Sean Jacobs's Blog, page 596

Photography. Alec Soth

Michael and Dominique, Detroit, Michigan.

From Soth's series "Sleeping by the Mississippi."

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Les Fantomes

By Orlando Reade,

Guest Blogger

A painting sits glowering on the wall of the Jack Bell Gallery in London. Figures daubed in bright colours stare out from the canvases against a dark background broken up by bits of newspaper cuttings. This is Les Fantomes, the work of Aboudia, a 26-year-old Ivorian painter whose stark images have recently been receiving some much-deserved attention.

In January, Aboudia was working in a studio in Abidjan without electricity. He remained in the city throughout the conflict which broke out in response to the contested 2010 election. His studio was right next to the Golf Hotel, which Ouattara's party used as their headquarters, and the artist came dangerously close to the conflict, forced to remain inside for days, and often retreating to his cellar when the fighting was nearby. Jack Bell recalls him talking about the burning of bodies in the lot next to his studio, how he observed the three stages of decomposition, grew to know the stench, the different colours of the smoke.

Since then, things have been changing fast. A German artist, Stefan Meisel, saw his work on Facebook, immediately bought two paintings, and offered to represent him. Aboudia has received plenty of press for the intimacy of his art with the conflict. An article by Reuters carried the headline: "Ivorian artist paints as bullets whizz overhead". Aboudia had his first show earlier this year, also at the Jack Bell Gallery, taking his first aeroplane flight to see it. After three days in London he was impatient to return to his studio. His work is due to feature at the forthcoming Painters' Painters exhibition at the commercial Saatchi Gallery. He is currently on his way to New York to collect his green card.

Two of Aboudia's paintings feature in Les Fantomes, a group exhibition of Central and West African artists.

These are the first work of his post-conflict work to be exhibited, and the explicitly political content of the earlier work has been replaced by mythology. The signifiers of war are absent, and the figures evoke the vodou talismans of the northern militia. If the conflict has abated, its phantoms are filling this work. Aboudia's second painting in this exhibition, The White King (pictured below), uses similar motifs. But the crown has a registered trademark symbol; the language of these paintings exceeds and resists that of global capitalism.

There appears to be a content to these works that resists being easily imported to the galleries of Europe. In Aboudia's work, tribal art is often worked over, erased, and reappears in the reworkings of magazine images. The visual debts to Jean-Michel Basquiat is already one of the stock responses associated with this work, but the real influences are closer to home. The scrawled writing on these canvases are reminders that graffiti, and the culture of the street is of primary importance. The words are often from nouchi, the Ivorian argot originating in Abidjan, the slang of child soldiers.

The complex of local and global in Aboudia's work are presented as part of a dialogue with the other African artists appearing in Les Fantomes. The extraordinary coffins sculpted by Paa Joe, a prostitute-shaped tomb for a prostitute, or a little Mercedes for a car mechanic, statements about their inhabitant's life work, are at once joyful and colourfully macabre. Leonce Raphael Agbodjelou's photographs apply the highly-stylised approach of his studio portraits to the ceremonial figures of local ritual in Benin. The other photographer in the exhibition, Hamidou Maiga, documents Mali's transition into independence and modernity. The Congolese artist, Steve Bandoma takes body parts from magazine clippings reassembling them with watercolour and ink into strange and delicate chimeras. Afedzi Hughes, a Ghanian artist now based in New York, makes paintings which negotiate their own hybridities, measuring an Adidas football boot against a gun, the imported image with associated forms of violence.

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The proximity of Aboudia's personal narrative to violence and suffering is the main reason this work has attracted attention, but the intensity and thoughtfulness of his mark-making is justification enough. In May he claimed to have hung up his "war brushes" and started a series on "the children of Abobo train station". In this work, the explicitly political referents which gives the war paintings their resonance with the European satire of Goya and Picasso are no longer to be found, replaced by a playful and brutal infancy. It will be interesting to see whether the interest in his work maintains if the phantoms with the conflict which has given it its aura of authenticity recede. But it is clear that, whatever happens with next month's elections in Abidjan, Aboudia's powers of description will not be wasted.

The next exhibition at the Jack Bell Gallery is the Egungun Project, Leonce Raphael Agbodjelou, 17 November – 17 December 2011.

* Orlando Reade is a teacher and writer based in London.

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'Julius Malema sets the cultural agenda'

The third season of "90 Plein Street," a scripted series about the travails of a ruling party MP, starts on South African public television tonight. The season's big topic:  nationalization of mines.  That's the trailer above. The season is directed by the talented Johannesburg director . Definitely a case of "art" following "life" even if some elites may pretend economic apartheid is just a slogan dreamed up by Julius Malema. Anybody down south watching it tonight (Dylan?). We'd like to get a sense of it.

H/T: Ntone.

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Music Break. Booker T. Jones

Booker T. Jones on the keyboard with Jim James (of My Morning Jacket fame) singing about 'progress'. Director Aaron Hymes talks about the video (set in Downtown L.A.) here.

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"I don't go for third terms"

By Elliot Ross

Kinnah Phiri is a hero of Malawian football.

As a player, he was a inspiration throughout the glory years of the 1970s, when the national team twice brought home the East and Central Africa Challenge Cup.  Before he signed as national team manager, Phiri enjoyed successful managerial spells in South Africa with Free State Stars, and with Malawi's most successful club side, the Bullets, known variously in recent years as the Big Bullets, the Bata Bullets (as in, the shoes), and the Bakili Bullets (after they were bought by then president Bakili Muluzi in 2003).

With Phiri at the helm, Malawi (the team is known as the Flames) reached the African Nations Cup finals for only the second time, famously beating giants Egypt (who would recover to win their third continental title in a row) during qualification, and notching up the country's biggest win with an 8-1 victory over Djibouti. At the tournament last year the Flames made their mark, thrashing a much-fancied Algeria 3-0 in the opening match.

Yet the disappointment of not reaching next year's African Cup in Equatorial Guinea saw the apparently untouchable Phiri come in for strong criticism from ever-prickly local pundits. He has resisted calls to resign, but confirmed that he would not be renewing his contract, which expires in June 2012.

Now Phiri has announced he is to stand down next summer.

His decision comes after Malawi's hopes of qualifying for the African Cup of Nations for the second time running were dashed by a last minute Chadian equaliser in N'Djamena.

The Flames had endured many years in the doldrums, but Phiri's appointment in 2008 brought a change in fortunes. A succession of highly-paid European coaches had come and gone, including the itinerant German tactician Burkhard Ziese, but the team kept losing. Whether from exasperation at the repeated failure of European appointments, or simply because the Football Association of Malawi could no longer afford to pay a 'foreign' salary, eventually they turned to Phiri.

Subsequent defeats to Mali and hosts Angola saw the Flames eliminated from a tough group, but Phiri rallied his players, inspiring them to an eight-game unbeaten run after the tournament that hauled the country into the top-100 of the FIFA world rankings for the first time.

Perhaps because of his revered status within the Malawian game, Phiri has proved an excellent man-manager as well as an able tactician. His squad is predominantly made up of players based domestically and in the South African league, and top talents nurtured during his tenure include Vasco da Gama (CT) midfielder Joseph Kamwendo, Orlando Pirates striker Chiukepo Msowoya and Platinum Stars midfielder Robert Ng'ambi.

It must have been with his former president Bakili Muluzi's ill-fated third-term bid in mind that Phiri wryly explained: "I don't go for third terms."

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Uganda's Guantánamo

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By Dan Moshenberg

Last week Ingrid Turinawe, the leader of the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) Women's League, in Uganda, was sent to the infamous Luzira Prison.

Everywhere one looks, there are "infamous" prisons. For the United States, for example, Guantánamo, with its regime of torture and its regimen of violence, is but the tip of a national iceberg. Every country has at least one. In Uganda, it's Luzira Prison.

Six years ago, two-thirds of Uganda's then 18,000 prisoners were awaiting trial. Some had been caged for years, for no reason other than not being able to post bond or because, in the global security climate, they have been deemed `terrorists', and so stay in prison for years, without every being charged.

Of the 18,000, prisoners, 5,000 were in Luzira, built in the 1950's, designed for a capacity of … 500. That's ten people for every one person's space. For years. And those were the good times. Last year, the prison system reported over 30,000 prisoners, of whom a little over 1,000 were women. In March 2010, Luzira Upper was at 366 percent of approved capacity; Luzira Women's at 357 percent. The situation is only expected to worsen over the next decade.

What does overcrowding mean?

Inadequate food, inadequate water, inadequate clothes, blankets, mattresses. Most prisoners sleep on the bare floor. The only prison in the entire system that has blankets is Luzira Women's Prison. The result? Reports estimate that 10% of inmates die in prison, primarily due to malnutrition and AIDs, but really due to lack of this, inadequate that, and none of essential those.

Along with overcrowding, use of isolation cells as "persuasion" is fairly common, in both Luzira Upper and Luzira Women's Prisons. For pregnant women prisoners, prenatal care is horrible and postnatal care is worse. For prisoners living with mental or psychosocial disabilities, their options are to languish or perish while the State dithers. Many of these prisoners are in Luzira. The same holds for many juveniles held in Luzira adult facilities and awaiting some sort of decision. The same holds for those on Luzira's death row, where perhaps as many as 25% are innocent, but hey. For sex workers the situation is, at best, dire. For those accused of "homosexuality" … worse.

And of course the open secret of Luzira is the torture of political prisons, covered under the fog of anti-terrorism.

One woman was held incommunicado for six months, during which she was beaten senseless. Then she was taken to Luzira, for a month, before being released on bail. Her crime? Being married to a person of interest. Another woman was abducted by rebels, as a girl. When she was captured, by the army, she was sent, finally, to Luzira, where she applied for amnesty. After seven months, she was released, without amnesty, without a trial and with charges dropped. Nevertheless, she is required to report to the equivalent of a parole officer once a month … in perpetuity.

In Uganda, if one is charged, or suspected, of "treason or terrorism", Luzira is in the cards.

Earlier this week, Ingrid Turinawe was sent to Luzira. Why? She has been charged with treason. Because she participated in and led the "walk to work" protests and campaign. Because she said something's rotten in the state of Uganda. Because she proposed that democracy, now, is both required and possible … now. Of course, there's barely a mention of Turinawe, or of the Walk to Work campaign in the western press, but what else is new? As you read of the Occupy movements, the Indignados, the Uncut movements, and all the other manifestations, and as you read of the police "over-reaction", which is always merely following orders, remember the Ugandans who, since last year, have been Walking to Work and think of Ingrid Turinawe, in Luzira Prison… for the treason of dreaming democracy.

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'The right ideology'

Musicians don't only talking about rims or energy drinks.

Video shot (by SOUNDTRACKS) in San Francisco (in August 2011) of a jet-lagged Seun Kuti opining on "The Arab Spring."

Bonus. Live footage from his summer gigs in San Francisco:

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Photography. Nana Kofi Acquah

Ghana.

Here.

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Occupy Africa

How do Africans–ground zero for resource extraction by the world's 1%–feel about the now global 'Occupy' movement? Thus far it's mostly restricted to South Africa (according to OWS's own data collection) and to small once-off protests by mostly white, middle class South Africans.*  But now they're joined by Senegalese musician Baaba Maal. That's Maal above–in the video sound bite–talking about 99% with Okayafrica's Allison Swank.

BTW, Maal could have added that Africans have been going on about global Apartheid for a while. If you take the anti-privatization social movements of the early 2000s in South Africa, the role of activists like Dennis Brutus, the various World Social Forum meetings held in Dakar last year and Nairobi before that, the AIDS movement, the films of Abdourahmane Sissako ('Bamako') or the protests against Shell in Nigeria, etcetera.

* Note: Race and class is as usual at the heart of protests in South Africa. It is useful to watch the video taken at a protest in Johannesburg and read the Malala.co.za post about whites and OWS. My two cents: In South Africa when black people protest about the effects of capitalism and their government going along with Wall Street dictats (when it comes to policy prescriptions around transforming the most unequal country in the world), it is usually dismissed as in the service of power struggles between the ruling party and its allies or between ruling party politicians. (Just last week a few thousand, young black protesters marched to protest economic Apartheid in South Africa; the march was led by Julius Malema. Predictably his presence became the only lens through which to view their very real grievances.) We've rambled on about that here countless times. Anyway, for now, let's enjoy Baaba Maal especially since Africa is not just South Africa.

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Viva Kinshasa

One of the most exciting films to come out of the continent recently is the Congolese gangster noir, 'Viva Riva!' Sean already blogged about it here when it just started to attract a lot of hype. I saw the film at the Durban International Film Festival earlier this year, where it seemed to polarize the audience. Some felt it was entertaining and authentic, while others felt it was "socially irresponsible". I found myself thinking the former. True to its genre, the film is a stylish rough-and-tumble tour of Kinshasa. There is violence and sex, but not to the point where it feels excessive or contrived. It's a gangster film after all.

We follow Riva (Patsha Bay Mukana), a charming hustler who steals a truckload of fuel from some Angolan gangsters and returns to Kinshasa to make money off it. There is a shortage of fuel in town and word quickly spreads of Riva's acquisition. He becomes hot property and everyone wants a piece of him. Throw a corrupt army official and a femme fatale into the mix and you've got yourself a thrilling ride through Kinshasa's bustling streets.

Writer/director Djo Tunda Wa Munga, who has been called "an African Tarantino" has his filmmaking roots in the documentary genre. He was born and bred in Kinshasa and it shows. Kinshasa is not just a backdrop to Riva's story, but a living, breathing character in the film. 'Viva Riva!' has been doing the rounds internationally and has thus far won an MTV award for Best African Film and six awards at the 7th African Movie Academy Awards.

I recently caught up with Djo Tunda Wa Munga in Amsterdam at the Africa in the Picture Film Festival, where he scooped the Best Feature Film Award. I sat in/hijacked Serginho Roosblad's interview with him for Radio Netherlands Worldwide and asked a couple of questions of my own. Serginho graciously offered this interview to AIAC.

Is 'Viva Riva!' in a way a story about Africans who have emigrated and the experience of alienation when returning to their hometown?

I didn't want to talk about the Diaspora in this film, that's not the most important thing. I wanted to talk about the city Kinshasa itself. It's kind of difficult to talk about the city if one just lives inside. So I wanted to use the tool of someone coming back after many years. Because when you come back, you kind of fall in love with the places that you know, with the city you grew up in. And so in that love relationship with the city it was also an opportunity to talk about Kinshasa. Viva Riva is really a film that describes the Kinshasa that I know and that I like. Someone asked me the other day if it's a love letter to the city. I think I would call it that.

Is it also a personal love letter to the city, as you moved to Belgium for a while, and perhaps fell in love with Kinshasa when you returned?

I wouldn't say it is because of the fact that I've lived abroad, in Belgium, and came back after my studies, that I have a parallel with Riva. I don't think so because I used it more as a dramatic tool in the story; the fact that he comes back. It's easier. When you come back you can look at things enthusiastically and describe them. For me, I don't see it that way. I've come back and I've seen the country evolve in many different ways. And so it's very different, the story you have in the film.

In what way is the film representative of the whole nation?

We have to be very serious about the fact that one film can't represent a nation. It's impossible. What I tried to do was to represent the point of view that I had of the city. And to create a relation as a filmmaker with an environment that I find beautiful or intense, and then to transpose it to film. If I manage to do that, to have a point of view of the environment, which is intense enough and accurate enough, I'll be very happy.

There's a lot of sex and there's a lot of violence in this movie. How did the Congolese public and people from Kinshasa in particular react to this?

In the screenings in Congo, I think that people weren't shocked. They weren't shocked because the reality, the environment we live in is much stronger; the prostitution, the violence, they have experienced that already. And so the fact that they can see it on the screen brings them some kind of relief in the sense that these are our realities, this is what we know. So the screenings in Kinshasa went well in the sense that people weren't surprised, there was no tension at that moment. Because reality is stronger and people just see that, OK this is a film. They can relate to it in a more positive way.

In the movie we see a lot of universal themes, like love and crime. But are there also typical Congolese themes hidden in the movie that you would only know if you were from Congo?

If there is one, I would say it's the self-destructive attitude of Riva, towards money. He's not a guy who's going to save money, he's not a guy who thinks, 'OK, I'm gonna calculate,' and so on. Riva is really someone from Kinshasa so he thinks bigger than life. It must be really, really large and he goes for that. He goes for that directly. And in that sense I can really recognize and relate to this extreme pleasure of life we aspire to in Kinshasa.

This is one of the few feature films to come out of Congo in the last two decades. Why do you think it took that long for something like 'Viva Riva!' to come along?

We had a long dictatorship under Mobutu, which ended in 1997. Mobutu didn't really allow artists to work, or to be independent, or to make films. After that we had five years of war, and after that we had a transition. All of this made it very difficult, kind of impossible, to film. After all that, we are in somehow at the beginning. We are reconstructing all of that.

As an African filmmaker, are you concerned with portraying your country as positively as possible to an international audience?

I think this may surprise you, but I'm not that focused on the external world, and what they will think of the representation of Africa. Because I think that's a mistake. I would rather try to focus on finding the inner voice, the truth inside myself and of the story. What will come out of that will be real and authentic. And after that, that thing will define itself towards westerners and international films.

Your movie has won a lot of prizes already. What is it about 'Viva Riva!' that captures the international imagination?

Maybe the fact that for once, these are the eyes from someone inside Africa who looks at reality, and probably looks at it differently. And yes I think that westerners recognize that and they say "why not, it's kind of interesting."

Do you think this film will open up doors for other filmmakers in Congo?

I really hope that this film will help some other filmmakers to get out there with their own projects. This is the best you can hope for, but I don't know. We'll have to wait a little bit, and hopefully people will get there.

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