Lee-Ann Olwage: “If we are looking to globally improve the lives of people living with dementia, then we cannot overlook the part that concerns different cultural perceptions”

Lee-Ann Olwage: “If we are looking to globally improve the lives of people living with dementia, then we cannot overlook the part that concerns different cultural perceptions” Lee-Ann Olwage, who admits she struggles with her own mental health issues, also has family members who have suffered or are suffering from Alzheimer's. For this reason, she states that, with her work, she aims to create a space in which the people she photographs can play an active role in creating the images and that, above all, makes them feel like the true “heroines” of their own stories.

13.12.2023 | by Mariana Moniz

Diego Rivera's Portuguese ancestry

Diego Rivera's Portuguese ancestry It is said in Mexico that good life stories are passionate. They are happy and painful, they tie and untie blind knots in the throat, like a harsh swallow of cheap tequila. We set the tone and enter one of the taciturn taverns of the city of Guanajuato - the so-called "cantinas", where personal tales are distilled as the glasses advance. Rough stone walls in the half-light, damp breath. In my head, Chavela Vargas sings "Tú me acostumbraste." It's night and it's raining softly outside. With a toast, we seal the moment. And we tell a secret life story.

27.05.2023 | by Pedro Cardoso

Biodiversity is an abstract concept, interview with Mia Couto

Biodiversity is an abstract concept, interview with Mia Couto Two hours with Mia Couto in an engaging conversation that covers various aspects of his interests and career, his affective geographies, the diversity of peoples and their ways of life as inspiration for the stories, the environment, and the development model to be discovered, and how to treat nature not as a "resource". We talked about hard times of violence, and the utopia of Mozambican Independence. Literary subjects do not predominate, although the Mozambican author wishes he had more time to dedicate to writing. Also thinking about how to take the pleasure of reading further and how to help bring out new writers. A writer in the terrain.

22.05.2023 | by Marta Lança

“To play music, it is necessary to read people”, an interview with artist and Dj Lucky

“To play music, it is necessary to read people”, an interview with artist and Dj Lucky Balanced between various cultures, he has lived for 31 years in a more open and diverse Lisbon, an openness and diversity to which people like Lucky have contributed so much, from building the city to making the city dance. This is a city of hard times, but also of encounters and possibilities with which he has grown up. In this text, we are led by the memories of Dj Lucky, between various sound tracks of quisange, semba, and afro blues, and multiple tracks on the floor, from Kinshasa to the Graça neighborhood, passing through Luanda, Cova da Moura, and Bairro Alto.

15.11.2022 | by Marta Lança

Where is black feminism? An interview with Desiree Lewis

Where is black feminism? An interview with Desiree Lewis Stuart Hall’s ironic use of “the west and the rest” is very real in the fixation among South Africans with “us” and “Africa”. It was encouraging that a sense of South Africa’s inextricable connectedness to the rest of the continent surfaced at moments in the FMF struggle. But the curiosity about and interest in African politics, literature, and academic knowledge still hasn’t really taken off, whether among students or established scholars.

30.05.2022 | by Sean Jacobs

“Institutions change, in a slow and tedious way, but it happens”. Interviewing Philipp Schramm and Katharina Fink from Iwalewahaus

“Institutions change, in a slow and tedious way, but it happens”. Interviewing Philipp Schramm and Katharina Fink from Iwalewahaus I think we always have the responsibility of looking into the ghosts of these colonial dreams and taking the ideas further. For example, we must rethink what are artwork features and what exactly defines them? Institutions change, in a slow and tedious way, but it happens. If we also think about the thesis and how it is configurated, how free can we be about the aesthetic part of it? Now we can offer “decolonize art studies” as a course. All the reconfigurations are a very long process to be achieved. A very important thing I would like to highlight is that where you are you must do your work and contribution. We should try to influence others with our work, inspiring them and trying to change what we know is wrong.

18.03.2022 | by Arimilde Soares

Photography and Identity. Interviewing Theo Gould

Photography and Identity. Interviewing Theo Gould My work has always been focused round connection. I’ve always wanted to tell stories that even though you know the audience and the subject might be different I would want the audience to look at the photo, the subjects, and each detail and for them to be able to see something similar. Most people that look at my most recent project “MIXED” and probably don’t necessarily think of themselves as mixed, however if we really look back at history and ethnicity it’s clear that we are all mixed, we just haven’t identified it . We all came from Africa and our genetic disposition is remarkably similar. The only differences we notice are as a result of our ancestors colonising different parts of our planet. Effectively we’re all mixed as racial purity is a complete myth.

28.02.2022 | by Alícia Gaspar

Memory work as “radical intervention” and “reparation”: interview with Marita Sturken

Memory work as “radical intervention” and “reparation”: interview with Marita Sturken Today, I think that the field is challenged more than ever by the increased volatility of debates about what nations remember and consequentially forget. Monuments and memorials are being vandalized, torn down, officially removed. They can no longer be seen as simply part of an historical landscape. Much of this can be understood as battles over the historical narratives of monuments and their power, but it is also about tensions around who the nation mourns and who it sees or does not see as having a “grievable life” in Judith Butler’s term. So I see memory activism as a key site for the production of memory scholarship.

25.10.2021 | by Inês Beleza Barreiros

No Breathing! Reflecting Achille Mbembe

No Breathing! Reflecting Achille Mbembe The article by Achille, I think, significantly points out the legitimacy of being limited from obtaining oxygen, by explicitly pointing out that for some parts of the world where healthcare is part of organized neglect, we are faced with more than just the need to physically breathe. There is a prohibition of breathing that is systemic in nature which is part of a larger need for the freedom to breathe (live). For example the violent killings of black civilians by the police in South Africa due to an unchecked implementation of COVID-19 laws and regulations left us questioning the relevance (need) for policing systems embedded in colonial rhetoric.

08.04.2021 | by Marcos Jinguba

Labor and Liberation: An Interview with Margaret Stevens

Labor and Liberation: An Interview with Margaret Stevens The significance of Mexico for this work is still emerging. Much more remains to be seen about just how deeply embedded the Mexican communists were in the radical networks across the Caribbean where black workers were predominant. Of what I have uncovered, the place of Mexico has two important functions in our historical understanding of the period. First, it was a place of refuge for not only radicals like the forced emigre from Republican Spain, but also for black revolutionaries like Jacques Roumain who spent some time there after being released from prison in Haiti and a short stint in Europe. Second, Mexico was the first people of color Communist nucleus in the western hemisphere, and the sense of anti-imperialism and sensitivity to chauvinism in the CPUSA was critical to strengthening the antiracist struggle across the region.

26.03.2021 | by The Public Archive

Markets and Margins: An interview with Etant Dupain

Markets and Margins: An interview with Etant Dupain During the colonial era, the French colonists did not want to share anything with the slaves, including food. As the population grew and grew, the colonizers decided to give the slaves pieces of land called portion de vive which were to be used as a way for them to feed their own families. The producers on this land were so successful that they began to trade what they were growing.

18.03.2021 | by The Public Archive

Breathing Prohibited

Breathing Prohibited Certainly, the virtual dimension will take a new importance, also in light of the massive use of digital tools that this new reality brought with itself, but also in relation to the fact that artists might end up not traveling a lot like before…who knows! The art that will change is only in relation to travel and distance. What could definitely change might be the distribution channels, moving more and more into streaming and digital platforms…but I really hope that this won’t happen. The emotion that live art arouses is incomparable.

12.03.2021 | by Marcos Jinguba

Women of Color in Film: An Interview with JT Takagi & Ada Gay Griffin

Women of Color in Film: An Interview with JT Takagi & Ada Gay Griffin The oppressive policies and structural inequities that underlie the conditions of poor and working class people’s lives here and abroad date from the first invasion of native territories, and the last few decades have exacerbated these conditions. What our older films reveal is the similarity of conditions now with what existed 50 years ago.

03.03.2021 | by Keelyn Bradley

Bisa Butler Summons Black History In Her Quilted Arts to Motivate the Fight for Black Lives

Bisa Butler Summons Black History In Her Quilted Arts to Motivate the Fight for Black Lives In Bisa's artwork , color is a language that speaks about African American evolution from enslavement in the United States to today's ongoing fight for Black liberation Bisa also draws on her Ghanaian heritage by illustrating the vibrancy of Africa's textile and fabric traditions. These artistic methods allow her to examine several themes including family, community, youth and power.

06.01.2021 | by Ugonna-Ora Owoh

Interview: Dr Natalia Kanem – Gender Equality is about fighting for the right things…

Interview: Dr Natalia Kanem – Gender Equality is about fighting for the right things… Today, tens of thousands of girls under the age of 18 were married off. Today, one in three women can expect to experience some form of physical or sexual violence in their lifetime. This needs to change, and it needs to change now. Each of these numbers tells a personal story and each one of these women or girls could have been my friend, my sister, my mother, my daughter, or me. That is what motivates me to create a better world for women and girls, no matter where they may be.

14.12.2020 | by Regina Jane Jere and Natalia Kanem

Hospitality Archaeologies | Interviewing Rachael Kiddey

Hospitality Archaeologies | Interviewing Rachael Kiddey Somewhere in between there is something more human that tries to understand these people, imagine if you had to flee your home and you could one carry one thing with you, how would you continue to be yourself? On top of fleeing and experiencing a traumatic conflict you turn up in a place that is supposed to be civilized and you get treated like an abomination. This project is about to try to humanize migrants and make them individuals and real people, our friends, our neighbors.

26.11.2020 | by Alícia Gaspar and Rachael Kiddey

Hospitality Archaeologies | Interviewing Yannis Hamilakis

Hospitality Archaeologies | Interviewing Yannis Hamilakis It has to do with the colonial history of Europe as a whole: I see this phenomenon of migration from the global south to the global north as the latest phase in the long history of racialized capitalism and colonialism. Many of these people who are trying to cross are coming from previously colonized countries by Europe. We know that, that long history of colonization has an impact in the present in terms of structural inequality, poverty, dispossession and war, and at the same time that we are seeing is the inability of Europe to come to terms with its own history. Which is a history of colonization, of course, instigated by proto-capitalism and capitalist developments as well as the hierarchy of racialization and the legacy of whiteness and white supremacy which fueled the whole colonial condition.

25.11.2020 | by Alícia Gaspar and Yannis Hamilakis

Revolutions and Revisions: An Interview with Charles Forsdick and Christian Høgsbjerg - Part II

Revolutions and Revisions: An Interview with Charles Forsdick and Christian Høgsbjerg - Part II Stuart Hall once wrote that James in The Black Jacobins was the first to centre Atlantic slavery in world history – so in this sense the importance of James’s work to these debates is self-evident. Certainly, James’s short discussion on the economic roots of British parliamentary abolitionism formed the essential outline of Eric Williams’s more famous and lengthy contribution in this field – as Williams himself acknowledged, though in my opinion James’s grasp of the modernity of colonial slavery and the slave ships and plantations thanks to his underlying theoretical grasp of the uneven and combined nature of capitalist development meant his analysis of the exact relationship between capitalism and slavery is more sophisticated than that of Williams in many respects.

18.11.2020 | by Christian Hogsbjerg, Charles Forsdick and The Public Archive

Revolutions and Revisions: An Interview with Charles Forsdick and Christian Høgsbjerg - Part I

Revolutions and Revisions: An Interview with Charles Forsdick and Christian Høgsbjerg - Part I In Toussaint Louverture: A Black Jacobin in the Age of Revolutions (Pluto) Charles Forsdick and Christian Høgsbjerg have produced what is arguably the most important biography of Louverture since CLR James’ magisterial Black Jacobins was first published in 1938. Kicking against the contemporary anti-Black and anti-radical revisionism that downplays the historical importance of the revolution while dismissing the significance of Louverture himself, Forsdick and Hogsbjerg’s short monograph is urgent, timely, and strikingly well-written. They have also created a sort of supplement to the book, editing The Black Jacobins Reader (Duke), an excellent collection of essays, commentaries, and primary source material that provides additional context and critique for the writing, production, and circulations of James’ classic history.

18.11.2020 | by Charles Forsdick, Christian Hogsbjerg and The Public Archive

The buala archive and other gestures of freedom with Marta Lança

The buala archive and other gestures of freedom with Marta Lança In 2010 Marta Lança set up the BUALA website, of which she is still the editor and the main driving force. To mark the 10th birthday of this unique platform dedicated to “exploring the synergies between art, theory, and activism in order to stimulate public debate about the lasting impact of racism and colonialism across Portuguese-speaking communities”, maat is hosting a special cycle of presentations, talks and screening entitled “and I am sparse in dense fluidity” – Gestures of Freedom”, curated by BUALA’s founder.

30.10.2020 | by Nuno Ferreira de Carvalho and Marta Lança