
Solidarity with Portlanders.
Solidarity with Portlanders.
Economic diplomacy, the power of data, corporate power and influencing en mass.
Produced by Athina Fokidou for the SOAS MSc module General Diplomatic Studies, Autumn 2018.
Just visited the Oregon Historical Society, where the disappointment turned into contempt and anger.
A state with around 200 years of history.
The first thing that I noticed is how everything was presented as a story of ‘doing’ instead of a series of histories emerging in equal importance on the narrative of what is new America.
The natives, the African Americans, the Asians presented as sharing the same space in an assumptive scenario that puts them in the otherness of America’s existence.
No narrative of their histories, just the acknowledgment they exist.
The pioneers who made this land in the forefront. The dislocations of indigenous people to securitize vast areas of land. The securitization agenda in its earliest form.
Securitise from what? This word serves the interests of those who are pursuing the agenda without equitable considerations for those marginalized in the process.
A history of half-hearted stories, incomplete narratives, equalization said but not existing in any form or story in real life.
The marketization of ideas, becoming ideas in themselves and accepted as currency fueling development, without any fundamental structure for emerging cooperation.
Forcibly changing a world that doesn’t want to change and presenting it as de facto.
I can dig a thousand words to describe the disappointment in American history. Mostly, because whoever took the lead in making this the common reality, had not thought through all they lost in the process of focusing on the small detail of the multiplicity the size of land has offered them.
Agrarian change for who, and to feed who?
The land of the amble, producing less for less.
The establishment of fake stories as a level of understanding of what might have been better imaginable.
The past few weeks have seen historical levels of political unwill in the US and UK.
Despite the repetitive votes in the parliament on Brexit options, across the pond, considerations over at which level the business interests of the President are conflicting with responsibilities in the public office, have been held back by senior Democrats.
Not very unlike the Labour leader’s opposition to the EU, and dislike the Tories are in the driving seat of the negotiations, with Theresa May being traditionally pro-EU – a clarity of parliamentarian’s will, is anything but a clear cut between for and anti-Brexit voices.
The confusion in UK and US is the re-divergence of the drivers behind people’s voting preferences. Traditional politics, that of the left and the right, have hegemonized to the extent of other areas of connectivity between political preferences has emerged.
Some may think the opinion Brexit will never happen and that Trump will not see through a second term, is premature today. Rightly the politics are still shedding old skin and testing new voices. Traditional far rightism may see some rise or tv coverage however in temporality, people seek new ideas, often held by the young.
Unquestionably it is a unique time in history to live and experience the shifts, twists, and stretches. Yet the presence of Extinction Rebellion and Young People’s Climate Strikes over the past few weeks have an 80’s tone, the global problems are ours and they are ignored by politicians continuing the pursuit of fast results and short term solutions. In the background, seals are dropping off to their death from cliffs in the Arctic they have not had to climb before when the ice area was 40% larger than it is today.
The tide is certainly changing, and we are running out of those in ye olde politics – inevitably will need to work together, for their own survival.
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From the Contemporary Art in the Global (MSc School of Oriental and African Studies)
WE.LIVE.INDARKTIMES
Artists: Derek Walcott, Mark Rothko, Frank Bowling, Atsuho Tanaka, Sammi Baloji
The project visits the theme of darkness as it is approached by the selected artists through painting, poetry, installation art and photography. Dark times have for centuries been associated with the Dark Ages, the victorian times, the plague, III Reich, and the Crusades. Is darkness created in the name of God to entice a journey in reflection?
Darkness in this exhibition will be visited through the artists’ own periods and reflections of darkness. Starting with the more recent Baloji’s photographs have a strong post-environmental sentiment, yet all artists reflect on humanity’s over-consuming framework of aimless societal misappropriations maintained by irrelevance.
The artworks date from post-war period, aligned with the more recent works of Baloji’s diptych, for the provision of a bridging point on perpetual concerns about the loss of communities, citizenship and human rights that have been exaggerated, yet feel less visual, for the absence of blood.
The art on show reflects as much today, as they did at the time of making, that we are entering an autumn of social conscience exasperated by the informality and misappropriation of technology coercing the psyches onto a temporal loss and inaction.
Yet there must be resistance. Art is also a mirror up to the society, ourselves, in hope each individual visiting this exhibition will reflect a little and make a small step of resistance that translates into a big change.
When we don’t speak, we maintain darkness. Northwest indigenous communities have talked of ‘silence’ as a skill. ‘Silence’ used in diplomacy can present a show of arrogance or absence as in demonstration against what I’d said. Against that theory, words presented hide the things that happen in silence, including their potential to tell a different story.
Bringing artworks made by Rothko, Bowling, Tanaka, Walcott, and Baloji together distinctively plays to the audience responses, being of equal therapeutic importance as they were to the artists at the time of making. The five artworks have incredible ‘enlightening’ power’, offering a quiet introspective space for soul searching.
We would like visitors to individual notice which one artwork they are drawn to on their individual experiential pattern route, free from want and free from fear.
ARTWORK SELECTION
Rothko “Silence is so accurate.”
Yellow and orange make green; green the colour signifying life, renewal, growth, fertility, harmony, nature, freshness, energy, and safety. Rothko never wanted association with any art movement however he was pigeonholed as an abstract expressionist. The simplicity of Orange and Yellow cannot go without noting the technical challenge of keeping the colours separate so they don’t produce green. Is the artist pointing out that we are in the process of exploring our spirituality, and have not reached a harmonious existence yet?
A quest for ascension, Orange and Yellow has a ritualistic quality to the universe framed within the shuttle golden Buddhist orange outline. His work has often been described for its meditative qualities whilst remaining large, and non representational.
Barney Newman, the man inspired title of Frank Bowling’s work in the exhibition, saw himself as a political artist who has also shown his work outside Rothko’s Chapel in Houston, Texas.
The painting is another major African flag colour representation Bowling is known for. Bowling is of Guyanese descent, a descendant of a slave, still surrounded by racism and race assumptions with participation in the First World Festival of Negro Arts, whilst being the first black artist elected in the Royal Academy of Arts with the artist recently receiving an OBE, continuing the colonial mode of tradition. His work was also shown at Afro Modern exhibition at Tate Liverpool in 2010’s, for significance the port of Liverpool having hosted the largest number of slave trade shipments in England.
The question is does Bowling rebel or commercialise further the idea of Africa in a place of exoticism and colonial frames? ‘Who’s afraid of Barney Newman’ was made in 1968, placed two years after the Guyanese independence from the British. Was Bowling raising awareness at a time when slave trade destinations were gaining independence from colonial rule?
Atsuko Tanaka had one said “I wanted to shatter stable beauty with my work,” highlighting how domestic objects are but beautiful and disruptive from the lack of presence, yet plethora of being.
Tanaka’s silence covered by the bulbs in the original artwork, from a position of an emerging arts movement, could have represented silence as an imposition for a projection of power. In international relations frameworks, silence is mostly imposed by psychological violence, affecting the corporal of the most vulnerable, women, people of colour and those not integrated in the functionality of post Colonialism, and neoliberalism in the global and constitute political discourses and practice. (Dingli, Bhambra and Shilliam, 2009)
Undoubtedly there is a pause in Walcott’s ‘Love after Love’ poem. Who inspired the poet to write this? Is it advice, or as I have always read this, as a love poem to oneself?
Derek Walcott passed away two years ago and his sea breeze of poetry is a timeless reminder to leave the insecurities we all carry, behind, and just be.
The meditative quality in the thought of spending time with oneself is not unlike Rothko’s iconographical ‘Orange and Yellow’.
Does it really matter who’s heart is broken or who broke whose heart? If anything, the world would become a better place if each and everyone reflected on the poem a little every day. After all, through love there’s light and the light lost in things that don’t work, is light lost.
Stylistically ethnographical, the photographer has removed the orientalism and exoticism of indigenous communities, removed the smiles and colours and yellow grey toned the landscape, to represent Congolese as the Congolese see themselves. In this diptych he has interestingly kept women seperate to men. He plays with the Primitivist Theory of the artist as an ethnographer, whilst placing it in a contemporary context.
Artwork Labels
Image from eu.art.com
Rothko’s goal was “the elimination of all obstacles between the painter and the idea, and between the idea and the observer.” Rothko was known to suffer depression, reflected by the frame as a limit to happiness. Rothko was Latvian and Russian who went to primary and high school in Portland, Oregon – the ‘weird’ US city because of its rebel inquisitive population. His work invites the viewer to explore ‘metaphysical realities of their own consciousness’. The red a reflection emotional forces fighting nature a sea of blood at sunset, framed in limitation, stopping time, a photograph. The mesmerising quality of this work, is attracting attention even for non believers. The quality of light and Rothko’s interest in creating light reflects his religious iconographic approach to his frames.
Image from https://www.wikiart.org/en/frank-bowling/who-s-afraid-of-barney-newman-1968
Bowling has expressed his frustration in an interview with Laura Barnett for the Guardian: “It seemed that everyone was expecting me to paint some kind of protest art out of postcolonial discussion. For a while I fell for it.”
The Rastafarian flag of green yellow and orange, signifying the displaced africans living in exile as a result of the slave trade. Unlike Rothko’s clearly defined frames, Bowling’s use of colours is blending into one, another around the edges and without affecting or altering the core of the three colours. Could the merging of colours also point to different ethnicities merging into one in the Caribbean and South America, as a result of colonial rule. Think of the children of Chinese, Indian, Syrian and Spanish immigrants on post-colonial lands, the ‘dougla’, the ‘koolie’, the ‘red skin spanish’.
Or did he attempt to define frayed around the edges, maybe from wear and tear?
The impact of slavery remains as unaddressed as it was in 1968 as it is today. Microaggressions are all apparent. The artist, a slave descendant, opposed the idea of representing Caribbean art.
Image from youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUV-v3xI7Lw
Atsuho Tanaka’s electric dress, still lighting gallery spaces and discussions across the world, even after the artist’s death, in a timeless manner, originally the bulbs laid to cover her body, now exhibited without it.
In the West, a Christmas tree is something beautiful, pretty and a tacky representation of a happy time.
Tanaka was one of the more influential Gutai art movement artists, believed by many to deserve the leadership position within the rebellious post-war Japanese artist group, a but hindered from it due to her being a woman.
Tanaka’s work is symbolic to false light, untruth, prettiness by misrepresentation, a wonderful objectification of many beliefs changing and evolving in the years the work was created.
When the artist wore the artwork, around 200 light bulbs flickered every two and half minutes, like a pulsating body, inviting the viewer to view it a ‘living’ being without consideration of the being inside. Gutai translates as ‘concreteness’ born from a society that advocated for the loss of individualism.
Image from https://www.christystich.com/blog/2016/2/4/my-most-treasured-poem
Derek Walcott passed away less than two years ago, a Caribbean child of a slave, lived most of his life in Trinidad and St Lucia, and was awarded with the Nobel Prize in 1990’s.
Walcott’s poem is a reminder of being one with ourselves, salvaging ourselves with acts of faith ‘Give wine. Give Bread’ playacting Jesus proclamation of memory in the act of sharing love towards a progression towards oneself to a place where our reflection in the mirror doesn’t feel ugly or drained anymore, but celebratory.
Walcott’s exploration of European and African cultural adaptations within the Caribbean, and the multiculturality of the West Indies is reflected throughout his work. Walcott’s poem has a nostalgia about the mistake of trying to fit in other people’s shoes, and when ‘The time will come’ as in the time we will be ready or will be forced upon us to reflect in being at peace with oneself reminding us it is entirely achievable as ‘Sit. Feast on your life.’ is one of the few things in life left we have entire freedom to do on our own.
Images from #sammybaloji instagram page
Sammy Baloji is a Democratic Republic of Congo born photographer working internationally, with photographs represented in a wide range high profile african art fairs and collective exhibitions.
Born in a country known for the inherent political fragility, threat to human life, animal habitat and near extinction of species. His work is very much representing a colour code for how DRC is seen abroad and how it feels to Congolese people from within the country.
Baloji having participated in Venice Bienalle in an exhibition on Belgium’s colonial rule, he notes sharing and learning about a specific time period “To talk about our reality, and also to dream.”
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Bibliography:
In autumn 2018, I made an in-class presentation at the SOAS, University of London Faculty of Law & Social Sciences Department of Development Studies for the GLOBALISATION AND DEVELOPMENT module on the topic of the informalisation of Labour in Developing Countries.
Contrary to expectations, informal labour relations have not disappeared but have been reproduced and incorporated into globalised production circuits.
The presentation covered the main theories on the topic with a focus on the case of Sierra Leonian mining work.
Open Society Foundation’s Civil Society Leadership Awards for postgrad studies open for applications now https://osf.to/1eHqBOh via @opensociety Check the list of eligible countries.
SEE FULL DESCRIPTION BELOW
The Civil Society Leadership Awards (CSLA) provide fully-funded scholarships for master’s degree study to individuals who clearly demonstrate academic and professional excellence and a deep commitment to leading positive social change in their communities.
Applicants must meet all of the following criteria:
The awards are available to citizens of the following countries:
Awards are available for study in the following areas:
The Open Society Foundations and Scholarship Programs are committed to equal opportunity, and exercise that policy in relation to all admissions processes. CSLA does not discriminate on the basis of age, race, color, sex, religion, sexual orientation, or disability.
Competition for the Civil Society Leadership Awards is open and merit-based. Selection is based on an applicant’s fit with the program’s objectives as well as the graduate admissions criteria of the participating universities. Academic excellence, professional aptitude, leadership potential in the field of specialization, proven commitment to open society values, and appropriate language proficiency are all important factors in evaluation.
All eligible applicants will be reviewed by an international selection committee. The proposed field of study should be logical for the goals expressed, and the application itself should be well-organized and complete. Compelling candidates will be interviewed by a selection committee comprised of university representatives, CSLA staff, and partner organization representatives, such as the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD).
Interested applicants must complete an online or paper CSLA application and submit along with supporting documentation to be considered for CSLA support.
All candidates are strongly encouraged to apply online if possible using the Open Society Foundations grant portal, an online platform. To apply online, please register on the portal and then follow instructions.
Paper applications may be accessed in the Download Files section of this page. Please download the application form before completing or printing, and review the accompanying materials before submitting your application.
If you are applying in French, you must download and email or mail in an application form. Please consult How to Apply for further information.
If you have further questions, please consult the Frequently Asked Questions.
All application materials in French will be available on this page from March 21, 2019.
https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/grants/civil-society-leadership-award
Written by an anonymous friend, November 2018
I have lived in Peckham from 1994 and have seen various gyms pop up in the area. However, a lot of these gyms did not really fit what I wanted. Recently, I saw an advertisement for a gym of FB and it looked like it hit all the right buttons, more cardio then weights type.
I will now tell you my experience of the gym, as it was interesting to me as I don’t really train at gyms in general.
I was going shopping one morning down Peckham Rye and saw that the F45 Training gym that I saw on FB was advertising their opening, so decided to pop in. I was greeted by a female trainer that was very friendly and was looking to sign me up straight away. The sells pitch was good for a trail membership. Now the gym is purely class based (only downside), meaning you can’t show up and do your own training thing. No big deal for me as I do my own thing with my homeboy and by myself. Goal was to do 1 or 2 hard workouts a week with this gym as it was close to home (main reason for joining.) So back to sales pitch, I would say they had all the right looks to draw people in, attractive trainers, sweet looking new equipment etc.. Now the kicker was the price 189 a month.. Damn am I still in Peckham. Commercial price for commercial gym, I guess.
So I thought the price being what it was that most of the clients would be white as most Peckham people I know ain’t paying that price (Laughing). So attending the classes I noticed firstly more woman than men (no biggy). So I have been to a few classes since joining in August, however, every time I go, I notice that I am the only brother (meaning Dark Skin Black Man) in the class. And first few times only black person period.
Noticed some sistas showing up, but still no brothers. Only brotha I saw was a trainer. So here I am in the middle of Peckham (known to be a so called Black Area) and I am the only brother a the gym, in this day and age gotta make you smile. But this fits in with the Costa and other cafe’s popping up in the area, vape shop etc.. (Gentrification). Luckily I am not bothered about being the only brotha, but now the pressures on to represent (Laughing). So at times it does feel strange, as the only brotha, but I keep my focus, as it is about the work.
Now my theory on why I am the only brotha I have seen is that most guys in general are into the weight training side of exercise more than cardio, so hence less men in general. And most Black guys I know prefer to weight train rather than cardio. So it will be interesting to see if the membership and look of the gym changes over time.
side note- On FB a Sista was looking at the advertisement and said that there were no Black People in the promotional video(interesting). I had a laugh and put in the comment section, that there are a few of us in there including myself. She replied, how come you not in the video, but there is no way I would be in the video as I am not one of there devoted members, I am in and out, so I assume the peeps in the video would be devoted members.
I can’t even begin to imagine what it feels like for Brazilians.
Half will be sharpening their machetes while the other half are shuddering in terror.
This is the defining moment in contemporary history. Humans eating their insides, being fooled to put the blame on the most vulnerable, articulating things they are neither proud or representative of.
No excuses for fascists anymore. This is a true war and it will leave many souless bodies behind.
Many days in the past two years I have woken up with the feeling we are living in parallel universes. Politicians continue to offend sensibility on a daily basis, polirising public opinion, whilst we stand aside watching on, the theatre of the insane. Our reality has become not too different from the Hunger Games, or many apocalypse-in-process themed movies.
Since Brexit, Trump being voted in, Putin and Erdogan, the troubles in Venezuela, Congo and Honduras to name a few, it is apparent that politicians aim to hold onto power, often to further their personal financial interests, on a wage funded by tax payer’s money.
Having gained power with dubious populist campaign sentiments, these politicians have also grabbed power with well versed catch-phrase marketing, tricking electorates with empty promises, whilst reducing their rights, and further pushing them into poverty.
However we have also seen the popularity and rise of progressive movements through the mist of this adversity. These have sown the seeds of change, pushing back on the dark principles of those autocrats. #metoo, #timesup, #FBPE and reports from non governmental organisations such us Doctors of the World, Human Rights Watch and Global Witness among other, have exposed witnesses in the political system, corruption, and promote accountability.
In London, knife crime amongst the young has escalated to uncontrollable levels, with police cuts, closure of youth services and social care, leading many with the inability to escape and furthermore to extremes and desperation.
Would any of the people affected be likely to join these movements or is their anger at a point where they are more likely to be pushed to extremes?
And how many times does this need to repeat to feel real in order of recognizing violence is not a resolution tactic, sometimes even when it is in defense.
Is activism and progressive thinking a middle-class will?
Artists and creatives around the world will surely emerge with an engaging and metaphorical message. That is the traffic light defining we live in intolerable political times.
Tracey Emin made her stand with the neon writing at St Pancras station. And that is all good willed and valuable. Many others follow.
However I can’t help but wonder how the most marginalised will gain a voice again. And who will care enough to listen, and for what reason.