Sean Jacobs's Blog, page 611

Music Break / Kommanda Obbs

It was Core Wreckah who first put us on to Lesotho rapper Kommanda Obbs a while ago. Asked for some background about this video, Kommanda tells us that "Ts'epe was shot in the mountainous villages of Bela Bela and Maputsoe in Lesotho. The aim of the song is to instil confidence in youth so that they embrace their cultures while learning about other cultures. The video introduces the album, the movement and the official Sesotho version of hip-hop. 'Ts'epe', which could be translated literally as 'iron', is used figuratively in this context as hard-hitting lyricism. The radio dj's in Lesotho and certain parts of South Africa are really supportive. The video is currently playing on Lesotho TV." We can see why.

'Wax Museum Scenes'

Algerian-born French philosopher Jacques Ranciere, author of The Politics of Aesthetics has some strong words about Yinka Shonibare's art:

"Multimediality" only means that you combine several media. The combination may be implemented in various ways, with various intentions and effects. The combination may be an addition or it may be a fusion. The addition may produce a surplus of sensory power or it can create a lack, a gap or a distance. Multi-mediality has often been used by conceptual artists to explore the relations between words, meanings and visible forms. When Gary Hill used a number of monitors as sculptural elements to explore the relations between a mouth and the words that go through it, this could hardly be considered as "hyper-spectacle". Yet, in contrast, when Jason Rhoades built his gigantesque installation that was supposed to represent the bellows of the capitalist machine swallowing everything and turning it to shit, he may have had the intention of denouncing the capitalist machine, but what remains on the ground is a kind of theme-park entertainment. The same occurs when Yinka Shonibare creates his Garden of Love (2007) where he turns some well-known French 18th century paintings into "tableaux vivants" and dresses the characters with batik cloth.* He may have had the intention to both denounce the reality of slavery behind the happy amorous scenes of noble life and the false authenticity of African batik, which actually was made in Indonesia, but what remains is a wax-museum scene. More generally I would say that there is no straight connection between multimediality and subversion (or subjugation). A technical dispositif is always at the same time an aesthetic dispositif, and it is at this level that art may take on such and such political meaning, according to such and such a context.

Source

* Shonibare's Garden of Love was held at, and created for, the Musée du quai Branly, Paris, April 2–July 8, 2007.

Wax Museum Scenes

Algerian-born French philosopher Jacques Ranciere, author of The Politics of Aesthetics:

"Multimediality" only means that you combine several media. The combination may be implemented in various ways, with various intentions and effects. The combination may be an addition or it may be a fusion. The addition may produce a surplus of sensory power or it can create a lack, a gap or a distance. Multi-mediality has often been used by conceptual artists to explore the relations between words, meanings and visible forms. When Gary Hill used a number of monitors as sculptural elements to explore the relations between a mouth and the words that go through it, this could hardly be considered as "hyper-spectacle". Yet, in contrast, when Jason Rhoades built his gigantesque installation that was supposed to represent the bellows of the capitalist machine swallowing everything and turning it to shit, he may have had the intention of denouncing the capitalist machine, but what remains on the ground is a kind of theme-park entertainment. The same occurs when Yinka Shonibare creates his Garden of Love (2007) where he turns some well-known French 18th century paintings into "tableaux vivants" and dresses the characters with batik cloth.* He may have had the intention to both denounce the reality of slavery behind the happy amorous scenes of noble life and the false authenticity of African batik, which actually was made in Indonesia, but what remains is a wax-museum scene. More generally I would say that there is no straight connection between multimediality and subversion (or subjugation). A technical dispositif is always at the same time an aesthetic dispositif, and it is at this level that art may take on such and such political meaning, according to such and such a context.

Source

* Shonibare's Garden of Love was held at, and created for, the Musée du quai Branly, Paris, April 2–July 8, 2007.

In Praise of Wangari Maathai

By Dan Moshenberg

Wangari Maathai passed this week. The news of her passing inspired memories, praise, and reflection, especially among those who knew and worked with her, and among those Kenyans who grew up watching her and then spent their adult lives learning to understand what they had seen as children.

Dr. Maathai was fierce. Indomitable. Passionate. Inspirational. She was a heroine. She stood up to the dictatorship of Daniel Arap Moi, and the global regimes of the IMF, the World Bank and all the rest. She organized, organized, organized. From the Uhuru Park demonstrations and "salvation" to the beatings and arrests, especially in 1999, through the post-Moi "democratic dispensation" to the present, Wangari Maathai organized. She organized women who then organized more women. She organized structures, most famously the Green Belt Movement. She organized events that were a model for others. When Ugandan women organized Women for Peace, in 2010, they cited Maathai's "amazing demonstrations" and mobilizations of over 100,000 women. To the end, Dr. Maathai herself organize to end violence, to make the violaters accountable, to create real and sustainable peace.

In fact, Wangari Maathai never stopped teaching. She simply moved her classroom from the University of Nairobi to the streets and the world. She taught African women new ways of standing, news ways of organizing, new ways of mobilizing, and, importantly, new ways of securing victories.

Maathai taught that the time for action, for democracy, for justice, for women, is now: "In the course of history, there comes a time when humanity is called to shift to a new level of consciousness, to reach a higher moral ground. A time when we have to shed our fear and give hope to each other. That time is now."

Upon news of her death, Professor Shadrack Gutto, of the Centre for African Renaissance Studies at the University of South Africa, suggested, "She belongs in the league of Nelson Mandela. Someone who fought for others and never thought of herself, working tirelessly to advance the freedom and dignity of others without expecting anything in return."

Wangari Maathai stands in a league with the too-few women who have won the Nobel Peace Prize. She stands in a league with leaders, women and men like Nelson Mandela. She stands with the women of Kenya. She stands with the women of Africa. She stands with her innumerable daughters everywhere.

Except in some quarters of Western media. There … well …

The photograph accompanying The Washington Post obituary for Wangari Maathai says it all. Dr. Maathai stands, beaming, between … Oprah Winfrey and Tom Cruise. After all the work, all the struggle, all the prison time and beatings … Oprah Winfrey and Tom Cruise … and not a tree in sight.

Rest in peace Dr. Maathai. Your daughters, and some of their brothers, will carry on the work. Rest in peace … and thank you.

Music / The Struggle

In the 1980s The Genuines ("South Africa's only black rock band") ruled protest band music in Cape Town. (They had some competition from jazzmen Robbie Jansen, Basil Coetzee and  to some extent from white rockers Bright Blue). The Genuines consisted of the very talented Mac McKenzie (guitarist and leader), Hilton Schilder (keyboard player), Gerard O'Brien (bassist) and Ian Herman (drummer). Not many of their music videos are online and their albums are hard to find. The internet contains a few videos of McKenzie,  Schilder and Herman (later of Tananas and in San Francisco). But those are of them post-Genuines. McKenzie and Schilder still occasionally collaborate, though Schilder has struggled with illness lately. However, recently the video for The Genuines' "Die Struggle" (translated from Afrikaans: The Struggle) has surfaced on Youtube.  The editor of the original music video had decided to post it after it was partially featured in the new documentary, "Mama Goema: The Cape Town Beat in Five Movements."  The song, mostly in Afrikaans, driven by a frenetic goema beat is brilliant. The lyrics and the video references the battlegrounds of 1980s Cape Town: Athlone, Elsies River, Crossroads, Gugulethu, Khayelitsha.

Added bonus: At the end of the video we hear  a police order (voiced by an actor?) to protesters to disperse (looks like Belgravia Road in Athlone?). One of the protesters screams back: "Julle moer jong." No translation needed.

"Law and Order: SVU" does DSK

In case you missed it, the cop and lawyers show, "Law and Order," opened its 13th season last week with a transparent plot based on the Dominique Strauss Kahn rape case.  They didn't even try hard:  Roberto DiStasio, " the odds-on favorite to be Italy's next prime minister" and "the head of the Global Economic Trust" is accused of raping a Sudanese hotel maid. He gets arrested before his plane takes off.  "DiStasio's wife Sophia claims she never doubted her husband's innocence." Turns out the maid, Miriam, lied about a rape back in Sudan on her asylum application and told friends she would make money off the case. Etcetera, etcetera.

There's also a scene where Di Stasio/Strauss Kahn is paraded in front of journalists and Ice T deadpans: "Freedom of the press, baby!"

Spoiler Alert: the whole thing ends after the the jurors in the trial claim they can't reach a conclusion and the judge rules the case a mistrial.

A show-runner working on "Law and Order" told The New York Post the writers had a hard time coming up with the plot. Yeh.

Meanwhile, back in Paris, the real-life Dominique Strauss Kahn has been giving interviews.  In one of these, with aclose friend of his wife, Ann Sinclair, he said was only guilty of a "moral fault."  His accuser Nafissatou Diallo "lied about everything." In fact, despite the fact that they had never met, they had consensual sex and as for why she would accuse him of rape: he said she is motivated by "the financial hypothesis." And he copies Bill Clinton. Verbatim.

"Law and Order: SVU," The DSK Episode

In case you missed it, the cop and lawyers show, "Law and Order," opened its 13th season last week with a transparent plot based on the Dominique Strauss Kahn rape case.  They didn't even try hard:  Roberto DiStasio, " the odds-on favorite to be Italy's next prime minister" and "the head of the Global Economic Trust" is accused of raping a Sudanese hotel maid. He gets arrested before his plane takes off.  "DiStasio's wife Sophia claims she never doubted her husband's innocence." Turns out the maid, Miriam, lied about a rape back in Sudan on her asylum application and told friends she would make money off the case. Etcetera, etcetera.

There's also a scene where Di Stasio/Strauss Kahn is paraded in front of journalists and Ice T deadpans: "Freedom of the press, baby!"

Spoiler Alert: the whole thing ends after the the jurors in the trial claim they can't reach a conclusion and the judge rules the case a mistrial.

A show-runner working on "Law and Order" told The New York Post the writers had a hard time coming up with the plot. Yeh.

Meanwhile, back in Paris, the real-life Dominique Strauss Kahn has been giving interviews.  In his first interview back in France to a close friend of his wife, Ann Sinclair, he said was only guilty of a "moral fault."  His accuser Nafissatou Diallo "lied about everything." In fact, despite the fact that they had never met, they had consensual sex and as for why she would accuse him of rape: he said she is motivated by "the financial hypothesis."

Film / Africans in America

Beautifully shot vignette of life among the mostly poor residents of The Fred Factory Gardens Project Houses in the majority African-American town of Spencer, Oklahoma.

Filmed by Trevor Tweeten and Richard Mosse.

Music Break / Calle 13

Puerto Rican band Calle 13 got their Peruvian fans talking today when they released the video for 'Latinoamérica' (which they partly recorded in Peru). And not just because it has their new (and first black) Minister of Culture Susana Baca in it.

Blogs / Exhibit B

I recently stumbled upon this short video feature on director Nikyatu Jusu, whose films–Say Grace Before Dying and African Booty Scratcher–you can now watch online in full. (Boima blogged about here for AIAC). In the clip above she gets asked about her favorite films. Watch it.

Apart from Jusu's excellent choices, I was also impressed by the people who interviewed her: Exhibit B, a site/blog which focuses on young, New York City creatives. Go check out the site.