If images are powerful for identifying and revolutionising through the multiple interpretations they introduce into human feelings, then words identify through questioning, as they are connected to an idea of language as domination and authority – in other words, only those with social and political legitimacy write and speak.
Afroscreen
15.11.2020 | by Marta Lança and Welket Bungué
A Radical Journal of Geography, Global Displacements is a rigorous and trenchantly argued examination of the impact of the global organization of capitalist accumulation and exploitation on the life and labor of Haitian and Dominican people. Focusing on the garment industry, Werner looks at the circulation of capital and labor under neoliberalism, paying close attention to questions of geography, race, and gender. A critical, Caribbeanist intervention into geographic and political-economic research, Global Displacements will stand as a classic work of Caribbean studies.
Games Without Borders
12.11.2020 | by The Public Archive and Marion Werner
To celebrate the 45th anniversary of Angola's Independence, the ATD and GERAÇÃO 80 in collaboration with TPA, Mostra de Cinemas Africanos and PlatinaLine will be shown documentaries of the project "Angola - Nos Trilhos da Independência”, “Independence”, “Women of Arms”, “São Nicolau - They Haven't Forgotten” and “The Persistent Fragility of Memory”.
Afroscreen
11.11.2020 | by Geração 80
As Black Lives Matter, we recognize and affirm the sanctity of all Black lives everywhere in the world. Following the murder of an unarmed civilian by the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) unit of the Nigerian police, young people across Nigeria have held protests denouncing years of brutality, torture, abductions, and killings. The demonstrations mark one of the largest Nigerian protest movements in generations. (...) There is a global movement for Black lives afoot. From the protestors in Cameroon who faced down water cannon and tear gas, to the fierce women in Namibia demanding #Shutitalldown, to the brave Zimbabweans campaigning for the release of Takudzwa Ngadziore, we will not be silenced and we cannot be stopped. The call for Black lives to matter is a rallying cry for all Black lives striving for liberation. We stand against all violence inflicted on black communities.
To read
04.11.2020 | by BLM
For 20 years, Fran Lebowitz has been dreaming of tourists disappearing from Times Square. “Now there are no tourists in Times Square,” she recently said, “but, of course, there’s no one in Times Square.” When the pandemic hit in March, Times Square went from a congested, and hellish, hub for tourists to an eerily empty dystopia. More recently, though, it has become a site of artistic expression, taken over by a free fall of protest art, colorful parades and performances. “It lacks the same history of worker organization spaces like Union Square, but with the spread of digital graphics and art during the Covid-19 pandemic and black-led uprisings, Times Square has made itself a unique site for protest in a city with more empty space, and an ongoing stream of creative mobilizations,” said Sarah J Seidman, a curator at the Museum of the City of New York.
City
04.11.2020 | by Nadja Sayej
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.
Face to face
30.10.2020 | by Nuno Ferreira de Carvalho and Marta Lança
So what does being tropical mean? Being less concrete and assertive in our ideas and convictions? There’s certainly an art to filling the arid hours and empty nights here.
The bad news comes, here as everywhere, first thing in the morning. I retreat to the intimacy of my bookshelves and flick through a few tomes, while outside, the day quickly passes from fresh to mild to heat wave. It’s absurd to try and fit the news of someone’s death into the context of whatever story you have at hand, some false, pseudo-writerly notion of anguish. It’s as if a ghost has settled in between the lines and started hopping from noun to pronoun, though verbs would doubtless take it further.
Mukanda
29.10.2020 | by Joaquim Arena
How a photographer, a group of models and a fashion show in Harlem kick-started a cultural and political movement that still inspires today. On 28 January 1962, a large crowd formed outside Purple Manor, a nightclub in the Harlem neighbourhood of New York City. A fashion show was taking place – an event that proved so popular it had to be held for a second time that same night – which sparked a movement that would change the way black people were represented forever. The show, titled Naturally ’62, was organised by the African Jazz-Art Society & Studios (AJASS), a group of creatives, including photographer Kwame Brathwaite.
To read
28.10.2020 | by Precious Adesina
Throughout the nationwide upheaval set in motion by the police killing of George Floyd, in Minneapolis, on May 25th, Trump has vilified demonstrators as nefarious insurrectionists. Much as adversaries of the civil-rights movement once contended that it had been infiltrated by Communists, he invokes antifascists, or Antifa, to delegitimatize Black Lives Matter. A week after Floyd’s death, as popular uprisings spread from Minneapolis to other cities, the President declared, “Our nation has been gripped by professional anarchists, violent mobs, arsonists, looters, criminals, rioters, Antifa, and others.”
To read
28.10.2020 | by Luke Mogelson
The ASAA condemns the use of the police and military by African states to mete out violence against its citizens. We especially condemn the ongoing brutalities in Nigeria, spurred by the violation of human rights and abuses by the erstwhile Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS). The Anti- Robbery Squad (SARS) was a Nigerian police force unit that was created in late 1992 to deal with crimes associated with robbery, motor vehicle theft, kidnapping, cattle rustling and crimes involving firearms. However, over the years, SARS has been linked to extrajudicial killings, extortion, torture, framing citizens for crimes they didn’t commit, and blackmail.
Mukanda
22.10.2020 | by ASAA
For Romero, this is one of the points of art: to help us face up to our own part in slavery and its legacy, and a powerful way to reveal, and explore, our past. “With this story, we wanted to tell the British angle – this is British history,” says Romero of The Whip. “We’re in constant dialogue with our past: we have to be.”
Afroscreen
22.10.2020 | by Holly Williams
“If it hadn’t been for World War II, African countries wouldn’t have been able to liberate themselves from colonial empires”. This observation, made by Mamadou Diouf – a Senegal-born Pole, activist and legend of the Warsaw music scene, during a debate organized in June 2019 as part of the 30th Malta Festival in Poznań seems to be a provocation rather than an objective statement of facts. The average Pole is unable to imagine that this cruel conflict, which began in Poland, could bring anything positive for humanity. In a country so profoundly affected by this war, Diouf’s statement is surprising, almost shocking.
Afroscreen
20.10.2020 | by Katarzyna Cytlak
The broad gains have led some in the British media to herald “the end of the ethnicity pay gap”, traducing the data and diminishing the issue to a “white v other” scrap among workers. The MailOnline’s dog-whistling headline – “Young employees from minority groups now earn MORE than white British workers” – is emblematic. This narrative is dangerous and misleading. Whether it is intentional or not, pitting the dominant ethnic group against minorities ignores systemic disadvantages between and within communities.
To read
16.10.2020 | by Halima Begum
The cumulative individual tragedies on slave trails to the coast, in the barracoons, and on the beaches: no one can even count. So the four centuries of African enslavement by Europeans remains an abstract story. The need to make it real, to find things that you can see, touch and feel is what most motivated me to participate in the ambitious documentary series Enslaved with Samuel L Jackson, to be broadcast on the BBC starting on Sunday. It’s an attempt to get away from the numbers and statistics and instead focus on the real people who endured this era – their flesh and bone, dreams and legacies.
To read
16.10.2020 | by Afua Hirsch
Compiled from episodes of their show, which has gained millions of listeners over the past 10 years, the book introduces us to mysteries that most of us have never considered. Why are manhole covers round? Why do the Japanese infuse them with elaborate decorations? What do painted yellow symbols on streets tell us? Why are traffic lights red on top and green on bottom? What might we notice about the designs and support systems of buildings and bridges? Why have so-called love locks or love padlocks become a problem around the world? Why are some streets straight and others curvilinear?
City
15.10.2020 | by Kenneth T. Jackson
The gaze and its processes of rotation and retroactivity are central to the philosophical and epistemological reflection of the 20th and early 21st centuries. From Merleau Ponty’s phenomenology of perception to Viveiros de Castro’s Amerindian perspectivism, passing by Sartre’s phenomenological descriptions, the thinking of the perceptive and cognitive models is combined with a reflection on the relationships between the subject/observer and the object/observed. The possibility arises of overcoming the conventional binary framework of the modern hegemonic visual and epistemological formations.
Afroscreen
30.09.2020 | by Raquel Schefer
In a society still marked by profound gender inequality, and understanding emancipation and freedom as processes that are daily struggles, we debate achievements and rights, and expectations when it comes to the body, career, maternity, representation, circulation, and artistic proposals. Part of it are also sickness, birth, war, violence, sexual freedom, the domestic universe, the world of labour (and invisible labour) and our current forceful will to break with the status quo.
I'll visit
14.09.2020 | by Marta Lança
The present photo-essay is the result of recent fieldwork. On the islands, the inhabitants had to harness available resources (e.g., rain, soil, mountains and oceans) and follow a frugal but ingenious diet. Collectively, they triumphed over natural forces, western colonialism and deterministic forecasts.
To read
13.09.2020 | by Kaian Lam
In the last weeks, political tensions in Portugal have arisen following public demonstrations of extreme right organizations that have also threatened anti-racist activists. On August 11, black antiracist activist Mamadou Ba and other nine persons (antiracist, antifascist and LGBT rights activists, MPs and trade union leaders) received an e-mail sent by a neo-Nazi movement that threatened them and their families if they did not leave the country in the next 48 hours.
Mukanda
02.09.2020 | by vários
Creating a sensational dialogue between our translucent memories and the luminosities that surround the landscape of this island–art gallery, hangs in the middle of the space, a site-specific artwork created by Ana, Joana and Paulo. A work composed by two suspended raw linen cloth paintings, with more than three meters, in which one holds the coulours of the dawn and the other of the sunset, alongside a soundtrack where we hear Paulo’s voice, dyed with the sounds of the island echoing through the exhibition space, so you too can hear and see the colours of São Tomé and Príncipe.
I'll visit
14.08.2020 | by Inês Valle
