I have decided to act in the symbolic realm. The aim is not to change the world out there but the discourse about the world out there. To sharpen the consciousness about ones proper accountability for global developments. In my artistic and textual work, I try to elaborate on the correlation between high-technologized societies and the production of precarious living conditions. One of my prime concerns is the willingness to recognize that causes and solutions are not always located somewhere on the “outside”.
At the horizon of imagined cities as “transcultural megacities”, music tends to gain agency in the promotion of senses of place and belonging in, and to the city. We attempt to show the ways in which the processes and values associated with the internationalization of culture – which, more generally, are taking place within the context of the “new political economy and its culture”, may be explored under the light of some musical manifestations taking place in the city of Lisbon.
Kepha Oiro is a contemporary dancer and choreographer from Nairobi – Kenya. He's the artistic director of a new contemporary performing group: Tuchangamke, which conducts research into movement fusion in ethnic African communities, based at the Kenya National Theatre, Nairobi, and is the artistic director of the Dance Marathon initiative. This encounter with Nadine Siegert took place in Cologne (Germany) during an artist residency until March 2010.
Kuduro sprang up Luanda's musseques (shanty towns) and spread rapidly through the Kandongueiros (street vendors or hawkers). New music appears on a daily basis, feeding Luanda's vocabulary with new expressions, new beats and new moves. This frenetic creation of urban languages plays an important role in today's Luanda, especially among the younger city dwellers.
I hate the idea that African life is simple bare life - the life of an empty stomach and a naked body waiting to be fed, clothed, healed or housed. It is a conception that is embedded in "development" ideology and practice. It radically goes against people's own daily experience with the immaterial world of the spirit, especially as it manifests itself under conditions of extreme precariousness and radical uncertainty. This kind of metaphysical and ontological violence has long been a fundamental aspect of the fiction of development the West seeks to impose on those it has colonized. We must oppose it and resist such surreptitious forms of dehumanization.
Behind the Rainbow explores the transition of the ANC from a liberation organization into South Africa's ruling party through the evolution of the relationship between two of its most prominent cadres, Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma. Exiled under apartheid, they were brothers in arms. Under Mandela they loyally labored to build a non-racial state. Now they are bitter rivals. Their duel threatens to tear apart the ANC and the country, as the poor desperately seek hope in change and the elite fight for the spoils of victory. Behind the Rainbow features key interviews with ANC current and former leaders, including Jacob Zuma, Thabo Mbeki, Kgalema Motlanthe, Pallo Jordan, and Terror Lekota.
"Our Forbidden Places", an extraordinary documentary by Leila Kilani, returns to the political repression in Morocco in the time of Hassan II. Three generations of Moroccans evoke a completely human story of heroism and fortitude. Belying their serenity, all the characters form a perfect picture of Morocco today –they are still frightened by memories of being “buried alive” in Tazmamart prison and of countless cries of despair that few dared even to listen to. "Our Forbidden Places" is not really a film about a particular country, but rather it echoes all human memories of torment by extreme forms of state violence, be it blind or selective.
In fact, to take up arms to dominate a people is, above all, to take up arms to destroy, or at least to neutralize, to paralyze, its cultural life. For, with a strong indigenous cultural life, foreign domination cannot be sure of its perpetuation. At any moment, depending on internal and external factors determining the evolution of the society in question, cultural resistance (indestructible) may take on new forms (political, economic, armed) in order fully to contest foreign domination.
I have decided to act in the symbolic realm. The aim is not to change the world out there but the discourse about the world out there. To sharpen the consciousness about ones proper accountability for global developments. In my artistic and textual work, I try to elaborate on the correlation between high-technologized societies and the production of precarious living conditions. One of my prime concerns is the willingness to recognize that causes and solutions are not always located somewhere on the “outside”. 
At the horizon of imagined cities as “transcultural megacities”, music tends to gain agency in the promotion of senses of place and belonging in, and to the city. We attempt to show the ways in which the processes and values associated with the internationalization of culture – which, more generally, are taking place within the context of the “new political economy and its culture”, may be explored under the light of some musical manifestations taking place in the city of Lisbon. 
Kepha Oiro is a contemporary dancer and choreographer from Nairobi – Kenya. He's the artistic director of a new contemporary performing group: Tuchangamke, which conducts research into movement fusion in ethnic African communities, based at the Kenya National Theatre, Nairobi, and is the artistic director of the Dance Marathon initiative. This encounter with Nadine Siegert took place in Cologne (Germany) during an artist residency until March 2010. 
Kuduro sprang up Luanda's musseques (shanty towns) and spread rapidly through the Kandongueiros (street vendors or hawkers). New music appears on a daily basis, feeding Luanda's vocabulary with new expressions, new beats and new moves. This frenetic creation of urban languages plays an important role in today's Luanda, especially among the younger city dwellers. 
I hate the idea that African life is simple bare life - the life of an empty stomach and a naked body waiting to be fed, clothed, healed or housed. It is a conception that is embedded in "development" ideology and practice. It radically goes against people's own daily experience with the immaterial world of the spirit, especially as it manifests itself under conditions of extreme precariousness and radical uncertainty. This kind of metaphysical and ontological violence has long been a fundamental aspect of the fiction of development the West seeks to impose on those it has colonized. We must oppose it and resist such surreptitious forms of dehumanization. 
Behind the Rainbow explores the transition of the ANC from a liberation organization into South Africa's ruling party through the evolution of the relationship between two of its most prominent cadres, Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma. Exiled under apartheid, they were brothers in arms. Under Mandela they loyally labored to build a non-racial state. Now they are bitter rivals. Their duel threatens to tear apart the ANC and the country, as the poor desperately seek hope in change and the elite fight for the spoils of victory. Behind the Rainbow features key interviews with ANC current and former leaders, including Jacob Zuma, Thabo Mbeki, Kgalema Motlanthe, Pallo Jordan, and Terror Lekota. 
"Our Forbidden Places", an extraordinary documentary by Leila Kilani, returns to the political repression in Morocco in the time of Hassan II. Three generations of Moroccans evoke a completely human story of heroism and fortitude. Belying their serenity, all the characters form a perfect picture of Morocco today –they are still frightened by memories of being “buried alive” in Tazmamart prison and of countless cries of despair that few dared even to listen to. "Our Forbidden Places" is not really a film about a particular country, but rather it echoes all human memories of torment by extreme forms of state violence, be it blind or selective. 
In fact, to take up arms to dominate a people is, above all, to take up arms to destroy, or at least to neutralize, to paralyze, its cultural life. For, with a strong indigenous cultural life, foreign domination cannot be sure of its perpetuation. At any moment, depending on internal and external factors determining the evolution of the society in question, cultural resistance (indestructible) may take on new forms (political, economic, armed) in order fully to contest foreign domination. 
