work for a while, it was a big drop in all artistic fields in Egypt for at least a year, during that time I decided I was going to do Les Misérables.”

On the choice, Allouba articulates, “Les Mis is a story about a revolution that also didn’t succeed, and I consider that our revolution is not yet finished, we are still going on and still looking for our democracy and our freedom…it’s a human story, it can happen anywhere…I didn’t want to do something that was fantasy, this talks to the people. When we did it in Egypt our first time, people couldn’t believe it, they thought it was written for [them], not that we had taken it and translated it.”

Allouba credits the dedication of the group members for much of their success thus far. As of now, none of them are paid for their work, neither is Ms. Allouba, nor their director. “They all sing for the experience and for the fun of it.” Ms. Allouba explains. “I am very thankful to them because…they have other jobs, we always rehearse in the evenings, when everyone is done with their school or their jobs. They come and they work very hard, sometimes under very [difficult circumstances]. Sometimes when there were demonstrations, because our [rehearsal] space is in the middle of the city…we hear them and we see the tear gas, but they still come. Sometimes the electricity was cut because they want people to go home and so we use lamps and we still continue working. It’s been hard, especially for the girls because their parents don’t agree to them going out in the evenings, but they insist on coming. I’m very thankful that they believe in what we’re doing. When the parents saw them they realized that it is very important work for us, and for the country I suppose, to show them art, because art has really been suffering a lot.”

For Fabrica, the appearance on El Bernameg was a game changer. “It was big…we knew when we were getting on that program that everybody was going to see it.” Mustafa explained. “For us it was very good exposure,” Allouba said, “because Bassem Youssef is seen in all Arab countries.”

She continued: “We had three days of rehearsals there, and he (Bassem Youssef) used to come and stand in the back, and he never said anything. Then when we were on the program at the end…he said, “Look, I don’t cry.” He was crying, all the people [in the studio] were crying. And then he decided to hand out the lyrics and the [audience] sang the last song, the whole studio.”

In addition to Egyptian Arabic translations of foreign works, Fabrica has performed Naguib Mahfouz’s Miramar, and is planning a production of the short stories of Yusuf Idris. For more information on the group visit http://fabricamusic.org/. For an impression of their stage presence, see their performance on El Bernameg below:

New Photography Book Depicts the South African Social Landscape

Between 2012 and 2013, an exercise took place known as the France South Africa Season. This bilateral initiative was aimed at strengthening relations between the two countries. In 2012 South Africa hosted France for a wide range of activities and vice versa in 2013. The activities took place in different areas of each country, covering various sectors, including arts and culture, business and investment, science and technology, tourism, sports and education. One of a number of outcomes of the agreement was the publication of a jointly produced photo book called Transition.

The Johannesburg based Market Photography Workshop, together with members of the French photography collective Les Recontres d’Arles, conceptualized a project in response to the France South Africa Season. The result was The Social Landscape project, on which the Transition book is based. The project investigated ideas around broad definitions of social landscape photography.

For the project, twelve photographers, six South African and six French, were expected to work in pairs to produce conceptual bodies of work from across South Africa. This worked better in some cases than others.

The memorial to the Great Xhosa Cattle Killing and famine of 1856/7, and consequent Great Famine of the One Hundred Year War of Resistance. This memorial, which lies in the mass burial site and town cemetery is a sad indictment of our attitude to memory and remembering. King Williamstown. Eastern Cape. 2012. Photo © Cedric Nunn

South African Thabiso Sekgala worked alongside Frenchman Philippe Chancel to engage with the issue of land ownership, mass social engineering and ‘black spots’ that occurred in the 1980’s as the Nationalist Afrikaner apartheid government forcibly relocated black communities to designated homelands. ‘Black Spots’ were areas of land illegally held by black communities under apartheid law. The pair investigated the Magopa ‘Black Spot’, an area near Marikana, where a massacre of protesting mineworkers happened at the time of the commission.

French photographer Raphaël Dallaporta and South African Pieter Hugo examined mining and mine-dumps. Hugo focused on the Main Reef Road, an arterial connecting road that ran through this scenario, while Dallaporta used a drone mounted camera to produce aerial images of the environmental devastation caused by mining, which he equated to the images of diseased lungs he had taken in the past.

French photographer Alain Willaume and South African Santu Mofokeng explored fracking operations in the Karoo as well as the MeerKAT radio telescope in the nearby the town of Carnarvon. Willaume utilized metaphor through dust clouds generated by vehicles on the dusty gravel roads of the Karoo to depict the non-existent fracking operations. Mofokeng reflected on the divisions which exist between the communities at risk of being affected by fracking technology and the need to bring economic redress to the dispossessed and marginalized within this environment.

Harry Gruyaert and I both worked in the Eastern Cape, though disconnected by our timing and availability. Gruyaert investigated the contrast between the leisure land sport lifestyles of the affluent and lives of people in nearby townships. I engaged with the One Hundred Year War, or Frontier War of dispossession between the British and the Xhosa, which took place between 1789 and 1879, revisiting the landscapes that inspired this act of war, and its consequences (photos above and below).

Memorial to the battle of 1819 in which Makana’s forces attacked the garrison of Grahamstown. Over a thousand warriors were slain in this battle. Egazini, Grahamstown. Eastern Cape. 2012. Photo © Cedric Nunn

South African Jo Ractliffe engaged with the story of the indigenous San war veterans who participated in the 31/201 Battalion in the apartheid border wars, in particular in Angola. The San now have been relocated to Schmidtsdrift and Platfontein in the Kimberley region of the Northern Cape. Her French counterpart Patrick Tournebœuf, explored traces of the past in the present of the mining town of Kimberley, home to the very first diamond mining rush in the late 19th century.

South African Zanele Muholi continued her interest in gender-based issues by focusing on the murder of a gay citizen in her home province of KwaZulu Natal as well as the reed ceremony which honours chastity in young women. Frenchman Thibaut Cuisset explored the periphery of the underground and opencast mining operations next to Mapungubwe National Park in Limpopo. Mapungubwe is of course the location of an ancient African gold mining people.

Mining and labour, wars, gender based violence, celebrations of womanhood and legacies of wealth and exploitation were the focus of these commissions. Yet reflecting on the theme of the project – social landscape – what was conspicuously absent was the ongoing contestation around land ownership. Not one commission dealt with the sometimes-controversial land claim issues, of which there are many. Black landowners, or those who dwell on the land were largely absent, not even as labourers. It could seem as though the Land Claims Court did not exist. South Africa rivals the United States for instance in its adoption of monoculture and fossil fuel based approach to agriculture, and crops such as maize and cotton are roughly 95% genetically modified. These issues also didn’t feature in the project.

The focus on mining and environmental issues was influenced by the current prominence of such topics in the South African political and popular discourse. Mining is one of the areas identified as key in developing black entrepreneurs, and a slew of new concessions has been handed to black owned or black majority share mining companies, opening up large areas for new operations. Yet the dominance of these issues overshadowed other critical land rights centered topics.

The fruits of dispossession. Soil erosion due to over-crowding and over grazing in KwaNdhlambe Village. Peddie. Eastern Cape. 2012. Photo © Cedric Nunn

My own personal misgivings centered around my awareness of the attitude France brings to cultural relations in general. My understanding is that culture is closely related to foreign relations in the French government. The present contestation around African resources in particular (France was a major adherent of military engagement in Libya at the time of the project, and the Mali intervention was brewing), and its intervention in the affairs of Côte d’Ivoire had just recently happened. I saw the Social Landscape intervention in this jaundiced light. I wondered if there was not a happy coincidence in an image audit of much-desired resources, namely minerals and land, and whether this cosying up between these two countries had some bearing on these recent developments.

I continue to pursue work begun on this collaboration and plan to produce a book and exhibition in mid-2014.

The book “Transition” is available now from Market Photo Workshop. For more images, see here.