herN
l
N
the ongoing civil
war in somalia
began in 1988 when
the somali national
movement (snm)
invaded northern
somalia causing a
massive population
displacement.
somalians escaped
to the south and
Ethiopia.
it caused the death
of nearly 60.000
people and destroyed
infrastructure,
communication and
public services.
Diversely populated
refugee camps
were established
throughout the
region.
1991
SOutherN
ClaN
war&famiNe
in 1991, the southern
Clan war starts in
mogadishu. Clan
warlords hijacked
humanitarian aid
and agriculture was
totally destroyed
by the civil wars,
resulting in famine
and causing mass
migration from the
south to north. in
January 1991, the
state of the republic
somalia collapsed
and has not had a
government since
then. somalis don’t
possess passports.
1992,1995&1996
wideSpread
famiNe
(S th/CO)
inter-clan warfare, banditry and widespread
famine continued in 1992, claiming the lives
of over 240.000 somalis.
in 1995, American Aid was removed causing a
mass outbreak of famine once more, largely in
southern and Central somalia. the Unosom ii
(2nd operation of United nations operation
in somalia) left the country without any
governmental or economic infrastructure.
the only regions of the country which have a
relatively stable legitimate and functional
administration are somaliland and puntland in
the north of the country.
N
N
N
CO
CO
CO
N
FUTURE(S)
OF
COHABITATION
CO
S
N
S
CO
N
#17
CO
N
CO
S
N
N
N
CO
CO
CO
S
N
N
N
CO
CO
CO
S
S
S
N
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N
CO
CO
CO
S
N
S
N
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N
CO
CO
CO
S
CO
S
N
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N
CO
CO
CO
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CO
CO
CO
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N
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CO
CO
CO
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S
CO
N
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CO
CO
CO
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CO
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CO
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CO
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CO
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in 2011, the worst famine was recorded in
Central somalia, caused by a drought that had
affected all of East Africa. somalis from
Central regions fled to the north and south.
reportedly 920.000 somalis fled to neighboring
countries, 440.000 refugees found their way
to 3 refugee camps in kenya, although the
maximum capacity of the camps was 90.000.
the mortality rate was more than 7 times as
high as the set 'emergency' rate and infant
mortality had risen threefold in a few months.
S
S
CO
2011
famiNe iN
CeNtral &
partly
S th SOmalia
S
1
2
1
Editorial
P. 5
SPECULATION
Creolizing Europe
P. 9
In the Fabric of the Voice: A Polyphonic Conversation
ETUDE
Patrick Flores
Bewitched Migrant
P. 39
“I Charge You to Leave This Body”
Comprehensive Methodology in Ancestral Earth-Star Complexes:
Lessons from Vela-Zimbabwe
MATERIALS
New Culture, A Review
of Contemporary African Arts P. 65
Nana Oforiatta-Ayim
Cultural Encyclopedia
PROJECTION
Giula Lamoni
cartazes para o museu
do homem do nordeste
P. 70
Claire Tancons
Sailing the Ship of Fools:
A Carnival Trilogy
Contributors
P. 100
2
Colophon
P. 102
EXHIBITION
ROOM
P. 88
P. 55
P. 28
CONVERSATION
John Akomfrah / Raimi Gbadamosi
Raimi Gbadamosi
Talks with John Akomfrah
P. 43
STATEMENT
CONVERSATION
A conversation around Afro-Brazil
Adriano Pedrosa Talks to Emanoel Araújo
ETUDE
ruby onyinyechi amanze
P. 13
Adriano Pedrosa and Emanoel Araújo
P. 17
Kapwani Kiwanga
Bisi Silva
None of the Above: From Hybridity to Hyphenation
­The Artist as Model Subject, and the Biennial Model
as Apparatus of Subjectivity
CONVERSATION
Virginie Bobin, Bouchra Ouizguen, Blanca Calvo
and Ion Munduate, Katarina Zdjelar, and Lawrence Abu Hamdan
SPECULATION
Simon Sheikh
P. 47
STATEMENT
Sharlene Khan
Speaking Truth to Power: Censorship
and Critical Creativity in South Africa
P. 59
STATEMENT
P. 68
Aurogeeta Das
Of Umbrella Terms
and Definitions: Diversity
Within a Framework?
Koki Tanaka
Precarious Tasks 7
PROJECTION
P. 77
GAME
P. 96
FUTURE(S)
OF
COHABITATION
Fatima El-Tayeb
Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez,
Virginie Bobin and Bisi Silva
3
Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez,
Virginie Bobin and Bisi Silva
Editorial
Throughout these last few issues of Manifesta Journal the question of
how to genuinely engage in an act of “affective solidarity”, as feminist critic
Clare Hemmings would put it,1 remains—and with it, the concern that the
still-prevailing white Western consideration of “global others” too often slips
from empathy to pity. In her critical essay on the European “other” that
inaugurates Future(s) of Co‑Habitation, the seventeenth issue of Manifesta
Journal, art historian Fatima El-Tayeb refers to Edouard Glissant and his
renowned theory of creolization. In the poet’s writings, the Caribbean
became a center of relational identities and situational communities exactly
because of their inability to claim the “sacred roots” of these territories. This
fact consequently excluded the inhabitants from a hegemonic world order
in which both dominance and resistance were built on notions of sacred
land. An origin that does not imply sacredness or authenticity is thus the
point from which minoritarian resistance can be articulated. In order to
arrive at this stage however, a different archive needs to be accessed: one
based on the experiences of marginalized, silenced communities, without
the usual dominating manifestations of Europeanness.
This active questioning of the overarching narratives of origin,
rootedness and authenticity, as well as the prevalence of identitarian
models (be they “European”, “Afropolitan”, or “post-black”) reverberates
throughout the entire issue of this journal; in equal measure traversed by
voices and bodies in diaspora and thus, necessarily, by the much debated
concept of “hybridity”. In his own contribution, writer and curator
Simon Sheikh brings forth Homi K. Bhabha’s germinal take on hybridity,
undermining the positive, all-encompassing connotation that the term
has symbolized in artistic, social and political language over the last few
decades: “It is [thus] not a celebratory concept,” Sheikh writes, “as it has
often been employed in biennial culture and major art events, but it is
rather an ambivalent state of being in-between powers of authority, the
authenticity of authorship, and the (im)possibility of cultural translation.”
Under the title “Future(s) of Co‑Habitation,” Manifesta Journal has
invited international artists, curators and thinkers to investigate this
state of in-between from a trans-historical and trans-geographical point
of view, with an emphasis on hyphenation in the term itself as well as
on critical assessment of the legacy of the concept of “hybridity”, its
contemporary relevance in the field of arts and humanities, and in society
at large. Instead of focusing on the term itself, the contributors to this
issue convene alternative vocabularies and positions that pay a tribute
to post-colonial theory and criticism, and recent debates in cultural
theory, such as the current revisitation of “Afrofuturism” or of what some
have called “cultural cannibalism”. The content assembled here forges a
different language and opens up visions, possibilities and realities for the
future(s) that we, and hopefully you, the readers, wish to co-inhabit.
1 Clare Hemmings. 2012. “Affective Solidarity: Feminist Reflexivity and Political
Transformation,” Feminist Theory 13 (2), 147–161.
4
5
In their conversation, the writers and film-makers Raimi Gbadamosi
and John Akomfrah underline the hierarchizing effect of the concept
of hybridity on a world in which a certain kind of encounter becomes
idealized and, thus, reductive. “There is nowhere in which anyone exists
in a pure state or an uncontaminated whole,” concludes the latter. His
position resonates dramatically with the recent hardening of global
policies towards migration that flourishes on the foul breeding grounds
of populist and right-wing forms of nationalism, which withdraw into
obsolete notions of the preservation of “organic identities”. In that
context, discourses and worldwide events celebrating “indigeneity”
raise doubts on the viability of such a term if employed in a generalized
way—a risk that the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa has challenged
in its recent exhibition Sakahan—International Indigenous Art, dissected
here by the artist and theoretician Aurogeeta Das. The metaphor of
contamination (a term employed by Akomfrah) is also useful when
extolling the rejection of “allochtones” into a social body, and the step
to a vocabulary of bewitchment, vampirization and haunting is quickly
overcome. In Terre Thaemlitz’s film Canto II, the stories of disillusioned
Philippine migrants to Japan are interwoven with local myths of
vampires whose bodies experience another, yet comparable form of
disjuncture; torn between their land and the necessity of pursuing the
quest for blood and survival. Thaemlitz’s film is a parable that, according
to writer Patrick Flores, highlights the occultation processes imposed on
undesired bodies.
Voices are immaterial markers of displaced identities, bearers of
accents and histories. Virginie Bobin’s polyphonic conversation with the
choreographer Bouchra Ouizguen and the artists Blanca Calvo and Ion
Munduate, Katarina Zdjelar and Lawrence Abu Hamdan stages different
voices that resist control and bypass material borders. Bodies confined in
space (or fixed identities) tend to turn to the realms of myth or, famously,
to science-fiction, in order to project themselves in time. If the term
Afrofuturism has recently been criticized for perpetuating the prefix “Afro”,
it has also produced an inspiring platform that allows Black subjectivity
to re-imagine and re-define itself through the prism of fantasy and the
transcendental, as well as through technology, alternative identities,
realities and histories that engage the past, rethink the present and
anticipate the future. Artist ruby onyinyechi amanze thus acknowledges
the spirit of Double Consciousness espoused by the sociologist and
historian W. E. B. Du Bois, and pushes the definitions of the hybrid and
conjures up an alter ego. By invoking, at times, the identity of an alien,
she takes on multiple identities that allow her to morph across time and
space. Artist Kapwani Kiwanga poses as a scholar in Ancestral Earth
Studies from the School of Galactic Anthropology at the Afrogalactica
Institute. She projects herself and the readers into a dystopian future,
where the influence of Great Zimbabwe on other stellar civilizations
proposes an allegory of geopolitical relations and the circulation of
cultural influences.
Adriano Pedrosa’s conversation with the pioneering African-Brazilian
artist and curator Emanoel Araújo provides a unique insight into a
singular curatorial practice, which has over the past four decades
6
confronted the racial complexities and tensions in the largest African
diasporic community in the world. Araújo’s thematic concerns as well as
his having set up the requisite institutional frameworks have highlighted
the neglected social, political and cultural histories of the mestizos. In
so doing he provides a counter discourse to the entrenched fallacy
of Gilberto Freyre’s ideology of a racial democracy (in which all races
are equal) that, in reality, resulted in a situation that “ignores, forgets,
puts aside and silences more than [it] outspokenly rejects, refuses or
repudiates” non-white Brazilians. Moreover, Freyre attempted to define a
regional specificity by creating the Museum of the Man of the Northwest.
Art historian Giulia Lamoni highlights the way in which Jonathas de
Andrade’s exhibition about Freyre’s museum appropriates the name
of the institution and challenges the way stereotypes are perpetuated
through linguistic and visual representation of identity by using the word
“Man” to represent all people, and in doing so denying the heterogeneity
implicit in the region.
In line with the editors’s endeavours to counter the hegemony of
colonial narratives and to write history from a local knowledge base,
Bisi Silva introduces New Culture Review, which during the ebullient
days following Nigeria’s independence provided an important platform
for artists and writers to articulate a discourse that portrayed their new
identities and realities. In existence for only eleven issues in the 1970s,
the possible loss of this rich archive is indicative of the failure of the
postcolonial state. From failure a new proposition is born. In response
to the lacunae that exist in the histories of the Continent and the way in
which they are notably perceived elsewhere (recalling here the former
French president Nicolas Sarkozy’s Dakar speech in 2007, when he
asserted that “the African man hasn’t entered history enough...”2), writer
and cultural historian Nana Oforiatta-Ayim embarks on the seemingly
impossible task of developing a collaborative cultural encyclopaedia
of Africa. By mapping out across the fifty-five countries the relativity
of truth in historical narratives through a multiplicity of voices where
“knowledge [is] constituted anew with each retelling” and “the elasticity
of silence” permeates its authority, her endeavour is as utopian as it is
forward-looking.
Finally, the attempt to stifle the right of artists to use their work as a
vehicle for social commentary forms the basis of the artist Sharlene
Khan’s contribution. Challenging the idea of the “rainbow nation”, she
analyses the increasing rate of art censorship in South Africa, which
highlights the persistent issues of race, class, gender and sexuality that
continue to confront the country in the post-apartheid era. The quality
of art to transform society by mirroring, emphasizing or exorcizing
its wounds is also explored, in a different context, by art historian and
curator Claire Tancons, who explains the way in which Carnival, born
in feudal Europe and reborn in colonial America and the slave system,
is now emerging worldwide as a form of anti-capitalist protest. A
“performance of protest”, it seeks to invent new ways of expressing
dissent and intervening in the social and political realms, through
artistic means in concert with the non-normative gathering of bodies in
2 Excerpt from speech given by Nicholas Sarkozy, University of Dakar, Senegal, on July 26th,
2007. Editors’s emphasis.
7
By traveling freely across cultures
those in search of the human essence
may find a space for all to sit...
Here a margin advances. Or a centre
retreats. Where East is not strictly east,
and West is not strictly west,
where identity is open onto plurality,
not a fort or a trench.
(Translated by Mona Anis)
Creolizing Europe
Being European without being white and/or
Christian does not only put one in a strange place,
but also in a strange temporality: Europeans who
are both tend to read one as having just arrived or
even as still being elsewhere—if not physically, then
at least culturally. When working on racism and
Europe, on the other hand, one is often faced with
the assumption that the former is nonexistent within
the continent—many white Europeans go as far as
to claim that they “do not understand race,” usually
when referencing a supposed American obsession
with it. Europeans tend to see the relevance of race as
one of, if not the central difference between Europe
and the United States (religiosity being the other)
and attempts at pointing to the important role of
race (and racism) in European identity formations
are frequently framed as enforcing an Americanized
“political correctness,” a discourse that is meant to
silence necessary critiques of migrant communities (a
term covering all groups not perceived as European,
including racialized Europeans) and their supposed
innate sexism, anti-Semitism and homophobia. This
move allows Europe to be presented as being more
tolerant than both the U.S. (plagued by racism) and
the Global South (plagued by intolerance of every
kind). That is, despite that the origin of the very
concept of “race” in Europe and the explicitly racebased policies of both its fascist regimes and its
colonial empires, the dominant assumption is still that
this history has had no impact on the continent itself
and its internal structures.
Indeed, at first glance it might seem as if Europe
exists outside of the U.S. American (post-)racial
temporality. While the latter is built on a narrative
of having successfully overcome intolerance and
discrimination, the myth of European colorblindness
claims that Europe never was “racial” (anti-Semitism
8
SPECULATION
Fatima El-Tayeb
space. In a more discreet but no less powerful way, Japanese artist Koki
Tanaka’s series of Precarious Tasks also propose individual or collective
experiences that may intensify one’s apprehension of a context, thus
proposing ways of building new communities and bonds — inventing
co-habitation beyond social traumas.
Together with these authors, “Future(s) of Co‑Habitation” hopes to
look beyond geographical boundaries, administrative borders and fixed
identities by welcoming unconventional modes of existence, thinking,
heterolingual expressions, resilient structures and science-fictional
narratives. Our era is challenged by constant mobility and migrations
where the forced geographical flexibility of the precarious worker is
synchronous to the confinement of undesired migrants, and where
Europe continues to struggle with acknowledging the consequences of
the colonial past on its social, political and cultural fabric. If the futures
of cohabitation that we hope for could be described in other words, they
would no doubt take the form of verses by Palestinian poet Mahmoud
Darwish from his poem Edward Said: A Contrapuntal Reading (2007),
with whose verses we would like to open this new issue:
is still often analyzed as being both an exception and
clearly separable from racism). This makes it hard
to challenge the narrative from within a continental
European theoretical framework that constantly
externalizes race, i.e. places it outside of the domain
of what needs to be theorized. Accordingly, the
continental European Left has produced no theory of
racialization. Instead, class remains central—which is
ironic since class is deeply racialized in Europe.
As a result, Europe, in its national and postnational
variations, is maintaining a normalized, Christian(ized,
secular) whiteness through an ideology of
colorblindness that claims not to “see” racialized
difference. It thus both stabilizes and silences race
as a framework inherent to the continent, all the
while using race (currently expressed via religion and
culture) to constantly produce non-white populations
as necessarily non-European (instead, terms like “third
generation migrant” affirm that racialized populations
permanently remain “aliens from elsewhere”, to use
Rey Chow’s term).1 This ongoing racial amnesia,
which is made possible through the erasure of
the history of European racism and the history of
Europeans of color, makes unspeakable the processes
of internal racialization and the ways in which they
are inseparable from the aftereffects of European
colonialism. In this way, neocolonial economic
structures increasingly posit racialized communities
as disposable populations.
This narrative of “colorblind Europe” is closely
tied to the success story of the European Union as
representing many of the virtues and few of the vices
of the nation states it is meant to replace. The rise of
the American empire and neoliberal multiculturalism
in the second half of the twentieth century coincided
with the reordering of Europe after WWII into West
1 Rey Chow, The Protestant Ethnic and the Spirit of Capitalism (New
York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 34.
9
and East, the loss of colonial empires, and after 1990,
another reordering, largely collapsing “Europe” into
the European Union. The latter came to symbolize
Europe’s successful reformation after the twentieth
century crises of totalitarianism, confirming the
continent’s place as the center and gatekeeper of
universal human rights. This narrative was affirmed
by the self-congratulatory designation of the EU as
the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize recipient, while it already
seems to be falling apart at the edges.
The current economic collapse of parts of the
European Union enhances an existing structural
violence, with housing segregation, unemployment,
incarceration, and the collapse of the public school
system all disproportionally affecting racialized
groups, in particular Muslim, black and Roma
communities. The particular histories of colonialism,
racism and migration in Europe have created
intersections and overlaps between these three
communities, who share spaces (housing projects,
prisons, detention centers), cultures (see their key role
in hip-hop music all across Europe), histories, and
positionalities (as not being properly European). These
connections are suppressed in dominant (policyproducing) discourses that identify each group as
deviant in particular ways:
Muslims appear as the internal threat posed by
migration, the other that is already there but remains
eternally foreign; whereas “Africans” (including black
Europeans) represent the masses who are not yet
here, pushing at the borders, the demographic (and
racial) Goliath threatening to overrun the European
David (the prevalence of metaphors along these
lines helps to normalize the extremely high death
toll the EU migration regime produces on its external
borders—about 5,000 per year, complimented by a
rapidly growing, and increasingly privatized, regime
of mass incarceration of undocumented migrants).
Roma peoples, finally, the quintessential European
minority of color, with a 500 year-long continental
history that includes slavery and genocide, continue
to face extreme violence, poverty and exclusion, while
being completely absent as a recognized presence in
contemporary Europe. Instead, they are framed as not
only coming from another, non-European, space, but
another time, an idealized European past, as reflected
in the centrality of “gypsies” to continental folklore.
The discursive separation of these groups
is symptomatic of the ways in which de facto
intersections of communities of color—with each
10
other and with white Europe—are negated within the
ideology of colorblindness, which cannot allow for
porous boundaries and instead has to continuously
produce distinct and homogenous groups. This is
reflected in the absence of intersectional analyses
that would allow us to trace connections and the
coalitions they produced, in addition to exploring
their potential impact on comparative studies of
racialization. Such a comparative perspective could
help to face the methodological challenges posed by
the unique position that Europe claims and is often
granted, as a supposedly neutral “ground zero” against
which everything else is measured, both unique
and universal. Europe, after all, is the only place that
white people are native to; where they are not settler
colonialists. This allows the continued claim that
racist and colonialist oppression, while admittedly
committed by (descendants of) Europeans has no
impact on Europe itself.
A critical theorization of European racializations can
challenge this supposed European exceptionalism.
It can and should use methodologies that were
developed in response to settler colonialism to
produce desperately needed theorizations of the
extremely violent anti-Roma racism that barely receives
academic, let alone public attention. The temporal
dislocation of Roma people has clear parallels to the
spatio-temporal placement of indigenous populations
elsewhere, as do (ongoing) histories of “special
schools”, stolen children and forced sterilizations. The
different but related situation of Roma can further
discussions on comparative racializations. Moreover, it
can be used to futher explorations of the intersections
of Muslim and African diasporas in Europe or of our
understanding of blackness in relation to Africanness,
especially with regard to Europe’s population of North
African descent or to the (self-)definition of Eastern
European Roma as black.
Structures of domination do cross spaces
separated by theory, after all, and working on race
outside the U.S. context, a comparative approach to
spatio-temporality is central: studying one location
makes it possible to identify the dominant model of
racialization and how it came out of and incorporates
earlier models. This model is currently, but arguably,
the U.S. model. Such an approach might create
too linear a temporality, however. A comparative
perspective complicates this linearity by assessing
the spatial distribution of coexisting different racial
temporalities and the ways in which they continue to
inform each other.
In my work, I have been interested in art and
activism that aims at creating the conditions of
“speakability” for minoritarian identities, art that
works not against but with the spatio-temporal
dislocation of racialized communities, using strategies
of resistance that originate (in) an identity that some
refer to as “diasporic queer of color”. That is, their
“queerness” in time and space, which is imposed
rather than chosen, precisely because it is more
pronounced for the current generation of Europeans
of color, produces new strategies of resistance. I
summarize these as the queering of ethnicity; a
non-essentialist, and non-linear political strategy,
which is not based on racial identification but on the
shared experience of being racialized. The result is a
situational, potentially inclusive identity, which creates
bonds between various ethnicized and marginalized
groups, whilst offering some preliminary tools for
theorizing positionality, legibility, and identity beyond
Eurocentric universalism and nationalist essentialism.
A queering, or “creolizing” of theory, if you will,
that works on the intersections of concepts and
disciplines, opens the potential of expressing exactly
the positionality deemed impossible in dominant
European discourses, namely that of Europeans of
color. It foregrounds the latter’s transgressive strategies
of resistance, which are often downplayed in culturalist
debates around Europe’s “migration problem”.
Edouard Glissant’s notion of creolization seems one of
the most interesting and successful attempts at moving
beyond the binary model of thinking that is so ingrained
in the ways we are taught to perceive the world. Such a
creolized theory would question Europe as the “sacred
territory” as it appears in dominant, internalist narratives:
according to Glissant, the Caribbean became a center
of relational identities and situational communities
exactly because their inability to claim the “sacred
roots” of these territories excluded its inhabitants from
a world order in which both dominance and resistance
were built on notions of sacred land.2 This positionality
is shared by racialized minorities in Europe. An origin
that does not imply sacredness or authenticity is thus
the point from which minoritarian resistance can be
articulated; a position as subject of speech achieved.
In order to arrive at this stage however, a different
archive needs to be accessed, one that is based on the
experiences of marginalized, silenced communities,
those who are not present within dominant
manifestations of Europeanness.
2 Edouard Glissant, Caribbean Discourse: Selected Essays
(Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1989).
Kanak Attak,
KanakHistoryRevue
“Opel Pitbull
Autoput”,
2001.
The poster utilizes an image of the cheap, sturdy and
large plastic bag that was a staple in the luggage of
migrant families who returned to work in Germany after
the summer and thus is immediately recognizable to
many of those interpellated as “Kanaken”.
Kanak Attak,
Konkret Konkrass,
2002.
11
3 Sun-Ju Choi, and Oulis Miltiadid, “Kanak TV—der o!ensive Blick,”
WiderstandsBewegungen: WiderstandsBewegungen: Antirassismus
zwischen Alltag & Aktion (Berlin: Interface, 2005).
4 Kanak TV’s videos, some with English subtitles, can be viewed
here: http://www.kanak-attak.de/ka/media_video.shtml, accessed 10
January 2014.
12
what Susan Suleiman calls a “crisis of memory”, a conflict
over “the interpretation and public understanding of an
event firmly situated in the past, but whose aftereffects
are still deeply felt.”5 These aftereffects originate
from Glissant’s “point(s) of entanglement” at which
differences and discrepancies were suppressed and
externalized. Most obviously so with regard to racialized
and religious minorities, but as feminists of color since
the 1970s (and earlier) have argued, these constructs
depend on heteronormative conceptualizations of
gender and sexuality that are no less restrictive in their
negation of what is not acceptable as is the discourse
of colorblindness with which they are interwoven. The
queering of ethnicity, diversion, situational communities
and diasporic intersubjectivities employed by racialized
minorities all work against the attempt to cohere them
out of existence, resisting not only their erasure from
the contemporary European landscape but also from its
past. The queering of ethnicity has the dual function of
inserting European minorities into the ongoing debate
around the continent’s identity and of reclaiming their
place in its history, with the creation of alternative
archives working as a bridge between the two.
Since the dogma of racelessness is centrally built on
silencing; on making certain identities, processes, and
structures unspeakable, I have explored a number of
alternative languages, all circumventing the mandate
to silence by making specifically European taboos
around race speakable [see Kanak Attak, starting with
the group’s name, which redefines what is speakable
by whom in German]. These sonic, performative,
and visual languages use the haunting presence
of repressed histories to map an alternative spatiotemporal European landscape, building Glissant’s
poetics of relation, or in Cathy Cohen’s terms, “a
politics where one’s relation to power, and not some
homogenized identity, is privileged in determining
one’s political comrades”.6 In the process they
destabilize naturalized understandings of time and
space that work in the interest of particular groups,
thereby recovering “impossible alternatives”. In short,
to riff on Audre Lorde, they are “the way we help give
name to the nameless so it can be thought.”7
5 Susan Rubin Suleiman, Crises of Memory and the Second World
War (Boston: Harvard University Press, 2006), 1.
None of the Above:
From Hybridity to Hyphenation.
­The Artist as Model Subject,
and the Biennial Model as Apparatus
of Subjectivity
SPECULATION
The human who has become a hyphen and
who thereby exposes the in-between, is without
why.3 Alexander Garcia Düttmann
Simon Sheikh
I shall only give one example here: the nationwide
German activist group Kanak Attak, which was most
active from the late 1990s to the mid-2000s, was built
around not racial identity but the common experience
of being racialized. They refused the normalized
“culture of dialogue” in which racialized subjects
were granted a voice only when not speaking as
Germans. They staged interventions into public
space (and time) that refused the logic of progressive
secular time. This was reflected in their name,
“Kanake”—a German derogatory term for “foreigners”
(i.e. those perceived as not belonging, whether they
are German or not) that has its roots in the nation’s
colonial empire (a fact that those who use the term
as an insult are usually unaware of). Germany’s
colonial past has only recently been “rediscovered” by
academia and the mainstream, and its historicization
remains firmly situated in the past—a discourse
that allows people to continue to perceive “race” as
something only brought to the nation recently via
non-white migrants. The colloquial use of “Kanake”,
reflects a less-standardized temporality, one in which
colonialism and the spatio-temporal order it has
produced refuse to stay either outside of Europe or in
the past. Kanak Attak brings this reality to the fore.
The activists used video, performance, posters,
billboards, flyers and other vernacular forms in order to
escape the institutionalized mechanisms of racelessness
that are designed to silence positionalities beyond the
white / Christian European vs. migrant dichotomy.
As “Kanak TV,” they produced a series of videos that
upturned normalized hierarchies, “anticipat(ing)
discursively the desired change in power relations”3 by
shifting the focus from the racialized subjects to those
engaged in racializing them.4 Kanak Attak first gained
national attention through their 2001 multimedia
project KanakHistoryRevue. The event brought
together minority and migrant artists / activists from a
variety of fields, who staged readings, film screenings,
and performances. Kanak Attak activists offered reenactments of forty years of labor migrant presence in
Germany, with its fractured, non-linear presentation that
radically differed from mainstream commemorations.
In opposition to the dominant attempt at creating a
common, cohesive narrative, the activists work towards
It is significant that the productive capacities of
this Third Space have a colonial or postcolonial
provenance. For a willingness to descend into
that alien territory—where I will lead you—may
reveal that the theoretical recognition of the
split-space of enunciation may open the way to
conceptualizing an international culture, based
not on the exoticism of multiculturalism or the
diversity of cultures, but on the inscription and
articulation of culture’s hybridity. To that end
we should remember that it is the ‘inter’—the
cutting edge of translation and negation, the
in-between space—that carries the meaning of
culture.1 Homi K. Bhabha
States are certain loci of power, but the state is
not all there is of power. The state is not always
the nation-state. We have, for instance, nonnational states, and we have security states that
actively contest the national basis of the state.
So, already the term state can be dissociated
from the term ‘nation’ and the two can be
cobbled together through a hyphen, but what
work does the hyphen do? Does the hyphen
finesse the relation that needs to be done? Does
it mark a certain soldiering that has taken place
historically? Does it suggest a fallibility at the
heart of the relation?2 Judith Butler
6 Cathy Cohen. 1997. “Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens: The
Radical Potential of Queer Politics?” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay
Studies 3(4), 438.
1 Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge,
1994), 38.
7 Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider (Freedom, CA: The Crossing Press,
1984), 37.
2 Judith Butler and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Who Sings the
Nation-State? (London: Seagull Books, 2007), 2–3.
If contemporary art is characterized, even unified,
by any single tendency, it is its internationalization,
or what could even be called biennialization.
Biennialization is, as I have argued elsewhere, a
process of transformation of how art presented
and viewed, as recurrent and punctual through
the biennial form itself, but also as internationally
dispersed, through the biennial form and its many
locations, which by now cover most of the globe.4
Biennialization is the transformation of how art is
produced, circulated and consumed, and it implies a
radical re-inscription of the artist-subject as a model
of global citizenship and (upward) mobility. It does
so through the establishment of two figures: that of
the international artist, of course, but also that of the
international curator. If there is, then, an international
style of art and its discourses, and therefore a truly
international art and curation, then how are these
artists and curators different from national, regional or
local ones?
What does this biennialization, and its participation
in the global flows of capital, manage to do with the
art and artists circulated, presented and represented
within it? In my view, there are three major elements
to the transformatory process of biennialization:
3 Alexander Garcia Düttmann, Between Cultures—Tensions in the
Struggle for Recognition (London: Verso, 2000), 102.
4 Although it has now been exported to most parts of the globe,
the idea of the international biennale, as a competition of cultural
superiority, as well as mobility, is a historically a Eurocentric
concept, originating from the Venice Biennial. This western notion
of an international, hegemonic artistic production is only the most
general form of the biennale, and other, local forms have also been
established. For further elaboration, see: Simon Sheikh. 2011. “What is
Biennalization?”, Humboldt 156 (104).
13
stylization, capitalization and, internationalization,
which nonetheless cohere under a single principle of
inscription, that of interpellation. Interpellation is, of
course, a key term associated with Louis Althusser, who
employed it in his essay “Ideology and Ideological State
Apparatuses” to describe how subjects are ideologically
produced.5 In this text, Althusser famously distinguishes
between two forms of state apparatuses: the repressive
and the ideological, with the first category belonging
to the public realm, with its mechanisms of power and
control, such as the police force and the courts, and the
second belonging to the private realm, with its discrete
features such as communication and culture. It is not
my place to reiterate the critique of cultural institutions
as ideological, but rather to focus on the notion of
interpellation, and how it, according to Althusser,
“recruits” and “transforms” the subject it hails. The
subject is thus addressed by power, but in a particular
way that situates the individual, such as in the example
of a police officer shouting “Hey, you!”—indeed both
someone, and everyone, in the crowd is concerned,
as subjects of this particular relation of power, in this
particular state (in both senses of the word).
Indeed, if a biennial is such an ideological state
apparatus, and its mode of address can be seen as
one of interpellation, it is so of several individuals
transformed into subjects and recruited for its cause;
audiences, artists, organizers, and so on. All of them
are biennialized, and thus brought into a specific
relation not simply to power, but entangled within
the three aforementioned elements: stylization,
indicating that they are brought into a certain form;
internationalization, meaning that they are more than
national, that they are extra-national, so to say; and
finally, capitalization, indicating their entanglement
in the global flows of capital and thus their status
as commodities. This also means that the subjects
circulating in this system, be they subjects as in artists
and curators, or as in subject matter or themes, are
fundamentally exchangeable and inter-changeable. It
is not the specific subject or specificity of a practice
that is important, but rather that each one can be
compared and thus replaced as objects in commodity
exchange, and, moreover, that each one must
constantly be interchanged to keep circulation and
thus production in place and in play.
As an apparatus, the international biennial is crucial
5 Louis Althusser, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses,” Lenin
and Philosophy (London: New Left Books, 1971), 127–188.
14
in the understanding of the subject production of
the contemporary artist, and can be seen as the
crystallization of how the subject is recognized and
misrecognized in contemporary international art. It
can also be seen as a matrix for subjects to be seen as
international, generative, productive and subjective in
a more general, political sense. Surely, the production
of contemporary art cannot be viewed as unalienated
labor, but rather as precarious, as one of the harbingers
of precariousness as a condition of labor; indeed
even self-precaritization as the willed production
of subjectivity—stylish, international, and capitalist.
Moreover, as an apparatus, the international biennial is
indicative of how surplus is produced, or perhaps more
precisely, imagined to be produced: through creativity,
innovation, entertainment, tourism, speculation,
monopoly rents, and so on. It is also an inscription of
the subjects involved—concretely, artists, organizers
and audiences, and abstractly, creators, administrators
and consumers, into a relation of power and
knowledge. Summarizing Foucault on the apparatus,
Giorgio Agamben has described it as the “intersection”
between these very relations, and, furthermore as “the
network that is established between these elements”,
which sounds as accurate a structural description of
the international biennial as any.6 The biennial is thus
a mise-en-scene of contemporary subjectivity, with all
that this implies of recognition and misrecognition. It
is indicative of a certain state of things, of the state that
we are in, or, as it were, in-between.
If it is not the specificity of the subjects and
practices that are primary, but rather their ability to
circulate, then the artworld (as characterized by the
biennial) is a circuit that transposes and transforms
the subjects that are interpellated, where the subject
is simultaneously the representative of a culture, an
object of desirous projection of cultural value and
futurity, and the extortion of surplus value from labor
power. On the one hand, an international artist is so
because s/he circulates, but with an identity, with a
specificity which is what can be compared and thus
exchanged. S/he comes from a specific generation, a
specific place and medium-based practice, like many
others, and is included, initially, into the international
circulation of art discourse and commodities as a
representative. Perhaps s/he is even chosen by a
national arts agency as their representative in an
international show, in an international demonstration
6 Giorgio Agamben, What Is An Apparatus? (Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press), 3.
of identity and artistry. In the moment of circulation,
of inclusion into the international, however, the same
individual transcends his/her locality and specificity
and becomes, precisely, inter-national. That is,
above, and between nations in the sense of localism,
provinciality, second tier-ism and so on.
On the other hand, the (now-) international artist
is part of a global economic exchange of artists and
goods, and the source of the extraction of surplus
value, or, simply, income, that is not primarily his
or her own. The circulation of monies in art is not
only extracted from the sale and resale of the works
themselves, but from their production (assistants,
contractors and so on), and also from what can be
seen as a minor type of financialization: money
can be granted from nation states and agencies, as
well as from international and private foundations,
patrons and the like. In other words, the artist as
representative can not only be seen in terms of his
or her production and geopolitical background, but
also in terms of his or her circulation within global
capital and politics. If this is not a split identity, then
it is certainly a highly complex and multifaceted one,
which trades under the seemingly innocuous disguise
of “international” artist. Perhaps this is also what we
should understand as cultural exchange, and with
that, the notion of the international artist as a so
called hybrid identity (or “post-diasporiatic” identity, if
you must). Hybridity is seen here as bringing together
opposite forces, making them productive for capital,
for post-modern subjectivity to become productive
of symbolic and real capital, and to conjoining them
even whilst attempting to resist.
Whereas hybridity as an identitarian construct
has most often been celebrated in contemporary
art discourse—reveling in the beauty of diversity, as
well as in contemporary, urban entrepreneurialism,
we are here reminded of its dark side, as was already
present in Homi K. Bhabha’s theorization of the term
in the early 1990s. For Bhabha, hybridity was not
a solution to a problem that could merge different
cultures, but rather an effect of colonial power and
its interpellation of the (post-) colonial subject, which
resulted in a split sense of the self, what he termed a
“negative transparency”.7 It is thus not a celebratory
concept, as opposed to the way in which it is often
employed in biennial culture and major art events, but
rather, it is an ambivalent state of being in-between
7 Homi K. Bhabha, op.cit., 112.
powers of authority, the authenticity of authorship,
and the (im)possibility of cultural translation. As
noted in the epigraph, Bhabha highlights the “inter”,
as in international and interstice (what he calls the
in-between space), indicating a space between
categories rather than a place that can unite, mix
or blur categories and spaces. If this focus on the
splitting rather the merging implied by hybridity can
be recaptured, it is perhaps best done by abandoning
the metaphor of the hybrid itself, since it, as we know,
always runs the risk of becoming identitarian, as in
the trading of subjects as new commodities. Instead,
shall we replace it with the more obviously doubleedged notion of the hyphen? Instead of international,
we could begin to think of the inter-national, as in
that which circulates in the forms described above.
Hyphenation is thus invoked here, not to produce
a new entity or identity out of old categories, but
as a term that remains both old and new, as well as
in-between, since it brings together two words or
concepts, but without merging them into one. Rather,
it accentuates the split, and sometimes jarringly,
uncomfortably, and counter-intuitively brings together
two different designations. The hyphen can conjoin,
obviously, but can also bring into form dialectics or
antagonisms. It seems to presuppose fallibility, as
remarked by Judith Butler in her questioning of the
hyphen as employed in the term nation-state. As Butler
underlines, the state is always cobbled with another
word, such as in nation-state.8 Butler pertinently inquires
into the nature of this hyphen, whether it finesses
a relation, implies a continuation of some historical
hegemonic order, or whether it reveals a fundamental
fallibility of the relation between nation and state. She
suggests that a state is not only the nation-state and its
executive powers, but also an economic state, such as
our current crisis, or even a mental state (which may
or may not relate to the nation- or economic state
one finds oneself in). It is important to note that the
nation-state not only provides identity, but also denies
it: this subject and subjectivity, and not that one. It does
so through borders and legislation, through inclusion
and exclusion (just like the artworld, in fact). There is,
therefore, in the words of Butler “[…] a certain tension
produced between modes of being or mental states,
temporary or provisional constellations of mind […],
and juridical and military complexes that govern how
8 Judith Butler, op.cit.
15
Moreover, this notion of hyphenation strongly implies
interpellation: how the designations of any identity
are provided from outside the subject. You are born
as a citizen of this or that nation, or not—this is not a
matter of choice, creativity or will, but an interpellation
from state power, and indeed, from supra-national
power, which decides your status and belonging. It is,
of course, possible to be a member of a nation that
does not exist, that is virtual and trans-national, or,
poignantly, to be a member of a nation-state with which
one does not identify, and which one wants to revise,
revolutionize, destroy or simply leave. Hyphenation
in terms of designated and designating subjects thus
implies linguistics, jurisdictions, identities, and not
creativity and multicultural hybridity. Indeed, as the
chosen example of identification, representation and
interpellation, the international biennial confirms that
we are not witnessing a proliferation of multi-culture in
terms of difference and contestation, but rather what
we could name hybrid mono-culturalism. The subjects
represented (and which represent) may vary, and
indeed, must constantly change, while the apparatus
itself remains the same, and, in turn, solidifies and
fortifies. As it spreads geographically, the biennial form
becomes not only more repetitive and similar, but also
more hegemonic as an exhibition form and a method
of circulation. When talking about artistic identities and
representations of the artist in the globalized artworld,
we can thus also talk about the hyphen: the international, indicating that there is something added to
the national, and that much else can be added too, with
widespread consequences in terms of recognition and
misrecognition, funding and defunding, circulation and
exodus, artistic survival, and social death.
As mentioned, the figure of the contemporary artist
can here be viewed as a sign of political subjectivity
9 Judith Butler, op.cit., 4.
16
in general—not just in its optimistic forms, whether
in terms of emancipation or commodification,
depending on ideology, but also in terms of the
indignity of interpellation, of being designated, even
with the best of intentions. A wonderful illustration
of this can be found in a drawing by Adrian Tomine,
published in the New Yorker in 2007. Twelve frames
are depicted, each one with an individual placed at
a desk, filling out a piece of paper, presumably an
administrative form of some sort. They seem to be
of various ethnicities, but their facial expressions tell
us nothing about how they are filling in the blanks,
if it at all. Rather, the caption reads, beautifully,
None of the Above. This indicates a mulitiplicity of
choices, but that none of them apply, that the people
in the image are hyphenated to such a degree that
(self) designation in this form becomes impossible,
if obviously not irrelevant. They are made to fill
out the form, which is interpellated, and they may
have to tick the box of that which does not fit: the
unrepresentable. Might this, in the current global
political situation, makes them truly democratic?
In the Fabric of the Voice:
A Polyphonic Conversation
CONVERSATION
Stills from Katarina
Zdjelar, Stimme,
2013. Courtesy of
the artist.
Should we reject hyphenation, and no longer
let ourselves be identified as both this and that,
and as inter-national? As attractive as this nonidentitarian exodus might sound, it is hardly possible
if interpellation already hails us from outside, and
from the side of power. Rather, perhaps, we could
try to embrace hyphenation, and do so through its
additivity—adding so many possible and impossible
designations that the whole endeavor becomes
absurd and short-circuits the making of meaning.
Hundreds of categories could be hyphenated. Or we
could focus on the possible impossibility of joining
the two words on each side of the hyphen. Instead of
being inter-national, we would say: I am black-white,
young-old, abled-disabled, man-woman, gay-straight,
citizen-denizen, worker-employer, and the like. As
hyphenated subjects, we are not only split subjects
in a psychoanalytical sense, but also endlessly
identified, named and categorized, expanded and
compartmentalized. We are, in the words of Alexander
Düttmann, presupposed, whether this presupposition
in any way fits or not.10 There is a category for
everyone within the law, even if that category places
us outside the law, or in some uncertain in-between
state of exception.
10 Alexander Garcia Düttmann, op.cit.
Virginie Bobin with
Bouchra Ouizguen,
Blanca Calvo and Ion
Munduate, Katarina
Zdjelar, and Lawrence
Abu Hamdan
and where we may move, associate, work, and speak.”9
Hyphenation as identity thus implies an irresolvable
undecidability on the part of the subject, since the
terms, or states of being, that are being hyphenated are
unclear and in flux, and since, more importantly, that the
very decision of hyphenation, of inclusion and exclusion,
of identification or annihilation, happens elsewhere. It
is imposed and enforced from the outside. It is not the
result of a willful subject production of funky cultural
hybridity, as is so often clamored by the cultural industry
and the art system.
The following interview was conducted via email in French, Spanish
and English with choreographer and dancer Bouchra Ouizguen, artists
and choreographers Blanca Calvo and Ion Munduate, artist Katarina
Zdjelar and artist and researcher Lawrence Abu Hamdan. Numerous
conversations in Aubervilliers, Stockholm, Rotterdam, Amsterdam,
London, Berlin and Tangier have inspired and informed this discussion.
It brings together a collection of voices and stories that emanate from
diverse contexts and bodies, traveling through different mediums and
spaces (such as the stage, the radio, the film, the exhibition, the book,
the Internet), which compose a heterogeneous landscape for a common
interest in the agency of the voice, and in turn, in the capacity of voice
itself to act as an ongoing sort of laboratory.
The testimonies below more often than not expose a conflicted relation
between voice, the utterer and the uttered, where voice is furred with
eccentricities, interferences, leaps, and affects, thus voluntarily or
involuntarily defusing attempts of control. They actively shed doubt on
the alleged capacity of the voice to convey clear meanings and to assign
defined identities, recalling that, in the words of cultural theorist Steven
Connor, “the uploading of body into voice is never perfect.”1 In that sense,
they call for intensified attention, where sensing and critical hearing are
brought to play in a process of subjectivation that bounds the speaker
and the listener into a space that is both affective and political.
1 Steven Connor, “The Dumb Devil of Stammering”, in Resonant Bodies, Voices, Memories,
ed. Anke Bangma, Deirdre M. Donoghue, Lina Issa and Katarina Zdjelar (Rotterdam: Piet Zwart
Institute, 2008).
17
Virginie Bobin: Bouchra, your last dance piece, Ha!, composed in
collaboration with three “Aitas”,2 begins in pitch darkness. Slowly,
white moving shapes emerge from obscurity, accompanied by
rhythmic breaths and vocal sounds that progressively turn into series
of cries and shouts, while the lights go up and the bodies appear in a
form of trance.3 This first part seems to last for quite a long time, and
produces a very strong effect on the spectator, who is caught into a
sort of sonic hypnosis during which hearing overcomes other senses.
The repetition of cries, and the alteration of the dancers’ voices
provokes a form of disidentification, as if the voices had detached
themselves from the bodies and acquired their own life and volume,
or rather, as if they were a pure product of movement instead of a
thinking process aimed at generating language. How did you and
the dancers think of the role of the voice in Ha!, first as regards
choreography, and then as regards the representation of madness,
or again, finally, as regards the inadequacy to social norms that you
explore in the piece?
V.B.: Blanca, Ion: After two editorial, radio and performance projects
exploring the productive dislocation between body and voice in
performance, When The Body Disappears and A Disembodied
Voice, Towards Love, you are currently working on a third chapter
entitled Being / Translation. How do body and voice mutually
resonate with this idea of “being translation”, which I understand as a
continuous movement from the inside to the outside and vice-versa?
In this process, what happens to “the otherness of the voice” that you
have previously explored? 2 Traditional cabaret dancers and singers in Morocco.
Blanca Calvo and Ion Munduate: At the inception of this project, which
has kept us occupied for the past two years, we probably didn’t know
where we would end up. We were however certain that the voice would
be the vehicle to translate us throughout the journey. We use the term
“translate” because it was indeed our intuition that in the course of
translating the perception of performance to another medium, questions
would arise, some of which would be answered and others would still be
left unresolved. This is why we chose the radio—because, by means of
the microphone, it allowed us to create a sense of being, in the air.
The otherness of the voices explored has formed a tissue composed
of different layers of sedimentation, where all these voices come to
rest and are waiting to be reactivated possibly in a different way, or at
least that is what we expect. They are implicit as well in the statements
and essays by invited artists, as for example your text in Workbook 2.
Being/Translation, which is about to be published.4 You take us on an
intense and exciting tour of the works of several artists, films, and links
to webpages and thereby elicit a comprehensive means to understand
the voice and the dislocation between voice and body. Which is yet
another layer of sedimentation. Accordingly, for this Workbook 2 we are
publishing CDs with both radio emissions, which at the time were only
broadcast by a pirate radio station with a radius of 1.5 kilometres. The
CDs contain eighteen hours of live broadcast.
The choice to use both terms jointly Being/Translation is a logical
consequence of the other two titles that frame this project. Also, as you
mention in your question, it is not that we conceive voice and body as
being separate, but rather that we wanted to get rid of the image. We
needed to see the here and now from a point of “freedom” that we didn’t
have, so we thought of sidestepping the present. Execute a movement,
go from A to B. In fact we rather need to “dodge” the present and
become suspended in another time, another present.
We think of the term Being as linked to our interpretation of Gilles
Deleuze’s concept of “being and becoming”; in our case and from
the experience of the programs we have produced, this means a
3 A trailer announcing the piece at the 2013 Juli Dans Festival in Amsterdam is available here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7b2YEEg1HQ (Accessed online November 2013).
4 A draft for this text is accessible here: http://www.specialissue.eu/field-notes-fromdisembodied-voice-travels (Accessed online November 2013).
Bouchra Ouizguen: Voice is experienced, sensed as being, being there;
in movement.
The balancing of our heads are the voices that inhabit ourselves, soothe
us and overtake us. From this loss looms meaning, and movement.
Losing one’s body; losing one’s voice.
Abandon as madness. Ritual as support. Repetition, because everything
has been done.
It doesn’t matter. A form of depth emerges from lightness; a cry arises
from a nod. We don’t know who is who anymore, who directs who—we
don’t care! We are at heart.
They burn us.
V.B.: Later on in the play, the dancers start laughing inextinguishably,
almost monstrously. Their laugh is foreign to any sense of joy; it has
become a pure sound. Yet, as it is eructed by these women on stage,
while they perform movements that they had primarily observed on
men’s bodies (alcoholics, lunatics, beggars) in the streets of Morocco,
this laugh also carries provocation, insolence, or even forms of
resistance. The fabric of this laugh manufactures a form of hybridity
between an inside (the body, the stage) and an outside (the street);
between madness and its representation, between norms and their
construction, between genders. Your voices deceive conventions and
the spectators’s projections. Was this what you were seeking?
B.O.: YES.
We are multiple,
We are alcoholics,
We are the lunatic, the beggar.
Not a representation of them.
18
We are always strange, estranged from something, from ourselves…
We identify ourselves in each one.
We are in the process of becoming others, for other lives to come.
Deceiving our own conventions, constructions.
Granting ourselves time in order to loose it.
19
confirmation that we are not actually in the here and now, but that
we move along, we translate, we transfer, and we transport ourselves
continually. Deleuze begins his work The Logic of Sense by saying
that, “The here and now lies in the simultaneity of becoming, whose
characteristic it is to elude the present. Insofar as it eludes the present,
becoming does not tolerate the separation or distinction of before and
after, of past and future.”
Consequently, in regard to the intention of the term translation, the
idea is to activate a strategy, which within its own movement would
select the elements, in turn recomposing it, and thereby creating from
its very substance the embryo or the future base for work. Hence the
need to dislocate certain elements implicit in the development of any
performance: sound, voice, image and representation. It is and has been
the goal of this process to recognize and open up new workspaces in full
continuity with the interval that exists in the process of translation.
Indeed the development of the radio programs with performances,
conferences, concerts and workshops is based on the articulation
between inside and outside in the development of the Mugatxoan
project. In this case it has more to do with an order of things, breaking
with certain mechanisms and freeing the movements from their own
substance.
Stills from Katarina
Zdjelar, Stimme,
2013. Courtesy of
the artist.
20
V.B.: Katarina, your last video, Stimme, follows a voice coaching
session between a middle-aged woman and her younger patient.
Although breathing and vocal exercises inhabit the entire duration
of the work, the camera mainly focuses on and draws attention to
the choreography of the coach’s hands, and the pressures, pokes,
caresses they perform on fragments of the patient’s body: her
belly, her chest, her neck, her head. The video operates a troubling
dismemberment of the younger woman’s body, while these
seemingly autonomous hands labor it into the delivery of a more
performing voice. Can you talk about the specific gaze that the
camera frame, the close-ups and the editing produce on these bodies
at work, and can you tell us more about their relation to voice as
construction?
Katarina Zjdelar: The piece considers when our voice becomes our
personal property. Where does the voice begin and where does it end?
Who is speaking when we speak, and who is entitled to speak? For that I
have followed the sessions of voice modulation, during which the client is
promised to gain her natural voice, that is, a voice which is released of its
existing socio-cultural markers and constraints. The piece circles in the time
and space of the vocal attribution. Oscillating between voices and never
arriving at the desired destination, Stimme focuses on a liminal voice; a
voice between culture and nature, something in between the material and
corporeal act of producing voice, and the social process of receiving voice.
Camera and editing work capture this process by cutting through the reality
that enfolds in front of the camera, and by localizing the field of vision and
sonic experience. They focus on visualizing the crafting of voice, thus mainly
committing to the hand the work of the coach who manipulates the body
of her client as if it were a musical instrument. I use filming and editing as a
writing device and not as a representation.
The coaching hands firstly locate the voice in the body of her client, than
instruct it, lead it, hold it. The hand work of the coach is akin to that of a
conductor. They lead to as yet uninhibited zones of clients’s bodies, they
unblock pathways, they give push, then guide and bring the voice out.
Hands make the contact with the clients’s voices and give an access to the
unreachable interior. We follow the way voice inhabits the body, the way it
moves, awakens, twists parts of the body, and we hear the way the same
body lies in the voice. On instances, the coach’s hands do the work of her
clients’s bodies and therefore appear as an extension; a prosthesis. Each
body part has its own sound, which needs to be tuned. Thus hands become,
in certain instances, a hearing aid of the coach, like an extra pair of ears that
examine and adjust the sound of the voice. The camera is complicit to this
act of processing the voice, as it is predicated precisely through an interplay
between the client, the coach, the gaze of the camera and the sound. Yet,
the camera lens, the sound, and the editing are not simply there to produce
knowledge, nor are they there to serve as a commentary to an ideological
apparatus. They co-produce a form of thinking, which is both guided
by and which guides this tuning operation; it is both passive and active.
Sometimes I would like to think of the role of the camera as a sort of intern
in a physician’s practice—partly assisting and contributing to the activities,
partly observing and internalizing the skills, and yet always running the risk
of messing things up and therefore making apparent the prescribed relation
between the physician and the patient.
V.B. The coaching session that we are witnessing in Stimme aims at
helping women to recover their “natural”, “inner” voices, to tune into
them. According to some studies, women socially acquire a higherpitched voice than the one they originally have, thus inducing
positions of weakness and dependency towards men, who in contrast
are doted with a lower-pitched voice, whose registers are associated
with power and authority, notably in a professional context. “You
don’t speak with your voice”, says the coach several times. Does a
voice belong to us? Is there such thing as an original, natural voice,
hidden under the layers of culture and social construct?
21
K.Z.: What we witness in Stimme is the manufacturing of natural voice, the
hard labour of producing natural sound. A contradiction in terms. We are
situated in the middle of the power struggle fought on the battleground of
language and voice, with all of its entrenched and enfolding history. Prior
to the triumph of metaphysics, voice was in direct relation with thought,
while thought was a corporeal affair, situated in the respiratory organs and
connected with alimentation. Thinking was done with the lungs and not
the brain. Therefore it was not surprising that the thinness of the voice
was related to the lack of lungs and consequently lack of contemplative
competence. Aristotle used to use voice pitch as a tool to differentiate
men from the elderly, castrato, children and women. He related authority
with low-pitched voices and therefore (functional) testicles and removed
the power from all other members of society, justifying it with the high
pitch of their voice, which served as an evidence of their inferiority. Is it
then safe to assume that here, thinking happens in the testicles and that by
lowering the pitch of one’s voice, one may also develop a degree of virility?
The first publicly known example of voice modulation is Margaret
Thatcher, who recognized the need to lower the pitch of her voice to
gain authority and to sustain political power. The current application of
this method is mainly reserved for women who aim at leading (business)
positions, promising them social and economic mobility. It has been said
that once one begins to speak with one’s own voice, the entire body
resonates. A particular kind of presence is roused through the voice, and
a sense of totality and completion is achieved. It is difficult to tell if there
is a voice without all its historical, cultural and social underpinnings,
mostly because its destination is speech. But if there is such a voice, can
we actually do things with it? Is that voice operational? And what remains
when all markers are removed? Is there voice beyond representation and
can voice be heard without its markers?
V.B.: Lawrence, last May at the Whitechapel in London, you talked
about a new policy established in 2001 in the United Kingdom to test
the accent of undocumented asylum seekers in order to verify that
they actually come from that places that they affirm they do. You
then told the story of a man who was born in Jenin, Palestine, before
being displaced through several countries and ending in London
where he acquired a strong local accent. How do these two stories
relate to your exploration of voice as a bearer of national identity,
legal borders and the politics of mobility? Furthermore, can this
inscription be undermined by what Mladen Dolar calls “the spectral
autonomy of the voice, this zone of indeterminacy… a principle of
division... at the intersection between the inner and the outer,”5 the
body of the speaker and the world around him? 5 Mladen Dolar, “What’s In a Voice?” in Resonant Bodies, Voices, Memories, ed. Anke Bangma,
Deirdre M. Donoghue, Lina Issa and Katarina Zdjelar (Rotterdam: Piet Zwart Institute, 2008).
22
Stills from Katarina
Zdjelar, Stimme,
2013. Courtesy of
the artist.
Lawrence Abu Hamdan: The story of the accent analysis of asylum
seekers can be seen very much as a technical and legal instantiation
of the Dolar’s psychoanalytical reading of the division of the voice.
Forensic linguist Helen Fraser says that we “need to clearly separate
linguistic data from potentially biasing background [information] on the
applicant’s ‘story.’”6 Clearly in this expression of objectivity we see how
linguists want to auscultate the accent and go beyond the potentially
traumatic and pathetic “story” of a person’s flight; preferring to find in
their speech another type of testimony. However, my argument is that
for adept forensic listeners, this accent object (linguistic data) should
also be heard as a ‘story’ in itself, one that could reveal an account that
is just as traumatic. In other words—for listeners who are not content
with drawing a border around a single phonetic article, the accent
should be understood as a biography of migration; as an irregular and
itinerant concoction of contagiously accumulated voices, rather than
an immediately distinguishable sound that avows its unshakable roots
neatly within the confines of a nation state. In the clear distinction
between biographical data and linguistic data, we see how this policy is
used as a practice that does not seek to excavate the life of an accent,
but merely revives the virtual impossibility of locating its place of birth. Finally, the amplification of these paralinguistic elements of testimony
produces a division of the voice, which in turn establishes two witnesses
within one voice. One witness speaks on behalf of language and the
other witness speaks on behalf of what Dolar would call phone (speechsound). Often the testimony provided by each of these two witnesses
is corroborated by the other, but the two can also betray themselves
in the same gesture. An internal betrayal between language and body;
between subject and object; fiction and fact; truth and lie. This betrayal
exists in a single human utterance in which the self gives itself away. This
splitting of the voice into two selves, or into two witnesses, can also be
seen as an extension of the well-established legal principle of Testis unis,
testis nullus, which translates to “one witness, no witness”, and which
means that the testimony provided by any one person in court is to be
disregarded unless corroborated by the testimony of at least one other
individual. The law, it seems, requires a certain doubling of testimony,
and this doubling extends even as
far as the singular witness. In the
eyes of the law, the testimony of
the single witness—be it that of the
suspect, or of the survivor—has to
be split into language and its bodily
conduit, for it to be considered
testimony at all. 6 Helen Fraser. 2011. “The role of linguistics and native speakers in language analysis for the
determination of speaker origin. A response to Tina Cambier-Langeveld,” The International
Journal of Speech, Language and the Law 18 (1), 121–130.
23
VOICE MAPPING
C
VOICE MAPPING
CONFLICTED PHONEMES
VOICE MAPPING
1
12
[SOM]
CONFLICTED PHONEMES
VOICE MAPPING
2
VOICE : ABDIRAHMAN
2
1
3
[YMM]
[SOM]
[SOM-BEN]
[YMM]
11
C
VOICE : ABDI
8
[ENG]
[SOM-BEN]
[SOM]
[SOM]
[SOM]
[SOM-BEN]
[YMM]
[ENG]
[DUT]
4
[ENG]
[YMM]
[SOM]
[ARA]
10
[YMM]
[DUT]
[AMH]
[SOM]
[SOM-BEN]
[YMM]
8
– ABDI
IN
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
SOMALIA:
MOTHER
FATHER
ENGLISH TEACHER
SOMALI & ARABIC TEACHER
FELLOW PUPIL FROM
STH SOMALIA
FELLOW PUPIL FROM COASTAL
SOMALIA
FELLOW PUPIL FROM
NTH SOMALIA
SOMALI LIVING IN
ETHIOPIA
7
[ENG]
[DUT]
[SOM]
– PERSON SPEAKS WITH
IN THE NETHERLANDS:
9 DUTCH (ARRIVAL IN NL)
10 DUTCH (CURRENTLY)
REFUGEES/ASYLUM SEEKERS:
11 AFGHANS
IRANIANS
KENYANS
KURDS
RUSSIANS
UGANDANS
12 SOMALI
[SOM]
[YMM]
6
[DUT]
7
6
– ABDIRAHMAN
[ENG]
5
– PERSON SPEAKS WITH
[SOM]
STANDARD SOMALI
[SOM]
STANDARD SOMALI
[SOM–BEN]
BENAADIR (SOMALIA)
[SOM–BEN]
BENAADIR (SOMALIA)
[YMM]
MAAY (SOMALIA)
[YMM]
MAAY (SOMALIA)
[ARA]
ARABIC
[ENG]
ENGLISH
[ENG]
ENGLISH
[DUT]
DUTCH
[DUT]
DUTCH
[AMH]
AMHARIC (ETHIOPIA)
Part C (Voice Mapping) of CONFLICTED PHONEMES
Lawrence Abu Hamdan & Janna Ullrich
Utrecht, 2012
Commissioned by Casco – Office for Art, Design and Theory
in collaboration with Stichting LOS
IN
1
2
3
4
SOMALIA:
MOTHER
FATHER
SOMALI & ENGLISH TEACHER
FELLOW PUPIL FROM
NTH SOMALIA
IN THE NETHERLANDS:
5 DUTCH (ARRIVAL IN NL)
6 DUTCH (CURRENTLY)
REFUGEES/ASYLUM SEEKERS:
7 EGYPTIANS
IRAQI
LIBYANS
SYRIANS
TUNISIANS
8 SOMALI
Part C (Voice Mapping) of CONFLICTED PHONEMES
Lawrence Abu Hamdan & Janna Ullrich
Utrecht, 2012
Commissioned by Casco – Office for Art, Design and Theory
in collaboration with Stichting LOS
V.B.: Indeed it does. Yet on the other hand, one could argue that the
intrinsic unreliability of the voice opens up a space of resistance. In
a society of control where movement is monitored by standardized
protocols and technological tools with questionable scientific value,
one’s voice can turn into a deadly enemy. One could be prevented
from obtaining asylum, for instance. This is partly due to our
growing reliance on prosthesis to listen: computers, recorders, and
lie detectors, which perform a process of hearing whereby human
interpretation cedes its power to the oppressive infallibility of
machines. Might we close this discussion on the political agency of
voice by reclaiming the political agency of listening?
L.A.H.: My project is titled Aural Contract, for exactly the reasons you
suggest. The project intends to produce a body of material that allows
us to move away from the predominant political rhetoric of “giving
voice” and “speaking out” in favor of listening and the political agency
of audition. To shift from the oral contract to an aural one, which is
to take more seriously our political participation and the relationships
between listening subjects—as opposed to speaking subjects. My work
tries to amplify the proclamation that we now live in an era in which
the conditions of testimony have insidiously shifted; one in which
the diminishing agency of words is being drowned out by the law’s
amplification of accents, inflections, reflections, impediments and
prosody. This shift in listening shows an emerging phrenology of the
24
4
[SOM-BEN]
[YMM]
[ENG]
9
5
3
Lawrence
Abu Hamdan,
Conflicted
Phonemes, 2012.
Graphic design:
Janna Ulrich,
courtesy of the
Lawrence Abu
Hamdan and
Galeri Non.
voice—yet we must shift with it by extending the idea of “free speech” to
encompass the sonic quality of speech itself. Now it seems that the battle
for free speech is no longer about fighting to speak freely but about
fighting for the control over the very conditions through which we are
being heard.
To find ways in which we can fight for these conditions and thereby
reclaim the political agency of listening, we need not look further than
forensic listening itself. The political agency of forensic listening is at
the moment occupied by regimes of control. Yet if we occupy these
techniques and learn from them we can possibly reclaim their radicality.
During my 2010 interview with the forensic linguist Peter French, he
admitted that “Last week, a colleague and I spent three working days
listening to one word from a police interview tape.” Statements like this
were exemplary of French’s radical approach to both listening and the
theoretical paradigms that surround sound production. Unlike many
sound theorists who focus on sound’s ephemeral and immaterial
qualities, French’s approach was markedly material.
The dominant contemporary school of audio culture is heavily
influenced by Don Ihde’s 1976 text, Listening and Voice: A
Phenomenology of Sound, which puts forward the impossibility of
fundamentally grasping sound. The continuing prevalence of this school
of thought is further demonstrated in Frances Dyson’s 2009 book,
Sounding New Media, who states in her introduction: “As Don Ihde and
Christian Metz pointed out decades ago, ‘‘a’ sound is always multiple,
always heterogeneous, being neither visible or tangible; sound is never
quite an object, never a full guarantor of knowledge.’”7 Yet French’s
formulation renders sound dissectible, replicable, physical and corporeal
in its object quality. The intensity at which French listens is actually
the basis that enables his radical approach to sound. The audio object
reveals a large amount of information about its production and its form:
the space in which it was recorded, the machine that recorded it, and the
ability to pinpoint an accent to a specific location—as well as the ability
to glean the age, health and ethnicity of a voice. Occupying a radical and affective means of listening would be, for me,
a step towards reclaiming the political agency of listening. Yet as with
all cases of legal, social and ethnic profiling, French walks a thin ethical
line. Ironically what allows him to maintain his credibility in a time
were law enforcement increasingly reaches out to forensic linguistics
in odious forms of surveillance and profiling that target huge swathes
of the population, is his ability to listen thoroughly. French understands
the limits of what can be detected through the voice, and in doing so
does not exploit the law’s increasing demands for the empty promises
of forensic science, which are so often accompanied by ignorance of
its practical capacities. Today, forensic listening is applied on such a
scale that law enforcement agencies and the security services cannot
often afford the expert listening services of people like Dr. French.
Hence, frighteningly, we are entering a time where there is both an
excessive demand for the governance of the voice, and yet our means
of producing the model of governance necessary is often either
7 Frances Dyson, Sounding New Media: Immersion and Embodiment in the Arts and Culture
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009), 4–5.
25
VOICE MAPPING
IN
P IN
T OF
LOWER
SOMALIA.
A
VOICE MAPPING
ORIGIN ACCORDING TO THE
APPLICANT:
CONFLICTED PHONEMES
LANGUAGE ANALYSIS
APPLICANT : ABDI
THE APPLICANT WAS BORN IN
MOGADISHU BUT HE GREW UP IN
BILIL QOQUAANI, DISTRICT OF
AFMADOW, JUBADA HOOSE (LOWER
JUBA REGION), IN SOUTH SOMALIA.
A
CONFLICTED PHONEMES
LANGUAGE ANALYSIS
APPLICANT : ABDIRAHMAN
ILMAHA
MAY
ISKUUL
MAAHAN
FIIRI
CANJEERO
BOOS
‘children’
‘no’
‘school’
‘is that right?’
'look at'
‘flat’
‘old’
Origin according to the applicant:
The applicant was raised in Kismayo in South Somalia which is bordering on Kenya.
Origin according to the applicant: The applicant claims that he was born in Mundul Baraawe,
South Somalia; he says he moved to Warsheikh at age six. He says he also returned to Mundul
Baraawe a second time and stayed there until he moved again to Warsheikh.
#1
#1
#2
Origin according to the expert:
Origin according to the expert:
Origin according to the contra-expert:
The applicant can be traced to the speech community
in North Somalia or Djibouti.
The applicant is definitely not traceable to the
speech community of South Somalia.
Because all the relevant dialect features are
South, it is most likely that the applicant was
socialized in South Somalia.
Result of language analysis:
Result of language analysis in 2008:
Result of language analysis in 2009:
NEGATIVE
NEGATIVE
POSITIVE
inadequate, or bogus, or both. In other words, we have now entered a
sorry phase where bad listening (and therefore bad evidence) floods the
forum.
The lie detector you mention in your question, which is based on
measuring the tensions of the vocal chords as made audible by the
subjects’s voices, is an example of this poor-quality mechanical listening
style at work today. In an interview situation, the lie detector’s visual
interface flashes its verdicts as the interviewee speaks. This machine
then promises to listen on behalf of its operator as it reduces or forces
into question their interpretative capacities / intuitions. In this sense,
the technology does not only mute the words of the speaker, but also
deafens the listener. By assuming an increasing proliferation of these
emergent and mutated strands of forensic listening, we are forced to
ask more general questions about the role of the voice as a central legal
infrastructure. Will our hearings still be fair and just when nobody is
listening? Translation from French: Virginie Bobin
B
STATUS
10 / 2012
REJECTED
Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Conflicted
B
STATUS
10 / 2012
Translation from Spanish: Anke van Wijck
WAITING
“Since 2001, immigration authorities around the world
Phonemes, 2012. Graphic design: Janna
have been using accent and language tests to determine
Ulrich, courtesy of the Lawrence Abu
the validity of asylum claims made by thousands of people
Hamdan and Galeri Non.
without identity documents in Australia, Belgium, Germany,
the Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden, Switzerland and the
United Kingdom. In most circumstances a private Swedish
company is contracted and during a phone interview between
the company and the asylum seeker the claimant’s voice is
analyzed to assess whether the voice and accent correlate with
the claim of national origin. On the 29th and 30st of September
2012, a group consisting of linguists, graphic designer Janna
Ullrich, researchers, activists, refugee and art organizations and
a core group of Somali asylum seekers, who had each been
rejected by the Dutch immigration authorities because of the
analysis of their language/dialect or accent, met to discuss the
controversial use of language analysis to determine the origin
of asylum seekers.”
The project was commissioned by Casco – Office for Art,
Design and Theory in collaboration with Stichting LOS.
26
27
A Conversation
Around Afro-Brazil
CONVERSATION
produced artworks around Afro-Brazil. Araújo’s deep knowledge and
experience with our African histories would perhaps not have been so
forceful if it weren’t for his vociferous and at times polemic character.
A maverick, he was director of Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo for
ten years, rescuing it from a deplorable state, guiding it through an
award-winning renovation made by Paulo Mendes da Rocha (who won
the Pritzker and the Mies thereafter), and pushing it to become what is
today the country’s most successful museum. Araújo’s groundbreaking
exhibitions A Mão Afro Brasileira (The Afro-Brazilian Hand, Museu de
Arte Moderna de São Paulo, 1987) and Negro de Corpo e Alma (Black in
Body and Soul, Mostra do Redescobrimento, 2000) gathered a colossal
amount of material, much of
which has been extended or has
found its way into the collections
of Museu Afro Brasil, in São Paulo.
The museum is a dense fabric
woven with loaded threads of
material culture of diverse sorts:
from modern to contemporary
art, from colonial to nineteenth
century objects, Brazilian, African
or foreign, photographs and
documents, costumes and jewelry,
religious objects of different
beliefs, all abundantly exhibited
and accompanied by explanatory
and contextual texts. None of this
would be there if were not for
Araújo.
São Paulo, August 16th, 2013
Adriano Pedrosa
Talks to
Emanoel Araújo
Introduction
Adriano Pedrosa
The numbers alone are undeniable: with sixty percent of its
population comprised of blacks and pardos, Brazil is the second most
populous African country, after Nigeria. According to the most updated
research on slavevoyages.org, a total of 3,800,000 Africans were brought
to Brazil, which is more than ten times the number of arrivals to the
United States (350,000), and which is even greater than the number
of Portuguese who set foot in the country to colonize it (2,256,000,
according to IBGE, Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística). Brazil
became home to about forty percent of the Africans in almost four
centuries of slave trade to the Americas, the largest dislocation of people
in the modern era. With a different type of colonization than the United
States, where the colonizer would move with his family to occupy the
territory and there was little mixed breeding, Brazil’s male Portuguese
colonizer often came on his own, and thus our mestizo histories began
in the sixteenth century, with the blending of African, Amerindian and
European ethnic groups.
The presence of Africa in popular Brazilian culture is immense if
not dominating, and all things typically Brazilian have deep African
roots: from carnival to samba, from candomblé (Afro-Brazilian religion)
to feijoada (the national dish), from capoeira to football (which was
imported by whites but only became masterfully Brazilian when blacks
were allowed to play it), from the figure of the Baiana to Iemanjá.
Underlying the powerful, sprawling and polyphonic African presence
lies what is arguably the most important process in Brazilian history—
slavery (Brazil was the last country to abolish it in the Americas, in 1888).
Yet such profound, long lasting histories cannot veil the prejudices of
color that still pervade much of Brazil, not so much through a loud,
vocal racism, but through a silent one—one that ignores, forgets, puts
aside and silences more than outspokenly rejects, refuses or repudiates.
Again the numbers are undeniable, and as criminality, violence, poverty,
exclusion and invisibility in the media and in government increase, our
mestizo skin darkens.
In this context, the professional trajectory of artist, curator and
museum director Emanoel Araújo is a pioneering and solitary one. For
more than four decades, Araújo, who was born in 1940 in Santo Amaro
da Purificação in the northeastern state of Bahia, near Salvador, the
capital of Afro-Brazil, has researched, written, collected, exhibited and
28
FESTAC 77, 1977.
Photo: Adriano
Pedrosa, courtesy
Adriano Pedrosa: Tell us how your experience and practice as an
artist brought you to curating exhibitions, collections and museums.
of Emanoel Araújo.
Emanoel Araújo: I first worked at the Museu Regional de Feira de
Santana (Regional Museum of Feira de Santana) in Bahia, created
by the Brazilian media mogul, Assis Chateaubriand (1892–1968) as
part of his regional museum project, which opened in 1967. The
museum was mounted by Chateaubriand’s media conglomerate,
Diários Associados. It held the “leather civilisation”1 artefacts from
Feira de Santana, which is the gateway to the hinterland. There
was also a collection of Brazilian art, assembled by Odorico Tavares
(1912–1980), who was the director of Diários Associados in Bahia, as
well as by Chateaubriand himself, through his friendship with artists
such as Djanira (1914–1979) and Emiliano Di Cavalcanti (1897–1976).
I was setting the museum up, working on the museography with the
architects, whilst simultaneously working as an artist.
1 Translator’s note: “Leather civilization” refers to the leather clothing worn by Brazilian
cowboys in the northeastern hinterland, and to hides and tanning in general, which were an
integral part of the cattle herding economy and culture.
29
A.P.: Tell us about the project at the MAM-SP, and about some of
your first trips to Africa.
A.P.: What is your educational background?
E.A.: I studied Fine Art at the Federal University at Bahia in Salvador,
the state capital. But I didn’t finish my degree because I started
working professionally. In 1965 I exhibited at the Bonino Gallery in Rio
de Janeiro and the Astreia Gallery in São Paulo, which were the most
important galleries in Brazil at the time. In 1963, I worked with Lina
Bo, the Italian-born Brazilian modernist architect, on the Civilização
do Nordeste (Civilization of the Northeast) exhibition at the Museu de
Arte Moderna of Bahia (MAM-BA). In 1972, I went to the United States
at the invitation of the US State Department, and visited art museums
from coast to coast—American, Chinese, European and African
American art—and I had the good fortune to meet curators who
showed me the museums and their storage spaces.
E.A.: The project began in
Senegal. The first time I went
to Africa was in 1976, with the
art critic and historian from
Pernambuco, Brazil, Roberto
Pontual (1939–1992), as part of
the Black Arts Festival in Nigeria.
Then at the Second FESTAC
(World Black and African Festival
of Arts and Culture) in Lagos, in
1977, I showed some enormous
reliefs in an exhibition organised
by Clarival Prado Valadares, the
Bahian art critic (1918–1983). It
was pandemonium getting them
there. Pontual wrote an essay
about them, “A raiz localizadora”
(“The Localising Root”)2—it was
under those circumstances that
I met a Brazilian called Mister da
Silva, who lived there.
A.P.: Were you invited there as an artist or as a museum
professional?
E.A.: As an artist. There were no museum professionals in Brazil
then. In 1981 I was appointed director of the Museu de Arte da Bahia
(Bahia Museum of Art, MAB), in Salvador, where I stayed until 1983.
A.P.: Is that how your curating career got started?
E.A.: Yes. I was also involved in remodelling and transforming the
museum, because that was one of the conditions I’d set with the
then-Governor of Bahia, Antônio Carlos Magalhães (1927–2007) for
returning to Bahia from São Paulo. It was hard, but I formed a team to
restore paintings, porcelain and furnishings, and created a museum
in the current building in Vitória Palace, based on the perspective of
design and decorative art. It was an eclectic museum—with paintings,
porcelain, furnishings, religious images, jewellery—like the museums
found in several Brazilian states, such as Bahia, Pernambuco, and
Ceará. The remodelling process took a year, and when it was finished,
I left. During that period, I organised some major exhibitions: the
400th anniversary of the Benedictine Monastery, the Bahia School of
Painting, and in 1982, the África Bahia África exhibition.
A.P.: What was that exhibition like?
E.A.: I included performances in the opening programme, such
as Filhos de Gandhy, the biggest afoxé (street Candomblé group) in
Bahia’s Carnival, and an Afro-Brazilian dance group. Fifteen hundred
people were at the opening, viewing photographs by the FrancoBrazilian photographer and ethnologist, Pierre Verger (1902–1996)
and items from Candomblé among others. It was only later, in 1987,
that I developed the theme in the A Mão Afro Brasileira, Significado
da Contribuição Artística e Histórica (The Afro-Brazilian Hand: The
Significance of its Artistic and Historic Contribution) at the Museu de
Arte Moderna of São Paulo (MAM-SP), along with its director, Aparício
Basílio da Silva (1936–1992).
30
A.P.: A descendant of
Brazilians, of the formerly
enslaved people who returned
from Nigeria in the nineteenth
century?
Negro de Corpo
e Alma (Black in
Body and Soul),
2000. Photo:
Adriano Pedrosa,
courtesy of Emanoel Araújo.
E.A.: That’s right. But he didn’t speak Portuguese and he didn’t
know anything about Brazil. For him, Brazil was an abstraction. He
owned a travel agency, Da Silva Travel. We became friends and I
arranged a trip to Osogbo, the land of Osun, with a group—the Bahian
writer Gumercindo da Rocha Dorea, Roberto Pontual, and Cleusa (d.
1997, later Iyalorisa of Gantois), the daughter of Menininha do Gantois,
one of Brazil’s most famous Iyalorisa and an Omolosun (Maria
Escolástica da Conceição Nazaré, 1894–1986). We went to see the
Osun River in Osogbo, travelling through Ife and Ibadan, and there I
had the great surprise of meeting Susanne Wenger (1915–2009).
A.P.: Yes, the Austrian artist. I saw her work recently in the
catalogue for The Short Century by Okwui Enwezor.3 Was she an
interesting person?
E.A.: Extremely. I wrote an article about that trip. In the middle
2 Roberto Pontual, “A raiz localizadora” (“The Localising Root”), in Izabela Pucu, Jacquelina
Medeiros, and Roberto Pontual, Obra crítica (Rio de Janeiro: Azougue, 2013).
3 Okwui Enwezor, ed. The Short Century: Independence and Liberation Movements in Africa
1945–1994 (Munich: Prestel, 2001).
31
of the forest, some large terracotta sculptures came into view. She
produced a highly European version of the cult of Osun. They were
large monuments, five to six meters high, completely surrealist.
A.P.: Did you go there with the expectation of reconnecting with
Africa?
E.A.: No. In fact, I got into an argument with Gilberto Gil, the Bahian
singer / songwriter and former Minister of Culture of Brazil, who was
there with Caetano Veloso, another Bahian singer / songwriter. He
asked me what I was doing in Africa. I said: “I’ve come to see Africa.”
And he said, “I’ve come to find my roots.” So then I replied, “You’re
wrong, your roots are in Bahia, not here.” But what I meant to say was
that Bahia was closest. We didn’t know anything about Africa, just as
the Africans didn’t know anything about us. Take the travel agent Da
Silva, who didn’t have the faintest idea of what Brazil was about. He
knew about his ancestry, and that was it.
A.P.: Had you visited Europe by that time?
E.A.: Yes. In 1972 I went to Italy and Austria, and then I went to the
United States and England. Although I was a son of Santo Amaro da
Purificação, a town of sugar plantations where there had been many
African slaves, my idea of Africa was of a very remote thing. I returned
there in 1987, sent to a conference in Dakar by the Brazilian President
José Sarney. It was there that the idea of A Mão Afro Brasileira was
born. Whilst visiting the Island of Gorée, the Institut Fondamental
d’Afrique Noire Museum (IFAN), a chaperone from a school saw us
and told the students, “Look, they are our cousins from the other side
of the Atlantic.”
(a sculptor from Minas Gerais, 1745–1813), Aleijadinho (Antônio
Francisco Lisboa, a sculptor from Minas Gerais, 1730 or 1738–1814),
Francisco de Paula Brito (a writer from Rio de Janeiro, 1809–1861),
and José Teófilo de Jesus (a painter from Bahia, 1758–1847). The arts
in eighteenth-century Brazil were completely Black because Black
people created them, although the standard is European, Portuguese.
There was also Thebas (Joaquim Pinto de Oliveira, 1733–?), for
example, who was a slave and then became a master builder here in
São Paulo, who built the Sé cathedral.
A.P.: What got you interested in this subject?
E.A.: I had studied Manuel Querino, the Bahian art historian,
ethnographer, and Black vindicationist (1851–1923), who was a
pioneer when it came to Black and Bahian artists. He wrote about
religious art, food, and Africans as colonisers. Another important
scholar on the subject was Marieta Alves, one of the few historians
who provided information about the person’s background and colour.
Although I refused to mention skin colour, I still think about it as
the basis and starting point. When I curated the exhibition on the
Timóteo brothers, for example, that was what interested me.4 That,
and the discovery of these extraordinary nineteenth-century painters
from Rio de Janeiro, Estevão Silva (1844–1891), Antônio Rafael Pinto
Bandeira (1863–1896), and Firmino Monteiro (1855–1888).
A.P.: Then there is the issue of the pardo—the Brazilian term for
“mixed-race” or “brown”, used in the census, which can refer to
African or Amerindian ancestry. If there is something African about
every mixed-race or pardo person, then they also have an African
hand. But tell me, if all Brazilians are mixed-race, could the museum
also be a Museu do Brasil?
A.P.: What was the research for that exhibition like?
E.A.: It was all done in six months. It was insane.
A.P.: But there was a vast amount of material; it must have required
a great deal of research, a lot of time.
E.A.: Six months. Luckily there were things I already knew about,
and had kept, collected. The research for África Bahia África was also
very helpful to me.
A.P.: The book is impressive—a truly pioneering study. I was
looking at the sections you established in it: “Baroque and Rococo,”
“Nineteenth Century,” “African Heritage in Popular Art,” “Modern and
Contemporary Art,” and then “Multiple Contributions,” which are
music, literature, cuisine.
E.A.: I started out with the Baroque because that is the period
with the greatest emphasis on that issue, involving Mestre Valentim
32
E.A.: It is indeed called the Museu Afro Brasil. It isn’t the Museu Afro
Brasileiro (Afro-Brazilian Museum), because I created the concept
so we could discuss African, mestizo, Brazilian issues, including
other peoples who are also Brazilian—people of Italian and Japanese
descent. Sometimes people call it the Museu Afro Brasileiro, but
that changes the concept completely, because this is not a ghetto
museum.
A.P.: What about Negro de Corpo e Alma (Black in Body and Soul,
which was one of the twelve exhibitions in the Brasil 500 anos: Mostra
do redescobrimento (Brazil 500 years: Rediscovery Exhibit) in 2000,
and whose catalogue is the largest?
E.A.: I wanted to take a look at the imagery of Johann Moritz
Rugendas (1802–1858), of Jean-Baptiste Debret (1758–1848), and
others, to include it in the process. Lasar Segall (1891–1957), José
Pancetti (1902–1958), and Cândido Portinari (1903–1962) were also
4 Artur Timóteo da Costa (1882–1922) and João Timóteo da Costa (1879–1932), both
painters from Rio de Janeiro.
33
included. Then I organised an exhibition at the Museu Afro Brasil in
2007 called Imagens Inocentes e Perversas (“Innocent and Perverse
Images”), which is about the type of portrayal that reinforces
prejudice. A mão afro brasileira is the exhibition that includes the
imagery that is not perverse but portrays Black people, and shows
Black people portraying themselves. These are intersecting points
that create new fields of study.
A.P.: Alberto da Costa e Silva, the Brazilian diplomat and scholar of
African history, writes in Um rio chamado Atlântico (A River Called
the Atlantic, 2003), that something of the slave has remained in all
of us Brazilians; a comment that the anthropologist Darcy Ribeiro
(1922–1997) has also made to some extent, in his 1995 book, O povo
brasileiro, a formação e o sentido do Brasil (The Brazilian People: The
Formation and Direction of Brazil).
Os Herdeiros da
Noite: Fragmentos
Do Imaginário
Negro (Fragments
of the Black
E.A.: Costa e Silva would like that to be so, but it is not true. Or
I should say, I think it is true, but people won’t admit it. Otherwise
Brazil wouldn’t be the prejudiced country that it is. When you watch
Brazilian TV, it looks like we’re in Sweden, with no Black people. The
main television network in Brazil, Rede Globo, only puts Blacks in the
worst roles, and actors accept that because they have no alternative.
Imaginary), 1995.
Photo: Adriano
Pedrosa, courtesy
A.P.: Do you think that is changing? Isn’t the Museu Afro playing a
role in that regard?
of Emanoel Araújo.
E.A.: No. The museum is just
nine years old, and Brazil moves
very slowly. The Brazilian art
world is prejudiced. When I
was appointed director of the
Pinacoteca do Estado de São
Paulo in 1992, people said, “What,
a Black, a Bahian?” And I’d say,
“Not just Black but homosexual,
too.”
A.P.: But today everyone
knows that Paulo Mendes
da Rocha’s remodelling of
Pinacoteca is a turning point in
the museum’s history. Don’t you
think things have improved in
the last thirty to forty years?
E.A.: They’re worse. There is
still a great deal of prejudice, but
it is a silent thing. Brazil is silent.
It’s perverse. For Brazil, Africa
does not exist.
34
A.P.: But the fact that this museum exists is important. Even if it is
just nine years old.
E.A.: When I arrived at the Pinacoteca in 1992, I started out my
administration with a project to remodel the museum, making the
São Paulo public aware that the museum was in a disgraceful state.
For me, this museum is an investment in the future, a tribute to my
past.
A.P.: To the Africa that is within us! Did you organise Afro-Brazilian
exhibitions at the Pinacoteca?
E.A.: In 1993 I organised Vozes da diáspora (Voices of the Diaspora),
and then in 1994, Herdeiros da noite: Fragmentos do imaginário
negro (Heirs of the Night: Fragments of the Black Imaginary), and in
2001 a retrospective of Rubem Valentim (1922–1991), called O artista
da luz (The Artist of Light), curated by Bené Fonteles. I also brought
works by Black artists into the collection, and acquired works Hélio
Oiticica and Willys de Castro and expanded the museum’s sculpture
collection.
A.P.: What was it like to create the Museu Afro Brasil in 2003,
occupying this large building in Ibirapuera Park in São Paulo?
E.A.: Marta Suplicy, who was the mayor of São Paulo from 2001–
2005, and who is currently the Minister of Culture, had thought about
setting up an Afro-Brazilian museum but she didn’t know how to get
started or with which collection. The secretary of culture asked me
if I would put my collection on loan. So then a group was formed to
develop that concept; they debated the museum—anthropologists,
sociologists, and I don’t know what else. I said, I’m not falling into
your trap. I applied the idea of the Afro-Brazilian hand.
A.P.: There are Amerindian objects here as well.
E.A.: It is a matter of indigenous art, because the Africans always
saw the Amerindians as the gods of the land. So much so that every
Candomblé temple in Bahia has its Caboclo.5 It is the Caboclos that
make the orixás (the Afro-Brazilian divinities) of that land, it is the
Caboclo that gives them significance. Almost every Candomblé
temple—though Ilê Axé Opo Afonjá is a notable exception—every
mãe de santo, the high priestess, worships the Caboclos, which is a
way of honouring that heritage. That is why, here at the Museu Afro,
our exhibition begins with the Caboclo, with the Amerindian. That
history is very complex, but it is also very clear: it is possible to read it,
but you must want to do so.
A.P.: Do you think Brazil is a Western country?
5 Amerindian divinity, but also the word for a person of mixed Amerindian and European
descent.
35
E.A.: Yes and no. There is so much here that has yet to be
discovered.
A.P.: It seems to me that
anthropophagy as was
promoted in the 1928 Manifesto
Antropófago by Oswald de
Andrade (1890–1954), is an
incomplete project, because
it was too focused on the
cannibalisation of European
references—on Léger, on
constructivism—and could have
devoured other ancestries, the
African and Amerindian, which
would replenish its energy.
E.A.: That was the mistake of
the 1924 Manifesto da Poesia,
Pau Brasil,6 and the 1922 Semana
de Arte Moderna (the Modern
Art Week, São Paulo). That Week
was organised by elitists, and just
one individual, the writer and
critic from São Paulo Mario de
Andrade (1893–1945), who had a
Brazilian outlook.
Bissau, Museu Afro Brasil, 2008) and discovered that the first Africans
who arrived in what is now the northern Brazilian state of Maranhão
were the Bijago, who planted rice in Maranhão, because they grew
that crop in their homelands. But no one knows that.
A.P.: There is tremendous ignorance. Do you think Portinari’s O
mestiço (The Mestizo, 1934) is perverse too?
E.A.: No, I don’t.
A.P.: O mestiço is a dignified portrayal.
E.A.: Yes, it is. But Portinari is much better than Tarsila in that
regard.
A.P.: What about Christiano Júnior, the Portuguese photographer
(1832–1902)? He treats slaves with dignity.
E.A.: He portrays them naturally, although those are studio photos,
and we don’t know if he added something to them. The fact is that
they are important. Militão Augusto de Azevedo, the photographer
from Rio de Janeiro (1837–1905) is even more important, because he
shows that there was a Black society in the late nineteenth century
whose members had the power to have themselves photographed.7
There is a great deal that is still hidden. Both of them are important,
as records of Brazil...
A.P.: We need to know more.
A Mão Afro-Brasiliera (The Hand of
the Afro-Brazilian),
A.P.: Tarsila do Amaral, the painter from São Paulo (1886–1973),
came from an elite family, but her paintings... Do you think A negra
(The Black Woman, 1923) is perverse?
E.A.: But there is no money for research. The universities are not
investigating that area.
Volume I. Photo:
Adriano Pedrosa,
courtesy of Emanoel Araujo.
E.A.: I think it is extremely perverse. She transfigures the image
of the Black woman with prototypes of perversity, accentuating
features, the breasts, the mouth. Portinari is perverse too. The only
one who escapes that somewhat is Segall.
A.P.: Segall, a Lithuanian immigrant, paints himself as a Black man,
a mestizo.
E.A.: Indeed. The illustrations he did for Jorge de Lima (1895–
1953), for the 1947 Poemas Negros (Black Poems), show that he
understands Brazil, even better than the Brazilians. Indeed, to
understand Brazil, you need to be a foreigner. During Brazil’s first 500
years, ever since Caramuru Diogo Álvares Correia (1475–1557) and
his wife Catarina Paraguaçu (a Tupinambá Indian, Bahia, 1495–1583),
Pernambuco and the Dutch, there has been a long, complex history,
a mélange. We held the exhibition of the Bijago of Guinea Bissau (A
arte dos povos da Guiné Bissau, The Art of the Peoples of Guinea
6
36
Oswald de Andrade, The Brazil Wood Poetry Manifesto, 1924.
A.P.: But that gap between academia and the general public, it
seems to me that museums could bridge that, particularly when it
comes to visual history.
E.A.: It is unlikely. The Museu de Arqueologia e Etnologia of the
Universidade de São Paulo doesn’t do it. There is a dichotomy
between traditional African art and contemporary African art, which
does not reach these shores.
A.P.: But one day it will.
E.A.: One day we’ll no longer be alive! And Brazil will become
white, following that theory of whitening.8 The university could play a
fundamental role if it weren’t so eugenic. As you will see, dealing with
this issue in Brazil is a complex matter. I’m not discouraged because I
7
Translator’s note: Militão produced business cards for well-off Black individuals and families.
8 Racialist ideologies of “whitening” emerged in Brazil in the nineteenth century, arguing that
over time, the mixed-race Brazilian population would become whiter by encouraging European
reproduction and immigration and better living conditions for their descendants in that country.
37
committed to my skin colour, and I have to move forward. But I think
it is all extremely difficult. And I’m an optimist, I’m stubborn, I go all
the way.
ETUDE
Bewitched Migrants
A.P.: Do you think there could be exchanges and residencies, for
example, between Brazilian and African artists? Rosângela Rennó
and Paulo Nazaré have been to Africa. I tell people that there is
nineteenth-century Brazilian architecture there and they don’t believe
me.
Patrick D. Flores
E.A.: We are doing that. They also hold a Carnival in Porto
Novo, the Brazilian community there. Except that they are entirely
neglected. I want to give them money so they can keep that
association going. They have a lovely Roman Catholic mass, which
is given in Portuguese. The extraordinary thing is that there is still a
Brazilian community there after 200 years. There are Brazilian families
there in Benin, there are lots of Regos, Sousas, Oliveiras. It’s incredible
that all that is still in existence, alive. That connection is what is
missing. It seems very remote, but it is not. It is very close. The level
of ignorance in Brazil is astounding.
Soulnessless is announced on Terre Thaemlitz’s website as the WORLD’S
LONGEST ALBUM IN HISTORY & WORLD’S FIRST FULL LENGTH MP3
ALBUM. It includes thirty-two hours of audio materials, eighty minutes
of video materials, 150 pages of text, and is distributed through a
16GB microSDHC card by Comatonse Recordings, Thaemlitz’s label.
According to its author, as published on the website, “Soulnessless
could be summarized as an attempted deconstruction of soul music.
More precisely, a deconstruction of notions of spirituality, meditation,
superstition, and religiosity perpetuated through audio marketplaces
that insist upon judging audio in relation to ‘authenticity’ and ‘soul’. And
like Lovebomb/愛の爆弾, this album approaches its central theme from a
variety of vectors—in this case, the various tenuous points of connection
being gender, electronic audio production and spirituality.” A complex,
restless endeavor with multiple ramifications and a viral distribution
scheme that defeats the all-digital, Soulnessless performs and displaces
multiple ranges of critical hybridity. For this issue, we have chosen to
address, through the sensitive words of Patrick Duarte, the chosen
specific question of disjunction and haunting that is at play in “Canto II”.
Read more at http://www.comatonse.com/writings/2012_soulnessless.html
The Editors
A telling scene in the work of Terre Thaemlitz’s “Canto II — Traffic with the
Devil” of the Soulnessless project gathers the mileage of drifters, and at the
same time, frames a catachresis. The deported Philippine worker flies home
on board a plane and upon descent, the country is glimpsed through the
window. The vessel and the voyager, who does not appear on screen though
is indirectly present as the one peering into or even the one hovering
alongside the aircraft, condense as winged figures that intercut with an
excerpt of a popular horror film depicting the flight of the manananggal.
The latter is the viscera sucker of local lower mythology whose body splits
at the waist so that the torso can morph into a bat and search for prey until
daybreak when it must return to its truncated corpus. In this relay of images,
the Philippine migrant, earlier alienated from native land, is severed from
work in Japan and comes back to the tropical archipelago; the vampire, on
the other hand, roams the realm for fetus and reunites with human life and
limb with only the waxing moon as witness. For this enigmatic body not to
cohere any longer, salt must be poured into the fissure—this thing out of
joint.
The film runs like an allegory of documentation even as it eludes
38
39
the typical language of the documentary. It turns to text (instructions,
billboards, quotations) that cuts across the image and barely resorts
to sound. In doing so, it sustains the tension between documentation
and disappearance. This is the first moment of the thesis: that the legal
regime of immigration in Japan and its apparatus of surveillance have
rendered those without official documentation ghostly, a condition to be
replicated within the undocumented self who verisimilarly experiences
haunting. This is the structure of feeling of migrancy: bewitching, prone
to the phantasmatic. The reinscription of this haunting across public
and private sites threatens the norms that govern aliens and their
rights to settle. The horror—and the terror—stems from this ubiquity
as well as from the agency of the manananggal, the alluring woman/
predator (played in the film by a dusky soft-porn star) or the heroic
overseas Filipino worker, to inhabit both domestic and civic spaces.
Thus, intense surveillance becomes necessary to ensure both intense
dematerialization and the dissipation of intense proximities. It is at
the intersection of folklore and film that this subjectivity is harnessed,
technologies that are conveniently instrumentalized by the rituals of the
state and the artifice of representation, but also keen to spin mutations,
as evidenced by the plural versions of myth and the multiple sequels of
the film Shake, Rattle, & Roll (1984)11 from which certain sequences are
culled.
The second moment comes in the comparison between the material
situation of the Philippine worker and a character in folklore, which
becomes visible, or visual, through the cinema. Otherwise, it would
remain merely oral in the same way that the worker would remain
occult. This presence in the cinema complicates the absence of the
worker, who is rearticulated through theory, statistics, and montage.
The abovementioned popular film trilogy proves to be a salient point
of comparison. This procedure of comparison is inherently spectral
because it tempts equivalence, an enchantment of affinities, or of
semblances, as the Philippine National Hero Jose Rizal would phrase
it in his 1887 novel Noli Me Tangere.2 This is largely brought about by
a trick of the eye or malikmata, which conjures double, quick-change,
polytropic vision.
Screen still from Terre Thaemlitz, Soulnessless—Canto II:
Traffic With the Devil, 2013.
1 The most reprised horror film in Philippine cinema, with fourteen sequels to date, was first
released through Athena Productions in 1984 but since 1990 has been produced by Regal
Entertainment, a dominant production in the 1980s in the Philippines. It is structured as a trilogy,
with multiple personnel and without common thematic and stylistic orientation. Except for one,
all titles opened on Christmas Day for the Metro Manila Film Festival.
2 It was originally written in Spanish in Berlin. The title is translated as Touch Me Not, a phrase
pronounced by Jesus in the Gospel of St. John. It is also known in some translations as The
Social Cancer and The Lost Eden. It speaks of colonial life in the Philippines under Spanish rule.
It was influential in shaping the Philippine Revolution in 1896, the year Rizal was executed.
40
41
“I charge you to leave this body”
1
ruby onyinyechi amanze
The third moment may be gleaned in the anthropological project of
the filmmaker when he visits the town of the deportees in Davao, south
of Manila in the island of Mindanao. There, he tries to investigate the
hauntings, a process that is corrupted by informants who have misled
his ethnographic subjects into believing their interviews would give
them visas to Japan. In this situation, the documentation falls apart but
its allegory thickens because it finally implicates the spectacle or palabas
that is contrived so that things could properly “appear” for the sake of
another chance at flight. The fact that the interviewees had concealed
negative conditions in Japan just so that they could return to their
zone of ghostliness means that they have internalized this haunting as
a tactic of survival or diskarte. At this point, the fulcrum shifts: the torso
of the dismembered worker transfers to Japan, the land of the rising
sun, thus confounding further the spectrality of both ethnic subjectivity
and global migration. It might be instructive to invoke Jacques Derrida
at this point to make sense of this constellation: that the cinema is a
fray of phantoms3 and that these phantoms are “vectors of an affective
engagement with the visceral implications of the factory, the plantation,
the market, the mine.”4 This, finally, is the traffic of affective labor, which
because Legion, is diabolical: bedeviling.
42
This is a story about aliens, ghosts and hybrid creatures.
Ada was a cultural misfit who carried around in her pocket several
identities. The term “alien” is often used by people who find it difficult to
interact with anyone who appears to exist in a space unknown to them;
a space outside of their static reality. Harriet described the foreign plant
sprouting outside of her home as invasive. A “nonnative” species. For this reason, she found it beautiful.
Perhaps this is our story also. Invasive, non-native,
beautiful in a seeming strangeness.
Where are you from?
Nowhere.
How can you be from nowhere?
I am from everywhere, so I am from nowhere.
That doesn’t make any sense.
Neither do I, but there are many of us.
In the final passages of the film, the bewitched migrants finally appear,
albeit somewhat in a blur, with the hardcore politics of globality ending
in soft focus. They are sheer, speaking of stress and arrest, comfort and
freedom, detention, insecurity, trauma. The hazy image and sound forces
the viewer to strain in order to figure out what is transpiring, and to
discern in the elliptical testimony the repetition of the split: “pronounced,
announced, the witch accounts for this splitting within one. It names
the foreign within oneself as the effect of an alien force hidden under
the guise of one’s neighbors…”5 It is this visceral experience of migrants
acting out their biopolitics that feeds into the experience of the viscera of
the witch/worker heaving, stirring, roiling (fleshed out amusingly through
Third World prosthetics)—that sanguine time when lives are lain bare and
the salt of the earth finally changes its state.
3 See Mark Lewis and Andre Payne. 1988. “The Ghost Dance: An Interview with Jacques
Derrida,” In Public (Fall), 60–74.
ETUDE
All of Ada’s life was one ongoing movement; never
sleeping in one place long enough to call it home.
In the formative years, this was difficult and isolating
territory to linger in; constantly losing people,
meeting new ones, constantly explaining why she
knew nothing of the land. But along the way she met
others; transient, kindred hybrids who flirted between
borders and assumed no singular identity. The
reasons for their being were as varied as they were.
Choice, circumstance, adventure, curiosity, necessity,
desperation, freedom, escape, boredom, angst, work,
play… She understood these creatures, and finally felt
as if she belonged. Not in a physical place, because
one was as good as any other, but surrounded by
others who, by their lack of cultural uniformity,
formed a new country where being many things all
at once was the norm.
ruby onyinyechi amanze, but the halo of
4 Jean and John Comaroff. 2002. “Alien-Nation: Zombies, Immigrants, and Millennial
Capitalism,” The South Atlantic Quarterly 101 (4), 796.
our kind will protect our duality, 2013.
Pencil, ink, photo transfer, metallic
1
5 James Siegel, Naming the Witch (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006), 220.
pigment, 11 x 17 inches.
from the album Amethyst Rock Star, 2001.
Saul Williams and Musa Bailey, “Penny for a Thought,”
43
We are hybrids of that place we grew up, the language that Mom
speaks, the country in which we once spent a decade before relocating
to the next [quite unlike the first], to perhaps partner with a fellow hybrid
and debate at dinner where to eventually raise the multilingual children.
Children suffer if you keep uprooting them.
That’s what you said.
But maybe the children will be okay?
You can’t listen to everybody,
But some people are just so loud.
Looking for more, Ada ran. Ran away home.
Where is home?
I really wish you would stop asking me that.
To that place where she was born, but of which, she knew so little.
It was there that she became an alien, because everyone else seemed
the same. Despite the discomfort, there was an inherent sense of
authenticity. Of belonging, if only in her head. If you feel as though you
have a right to be somewhere, then you do.
No one can take that from you.
Remember that, Ada.
ruby onyinyechi amanze, the outer space
system of our wandering, 2013.
Pencil, ink, photo transfer, 11 x 17 inches.
I will.
Are you still an alien when everyone around you is also an alien?
No, you are only an alien when you are “thrown against a sharp”1
homogenous background.
You are always a hybrid, but alien only sometimes.
What of ghosts?
Ghosts are coming.
ruby onyinyechi amanze, two galaxies
and third mainland, 2013.
Pencil, ink, photo transfer, 11 x 17 inches.
So many of us go through this world straddling space. It is not
necessarily about being uprooted, although for some, “roots” are
as abstract as aliens. Yet even within any semblance of belonging,
however temporary or permanent, there is always an underlying angst
for somewhere/something else. The here and now tend not to suffice
because there is more.
There is always more.
We know this because we are comprised of so much...
A hybrid is slightly different from an alien. It moves in space and
transcends boundaries more easily than an alien. To its advantage it is
equipped with what biologists would call hybrid vigor; pulling strength
from multiple, heteroclite sources.
1 Inspired by Glenn Ligon’s (b. 1960), Untitled (I Feel Most Colored When I Am Thrown Against
a Sharp White Background) (1990), Oil stick, gesso and graphite on wood.
44
45
Now she floats in between these spaces, suffering daily from
hallucinations. At one point, some of her only existed in theory. Going
“home” solidified these abstractions, upsetting the balance of everything
she thought she knew. In one blink she is here, wherever that may be.
In the next blink her mind has gone to that other place, the one that
became real.
Learning to fly was the most necessary skill to acquire. To be okay
at living in between, it was imperative that she remain light, leaving as
gentle of a mark on the surface for fear it might crumble beneath her.
This is how she became a ghost. Always a hybrid. Sometimes an alien.
Borders are just pencil lines.
How can you divide something that is fluid [space]?
Raimi Gbadamosi
Talks With
John Akomfrah
CONVERSATION
Raimi Gbadamosi: Like you, Stuart Hall has been very important in
helping form ideas about the self. I was asked recently to be part of a
discussion around Stuart Hall’s notion about the arts in Britain and I
think it’s called the fourth wave. It is in his essay, “Black Diaspora Artists
in Britain: Moments In Post-War History” where he talks about different
waves of artists that emerge and why they make the kind of work that
they make.
My response at the time was that we’d reached a point where we would
have to start reconsidering for ourselves how we see ourselves. The
theorization of the self in Britain is hinged on multiple histories. And
actually it’s interesting being here in South Africa: I look at it and think,
they have to go through all the things that we went through in Britain
in order to make sense of the world that they’re creating for themselves.
However we in Britain are at a different point. How come this fourth
wave is not as assertive as it’s expected to be?
Raimi Gbadamosi
John Akomfrah
Suddenly it ended and Ada returned to her other home with her
perspective in flux. Her eyeballs had grown large. They held more light,
and saw more magic—because one cannot move around and yet remain
the same. Hybrids have this thing about compartmentalization; the
ability to separate all the parts they adopt. There is room for you to stay
and amalgamate with me, maybe because one day I will leave.
The whole world is mine.
John Akomfrah: There is a tendency—which I notice more and more in
Britain—of a kind of national chauvinism that elevates the status of the
debate around identity in political and cultural terms into something of
an exception. It’s very common to hear people say “Oh, well, in England
we’ve really advanced these debates, unlike some of our other European
counterparts for instance”. What gets forgotten is that this debate is four
centuries old in Britain. And by that I mean not simply the trans-Atlantic
trade: the (European) encounter with the west African coast in the 1490s
meant that we’ve been discussing—those of us of African descent— with
Europe this question of location and its connection with identity for four
centuries.
One cannot expect Ukraine or Romania to have exactly the same kind of
debate; because they don’t have four centuries of that kind of discussion
between them and the African continent.
I think the question of history, of historicity, needs to be addressed in
order to partly understand this now. As soon as one invokes the question
of history or the notion of historicity, the fourth wave discussion makes a
certain kind of sense, and the sense it makes for me is this: we are saying
in Britain that there have been “afro-modernist” waves, interventions in
the art world, and this can be broken down both generationally, culturally
and historically. I agree with that, I agree that there is a difference
between artists such as Frank Bowling, Donald Rodney and Chris Ofili.
What I don’t want to do is to elevate those differences into qualitative or
what I might call teleological ones whereby Ofili becomes the apex of a
development in which Bowling is merely a junior.
I can see what the fourth wave debate is trying to do; it is trying to
periodize, it is trying to introduce the question or process both historical
and otherwise. I don’t agree with it, especially if it starts to seem as if
46
47
what we’re saying is that one wave is “aesthetically or politically inferior
to the other.” In other words it’s very difficult to hang on to the sense
of development and process and resist the temptation to also have this
hierarchy of value. It is the hierarchy of value that I dispute where it is
implied.
R.G.: I think you are voicing some of my discontent quite clearly,
because a hierarchy is implied, and a hierarchy to a certain extent
is stated. I understand that each wave, so to speak, acquires greater
agency through the length of time that one is within this post-colonial
space. Each generation acquires greater confidence. As I pointed out
before your mooting, those hierarchies lead to problems. It means
that a particular set of individuals can never quite reach this point of
satisfaction, and one would expect that the next generation of artists
after Ofili, they (artists of Ofili’s generation) are going to be the ones
being pointed to. I think this is problematic. These are the kinds of
problems that for me are built-in with issues of hybridity that I have
written about. Pointing out that hybridity, as an idea, has had its
moment, and I think one could look back in history—and you’ve already
sort of alluded to history—as it allows us to think about change in a
particular way, over a length of time so we’re not necessarily a singular
set of people bringing about change. It happens because change has
to happen, to a certain extent. There is a way “the wave” and “hybridity”
merge together in a subtle fashion; that the longer the time the “colonial”
spends in the mother country (to use those rather overloaded terms) the
more they acquire an ability to speak. That, I think, is one of the lingering
problems, for me amongst others, and we will get to the others about
questions of hybridity in just a moment. The reason why I am linking the
two is that one cannot but see that it is longevity that allows the fourth
wave to emerge.
come about: that seems to me to be much more suggestive, and it
seems to escape some of the raciological trappings of hybridity. It is
those raciological trappings that I can sense that you have a certain
discomfort with. I do too but I don’t share them because I don’t believe
quite as much in the explanatory power of hybridity as maybe I did
twenty years ago.
John Akomfrah,
The Stuart Hall
J.A.: I don’t share your disquiet with the notion of hybridity. I understand
why that disquiet is there because I’ve tried over the last decade or so
to not align my thinking directly with what one might call the “theorists
of hybridity”. If there is a problem with hybridity, it is that for me, it
participates in this hierarchisation of the world in which a certain kind
of encounter is elevated above others and made into the equivalent of a
sort of holy union.
If you take the West African coast, it is clear to me looking across that
coast that one cannot understand it without some resort to the notion of
the hybrid. These are hybrid spaces in which Akans are mixing with Ga
people. My name, for instance, is supposed to be Ga but it only means
something in Akan, and is completely meaningless in Ga. In other words,
the notion that somehow certain parts of the world are foreign to the
hybrid seems to me to be wrong. I think what we have had all along are
overlapping definitions of the hybrid. There is nowhere in which anyone
exists in a pure state, as a kind of uncontaminated whole. So for me, the
problem is not the concept but rather the overly prescriptive and—dare I
say it—enthusiastically Hegelian manner in which it is deployed to speak
of a metropolitan cosmopolitanism.
What I am more interested in is the notion of the hyphen. How hyphens
48
Project, Smoking
Dogs Films © 2013.
R.G.: You see the hyphen is fascinating. When I think of the place
where the hyphen is used the most, in the United States, it still carries a
particular code of entitlement and power. Some people do not have to
hyphenate themselves, others do. And so, yes, while the hyphen provides
an alternative to the hybrid, it also points to the fact that you are what
you attach yourself to. The hyphen in this case does become a form of
attachment, rather than it being about ownership.
I share with you the opinion that the question of race, to do with
hybridity, is one that bothered me the most. It is however interesting
to listen to you speak about the western coast of Africa and the idea
of the hybrid. I’ll get back to you about that. But the thing is, when the
hybrid is evoked the most often, it is when the West African coast—just
to stick to one part of Africa—finds itself in contact with the Western
world. That is, when hybridity is actually evoked; otherwise people talk
about syncretism for instance, or probably just an easier term to use with
regards to the way that cultures come into contact with each other and
new things emerge. It is syncretic rather than it being hybridized.
As I said, I would get back to the issue of West Africa. I agree with you;
there is this thing about different parts of that coast just simply exist and
people come into contact and things seem easy. Recently, I was with
a group of people from Sierra Leone who have Yoruba names. These
are just their names, that’s what it is. I met someone from Ghana who
49
thought I was Ghanaian because my name is Gbadamosi and I just see
it as a Yoruba name. But he said: No, there are lots of Gbadamosi’s in
Ghana. I think that is about human existence. It is very difficult for me
not to engage with hierarchies when we start discussing the hybrid
because somebody has to declare this form, this new accepted form, as
being hybrid, and that bothers me.
J.A.: I’ve turned circles around this notion of the hybrid, since the
1980s. If we remove it from the field of identity politics for the moment
and apply it to the question of aesthetics, the question of hybridity has
been very important for us. It implies that we haven’t necessarily had to
swear allegiance, for instance, to the existing set of genres and modes
of address and cultural practices which were available to us. People
would endlessly ask me. Do you make art or cinema? Are you doing
documentaries or feature films? Where is the place of the historical in
these works, which clearly flirt with notions of historicity, but which also
seamlessly attempt to weave them with fictional scenarios?
I would routinely say that we have a kind of agnostic relationship to
a number of these genres. I can’t swear full allegiance, let’s say, to the
documentary because most of the documentaries in its origins—because
the modes of address that it sets up—have not been flattering to people
of African descent. I have no reason, unlike some of my European
counterparts, to feel that the history of the documentary is one that I
feel kinship with. We all know and we’ve talked over the years about
the racism of some of the early founders, D.W. Griffiths and so on. My
point is this: since the history of the forms that I work with are already
“contaminated”, an appeal to the hybrid becomes both the defining
gesture as well as the conditions of existence of one’s engagement
with those forms. One of the ways in which one tries to see through
the impasse is by working with what used to be called a “recombinant
aesthetic”, whereby every element from these available narratives and
genres was drawn upon, without swearing wholesale allegiance to them.
Now it seems to me that in that sort of context, the notion of hybridity
does have a use because it connotes a certain descriptive accuracy
when it is applied. My problem with it is when it begins to migrate
from that space and into the field of identity, and particularly into the
field of identity formation. I disagree with the deploying of hybridity
essentially for what Paul Gilroy calls “racialogical purposes”. I don’t want
to completely let go of the notion of the hybrid, I just want to limit the
areas of its use and the values that one ascribes to it.
The reason why I say that I am much more interested in the hyphen is
also because it poses cultural and intellectual challenges for me that I
am trying to get my head around. Take, for instance, the notion of the
Afropolitan. The notion of the Afropolitan has exactly the same sort
of problems that hybridity had before. As a descriptive category, the
afropolitain is trying to understand patterns of traffic, both cultural and
identitarian, across the world. It is trying to find a way of discussing and
understanding how someone such as David Adjaye might come about:
someone born in Ghana, raised in Dar es Salaam, and who works in
Europe, et cetera. We have to find ways of describing these identities
without then setting up a hierarchy in which they appear to be more
50
civilized, more “advanced” than the so called “common” African who
hasn’t had the experience of living in Dar es Salaam and other places.
I can understand the ethical dimension to the problems we have got
but I don’t want to put the cart before the horse. Both terms are trying
to understand patterns across the post-World War planet and we need
to turn our attentions to how to do that without them becoming the
problem that you are describing. What would you be happy with?
R.G.: If I just latch on to the “Afropolitan”, I understand the desire to coin
the term, but what is wrong in this instance is almost a contradiction
in terms, and I’ll explain what I mean. It’s not that we did not have city
states for hundred, thousands of years; it is not that knowledge was not
being transferred. It’s not that there has not been active engagement
with trade that comes out of the city. Somehow, however, in order to
define the possibility of a metropolis in Africa it has to be redefined.
Otherwise it becomes difficult for this place to be imagined as being this
thriving energetic situation. Language also becomes very important. I
am presently in a city that brands itself, it trades on the term, and I would
have to check on this properly, but something along the lines of “a world
class city in Africa”—you can see the problem already. So I think that
these terms are helpful in alerting people to the fact that this, the African
metropolis, is not strange, it is not different, there is nothing new in
thriving African cities, it is just that you don’t see it.
Perhaps an anecdote will help. I had a show in Glasgow called Shrine ,
which was about Fela Kuti, well, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti to give his full name,
and a woman came up to me and said “Oh this is really good, people
are beginning to listen to him,” and I said to her, “But, well, Madam you
know there are over a 150 million people in Nigeria alone, so what do
you mean by ‘people’?” We then got into this discussion. For her, she
was slightly perplexed, and she felt I was being offensive by stating the
obvious back to her, but the reality for me was I couldn’t understand
what she’d meant by “people”. The same thing emerges with terms
like “Afropolitan”, as if we’re describing notions of the hybrid, being
seen and recognized outside of one’s own capacity. So you ask me
what would work on me? Without me sounding too blunt: how about
“original creation”? People simply do what they do, and recognize that
individuals have the capacity to come into contact with influences and
out of that produce something new. Not necessarily the genius prize,
because I don’t usually ascribe to the notion of the genius, but it is
possible for things to emerge because people are, to use another loose
term, creative. People do things. We see things, we reject them, we say
that one thing is not going to work for me, but this other will. It’s like
the question of language—lucky enough to have been taught Yoruba
as a child, sometimes there are moments where I think there is a much
better word in Yoruba for a situation, one that would work, that would be
appropriate right now. Is that going to be deemed some kind of hybrid
experience? Or just that I have access to other forms of knowledge, to
other forms of thinking?
J.A.: You know, those of us involved in the afrofuturist debate feel
partly responsible for the coming of the afropolitic. I want to try and
51
rescue something from it, for a minute, by returning to that debate on
“futurority” which afrofuturism is about. If you remember… neither term,
either afro or futurist, were indeed new.
R.G.: No, of course not!
John Akomfrah,
The Last Angel
of History, Black
Audio Film
Collective © 1995.
J.A.: The recombinant ethic there was to try and force two sets of
seemingly mutually exclusive categories to talk to each other, and in the
process, yield something new. The prize was that one gets to re-read
questions of science fiction through the lens of race. In the process, one
gets to re-read and re-transcribe notions of futurity. The implication of
that, however, is the change that happens to the substance of the debate
about what race constitutes the past and the future.
Coining the term allowed one, for instance, to work across a temporal
line that questioned which came first. We were able to say, as Greg Tate
would, that when you look for instance at the slave sublime, the modes
of existence that slavery threw up, certain narrative scenarios emerge:
here is a narrative in which people are forcibly removed, relocated
somewhere, and they now have to exist in this strange and foreign
land and make their way through it. Greg always asked, what could be
more fitting for a science fiction scenario then that? Once you turn to
the genre, the futurist genre of science fiction, one finds echoes that
apply and in some ways, better describe certain conditions that are
supposed to be historical. It was a provocative way of allowing that form
of trespassing into territories in which one would otherwise not go. I
believe in that co-mingling. I believe in the idea that if you force two
words or two concepts or categories to collide or converse with each
other, it tells you something about both.
R.G.: Yes, but you see, I’ve been doing some work on Afrofuturism
recently, and it’s interesting being here in South Africa. Someone like
Nola Hopkinson for instance, points out that the creative abilities
52
surrounding storytelling and envisioning different dimensions and all
of those things have always existed. That perhaps it is not as peculiar
to existence, to the Afro-, to the African existence, as one necessarily
imagines. Then someone like Fagunwa, for instance, who wrote The
Forest of a Thousand Demons—to read that book now is to know that
people have always been aware of a particular type of travel that exists
in the imagination. Out of this contact with these alien and alienated
bodies, something else emerges. You know, Amos Tutuola also does a
similar thing. Certainly, science fiction as a form, which is almost always
seen as the domain of the white spotty male… it’s supposed to be a geek
in his or her bedroom, totally anti-social. Certainly it comes into collision
with another type of existence, and out of that, comes Afrofuturism. I
think Afrofuturism as an idea is really important. I think it’s very useful.
I think it does help to explain the inexplicable. If anything, it is a form
of escape from a type of containment. The escape comes from saying:
“Well actually, there are other possibilities. If this world doesn’t work, then
there’s another one, somewhere. Not the religious sort of other world,
but other dimensions where I can function.”
J.A.: In the early 1990’s, when it became clear that there was a cluster
of concerns both in literature, in music and so on, that one could bring
together to formulate a kind of Afrofuturist manifesto, what was very clear
was that first and foremost, this was about trying to privilege forms of
African address that are unpopular, non-traditional and not non-diegetic. In
other words, this was a way of bringing Marcel Griaule’s Conversations with
Ogotemmeli, African cosmological musings together with Sun Ra’s music,
with Amos Tutuola’s novels, via a detour through Detroit Techno music.
Basically, non-traditional, not-popular forms of black performative address.
Very quickly, Afrofuturism became linked to them and I think unfortunately,
it became overly linked with the notion of science fiction. Black science
fiction was a part of that, and Afrofuturism told you something about the
ways in which science fiction could be commandeered to speak other
truths. Yet it was certainly not a sub-genre of science fiction, as it became
for many people. The reason for that is to do with this protean possibility,
when you force an untidy conjunction between these two categories.
It was never wholly a futurist debate around questions of fictions; scientific
or otherwise. It was really an attempt to pull together a lot more, both
a sonic, cultural archeology of artifact and of sensibilities that were just
beyond the pale. The kind of stuff that questioned what the borders and
boundaries of what one could call “black culture” or “African culture”. This
was supposed to introduce the notion of the porous into those categories
and force them to take on the itinerant, the outlaw, the troubador
manifestos and ideas. I still believe that this is what happens when these
protean possibilities are at their best. If you force two categories together
in that way, it does begin to have a certain subversive value for forms of
practice.
So, what is the connection with identity? Well, there are ethical implications
in those forms of practice bricolage which can then become a discussion
about identity. Yet only as what I would call “the second question”. Too often
that second question finds a way of inserting itself as the first.
53
Comprehensive Methodology
in Ancestral Earth-Star Complexes:
Lessons from Vela-Zimbabwe
Kapwani Kiwanga
R.G.: I do want to look at this questionable, tentative identity. This is
of considerable interest to me. I’ll use a very recent example. I went
to the first national conference on albinism in South Africa. I was with
government officials and “activists” who were saying that people with
albinism were fundamentally disabled from the moment they are born,
and a host of other things. I just wanted to wrap up what I think is an
issue of alternative identities, as suddenly I was forced into a position
which is almost alien to the discussion we are having now. A situation
where the person, their identity, their structure, everything they assume
about themselves has to be reconfigured to fit into another’s desired
paradigm. I am using this example as a probe, as to what you might
envision to be an “alternative identity”, considering the existing complex
understandings and relationships that you recognize in the making of
artwork, and in discussing it. In engaging the world, whether we like it or
not, we are able to, and made to, speak from a pre-defined platform of
our own or others’s making.
J.A.: I’m really glad you raise this question and I’m very, very happy to
have done this with you, Raimi. We should do it more often. To sum up,
this is what I would say: we’ve got to coexist in narratives and they do
have overlaps and affinities but there are clearly two narratives that are
preoccupied with their own unique, self-contained questions. If you
were to push me even further, what I would say is this:
Over the years there has been a way in which identity has been attached
to the work I’ve done. People have tried to link it to the question of
identity politics in various ways. I’m against that use of the term to
describe the work, for the very simple reason that it closes off all the
things I am trying to explore. I’m instead interested in a politics of
identity; I’m interested in probing the limits of beings, the limits of
identities or even how identities come into being because I don’t accept
that they are natural, biological, or otherwise. I know that those “eternal
categories” play into the formation but I don’t want to give them the
entire responsibility. Which then means that the work is invariably about
how someone could say to me, “Well, you’re a black person.” What does
that mean? When did this come into being? Because I remember not
being black! I remember being Negro, Coloured, African and all sorts
of not-so-flattering descriptions! I’m trying to understand the traffic
between these moments of naming, all of which have appeared “natural”
and “universal” at their inauguration. We could have this conversation, no
doubt ‘till we die, because we are interested in the same things, though
we come at them differently. So I thank you very much and hope to
speak to you again soon.
STATEMENT
School of Galactic Anthropology, Ancestral Earth Studies, Afrogalactica
Institute.
Keywords:
Early Earth-Star Complexes
Great Zimbabwe
Social Complexity Southern African Iron Age
Social Stratification Vela Accretion Age
Vela
Zimbabwe Birds
R.G.: Thank you, too.
Vela Supernova Remnant and Pulsar
Image from Southern H-Alpha Sky
Survey Atlas.
54
55
It is a widely accepted hypothesis that rank-based social organisation
in the Milky Way galaxy first developed in the Vela star region shortly
before its supernova transformation.
Fragment of Soapstone Bird , Great
Zimbabwe. Photo courtesy of National
Museums and Monuments of Zimbabwe.
The Vela civilisation, which took its name from the abovementioned
stellar mass, has received a large amount of scholarly attention
because of its stratified social structure. However, the civilisation
of Great Zimbabwe, the other half of Vela’s earth-star complex, has
often been neglected in such analyses. Such omissions have done a
disservice to our understandings of this early age and have entrenched
a methodological bias that disregards earth civilizations in the fields of
archaeology.
Records state that the religious leadership of the defunct Vela
civilisation unsuccessfully attempted to arrest the nearby star’s
advancement toward a supernova state. Failing to avert this cataclysmic
threat, the population began to hold the priestly caste in contempt. The
burgeoning political elite seized the opportunity to consolidate their
leadership and galvanise class stratification.
During this period of social reform, exchange between the complex’s
stellar (Vela) and terrestrial (Great Zimbabwe) units increased
considerably. Amid emissary visits to their earthly confederates, Vela’s
new leadership shaped their ideas of rank distinction. Evidence of this
ideological shift is found in the emergence of human-bird symbolism
in Vela high society. Hitherto found exclusively in Great Zimbabwe,
this imagery was employed to represent royalty in its African context.
The rising galactic gentry used analogous emblems to distinguish their
group.
Chronicler Okul Equiano travelled to Vela before the supernova’s
implosion and wrote of bird symbolism amongst Vela’s secret societies.
This document was long thought to be a hoax in academic circles as no
material evidence of such symbolism was found in earlier Vela periods.
However, recent findings from x-ray archaeological surveys1 beg one to
reconsider Equiano’s account as a legitimate archive; it is even, perhaps,
one of the last records of this bygone civilisation during its Accretion
Age.
Comparative analyses of eight soapstone bird carvings from Late Iron
Age Great Zimbabwe and similar artefacts from Vela affirm that Vela
culture was directly influenced by Zimbabwean aesthetic and social
concepts.
1
56
Otari Cruz. “Vela bird hybrids”. In Interstellar Archeology 183 (00), 134–142.
57
Zimbabwe
I have been away from South Africa for the last two years and every
time I visit, some new artistic / cultural venture has emerged. While
government funding for individual artists remains as sparse as ever, new
private galleries and artistic enterprises, as well as individual or collective
initiatives are challenging the discipline of visual arts.1 Even while
structural racial inequalities exist in every field in South Africa, including
the arts, these are exciting times to be living and working as an artist in
South Africa with what is possibly the largest number of opportunities
we have ever seen in our history.
Sharlene Khan
Speaking Truth to Power:
Censorship and Critical
Creativity in South Africa
STATEMENT
Conical Tower.
Touristic post card,
Rhodesia.
The conical structure of Great Zimbabwe’s Great Enclosure was also
built at the time of increased contact between stellar and terrestrial
communities. Richard Wade, archaeologist-astronomer of the twentyfirst century at Nkwe Ridge Observatory in South Africa, conjectured that
this stone structure was built in the Shashe-Limpopo basin to mark the
position of the progressively brightening Vela star as it went supernova.
As I argue elsewhere, one must consider this structure not as an
astronomical instrument, as Wade has suggested, but as a politically
motivated construction.2 It was, in fact, a monument erected to mark
the end of the Vela-Zimbabwe complex, thereby commemorating the
beginning of new societal orders both on earth and in space. The act of
monumental commemoration, although rare in stellar communities, is a
reoccurring practice amongst earth societies.
Whether it be the conical structure of Zimbabwe’s Great Enclosure or
bird relics from Vela’s secret societies, studies of ancient Vela civilisation
cannot fully be appreciated if the terrestrial component of its earth-star
complex is not adequately considered. The same holds true for all other
earth-star social complexes; past or present. The Vela-Zimbabwe case
clearly illustrates that the role of terrestrial civilisations ought not be
downplayed; for it may create blind spots in our galactic heritage.
2 Kapwani Kiwanga. “Monuments in Prehistoric Earth Terrestrial Societies,” Journal of Galactic
Anthropolitical Archeology 47 (00), 37–59. For information on Wade’s suggestions, please refer
to: Stuart Clark and Damian Carrington. “Eclipse Brings Claim of Medieval African Observatory,”
New Scientist, December 4, 2002.
58
Interestingly, in recent years, visual arts productions have courted
controversy and generated some of the—occasional—public discourse
that there is on race-gender-class-sexuality representation. Some of these
include the public criticism of the use of blackface in the “transgressive”
works of Afrikaner artist Anton Kannemeyer by curator Khewzi Gule
(2010) and in the subsequent responses defending Kannemeyer’s modus
operandi;2 Brett Murray’s Spear painting of President Jacob Zuma with his
penis exposed, which elicited public protests and death threats, and resulted
in the defacing of the work in a Johannesburg gallery (2012); and more
recently, artist Ayanda Mabulu’s painting, Yakhal’inkomo (Black Man’s Cry),
which features Zuma trampling on the head of a Marikana miner,3 which
was removed before the opening of the 2013 Joburg Art Fair. Much of this
follows on the heels of a very public spat between political satiric cartoonist
Zapiro (Jonathan Shapiro) and Zuma, who tried to sue the cartoonist for
defamation for his representation of the president, pants open, approaching
a Black lady justice being held down by other Black4 political allies (the case
was later dropped in 2012).5
1 The Joburg Art Fair has concluded its fifth edition, and the Cape Town Art Fair has
concluded its first. South Africa now has its own pavilion at the Venice Biennale while evercradling the hope of a resurrection of the Joburg Biennale. Art South Africa, the country’s
leading art publication, is turning its head towards the rest of Africa and opening minds to the
wealth of history and talent on the continent. The Mail and Guardian newspaper has created an
online platform focusing exclusively on women, and the second year of the Mbokodo Women in
Arts Award has recognised the immense creativity and legacy of South African women cultural
producers. South African artists feature globally, winning loads of awards along the way.
2 D. Marais. 27 August 2010 (b). “Denying the Privileged a Aoice,” Mail and Guardian [online].
See: http://mg.co.za/article/2010-08-27-denying-the-privileged-a-voice (November 2013).
3 This refers to the miner’s strike at the Lonmin Mining Company in Marikana, South Africa,
in 2012. Protests in which the miners were demanding increased wages turned into a violent
confrontation with the armed national police force, which resulted in the death of over fortyfour miners. Increasing evidence in the subsequent legal hearing shows that policemen likely
instigated the violence and in some cases, even executed the miners while they were restrained.
4 This text employs South African racial categories: White, Black, Indian, Coloured. “Black” signifies
indigenous African ethnicities, while “black” is used to denote the previously disadvantaged groups of
Black, Indian, Coloured and Chinese (and instead of the term “non-white”).
5
Ex-African National Congress (ANC) Youth League President Julius Malema, ANC Secretary59
All of these cases point to problems of representation in postapartheid South Africa, and necessarily highlight the intersectionality of
categories of race-gender-class-sexuality. For instance, Kannemeyer’s
use of blackface is seen by critics as that of a privileged White cultural
producer utilising demeaning racial stereotypes of underclass Black
African natives to critique fellow White Afrikaners. For me, the humour
in his parodies can only be had if one disregards the bodies of his Black
characters as props in his endeavour to expose White paranoia, and then
aligns oneself with the gaze of the White characters, the White audience,
and the producer.6 Murray’s controversy presented a unique case when
the coding of visual artworks within the safety of the white cube was
deemed offensive and disrespectful when forced into the wider culture.
At some point in the discussions elicited by these different cases has
emerged the rhetoric of “freedom of speech” (which is equated with
the ability to criticise whomever, however) being under attack currently
in South Africa. This “freedom of speech” rallying cry has, to a certain
extent, been racialized in that there is a persistent claim by White artists
that they are not only being silenced, but victimized.7 Such perspectives
align with what Critical Whiteness Studies scholar Melissa Steyn has
called a resistant “White Talk” in South Africa, as White South Africans
have to negotiate the change from apartheid privilege to post-apartheid
redress.8 Characteristics of this “White Talk” include a pessimistic view
on Black / African governance, the stacking up of negative tropes of the
living conditions of Africa, the idea that Whites are disproportionately
affected as a community by criminality, corruption and black economic
empowerment policies, as well as the belief that when they criticise such
issues they are standing up for more universal conditions which all liberal
minds would agree with. Much of this exemplifies a spirit of victimhood
that is persistent in “White Talk”.9
Ayanda Mabulu,
Yakhal’inkomo
(Black Man’s
Cry), 2013. Oil
on canvas, 250 x
350cm. Courtesy
However, criticisms of the artwork of Zapiro, Kannemeyer and Murray
have not tried to silence the critique of these artists directed at Black /
African governance (which are often conflated), but rather, have tried
to question the choice of iconography by the artists. This choice, which
General Gwede Mantashe (with a speech bubble that says “Go for it Boss”, South African
Communist Party President Blade Nzimande and Congress of South African Trade Unions
(COSATU) chairperson Zwelimzima Vavi.
6 In my current PhD research on postcolonial strategies of masquerading in South Africa I
elaborate on this critique of Kannemeyer’s use of satiric parody in his Pappa in Afrika (2010)
book.
7 Ever since apartheid, the South African visual arts field has been dominated by White
producers, gallerists, writers, “critics”, historians, collectors and other mediators. White visual
artists are unaccustomed to being challenged on their perspectives and aesthetic considerations
by Black intellectuals and artists.
8 M. E. Steyn. 2004. “Rehabilitating a Whiteness Disgraced: Afrikaner White Talk in PostApartheid South Africa,” Communication Quarterly 52 (2), 143–169; M. Steyn and D. Foster.
2008. “Repertoires for Talking White: Resistant Whiteness in Post-Apartheid South Africa,” Ethnic
and Racial Studies 31 (1), 25–51.
9 The South African 2011 Census found that Black-headed households earned on average an
annual income of R60 000 while White-headed households earned per annum an average of
R365 000, and that White men still maintain the most privileged economic spaces (highest level
of education, the best jobs and the highest salaries).
60
of Commune 1
Gallery.
the artists present as natural representations of the addressed issues,
often pathologizes Blacks, Africans and Africa. In Kannemeyer’s work,
African governance is visually associated with the dictatorships of Idi
Amin Dada and Robert Mugabe, and corruption is racialized as Black
greed, which is evidenced in numerous references to “Black Fat-Cats”
and Black Economic Empowerment. Both Murray and Zapiro have
vehemently defended their right to activate colonial racial stereotypes
of rampant Black animalistic sexuality in the Spear and Rape of Lady
Justice cartoons. While we do “get” parody, metaphor and allusion, the
question remains as to why White male cultural producers would choose
to reduce important questions regarding the country’s problems (the
ruling tripartite alliance, populist politics, the dearth of credible political
opposition, mismanagement, corruption, lack of accountability and
transparency, sustainability and the growing gap of rich and poor in
capitalist democracy amidst blatant police repression, to name a few) to
just one person and his genitals.10 When that person is a Black individual,
heading up a black majority government in a black majority country
that is steeped in a history of racial segregation and the denigration of
blackness, it is not only necessary to interrogate the appropriateness and
naturalness which attends elected representations in a post-apartheid,
postcolonial context, but also to point to the silences surrounding this
10 None of these problems are particular to South Africa or the African continent. They
are all problems that various governments have faced throughout history, and they manifest
themselves in a multitude of ways in postmodern democracies. It is however important to note
that critiques of these issues take into account their particularities in South Africa.
61
discourse. While the liberal media would like us to believe that these
instances symbolise a fundamental blow to free speech in South Africa,
contradictorily they signify a win for democracy—even the President of
South Africa has been unable to bring any action against these public
criticisms of his character.
The most recent case of the withdrawal of Ayanda Mabulu’s painting
at the 2013 Joburg Art Fair indicates another situation of cause-andeffect that must be highlighted.11 The controversies around visual racial
stereotypes have created a tender ground on which to tread amidst a
climate of political-racial tension. The Fair’s organisers withdrew the
painting from the opening, unwilling to upset governmental and private
sponsors. In doing so, the organisers were able to do what our despot
and legal system weren’t able to manage. Censorship becomes a selffulfilling prophecy in this private censorship of state criticism. This
incident evidences the need for the constant unpacking of racial-genderclass-sexuality representations, so as not to cultivate an environment
that dredges up easily accessible stereotypical fodder. This is not about
dictating to artists what they can produce, but rather is about pointing
to the need for wider education on the insidiousness of racism in visual
culture. Black feminist bell hooks reminds us that “transgressivity” is not
an end in itself and does not denote “progressivity”, as it offers little for
overhauling long-accepted knowledge systems. Rather, the keyword
should be “transformation”. Part of that transformation is a critical
creativity, which is not only outwardly critical of society and its beings
and doings, but is committed to inwardly examining and probing its own
modes of production, critique and contextual relevance.
11 Ayanda Mabulu’s Yakhal’inkomo (Black Man’s Cry) which showcases President Zuma’s dogs
attacking a miner and him stepping on another miner—referencing the 2012 Marikana mining
strike in which least forty-four miners were gunned down by the South African police—was
taken off the display before opening night. With headlines decrying censorship, it took a certain
amount of time to realise that it was actually the organisers of the Art Fair themselves who had
felt uncomfortable with the work and had thus decided to self-censor. Subsequently, veteran
South African photographer David Goldblatt, in solidarity with Mabulu, decided to take down
his exhibition of works, prompting a rethinking of the act by the organizers. Mabulu’s work was
reinstated the day after the opening, and the directors admitted that they had not considered
the full implications of their initial decision. Where Zuma and the ANC have been unable to use
the legal system to impose censorship, private individuals with economic interests are now
doing so. Mabulu’s work did not merit censorship, but, I believe, the irresponsible use of Black
stereotypes by artists such as Kannemeyer, Murray and Zapiro have created the present climate
of racial tension around representation.
62
All of the artworks discussed above circulate not simply as objects
of commercial art, but are given currency locally and globally by an
inherent criticality that we invest in visual artworks. In doing so, I like to
think of artists not simply as “creatives”, but as creative intellectuals with a
duty within the larger commoditized fields of visual arts, popular culture
and global visual representations to “speak truth to power”, and thereby
break down “the stereotypes and reductive categories that are so limiting
to human thought and communication” (Edward Said).12
It is not often enough that as an artist one is able to be involved in
national debates on identity and representation. As bell hooks aptly
reminds us, this is not the task of any one group:
Creating new and different representations of blackness should
not be seen as the sole responsibility of black artists, however.
Ostensibly, any artist whose politics lead him or her to oppose
imperialism, colonialism, neo-colonialism, white supremacy, and
the everyday racism that abounds in all our lives would endeavour
to create images that do not perpetuate and sustain domination and
exploitation. The fact that progressive non-black artists who make
films, especially experimental work, challenge themselves around
this issue is vital to the formation of a cultural climate in which
different images can be introduced.13
Present-day South Africa presents such an opportunity and it is
therefore not one to be taken up without serious consideration of our
roles as cultural producers and visual makers.
12 Following Gramsci’s idea of an organic intellectual defines an intellectual in the following
way: “Today, everyone who works in any field connected either with the production or
distribution of knowledge is an intellectual in Gramsci’s sense.” Said, Edward, Representations of
the Intellectual (New York: Vintage Books, 1994), 9.
13 bell hooks, Reel to Race. Race, Sex and Class at the Movies (New York: Routledge Press,
1996).
63
MATERIALS
Bisi Silva
New Culture,
A Review of Contemporary
African Arts
(b.1978—d.1979)1
One of the lingering consequences of the failure
of the postcolonial state is the inadequate investment
in the development of education. With the rise of
authoritarian and dictatorial regimes from the late
1970s to the late 1990s, the frontline attack was
on academia and any form of intellectual life. The
plethora of journals, magazines and reviews that
were propelled by the euphoria of the independence
period were soon to be consigned to obsolescence.
Nonetheless, a few have been able to reinvent
themselves, outside of the continent. Some of the
well known pan-African titles—which focused on
art, culture, politics and society—included Drum
Magazine, Black Orpheus and Transition,2 and they
complemented the scholarship that was coming out
of the dynamic University presses from across the
continent at the time.
1
My discovery of New Culture: A Review
of Contemporary African Arts highlights the
informational vacuum that exists with regards to
1 Volume 1, no. 1, November 1978, through Volume 1, no. 11,
October 1979.
2 Drum Magazine (initially called African Drum) was started in South
Africa in 1951 by Bob Crisp and Jim Bailey. It was a lifestyle magazine
that targeted the Black population. However it became popular for
its coverage of township life under apartheid in the 1950s and 1960s.
Black Orpheus was founded in 1957 in Nigeria by German expatriate Ulli
Beier as a journal of African and Afro-American literature. Transition: A
Journal of Arts, Culture and Society was started in Kampala, Uganda in
1961 by Rajat Neogy as a platform for East African intellectuals.
critical endeavors in the past. Until Janet Stanley,
Chief Librarian at the National Museum of African Art,
Smithsonian Institute, offered to provide the library of
the CCA, Lagos3 with copies of the publication, I was
not aware of the existence of the review. Only eleven
issues underline its brief existence over a fifteenmonth period in the late 1970s. During this period in
Nigeria a handful of defunct magazines stood out for
their focus on the arts, such as Nigeria Magazine4 and
Uso: Nigerian Journal of Art5. New Culture: A Review
of Contemporary African Art placed a particularly
strong emphasis on the visual arts. It started with an
illustrious editorial team that consisted of important
artists based both on the continent and elsewhere as
part of the diaspora, such as the American sculptor
Melvin Edwards, the London based artist Taiwo
Jegede, and Nigerian artists such as Demas Nwoko
(founder) and Uche Okeke, who were subsequently
joined by Ola Oloidi, the art historian and professor at
the University of Nigeria.
3 Full disclosure, the writer is the director of CCA, Lagos. http://www.
ccalagos.org, accessed December 23, 2013.
4 Nigeria Magazine may be the longest running arts and culture
magazine in Africa. It was founded in the 1930s and the final volume
was in 1990.
5 USO: Nigerian Journal of Art came out sporadically, only managing
to release three publications in three Volumes (one edition per year)
between December 1995 and December 2001.
New Culture Mag, January 1997. Courtesy of New Culture Studios.
64
65
The review delved into many such issues such
as identity, colonialism, post colonialism, as well as
history and tradition as they came to highlighting the
new African reality, and the way these were engaged
by the artists in their work. The key section of the
review focused on the aesthetics of African Art and
Culture, which propounded a return to the study of
traditional art— which the founder, artist, architecture,
poet and writer, Demas Nwoko (1935 - ) considered
to be the “only one art stylistic idiom… valid to the
African and the Blacks of African descent the world
over, its origin being the too well-known form of
traditional African arts, a form that was created and
nurtured to maturity by African people themselves,
with a history that dates beyond 2000 years.” In
espousing a return to the past he also acknowledged
the need for “a new aesthetic position relevant to our
time.”6 To achieve these objectives, the reviewers
covered the arts across the continent. The drawings
by Sudanese artist Ibrahim El Salahi (1930– ) that were
featured in the May 1979 issue are such an example,
as they reached out to the diaspora. The eleven
editions are filled with reviews and essays, in addition
to containing a vibrant children’s section that makes
palpable the dynamism of the cultural and creative
sector of the period. The exhibition review I found to
be the most illuminating was that of Theresa LuckAkinwale (1934– ),7 one of the few trained female
artists in Nigeria who still remains inadequately
represented in the history of Nigerian Art. As such, the
eleven editions constitute an indispensable archive of
our cultural life in a context where such information
remains difficult to find.
6 New Culture Magazine (November 1978), 1.
7 Pat Oyelola. 1979. “The Art of Theresa Luck Akinwale”, New Culture
Magazine, 21.
All images:
New Culture Mag, November 1978,
1979. Courtesy of New Culture
Studios.
66
67
Nana Oforiatta-Ayim
CULTURAL ENCYCLOPAEDIA
STATEMENT
We create ourselves through language yet what we say at one moment can at any
other be overturned
Does this disrupt a constancy of being or reflect inherent changeability? Is language
confirmation or distortion?
In the Akan language, knowledge was constituted anew with each retelling; elasticity
of silence as important as authority of sound
Then came Definity and language filled the spaces of silences
History as an affirmation of collective memory
History as the constructed projection of the future. I will be, because I am, and was
History as a narrative of subjugation and disruption: Pre-Colonial, Colonial,
Post-Colonial
The Definity of Language in the spaces of silence
Geographies massed by land and boundaries
Geographies separated through histories of language and becoming
Geographies reduced by language to one or other Story: Hopeless Scar, Rising
Renaissance
The Authority of Sound, not the elasticity of silence
The Cultural Encyclopedia as narratives of histories flowing in and out
The Cultural Encyclopaedia is a fifty-four volume Encyclopaedia
that traces cultural trajectories in each of the fifty-four countries of
the African continent, on subjects ranging from Art and Archaeology;
Philosophy and Science; Drama, Theatre and Film; Politics, Sociology
and Anthropology; Music and Literature; Mathematics and Economics;
and Design, Fashion and Architecture. For now, the paradigm is that of
country, though it is possible this will be overhauled. Every six months,
a new Encyclopaedia—with entries ranging from classical to
contemporary oratures, literatures, and art forms, to alternative
mathematical models—will be distributed to schools and higher
education institutions; excerpted on radio, television; in magazines,
newspapers; and via mobile phones. The first volume, GHANA, will be
launched at Dak’art 2014. The printed versions will consist of: selections
of essays from published and unpublished manuscripts, theses, and
essays by leading thinkers from each country, chosen by a team of
editors. The online versions consist of: conversations, portraits, writings
on contemporary cultural output, and a database of links to the complete
research. Throughout the process, workshops, seminars, and talks will
discuss and explore expression, methodology, process, implications,
implementation, co-operation and collaboration.
http://anoghana.org/cultural-encylopaedia.
The Cultural Encyclopedia as mapper of continuities and disruption
The Cultural Encyclopedia as collector of remnants
The Cultural Encyclopedia as act of recreation
The Cultural Encyclopedia as re-interpreter of language
The Cultural Encyclopedia as re-examiner of boundaries
The Cultural Encyclopedia as act of recreation
The Cultural Encyclopedia as beginning and not end
How does theory flow into practice?
How does knowledge make itself felt?
How does language approximate what cannot be spoken?
How are foundations earth and not cement?
68
69
cartazes para o museu
do homem do nordeste
PROJECTION
Posters for the Museum of the Northeast
Man, Kunsthalle Lissabon, Lisbon, PT: June
21, 2013–August 17, 2013. A publication
by the artist is associated to the exhibition
(published by Kunsthalle Lissabon, Tijuana
and Mousse Magazine). To see the project’s
Giulia Lamoni
further developments, visit: http://www.
galeriavermelho.com.br/pt/exposicao/6977/
museu-do-homem-do-nordeste.
Inside, Immediately Outside
The impression that Jonathas de Andrade’s exhibition at Kunsthalle
Lissabon begins or expands outside depends on one’s physical location:
on the stairs of the building where the art space occupies an apartment,
or on the street, if one looks up at one of the gallery’s windows. The
ambiguity of borders defining an inside and an outside is first perceived
spatially, via one’s own itinerary in, through and out of the exhibition
space.
Making reference to an existing institution, the Museu do Homem do
Nordeste in Brazil, de Andrade’s posters explore the possibility of creating
an imaginary visual identity for the museum. Through this process, they
open a literal, multilayered space to question not only how the museum
historically participated in the construction of specific representations
of the “Man of the Northeast”,1 but also how it could hypothetically
choose to represent itself today as an institution. Who is the “Man of the
Northeast” in the museum’s name? Who could he possibly represent?
Who articulates this representation?
Vânia Brayner observes that the Museu do Homem do Nordeste,
a museum of anthropology and history created in Recife in 1979, is
associated with Gilberto Freyre’s museological ideas and is historically
linked to his engagement with the preservation of regional culture.2
1 For a historical analysis of representations of the Brazilian “Northeast” as a specific region
in the first part of the twentieth century see: Durval Muniz de Albuquerque Júnior. March 2004.
“Weaving Tradition. The Invention of Brazilian Northeast”, trans. Laurence Hallewell. In Latin
American Perspectives 135, 31 (2): 42–61.
2 The museum, linked to the Fundação Joaquim Nabuco, results from the union of the
Museum of Anthropology of the Institute Joaquim Nabuco (1961–1979), the Museum of
Popular Art (1955–1966) and the Museum of Sugar (1963–1977). See Vânia Brayner, “Uma
gota de sangue no Museu do Homem do Nordeste”, in Angel Espina Barrio, Antonio Motta,
Mario Helio Gomes (org.), Inovação Cultural, Patrimônio e Educação (Recife: Massangana,
2010), 313–327. Consulted online:campus.usal.es/~iiacyl/MAI/images/publicaciones/
livrocongressoRecifecompleto.pdf (August 26, 2013).
70
Jonathas de Andrade, Cartazes para
o museu do homem do Nordeste,
2013. Photo: Bruno Lopes, courtesy of
Kunsthalle Lissabon, Lisbon.
Freyre’s desire for the constitution of regional museums in Brazil and
more specifically in the Northeast ­(which would be, in his own words
“[…] museums of a new type: gathering expressive values of the culture
and ethos of people who are regional in a Brazilian way”3) is first
expressed in the twenties at a time of regionalist struggles to affirm a
specifically “Northeastern” identity within the national context.4 Drawing
3 “[...] museus de um tipo novo: que reunisse valores expressivos da cultura e do ethos de
gentes brasileiramente regionais”. Gilberto Freyre, “Que é museu do homem? Um exemplo: O
Museu do Homem do Nordeste brasileiro”, in O Museu do Homem do Nordeste (São Paulo:
Banco Safra, 2000), 14. Translation: Guilia Lamoni. The text was written in the mid-eighties.
4 Although the Museu do Homem do Nordeste was created in 1979, its conception and
development by sociologist and writer Gilberto Freyre, as well as other contributors, have an
extensive history whose main lines I can only sketch in this context. As underlined by Freyre in
his text, “Que é museu do homem? Um exemplo: O Museu do Homem do Nordeste brasileiro”
(see note 3), as early as 1924 he promoted, in a newspaper article, the foundation of regional
socio-anthropological museums in Brazil. These museums should document, in the author’s
view, the everyday life and culture of regional populations in Brazil, and specific local industries
such as sugar production. At that particular time Freyre, as an intellectual based in Recife,
engaged in regionalist debates on the preservation of Northeastern local culture and traditions
within the national context (see Durval Muniz de Albuquerque Júnior, trans. Laurence Hallewell,
2004). Freyre’s position in favor of safeguarding and valuing Northeastern cultural traditions
is affirmed, along with the idea of the institution of regional museums in the context of his
Regionalist Manifesto. Dated 1926 and strongly defending a regionalist perspective, it contains a
specific remark on the desire for museums that display not only traditional historic objects but
everyday local objects, popular creations and local productions, and more specifically, a remark
on the desire for a regional museum. When, in 1948, as a federal deputy, Freyre proposed
the creation of the Instituto Joaquim Nabuco in Recife, the project included the creation of
a museum of regional ethnography, “popular art” and “cottage industry” (www.fundaj.gov.br/
geral/didoc/gf-ddc-ijn.pdf September 23, 2013). The Museum of Anthropology of the Instituto
was finally created in 1961 and in 1979 the gathering of three museums (see note 2, above)
gave rise to the Museu do Homem do Nordeste whose varied collections include photographs,
objects related to the sugar industry and slavery, domestic objects, tiles, works of visual art,
ex-voto, objects associated to Afro-Brazilian religions and the Orixás, local craft, Indian objects,
and related material. The exhibition of long duration was inaugurated in 2008, and was titled
“Nordeste: Territórios Plurais, Culturais e Direitos Coletivos” [“Northeast: Plural and Cultural
Territories, and Collective Rights”]. It opened a space for questioning regional identity, and made
space for difference, complexity and reciprocity in its museological discourse. Vânia Brayner
71
upon this set of histories and representations, de Andrade’s project
invites the public to temporarily occupy an ambiguous and shifting
position. One is not inside the Museu do Homem do Nordeste, but one
is not completely outside of it either. The artist’s work engages with the
symbolic space associated with its name and history.
Distance and Proximity
Instead of obliterating stereotypes, Jonathas de Andrade’s project
sets them in motion.5 The posters juxtapose the museum’s name to
photographs of a variety of male participants in different poses and
locations, performing everyday activities. As a consequence, they
ironically de-universalize the word “man” and reduce it to a marker of
masculinity. How have these “men” come to participate in the project?
The methodologies adopted by the artist in the making of the work are
disclosed by a set of framed newspapers pages and the projection of
slides on which he took note of his interactions with potential participants.
Ethnographic writing, in the form of field notes, is ambiguously convened
by these texts. Their accurate listing of dates and places, in addition to
their descriptive writing style suggest a distant positioning, possibly framed
by a scientific perspective. At the same time, the announcements in the
newspapers, which are meant to find “candidates” for the photographs in
the posters, draw on some of the features stereotypically associated to
men of the Northeast: a strong moreno6, a worker, someone who works
with his hands, a descendant of slaves.7
interprets this process in her text, “Uma gota de sangue no Museu do Homem do Nordeste”,
2010. Yet for an extensive reading of Freyre’s museological ideas, see: Mário de Souza Chagas,
Imaginação museal — Museu, Memória e Poder em Gustavo Barroso, Gilberto Freyre e Darcy
Ribeiro, PhD Thesis, PPCIS, Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, 2003.
5 “[…] What I really want,” said de Andrade in an interview, “is to dive into this stereotype
and implode it from the inside”. Trans. mine. “[…] o que eu quero mesmo é mergulhar nesse
estereótipo e implodi-lo a partir de dentro”. In José Marmeleira. June 28, 2013. “Corpos que
deslizam num museu clandestino”. In Ípsilon, O Público, 12.
6 Brown, miscegenated but also black, depending on the context of enunciation. On the
ambiguity of this term, see Livio Sansone. 1996. “Nem somente preto ou negro. O sistema de
classificação racial no Brasil que muda”. In Afro-Ásia 18, 180. Consulted online:
http://www.antropologia.ufba.br/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/NEM-SOMENTE-PRETO.pdf
(August 26, 2013).
7 These are some of the words used by the artist in the announcements. Trans. by the author.
72
The formulation of the announcements is, I suspect, also meant to
instill doubt. One particular message does not mention the museum’s
poster but an anthropological research project that seeks men for an
archive of nude photographs. The distance implied by the subjective
position produced by the field notes is destabilized here, inferring an
emotional or even a sexual proximity. An article by José Marmeleira
on the exhibition suggests “a sexual ambiguity”.8 This palpable effect is
produced, in my view, by the spatial interplay of photographs in which
male bodies—dressed entirely or only partially, facing towards or away
from the camera—are portrayed in a variety of positions ranging from
distant to close proximity, from the whole to the fragment. Similarly,
close proximity to the stereotype (operated through processes of
selection and (self-) identification) appears to compromise the identity
of the “Man of the Northeast” as the product of an “anthropological
imagination”,9 thus engendering both visual heterogeneity and spatial
dissemination.
Negotiating with a Legacy
Rather than shaping a plural or more inclusive image for the “Man of
the Northeast”, the artist’s project primarily confronts the very strategies
of representation of cultural identity embedded in museum practices.
Visually juxtaposing the name of the Museu do Homem do Nordeste
itself to heterogeneous images of masculinity, and symbolically
mobilizing it in an art space located in a different geographical and
cultural context, effectively dislocates the museum. The institution is
thus rethought of as a place where representations and identities are
negotiated through a multiplicity of perspectives involving various
degrees of reciprocity. This “contact zone” to use James Clifford’s
terminology,10 is crossed by a complex net of relations that engage,
among other factors, specific historical legacies and power geometries
associated, for instance, with class and gender.
8 Marmeleira, 2013.
9 Arjun Appadurai. 1988. “Putting Hierarchy in Its Place”. In Cultural Anthropology 3 (1), 39.
10 See James Clifford, “Museums as Contact Zones”, in Routes, Travel and Translation in the
Late Twentieth Century (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 188–219.
73
of the museum involves the creation of zones of tension between this
imagined synthesis of regional identity and the material processes of
the making of representations, which is always a conflicted and multiple
one. If the first supposes an idealized position, the second engages
entanglement, ambiguity and close contact.
Post-scriptum: On Translating and Writing, from Lisbon
Jonathas de Andrade, Cartazes para
o museu do homem do Nordeste,
2013. Photo: Bruno Lopes, courtesy of
Kunsthalle Lissabon, Lisbon.
Jonathas de Andrade’s take on regional stereotypes cannot be
dissociated from the participants’s identification with some of the
features of the representation, but also from the way that the men
imagine they are interpreting regional identity when posing for the
camera. “I seek a worker capable of representing the Northeast […],”11
says one of the announcements. “He imagines himself in the museum’s
poster taking care of closing a burst pipe,”12 writes the artist in one of
the slides. The possibility for the public to intervene in the material
configuration of the exhibition adds another layer of complexity to this
dialogic process. A simple display system allows for changes in the
positions of the posters. Some of them, selected from stacks laying on
supports placed on the floor, will eventually replace others, and the slides
can be placed on the overhead projector in whatever configuration best
suits their reading.
The role of the Museum of Anthropology at the Instituto Joaquim
Nabuco, which would in 1979 become part of the Museu do Homem
do Nordeste, was described by Freyre in 1960 as being “[…] a synthesis
of rural life of the rural North of Brazil or of the culture—culture in the
sociologic or anthropologic sense—of the region thus characterized.”13
Jonathas de Andrade’s negotiation with the historical and cultural legacy
11 “Procuro trabalhador capaz de representar o Nordeste […]”. Trans. mine.
12 “Se imagina no cartaz do museu cuidando de fechar um cano estourado”. Trans. by the
author. My interpretation of the artist’s handwriting.
13 Italics and trans. by the author. “[…] uma síntese da vida agrária do Norte agrário do Brasil ou
da cultura – cultura no sentido sociológico ou antropológico – da região assim caracterizada”.
Gilberto Freyre, Sugestões em torno do Museu de antropologia do Instituto Joaquim Nabuco de
Pesquisas (Recife, BR: Imprensa Universitária, 1960). Consulted online, Biblioteca virtual Gilberto
Freyre: http://bvgf.fgf.org.br/portugues/obra/opusculos/sugestoes_torno_museu.htm
(August 26, 2013).
74
I recall seeing works by Jonathas de Andrade on display in various
cities throughout the occidental world: in New York, at the New
Museum’s 2012 Triennial, in Lisbon, and in Venice for the Future
Generation Art Prize at the 2013 Biennial. It strikes me how strongly
these works relate to their context of production and to specific historical
material. The diary of Ressaca Tropical (2009),14 found in the trash in
Recife and the heterogeneous photographs to which it is associated,
is one example; the 1970s educational posters in Educação para
adultos (2010)15 that were used by the artist’s mother when she was a
teacher, is another.16 The works travel relatively easily considering their
geographical, historical and cultural rootedness. It is as if their complex
structure somehow prepared them for it, as it is multilayered and often
inhabited by tensions and ambiguities.
The ways in which cultural decontextualization may negatively
affect the articulation of the meaning of an artwork were the subject
of an article by Nelly Richard, who commented on Latin American
art in an international context in the mid-1990s. Envisioning this
process of transplanting as a form of intercultural “translation”, and the
14 Tropical Hangover. This work is an installation composed of pages of an intimate diary
found by the artist in Recife and a variety of photographs taken from different personal and
institutional archives. See: http://cargocollective.com/jonathasdeandrade-eng#tropicalhangover (September 22, 2013).
15 Education for Adults. In this work, the artist experienced Paulo Freire’s alphabetization
method with a group of illiterate women. He started with posters from the seventies that had
been used by his mother when she worked as a teacher. Both interaction and dialogue led to
the creation of new posters. The posters are displayed in a panel that mixes elements that date
from different periods. See: http://cargocollective.com/jonathasdeandrade-eng#education-foradults (September 22, 2013).
16 See cargocollective.com/jonathasdeandrade-eng (September 22, 2013).
75
inconsistencies it could engender as “failures of translation”, Richard
considered that “There is no reason to think that these failures of
translation can or have to be eliminated […] By multiplying ‘translation
experiments’,” wrote Richard, “these failures will emerge as a way to
call attention to the problematicity of meaning.”17 Many of the visitors
of Jonathas de Andrade’s exhibition in Lisbon have probably neither
read about nor visited the Museu do Homem do Nordeste in Recife.
In Portugal books about the museum are hard to find (though one
exhibition catalogue can indeed be found in the National Library). Yet
one may consider these words from the artist’s website, referring to
the panel of Educação para adultos: “This final collection detaches itself
from the process that generated it, and it can be read according to the
spectator’s repertoire […].”18
Aurogeeta Das
Of Umbrella Terms and Definitions:
Diversity Within a Framework?
Sakahàn is an ambitious exhibition at the National Gallery of Canada
(NGC), which opened on May 17 and closed on September 2, 2013, and
was conceived of as the first of the NGC’s planned quinquennial surveys
of international indigenous art. The scope of this article will not permit
discussion of the artworks featured in the show, so I will instead attempt
to assess and place Sakahàn within the narrative of exhibition histories.
In this sense, it seems to me that it is precisely Jonathas de Andrade’s
determination not to erase incoherencies, failures of translation and
ambiguities that facilitates the circulation and intercultural reading of
his pieces. These explorations are envisioned as significant to the very
functioning of the artwork, to the articulation of meaning, and to its
communication. While walking through the artist’s exhibition in Lisbon,
or in writing about it, its very material construction reminds one of the
“situatedness” of her/his own perspective. It is from this specific position
that one begins to articulate relations between objects in space, objects
and one’s own body; words and images, and images and memories, and
to weave together a narrative—but one of many.
Author’s note: I would like to thank Jonathas
de Andrade, Kunsthalle Lissabon, and Cristiana
Tejo, for their generous support.
17 “No hay por qué pensar que esas fallas de traducción pueden o deben ser eliminadas.”
“Al multiplicar ‘experimentos de traducción’, estas fallas se pondrán de manifiesto como
una manera de llamar la atención sobre la problematicidad del sentido.” Translation Giulia
Lamoni. Nelly Richard, «La puesta en escena internacional del arte latinoamericano: Montaje,
representación.» In Visiones comparativas: XVII Coloquio Internacional de Historia del Arte,
Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas,
1994, 1013. Consulted online: http://icaadocs.mfah.org/icaadocs/. Richard’s argument takes the
subject further, having referred to work by James Clifford.
18 http://cargocollective.com/jonathasdeandrade-eng#education-for-adults (October 22,
2013).
76
PROJECTION
In theory, a curatorial selection process for a themed exhibition might
deliberate on what is to be included, but in practice, it often begins by
determining what to exclude from within a broad framework. Sakahàn’s
principal concept is the “indigenous”, a term that is most frequently
understood to mean “original inhabitants native to a land”. Notwithstanding
the fact that the non-indigenous are rarely identified as such, those
excluded at Sakahàn were metropolitan artists of non-indigenous descent.
Sakahàn also excludes rural and folk artists who in some instances may
share enmeshed histories with indigenous artists, such as India’s Kalighat
and Bengali patua (scroll) artists whose art shares a genealogy with that
made by the indigenous Santal peoples. When an exhibition focuses on
indigeneity1, the curatorial process is potentially contentious because it must
necessarily negotiate issues of race, identity and tangled histories. Each
presents its own conceptual challenges. These complexities multiply when
the term “indigenous” applies to “art”, itself a much debated and progressively
ambiguous term, referring to bewilderingly varied objects and practices
that engage with distinct concepts and make use of wide-ranging media.
Traditionally, the inclusion of indigenous cultural objects and practices
within Establishment or White Cube museum and gallery spaces has been
problematic because of the seemingly oppositional approaches of Western2
1. Despite the fact that Merriam Webster’s dictionary recognises only the noun
“indigenousness”, “indigeneity” is preferred here. At the most basic level, I think myriad attributes
make up the state of indigeneity and it seems to me that indigenousness appears to suggest that
a single quality or attribute qualifies the indigenous; I therefore prefer the term indigeneity. For
an argument focusing on the distinctions between indigenousness, indigeneity and indigenism,
especially one that takes into account post-colonial debates, see Jace Weaver’s chapter
”Indigenousness and Indigeneity” in Companion to Postcolonial Studies: An Historical
Introduction, Eds. Henry Schwarz and Sangeeta Ray (Malden (MA): Wiley-Blackwell, 2004).
2. I use the word Western here, despite it being a problematic term to use in this context. It
connotes predominantly White Anglo-American museum practices, which have traditionally
excluded or at the very least marginalised cultural objects and practices by indigenous peoples
within the West as well as non-Western practices elsewhere, whether indigenous or otherwise.
77
Sakahàn opening ceremony, with
curators, artists and visitors present.
Photo: Aurogeeta Das, courtesy of the
National Gallery of Canada.
conceptions of art and aesthetics and the discipline of anthropology. The
latter has traditionally found it easier to accord them value. Curators trained
in the accepted methodologies of Western art history have for a long time
found it difficult to incorporate into museum and gallery displays the very
function for which indigenous material objects are often created. If the
function was to be revealed through modes of display, “contemporary” art
curators often worried about cultural objects being interpreted through
an anthropological lens.3 Therefore, when two terms such as “indigenous”
and “art” are brought together, one must question not only whether the
above-mentioned dividing line has been successfully ruptured, but also
consequently, whether or not the extraordinary breadth of objects and
practices that may be included under their combined ambit justifies the use
of these umbrella terms. As I do not examine Sakahàn’s artworks and modes
of display here, I propose to tackle the latter question.
3. Note from the editors: We agreed with the author that this critique should be attenuated
in the aftermath of recent large-scale exhibitions such as Anselm Franke’s Animism (Antwerp,
Bern, Vienna, Berlin 2011–2012), Okwui Enwezor’s Intense Proximity (Paris, 2012), Documenta
13 (Kassel, 2012) or Massimiliano Gioni’s Palazzo Enciclopedico (Venice Biennial, 2013). Far
from solving the issues of the ambiguous relationship between works of contemporary art and
anthropological or cultural objects, these exhibitions nevertheless emphasized an inclusive
desire for non-art objects in the field of contemporary art.
78
Sakahàn features over 150 artworks by more than eighty indigenous
artists originally from Australia, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Finland, Greenland,
Guatemala, India, Japan, Kenya, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand,
Norway, Taiwan and the United States. According to the NGC, it is “the
largest ever global survey of contemporary indigenous art.” This is a claim
that does not appear to be overly far-fetched but it nevertheless raises
questions, particularly due to the use of the word “global”—a word that is
much bandied about of late, being that it is divergently interpreted and
that it continues to elicit mixed responses. Sakahàn may be critiqued for
the omission of African and Middle Eastern indigenous artists: for example,
the Berbers were not represented. The exception is Wangechi Mutu, a
Kukuyu artist originally from Kenya, who lives and works in New York. One
would hope that the next quinquennial will rectify such glaring omissions.4
However, Sakahàn curators Greg Hill, Christine Lalonde and Candice
Hopkins self-reflexively apologise for having neglected Africa, clarifying
that the first of the planned quinquennial shows could not possibly do
justice to indigenous artists from all continents. The curatorial trio felt that
a superficial inclusion would be disrespectful and that they would prefer
to wait until they have developed the necessary knowledge and expertise
required to select indigenous artists from regions they currently do not
specialise in. Given Sakahàn’s not insignificant reliance on curatorial advisors
from a number of countries, one may wonder why the same model could
not be adopted for Africa. At any rate, this is perhaps why—despite the
NGC’s claim—the curatorial trio refrained from using the word “global”
in the exhibition title, instead choosing to qualify the term “indigenous”
with “international”. As Errington has pointed out in her essay, “Gloablizing
Art History”, terms like “worldwide”, “international” and “global” do not
mean quite the same thing.5 While Errington poses pertinent queries with
4. Arts of the Arctic, an early programme of five travelling exhibitions of indigenous art
from Alaska, Canada, Greenland, Russia and Sápmi, was held between 1984 and 1995. With
participation in Sakahàn triggering her memory of participating in Arts of the Arctic, Ingunn
Utsi recalled how the earlier exhibitions’s production, planning and implementation taxed the
personal resources of organisers. Some may regard Arts of the Arctic as being, on a smaller
scale, a precursor to exhibitions like Sakahàn. Despite the existence of the Sámi Art Museum in
Norway, perhaps what distinguishes Sakahàn and other large-scale exhibitions is not just their
more expansive international scope but also the extent of the institutional support these receive
when compared to earlier efforts.
5. Shelley Errington, “Globalizing Art History”, in Is Art History Global, ed. James Elkins (London:
Routledge, 2007), 405–440.
79
reference to “global” art history and art historians, similar questions may be
asked within the specialised arena of curatorial practices in major museums.
Marie Watt, Blanket Stories, 2008.
Photo: Aurogeeta Das, courtesy of
the National Gallery of Canada.
The use of the word “global” in occidental museums increasingly
appears to take into account the general perception that the prominent
shows they have assembled thus far have had a primarily Euro-American
focus. Undoubtedly, with changing and uncertain economies, such
institutions are now under pressure to demonstrate a global relevance
for their temporary exhibitions. Apart from the participation of artists
originating from sixteen different nations, some Sakahàn artists may
be called “global” citizens in that they have moved around and may be
based in more than one major metropolis at the
same time. Maria Thereza Alves, for example, is a
Kaingang and Guarani artist originally from Brazil
who now lives in Rome and Berlin, much like the
Cherokee artist Jimmie Durham, who admittedly has
well-recognised claims to international recognition;
Mestiza artist Teresa Margolles lives in Madrid and
Mexico City; the late Jangarh Singh Shyam, a Gond
artist born in Pattangarh village in India, died in
Tokamachi, Japan. The country of residence for
several other Sakahàn artists differs from their
country of birth. Does this mobility make them
global/international artists? Or should it be the global/
international relevance of their artworks that should
determine whether they may be qualified as such?
Leaving aside the difficulties of deciding who
qualifies as an international artist is the task of
determining who may call him/herself an indigenous
person. One could, for instance, follow national
governments’s definitions of indigenous peoples.
In Australia, the three criteria for determining who
may lay claim to indigenous identity are descent
(Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander), self-identification
and community acceptance. In India, rather than a
clear-cut definition, certain characteristics are broadly
80
considered with reference to those
who may request “Scheduled Tribe”
status. These are geographical
isolation often caused by
inhospitable environments; poor
sanitation, health and literacy;
social backwardness; a closed
economy and a distinctive
culture, language and religion.
Problems that are common
among tribal people in India are
demands for agricultural reforms;
environmental concerns; rights
to the use of natural resources
and political rights, especially
those that relate to autonomy and
finally, timidity of contact. One
might say that many—if not all—
of these problems are shared by
indigenous peoples the world over
to a greater or lesser degree. Indeed, several of the artworks in Sakahàn
engage explicitly with indigenous peoples’ distinctive cultures, languages
and religions; environmental concerns; rights to the use of natural
resources; political rights, and additionally, violence, which is often
caused by struggles against oppressors. Given the diverse interpretations
of indigeneity that different governments have adopted, perhaps the
Sakahàn curators’s decision to address the definitional challenge by
focusing only on those artists who identify themselves as “indigenous”,
was a wise one. The reason Bengali patua artists were not included in the
show was indeed because they do not identify themselves as indigenous
even if others may do so occasionally. Nevertheless, since their art
touches upon indigeneity, it may well be worth including such artists in
future exhibitions. The Sakahàn curators seem open to considering such
a move. Conversely, the question of whether all art made by indigenous
peoples counts as indigenous art begs to be asked. While self-definition
may prove to be a better basis than others, and one that to a certain
extent sidesteps the inevitable minefield of race and identity politics,
Jimmie Durham, Encore tranquilité,
2008. Photo: Aurogeeta Das, courtesy of
the National Gallery of Canada.
81
it does give rise to inclusions that some artists and visitors may argue
with. Sakahàn artist Nadia Myre, for example, averred that she would not
necessarily consider Mestiza artist Teresa Margolles as indigenous. The
Australian government and the Aboriginal people themselves emphasise
that skin colour is not a factor for consideration in determining who may
lay claim to indigenous identity. Despite this, indigenous artist Janelle
Evans informed me at a Paris conference on contemporary art and
indigenous identity (which followed on from Sakahàn),6 that there are
some who dubiously regard Sakahàn artist Danie Mellor’s claim to being
an indigenous artist. This skepticism may be based on his light skin tone
and is apparently exacerbated by his non-possession of governmentrecognised ID. Note that the decision to apply for this ID, which would
allow an aboriginal person to apply for government funding for their
work, is optional and entirely personal.
Skeptics will find that the Sakahàn catalogue states not only the
country of origin and the country of residence for each artist, but also
the name of their tribe(s). Mellor, for example, is (self)-identified as
Mamu, Ngajan and Ngagen. The listing of individual tribes is a politically
strategic decision that is aimed at resisting colonial definitions and terms.
It also, just as importantly, resists homogenisation and reminds us of
the many individual tribes that make up indigenous plurality. Favouring
the U.N.’s use of the word “indigenous” over other less inclusive terms,
Lalonde quotes David Garneau in the show’s catalogue:
The long gestation of the indigenous as meta-discursive beings
means, for example, the end of traditional anthropology—in the
sense of Peoples’s in need of dominant others to read them into
being. We read, write, and critique ourselves into contemporaneity.
This is self-determination. Figuring out what is or who are
essentially indigenous is no longer a Settler issue, it is an indigenous
problem.7
6. Art contemporain et identités autochtones : Une contre-écriture de la mondialisation, Institut
National d’Histoire de l’Art in asscociation with Université Sorbonne Nouvelle - Paris 3 (org. by
Zahia Rahmani and Jean-Philippe Uzel), Paris: INHA, May 29–30, 2013.
7. David Garneau, “Necessary Essentialism and Contemporary Aboriginal Art,” in [symposium]
Essentially Indigenous? Contemporary Native Arts, New York: National Museum of the American
82
In this sense, the curators show
a keen understanding of the
entrenched divisions between
art and anthropology, between
perceptions of the dominant
Settlers or Colonisers of the
indigenous “others”, and the indigenous peoples themselves.8 The only
clearly non-indigenous person included in the show is Dutch artist
John Noestheden, who collaborates with Canadian Inuit artist Shuvinai
Ashoona. His participation raises the question of whether or not a
non-indigenous person can create indigenous art. What is important is
that Sakahàn appears to have invigorated existing discussions on what
constitutes indigeneity.9 Indeed, as Lalonde asserts, the term indigenous
should be viewed as a constantly evolving one. Neither the discussions
nor the exhibition itself provide definitive answers, but that they give rise
to revitalised debate is a sign of the exhibition’s relevance in Canada and
elsewhere.
Vernon Ah Kee, cantchant, 2009.
Photo: Aurogeeta Das, courtesy of
the National Gallery of Canada.
Given the increasing awareness of visitors and artists of the abovementioned pressure on major museums to “up the ante” vis-à-vis
global perspectives in their shows, curators are now also obliged to
demonstrate a long-term commitment to diversity. Several Sakahàn
artists questioned the basement location of the Inuit gallery in the
Indian, May 5–6, 2011, publication forthcoming. Quoted by Christine Lalonde, “Introduction: At
the Crossroads of Indigeneity, Globalization and Contemporary Art,” in Sakahàn: International
Indigenous Art (Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada, 2013), 15.
8. For a discussion on some of the prejudices that further entrench divisions between art
and anthropology, see Aurogeeta Das. 2010. “Metropolitan and Traditional: An Exploration of
Semantics in Contemporary Indian Arts Discourse”. In Etnofoor: Imitation, eds. Birgit Meyer and
Rob van Ginkel (Guest eds. Andrew Whitehouse and Petra Tjitske Kalshoven), Amsterdam 22 (1):
118–135.
9. For discussions on indigeneousness, especially those offering post-colonial perspectives,
see: Heather Igloliorte, Decolonize-me, Décolonisez-moi (Ottawa: Ottawa Art Gallery / The
Robert McLaughlin Gallery, 2012); Daniel J. Rycroft (ed.), World Art and the Legacies of Colonial
Violence (Surrey BC: Ashgate, 2013); Daniel J. Rycroft and Sangeeta Dasgupta,
The Politics of Belonging in India: Becoming Adivasi (London: Routledge, 2011); and Sally Price,
Paris Primitive: Jacques Chirac’s Museum on the Quai Branly (Chicago: The University of
Chicago Press, 2007). For discussions arguing for the importance of gendered decolonisation,
see Joyce Green (ed.), Making Space for Indigenous Feminism (Nova Scotia, London: Fernwood
Publishing / Zed Books, 2007).
83
NGC’s permanent display, shrewdly wondering whether this somewhat
marginal position reflected the NGC’s broader policy towards indigenous
art and whether, therefore, Sakahàn was merely about fulfilling a diversity
quota in the short-term. The full programme of events, including
educational activities and the curators’s own enthusiastic plans for
quinquennial global exhibitions of indigenous art indicate that such
cynicism may be misplaced. In this instance, it will be interesting to
observe how the NGC develops upon the impetus gained at Sakahàn.
In her essay, “Placing Aboriginal Art at the National Gallery of Canada”,
Whitelaw traces the history of the inclusion of indigenous art at the
NGC, which she dates back to the late eighties, when the NGC began to
show the works of First Nations artists.10 Although this inclusion came
relatively late, considering the significant indigenous population in the
country, it was nevertheless more robust in comparison to countries like
India, for example, where indigenous art is still often relegated to “crafts”
institutions—a situation that is admittedly changing.
The NGC’s symposium, which accompanied the opening week of
the exhibition saw spirited participation by visitors and artists alike.
Speakers included Diana Nemiroff, who mentioned both the NGC’s Land,
Spirit and Power, which she curated with Robert Houle and Charlotte
Townsend-Gault (NGC, Ottawa, 1992) and Centre Pompidou’s Magiciens
de la terre (Jean Hubert Martin, Paris, 1989); the latter, she felt, was a
“starting point” for shows such as Sakahàn. Indeed, I would propose that
the practice of having a large team of international advisors may well
have started—or been cemented—with Magiciens de la terre. Barring
smaller solo shows like the NGC’s Norval Morrisseau: Shaman, Artist
(Greg Hill et al, 2006), what is perhaps most pertinent about Sakahàn
is how radically its treatment of indigenous art differs from previous
large-scale international shows that have featured indigenous cultural
objects. While MOMA’s Primitivism (William Rubin, New York, 1984) did
not even bother to name the indigenous artists whose creations were
10. Anne Whitelaw. 2006. “Placing Aboriginal Art at the National Gallery of Canada” in Canadian
Journal of Communication 31 (1). However, Lalonde mentions in the Sakahàn catalogue that the
NGC started collecting First Nations sculptures in the 1950s. Whether these were shown soon
after acquisition is unclear but it does put into question Whitelaw’s identification of the NGC’s
earliest acquisitions of indigenous art.
84
regarded as mere inspirational fodder to Western modernists, Magiciens
de la terre exoticised indigenous artists and clearly set them apart from
modern Western artists, problematically implying through the selection
process and the modes of display that non-Western artists were solely
indigenous, engaged with distinct subjects that did not relate to those
that Western modernists grappled with. Consequently, and despite
Jean Hubert Martin’s intentions to express the contrary, they were not
portrayed as “contemporary” as artists from the so-called established
centres of art.11
Wangechi Mutu, Sleeping Heads, 2006.
Photo: Aurogeeta Das, courtesy of the
National Gallery of Canada.
In contrast, Land, Spirit, Power celebrated the richness of art by First
Nations people in Canada, but notwithstanding the appropriateness of
the subject, the scope of the show was nevertheless limited by focussing
it on a theme that has somewhat distorted and exoticized interpretations
11. It is pertinent to emphasise here that MOMA’s Primitivism; Pompidou’s Magiciens de la terre;
the NGC’s Land, Spirit, Power; and Sakahàn do not all necessarily use the term “indigenous art”.
MOMA, not surprisingly—given the title of the exhibition—used “primitive” and “tribal”. Although
Jean Hubert Martin sought to avoid the term “art” and “artist” altogether, and hence used
“magician”, the exhibition material did use both “tribe” and “aboriginal”. Land, Spirit, Power, on
the other hand, used “First Nations art”, and art by artists “of native ancestry”. Others frequently
use the terms “aboriginal” or “native”. Another exhibition, one that I have not discussed here
(Histoires de Voir, Paris: Fondation Cartier, 2012) uses the term “naïve” with reference to
interpretations of some of the show’s artworks, which include indigenous art from India.
“Indigenous” now seems to be emerging as a strong replacement for all these terms, revising
earlier connotations of previously used words and one that is viewed as politically more effective
and more global in its dimensions. However, while there may be changes in the practices and
objects that demand scrutiny (especially, perhaps, with regards to media) and these influence
terminology in some instances, it is predominantly the viewers’s interpretations that have caused
changes in the terms used. In other words, changes in terminology appear to have occurred
more because of shifts and continuums in the context of reception (display and critique), rather
than in the context of production.
85
in the popular imaginary.12 Further, it suffered from what previous and
future exhibitions would continue to battle against: How to promote
and disseminate a thus-far oppressed peoples, or in this instance, their
marginalised art, whilst simultaneously trying to integrate it into a
broader mainstream? The difficulties of according respect and value
to diverse practices and objects by particular groups without falling
victim to the tendency to essentialize or homogenize their narratives are
commonly faced by advocates of indigenous arts.
Gayatri Spivak’s theory of “strategic essentialism”, which has since
been disavowed but not entirely rejected by the writer herself, was
touched upon in Jolene Rickard’s essay in the Sakahàn catalogue.13 In
principle, Spivak’s concept refers to the practice of groups (ethnic groups
for example) adopting a position of solidarity for a brief period, despite
internal differences, for the purpose of strengthening their voice for
advancing social action.14 Despite Spivak’s own reservations about the
term being misused and misappropriated by others, this concept may
be key with reference to Sakahàn, because one of the questions that was
raised by visitors and participating artists alike was about the merits and
demerits of “pigeonholing” indigenous artists in the distinct category of
“indigeneity”. However, as Greg Hill pointed out, such limitations appear
to be highlighted only when issues of ethnicity or race are involved,
whereas other subject-based shows do not appear to be regarded as
being in any way constrained on the basis of a thematic framework.
Rather than regard the term “indigenous” as a limiting label, the
co-curators of the show have chosen to celebrate the richness of diverse
12. This is not to say that the theme was irrelevant. Indeed, it was highly pertinent due to the
very importance of land rights and disputes about claims being undermined, underestimated
and/or under-reported. It also was in some ways an ideal theme in that it provided a focused yet
broad framework to showcase the richness of art by First Nations artists in Canada. Furthermore,
by introducing the perspectives of these artists on a theme that normally suffers from distorted
or exoticized representations in the popular imaginary, it contributed to clarifying some of these
popular misunderstandings.
indigenous cultures. The myriad perspectives, media and approaches
adopted by the artists in the show testify that the effort is not only
well-intentioned but to a large extent successful. Certainly, the artists
of the show were pleased to be participating in it, despite the questions
they raised. One of these was hybridity. At a roundtable during the
symposium, Sakahàn artists were asked about whether they felt the
concept of hybridity was relevant to the exhibition. Whether regarded
as a critique of essentialism or as a cultural by-product of globalisation,
unresolved debates about the term may have led to Samoan artist
Shigeyuki Kihara’s dismissal of it; a wariness that seemed to be endorsed
by her colleagues. Kihara felt that comparing indigeneity to hybridity
was meaningless and offensive, and that it may even refer to the political
inefficacy of the term. What emerges from both the show and the
artists’s own outspoken articulations is how much more complex and
specific indigeneity is—historically, culturally, politically and racially—than
could possibly be explained away by hybridity, itself prone to essentialist
stances. Instead, and despite the umbrella terms used in the show’s
title, the artworks seem to defy categorisation. While Sakahàn’s use of
umbrella terms continues to sit uncomfortably with long-term goals to
integrate (not homogenize) indigenous art into a broader mainstream, it
is this defiance of pigeonholing that the show expresses, and which turns
it into a landmark show. Sakahàn means “to light the fire” in Algonquin.
In the catalogue, Greg Hill positions himself in 2038, as if he were
looking back at how Sakahàn will have lit the fire for future quinquennial
exhibitions.15 While some of his ambitions seem undesirable (such as
wanting the show to achieve biennial-type status), other contemplations
are pertinent. He situates “indigenous” as a term and concept in diverse
political and historical contexts, teasing out the specifics of how they
developed in relation to colonial experiences. What is most useful is his
reminder that the term “indigenous” must remain mutable, both as a
term and for the meanings it connotes. The rest of us must wait to see
how future quinquennial shows planned at the NGC will explore both
the possibilities and challenges of that plasticity.
13. Jolene Rickard, “The Emergence of Global Indigenous Art” in Sakahàn: International
Indigenous Art (Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada, 2013), 54–60.
14. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics (New York: Methuen,
1987), 205, quoted by Rickard, ibid, 58.
86
15. Greg A. Hill., “Afterward: Looking Back to Sakahàn” in Sakahàn: International Indigenous Art
(Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada, 2013), 136–140.
87
Claire Tancons
Sailing the Ship of Fools:
A Carnival Trilogy
EXHIBITION
ROOM
In 1492, Genoese sailor Christopher Columbus
was credited for the discovery of the Americas for
the Kingdom of Castile. A couple of years later,
German theologian Sebastian Brant wrote The Ship
of Fools (Das Narrenschiff) against the abuses of the
Church.1 Caravels and slavers, ships of discovery
and ships of servitude alike, began crossing the
Atlantic to conquer, capture or settle so-called
Indians, lowly Europeans, and Africans, while Ships
of Fools continued to crisscross the seas and
canals of Europe to detain the madmen and other
deranged denizens of the late-medieval world.
Was the same folly let loose on the Ship of Fools
as was unleashed on slave ships? Was Le Passage
de la Ligne—a traditional ritual on board European
ships consisting in a pagan baptism conducted
by a costumed Neptune upon crossing the “line”,
i.e. the Equator—a ritual of the Middle Passage as
well? On the line or in the middle, lives of sailors
and slaves cut through. How many nautical miles
and imaginary tales between the Stultifera Navis
(or “Ship of Fools”, the Latin translation of Das
Narrenschiff) and the Carrus Navalis (or “Chariot of
the Sea”, the alternative Latin etymology to Carne
Levare “Farewell to the Flesh” for Carnival)? Ships of
Fools and carnivals, rites of Othering and festivals
of otherness, were celebrated on distant seas and
into deep oceans of oblivion where fools and slaves
might be sunk. What if Carnival was born at sea
to sailors and slaves and other destitute persons
rather than on land? Wasn’t the ship one of the
first locus of a world turned upside down with the
threat of capsizing and specter of revolt always
on the horizon? Was Carnival reborn in colonial
America after having thrived in feudal Europe? If
capitalism is the madness of our times, might we no
88
longer wonder why Carnival emerges anew in these
nefarious decades of greed? To anti-corporate
capitalism activist group, Reclaim the Street’s 1999
declaration of “Carnival Against Capitalism”, I bring
to bear Eric Williams’ 1944 study on capitalism
and slavery in the book of the same title. 2 For if
slavery is at the root of capitalism, Carnival is a
counter to both, historically—as Williams, the first
Prime Minister of independent Trinidad and Tobago
otherwise known as a “Carnival Country” failed to
account—and symbolically—as Reclaim the Street
successfully staged in the City of London during the
G8 summit. As I have suggested before, Carnival is
the missing link between Capitalism and Slavery and
it is worth reiterating that Carnival, Capitalism and
Slavery is a triadic historical, cultural and political
combination worthy of continued investigation.
So what if Carnival, like the Ship of Fools of old,
set sails toward uncharted territories, and called at
previously inhabited locales only to make landfall in
otherwise strangely familiar landscapes?
This carnivalscape tentatively periodizes a first
carnival phase in Europe, during the Middle Ages,
fueled by servitude and feudalism and, a second
phase in the Americas, powered by colonization
and slavery. It identifies a third phase as a return to
Europe through a process of retro-colonization,
whereby colonial subjects (in the late 1950s) and
soon-to-be-independent Caribbean populations
(with the independences of the early 1960s)
migrated to the former colonial center (London)
and its satellites (i.e. New York, and Toronto)
throughout the first half of the 20th century. These
movements gave rise to the Harlem Carnival
in New York in the mid-1940s (ancestor of the
present-time Brooklyn Labor Day Parade), the
Notting Hill Carnival in London in the late 1950s
and Caribana in Toronto, among other diasporic
carnivals (in this context, carnivals of the Caribbean
diaspora in North America and Europe.) This
periodization ponders a subset of this third phase,
or a fourth phase of its own, with the emergence,
in the late 1970s and early 1980s, of immigrant
and multicultural carnivals in the Nordic countries,
(e.g. Sweden), following the migration of Latin
American political refugees. If this carnivalscape
charts a periodization of carnival according to the
power dynamics of European colonization and its
aftermath, however, the art historical alternative it
presents goes beyond historical and geographical
boundaries, and the counter-curatorial model it
offers knows no creative confines.
Sailing the Ship of Fools: A Carnival Trilogy
pursues this longstanding investigation into the
modernity of Carnival, the contemporary uses of
the carnivalesque and the topicality of both Carnival
and the carnivalesque as performances of protest
and demonstrations of dissent, artistic practice
and interventionist action. This trilogy of carnival
projects is the pendant to an ongoing reflection
on Carnival’s many turns (as delineated above).
It provides the basis for a re-reading of Carnival
history starting from Modern times, and a re-writing
of Carnival theory after the Russian literary critic
Mikhail Bakhtin (author of the reference volume for
the theory of the carnivalesque, Rabelais and His
World)3 and the Brazilian anthropologist Roberto
Da Matta (author of the landmark title, Carnivals,
Rogues and Heroes).4 It also proposes an alternative
genealogy of performance practices beyond the
European avant-gardes of the last century, and
an experimentation with display methodologies
outside of the exhibitionary complex (as presented
below). As a whole, it considers a radically different
history of performance that leads not to the theatre
stage or the gallery space but to the streets, with its
marches, processions, parades and demonstrations.
A history of performance that addresses not the
few but the many, in keeping with the turbulent
increase of global citizens’s access to and recreation of public space.
https://independent.academia.edu/ClaireTancons
1 Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in
the Age of Reason (New York: Random House, 1988 (1961), 15.
2
Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery, 1944.
3 Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World (1965), 1968 for the first
English translation (Cambridge: MIT Press).
4 Roberto DaMatta, Carnival, Rogues and Heroes. An Interpretation
of the Brazilian Dilemma. (1979), 1991 for the first English translation
(Notre Dame (IN): University of Notre Dame Press).
89
SPRING
September 5, 2008 / May 18 Democratic Square and Geumnamro
7th Gwangju Biennale
SPRING was inspired by the May 1980 Democratic Uprising or Korean Spring
and analogized into the fountain, or indeed spring, of the May 18 Democratic
Square around which it took place on September 5, 2008, on the opening
day of the 7th Gwangju Biennale. A ninety-minute mass public processional
performance of around 200 participants and countless members of a mostly
local public with a sprinkling of international audience, it was also fueled by the
unlikely combination of the Spirit of May and the resistant ethos of the modern
carnivals and other public rituals of the Americas, from Trinidad to Brazil, and a
hint of New Orleans and the French Caribbean.
Public assembled around the May
18 Democratic Square, watching
in awe and surprise the spectacle
of the first performances. Photo:
Akiko Ota.
Karyn Olivier, Grey Hope. Photo:
Akiko Ota.
SPRING, final view around the May 18 Democratic
Square. Photo: Cheolong Mo, Gwangju Biennale
Foundation.
90
Marlon Griffith,
RUNAWAY / REACTION.
Photo: Akiko Ota.
Mario Benjamin, Le Banquet.
Photo: Akiko Ota.
Jarbas Lopes, Demolition Now.
Photo: Akiko Ota.
MAP Office (Laurent Gutierrez &
Valérie Portefaix), The Final Battle.
Photo: Cheolong Mo. Courtesy of
Gwangju Biennale Foundation.
91
A Walk into the Night
May 2, 2009 / Company Gardens
CAPE 09
The outcome of an ongoing dialogue with artist Marlon Griffith,
A Walk into the Night performed a ritual return of black and Coloured
populations once displaced by Apartheid-era Forced Removals, and extended
an invitation to all current residents to join into the city center of Cape Town. A
night walk whose title was inspired by a novel by Alex La Guma, it took place in
the Company Gardens of colonial memory, on May 2, 2009, the opening day of
CAPE09, the second (and last) Cape Town Biennial. The masquerading traditions
of the Cape Town Carnival, a New Year’s tradition from the city’s Coloured
population, underwent a radical transformation through Griffith’s designs and
display: performance participants, hidden behind screens, projected shadow
images, eschewing prevalent associations between skin color and race.
Marlon Griffith, A Walk Into the
Night. Photos: Mark Wessels.
Marlon Griffith, A Walk Into the
Night. Photo: Mark Wessels. Garth
Erasmus and the Khoi Khonnexion
behind the screens.
The end. Photo: Mark Wessels.
92
Marlon Griffith, A Walk Into the Night.
Photo: Mark Wessels.
93
ANARKREW
September 6, 2013 / Götaplatsen to Esperantoplatsen
&
AnarKrew: An Anti-Archives
September 7— November 17, 2013 / Göteborgs Konsthall and Hasselblad Center
7th Göteborg International Biennial of Contemporary Art
AnarKrew: An Anti-Archives took the the personal archives of Johan Heintz,
founder and director of the Göteborg Carnival (1982—1993) as its premise
to confront other related, if unexpected, archives (of the European anarchist
movement as staged by Nicoline Van Harskamp’s in the multimedia video
installation Yours in Solidarity (2011—2013), introduce competing memories
(of the anti-E.U.-U.S. summit unrest of 2001 as collected and interpreted in
Sonia Boyce’s film, MOVE (2013)) and, ultimately, interrogate the myth of
multiculturalism in Sweden. The exhibition was preceded by ANARKREW, a
processional performance wherein the public rather than the artists assembled
in a march and brought some of the performance’s elements back into
Göteborgs Konsthall.
Jean-Louis Huhta, PAN ACID, with truck decorated
by MYCKET and The New Beauty Council in
collaboration with Maja Gunn with special guest
Makode Linde. Performance on Götaplatsen. Photo
Attila Urbán
MYCKET and The New Beauty Council in
collaboration with Maja Gunn, Exclude Me In
performance. Photo Attila Urbán
94
MYCKET and The New Beauty
Council in collaboration with Maja
Gunn, Exclude Me In installation.
Photo Attila Urbán
Psychic Warfare, Psychic Attack, 15-min. performance
in front of Stora Teatern. Photo Attila Urbán
Sonia Boyce, MOVE, video, 2013.
Roberto N. Peyre & NOKAKO, LOVAMAN #4: Gully
Swag Breeze, Rosenlundkanalen.
Photo Attila Urbán
Deimantas Narkevičius, detail, Feast
for one alone
or a few, 2013. Photo Attila Urbán
95
Koki Tanaka
Precarious Tasks #7
GAME
Friday, August 30, 2013 at 5 p.m. in Nakameguro, Tokyo
I prepared yellow cloth, scissors, safety pins and
drinks on a table in the gallery space. In a gesture
against electricity dependence / nuclear power, I also
turned off the lighting and air conditioning, providing
instead candles and paper fans. Printed on a wall was
Takamatsu’s instruction piece Remarks 5, with my
own instructions added to it.1
The day was extremely hot, around 97°F/36°C.
Participants came and went throughout the day and
night. They cut the yellow cloth as they liked and they
wore it. Some participants didn’t touch the yellow
cloth at all, which suggests that there were a number
of different interests. Some came to observe the
gesture against nuclear power, some came to observe
a historical artwork and its reinterpretation, and
some came to observe other audience members’s
Artist’s Notes:
Since the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster,
hundreds of thousands of Japanese have participated
in protests against the use of nuclear energy. Even
though more than two years have passed, the protests
continue to take place every Friday in front of the
Prime Minister’s Residence and National Diet Building
in Tokyo. Of course, even if we wanted to do so, it
would be difficult to participate in every protest each
Friday. We have our lives, our everyday jobs. Yet I
wonder if there is some way for us to participate in
the protests whilst maintaining our lives.
Since I live in LA, I cannot participate in the Friday
protests in Tokyo. I feel too distant. However, in
2012, as the anti-nuclear movement was gaining
momentum, a leading artist and thinker based
in Tokyo, Kenjiro Okazaki, tweeted the following
proposal. He wrote, “Even if you can’t join the protests
on site, in simply wearing a yellow T-shirt, no matter
where you are, you can show that you are protesting.”
(As in Germany, yellow is the symbolic color of the
anti-nuclear movement in Japan.) This idea could
be a key for continuing to participate in the protests
whilst remaining committed to our responsibilities,
no matter where we may be. Keeping conscious of
this idea in our everyday routines is critical to this
proposal. If we are conscious that we are participating
in the protests, then the everyday itself could become
a political action.
96
reactions to the work. Some were just passing by.
Other participants sat and talked, some stayed for
a bit and then went out into the city. However, all
the participants—as well as all the people in Tokyo
that day—perspired a lot. Divided across different
positions, we nevertheless experience the same
bodily responses. The project ran until midnight, but
because of the heat I had to lay down for an hour’s
rest. Having embarked upon a political action and
reconsideration of art history, the bodily response of
sweating was ultimately what remained.
This project is an extended project from the Japanese Pavilion
at Venice Biennale, 2013.
http://2013.veneziabiennale-japanpavilion.jp
To promote such an everyday consciousness,
I’d like to introduce a historical artwork. One of the
most influential artists in post-war Japanese art, Jiro
Takamatsu (1936-1998) was interested in how we
could keep fresh eyes in our daily routines. One of his
instruction pieces, Remarks (1974), is a proposal for
liberating both the body and mind from daily routine.
I will reuse Takamatsu’s universal idea in order to
update and connect the political moment of Japan
in the 1960s and 1970s to the current state of political
awareness in Japan.
———
Koki Tanaka, Precarious Tasks #7: Try to keep conscious
about a specific social issue, in this case “anti-nuke,” as long
1
as possible while you are wearing yellow color, 2013. Photo
specific consciousness as many times as possible. I have added the
courtesy of the artist, Aoyama Meguro, Tokyo and Vitamin
following above Takamatsu’s instruction: Try to keep conscious about
Creative Space, Guangzhou.
a specific social issue, in this case “anti-nuke,” as long as possible while
Jiro Takamatsu, REMARKS 5 (1974): Try to repeat the content of a
you are wearing yellow color.
97
Koki TANAKA
Precarious Tasks 7 (2013)
Note 9: TANAKA adds an additional proposal onto “REMARK 5” by TAKAMATSU below.
Try to keep conscious about a specific social issue, in this case “anti-nuke,”
as long as possible while you are wearing yellow color.
Jiro TAKAMATSU
REMARK 5 (1974)
Try to repeat the content of a specific consciousness as many times as possible.
Note 1: As far as they remain true to the spirit of the Remark, any number of conditions may be
added, by anyone.
Note 2: The experience described in the Remark may be acted out by anyone, at any time, in any
place, under any circumstances.
Note 3: Either one, or more than one, participant may act out the experience. The Remarks offer
no conditions to mutual relationships that may arise among plural participants.
Note 4: Any object(s) may be used in acting out the experience.
Note 5: In the strict sense, it is impossible to repeat the content of a specific consciousness
exactly, but it is possible to make an effort to do so. In terms of time, cyclic similarity is
an integral part of the experience. Since precision is unattainable, however, the attempt
should be the participant(s)’s goal. Physical measurements by clocks and other things
are, therefore, unnecessary. Similarly, where time unrelated to the experience is involved,
such time must be considered as outside the experience and cannot be included in the
cycle.
Note 6: The content of consciousness to be repeated must be determined by the participant(s).
The Participant(s) may receive instructions relevant to the Remark from another party.
Note 7: The Remark sets no conditions to bodily movements.
Note 8: The interpretations of these sentences and those of the problems that might arise from
the things left unsaid, depend ultimately upon the participant(s)’s judgment.
*Above English translation from original Japanese text is as-is of Takamatsu's unpublished material. Which is
published later in his book “Sekai Kakudai Keikaku,” (Project for Expanding the World) 2003 after he passed away.
98
99
Contributors
London-based artist Lawrence
Abu Hamdan’s recent solo
shows include
The Freedom Of Speech
Itself (2012) at Showroom, London, The Whole Truth (2012)
at Casco, Utrecht and Tape
Echo 2013 at Beirut in Cairo. Abu
Hamdan is one of the four artists
comprising the group Model
Court and is a PhD candidate and
lecturer at Goldsmiths College.
John Akomfrah is a director,
writer and theorist who creates
documentaries, feature films and
exhibitions. He was a founding
figure in the influential cinecultural group Black Audio Film
Collective and set up Smoking
Dogs Films in 1999. ruby onyinyechi amanze is a
Brooklyn-based artist of Nigerian
birth and British upbringing. She
holds a BFA from Tyler School
of Art, Temple University and an
MFA from Cranbrook Academy of
Art and is a 2012–2013 Fulbright
Scholar with a focus on drawing.
Nana Oforiatta-Ayim is a writer,
filmmaker and cultural historian. She has an MA in African
Art History and is completing a
PhD in African Languages and
Cultures at the University of
London. She has created books
and films for exhibitions and has
written for publications such as
National Geographic and frieze.
She set up the cultural research
platform ANO in 2002 which is
now based in Accra, Ghana.
100
Virginie Bobin is Associate Editor of Manifesta Journal; Assistant Curator at Witte de With
Center for Contemporary Art in
Rotterdam; and an independent
curator and writer currently
working on projects in New York
and The Hague.
Blanca Calvo and Ion Munduate
are choreographers, who in 1998
conceived Mugatxoan: a project
concerned with the emerging
practices that situate themselves
between the choreography and
visual arts. www.mugatxoan.org.
Trained in printmaking, Aurogeeta Das did her PhD
on muggus, southern Indian
floor-drawings (University of
Westminster, 2012). Her funded
research on indigenous arts was
conducted under the aegis of
INHA, Paris while she was the
CREAM Visiting Research Fellow
at Westminster. She is a Visiting
Lecturer at the University of
Hertfordshire.
Fatima El-Tayeb teaches at the
University of California, San
Diego. She is the author of European Others. Queering Ethnicity
in Postnational Europe (University of Minnesota Press, 2011) as
well as of numerous articles on
the interactions of race, gender,
sexuality, and nation. Before
moving to the U.S., she lived in
Germany and the Netherlands,
where she was active in black
feminist, migrant, and queer of
color organizations.
Patrick D. Flores is Professor of
Art Studies at the Department of
Art Studies at the University of
the Philippines and Curator of
the Vargas Museum in Manila.
He is Adjunct Curator at the
National Art Gallery, Singapore.
He has published works on Asian
Art and curatorial practice.
Raimi Gbadamosi is a contemporary British conceptual artist,
writer and curator who received
his Doctorate in Fine Art from
the Slade School of Fine Art,
London. He is currently professor in Fine Art, Wits School of
Fine Arts, Johannesburg.
Sharlene Khan is a South African
visual artist, currently based in
London and engaged in a PhD
in Arts, exploring the concept of
“postcolonial masquerading”. Kapwani Kiwanga studied
Anthropology and Comparative
Religions at McGill University.
She has been an artist-in-residence in Paris, Eindhoven and
Dakar and has exhibited in many
locations internationally including Paris, Glasgow, Almería
and London. Her film and video
works have been nominated for
two BAFTAs and have received
awards at international film
festivals.
Giulia Lamoni is a Post-doctoral Fellow at the Instituto de
História da Arte of the Universidade Nova in Lisbon, Portugal.
Her research project, which
focuses on feminist perspectives
on Portuguese and Brazilian
contemporary art, is financed
by the Fundação para Ciência e
Tecnologia (Portugal).
Bouchra Ouizguen is a performer and choreographer born in
Morocco and trained in France.
Since 2007, Ouizguen has been a
co-organizer of the annual festival Recontres Chorégraphiques
in Marrakech.
Adriano Pedrosa is an independent curator and writer
based in São Paulo. He was
co-curator of the 12th Istanbul
Biennial (2011) and is director
of Programa Independente da
Escola São Paulo (PIESP).
Claire Tancons is a curator,
writer and researcher who was a
curator for the Göteborg Biennial in 2013. Since 2012, she
has been teaching a curatorial
seminar at IUAV University,
Venice and she is the recipient
of the 2012 Emily Hall Tremaine
Exhibition Award.
Katarina Zdjelar (www.katarinazdjelar.net) is an artist based in
Rotterdam and Belgrade.
Dr. Simon Sheikh is a curator
and theorist who lives in Berlin
and London. He is Reader in Art
and Programme Director of MFA
Curating at Goldsmiths, University of London. He is a correspondent for Springerin, Vienna,
and a columnist for e-flux
Journal, New York. A collection
of his essays is forthcoming from
b_books.
Bisi Silva is an independent
curator and the founder/director of Centre for Contemporary
Art, Lagos (CCA, Lagos) which
opened in December 2007. She
curated the Dakar Biennale in
Senegal in 2006 and co-curated
The Progress of Love, a transcontinental collaboration across
three venues in Nigeria and
America from Oct 2012 – Jan
2013. Since 2011 she has been
the curatorial advisor for Tiwani
Contemporary, London.
Koki Tanaka. Artist. For
further information, visit a
website: www.kktnk.com
101
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Manifesta Foundation
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
CHIEF EDITOR
Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez
The contents of this journal are
published according to the terms
of the Creative Commons License
unless otherwise mentioned.
Lawrence Abu Hamdan,
Conflicted Phonemes, 2012
(detail)
Graphic Design: Janna Ullrich
Courtesy of Lawrence Abu
Hamdan and Galeri Non.
Colophon
Attribution—Non-Commercial—
No Derivatives
ASSOCIATE EDITOR
Virginie Bobin
GUEST EDITOR
Bisi Silva
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GRAPHIC DESIGN
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TRANSLATIONS
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interview: Sabrina Gledhill
(Portuguese—English)
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van Wijck (Spanish—English)
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102
103
104
CONfliCted
phONemeS
2012
1972
SOmali
laNguage
firSt
writteN
1974
fOrCed
iNtegratiON
prOgram
somali has been the
national language
of somalia since
1972, gaining
official status
with standardization
(standard somali)
and the adoption of
the latin script,
developed under
orders of then
president siad
barre. for nine
years, the somali
language Committee
sifted through 18
competing scripts.
Campaign against
illiteracy:
young teachers &
students from cities
intentionally went
into rural areas—
far from home— to
educate villagers.
Under this program
somali people were
often forced to
marry someone from
another region/clan.
1977
ethiOSOmali
war
in 1977, somalia
invaded Ethiopia
to achieve the
annexation of the
ogaden, igniting a
major war. somalia
sent out 63.000
soldiers and lost
over 6.400 lives.
Eight months after
invasion, somali
forces retreated
back and a truce was
declared.
utreCht,
Nl
N
CO
CO
CO
S
CO
N
CO
CO
CO
S
CO
stAndArd somAli
(offiCiAl lAngUAgE)
Also kown As
mAxAA tiri
=
[som]
(Common in
northErn
somAliA)
N
mArriA
gE
since 2001 immigration
authorities around the world
have been using accent and
language tests to determine
the validity of asylum claims
made by thousands of people
without identity documents in
Australia, belgium, germany, the
netherlands, new Zealand, sweden,
switzerland, and the United
kingdom. in most circumstances
a private swedish company is
contracted and during a phone
interview between this company
and the asylum seeker the
claimant’s voice is analyzed
to assess whether the voice and
accent correlate with the claim
of national origin.
over the 29th and 30th of
september 2012, a group
consisting of linguists, graphic
designers, artists, researchers,
activists, refugee and art
organizations and a core group
of somali asylum seekers, who
have all been rejected because of
the analysis of their language/
dialect or accent by the Dutch
immigration authorities, met to
discuss the controversial use of
language analysis to determine
the origin of asylum seekers.
/
the meeting was called because we
feel that these accent tests are
becoming increasingly unjust and
prevalent in denying legitimate
claims of asylum. the tests are
relatively unheard of outside
of specialists working in the
field and creating these images
is a way of disseminating its
existence. we hope that when we
know of such a policy, we might
reflect on what our own hybrid
accents say about our place of
birth; how we change and adapt
our voices in different social
situations and how complex our
accents would be after a lifetime
of migration.
/
often the result of these tests
hinge on a couple of words and
unable to contest the results
of their language analysis, the
collection of maps exhibited here
intend to offer the rejected/
silenced asylum seeker an
alternative and non-vocal mode
of contestation.
/
in particular such accent tests
wrongfully target the somali
community; common results of
the tests find that the somali
applicants are from the north
rather than the south of the
country, pinpointing them
conveniently to the small pockets
of safe and habitable regions.
these maps intend to demonstrate
how the history of somalia,
its ungovernability and its 40
years of continual migration and
crisis, have made an impact on
both peoples way of life as well
as their way of speaking. Usually
maps are abstracts, they reduce
the complexity of the issue to
a digestible form, yet here we
felt it was important to rather
show how complex the situation in
somalia is and how consequently
irreducible the voices and
biographies of those who are
fleeing from conflict and famine.
.
AbgAAl
northErn
bEnAADir
DiAlECts
AJUrAAn
gAAlJACAl
CO
lawrence Abu hamdan
AffECtED ArEAs:
benAAdir
=
[som-bEn]
(Common At
somAliAn
CoAst)
xAmAAri
north somAliA
soUthErn
bEnAADir
DiAlECts
CoAstAl somAliA
bimAAl
soUth somAliA
rEAsons for migrAtion
forCED mArriAgE
/ tEAChing
/ stUDying
EsCAping wAr
/ EsCAping fAminE
tEAChi
JiiDo
militAry sErviCE
ng
stAying in A
sAfE rEgion
stAying in A
wAr / fAminE rEgion
DAbArrE
DEstinAtions:
N
Ci-miini
north somAliA
bAntU
DiAlECts
CO
CoAstAl somAliA
S
soUth somAliA
wAr / fAminE rEgion
mUshUngUlU
gArrE
Colophon:
ConfliCted Phonemes — part d
Editing
lawrence Abu hamdan
& Janna Ullrich
Design
www.jannaullrich.de
Commissioned by Casco —
office for Art, design and theory
in collaboration with
stichting los and de taalstudio.
Utrecht, 2012
S
CEntrAl tUnni
mAAy
Also known As
Af mAAy,
AfmAAy,
Af-mAy,
Af-mAymAy,
rAhAnween,
rAhAnweyn
mAi-terreh
=
[ymm]
(Common in
soUthErn
somAliA)
1988
NOrth
Civil
war