DÁ FALA

Inauguration of the Exhibition - UPCycles Residência Criativa Audiovisual 2021, on next Friday (September 3) at 6 pm, at the Fortress of Maputo - which will present five multidisciplinary works by emerging artists from Mozambique and Cape Verde, with tutorship by Ângela Ferreira ( Portugal/South Africa) and Edson Chagas (Angola).

An organization of the Association of Friends of the Museum of Cinema (AAMCM) with funding from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and with your indispensable support.  

O ponto de partida da exposição internacional Re-Lembrar (Mystery of Foreign Affairs) é uma reflexão sobre a vida entre culturas diferentes de vinte mil trabalhadores moçambicanos que trabalharam e moraram na República Democrática Alemã. Contudo, o projeto almeja também, de forma mais abrangente, contribuir para uma reflexão sobre as relações entre Europa e África, no passado e no presente.

A primeira parte da exposição decorreu em vários lugares da cidade de Schwerin, na Alemanha, entre setembro e novembro de 2017, com a participação de artistas de Moçambique, Angola, África do Sul e Alemanha. Nesta exposição, as obras de artistas como Dito Tembe, Iris Buchholz Chocolate e Katrin Michel abordam a temática das relações de intercâmbio da República Democrática da Alemanha com trabalhadores moçambicanos, conhecidos como Madgermans. Por seu turno, as obras de artistas como Matias Ntundo ou Gemuce proporcionam uma revisitação do passado colonial, enquanto os trabalhos de Edson Chagas e Zanele Muholi representam a presença e a questão de estereótipos e atribuições culturais no mundo atual.

A segunda parte da exposição decorre em dois espaços da cidade de Maputo, no Camões – Centro Cultural Português e na Fortaleza de Maputo, e estará patente entre 14 de junho e 27 de julho de 2018. Em Maputo, a exposição passa a incluir dois trabalhos sobre a Namíbia: Towards Memory, de Katrin Winkler, um projeto de vídeo e pesquisa que surgiu de uma colaboração com mulheres da Namíbia que foram enviadas em crianças para a RDA em 1979, aquando da luta da libertação e anti-apartheid no seu país. O segundo trabalho é intitulado Namibia Today, de Laura Horelli, e recorda a edição do jornal homónimo impresso na então RDA.

Em Maputo, são ainda apresentadas obras de Jorge Dias, Maimuna Adam, Gemuce, Dito Tembe, Luís Santos, Matias Ntundo, Iris Buchholz Chocolate, Edson Chagas e Katrin Michel. Através de diferentes meios, da instalação à pintura, passando pela escultura e vídeo, a exposição pretende contribuir para um trabalho de memória sobre o passado comum, bem como para uma reflexão sobre as relações atuais entre África e Europa.

No dia 18 de Outubro próximo o historiador norte-americano Allen Isaacman irá apresentar no ICS-UL a sua pesquisa mais recente, num seminário intitulado: “Invisible Histories: Clandestine Migration from Mozambique to Zimbabwe 1900-2000”.

Allen IsaacmanTrabalhando sobre a história de Moçambique, Isaacman é um dos mais importantes investigadores do colonialismo português nos séculos XIX e XX. Ao longo da sua obra, parcialmente escrita em conjunto com Barbara Isaacman, Allen Isaacman oferece uma visão historiográfica fundadora sobre a sociedade moçambicana. Analisa as estruturas políticas e sociais africanas, o processo de ocupação colonial portuguesa, as principais características do seu modelo colonizador e o modo como afetou a vida das populações . O seu livro sobre a cultura forçado do algodão  (Cotton is the Mother of Poverty:  Peasants, Work and Rural Struggle in Colonial Mozambique 1938-1961) é um dos melhores exemplos deste trabalho historiográfico. Apoiante da luta pela libertação do território, Issacman envolveu-se pessoalmente na formação da nova nação moçambicana.

Nas suas obras, que listamos à frente, há uma preocupação constante com a realização de uma historiografia preocupada com os processos no terreno, nomeadamente com a intenção de trazer para o primeiro plano da análise historiográfica as práticas, expectativas e visões do mundo das populações locais.

Livros publicados

Mozambique: The Africanization of a European Institution, The Zambezi Prazos, 1750-1902 (University of Wisconsin Press, June 1972)

The Tradition of Resistance in Mozambique: The Zambezi Valley, 1850-1921  (Heinemann and University of California Press, 1976)  Translated into Portuguese in 1979.

A Luta Continua: Creating a New Society in Mozambique (Fernand Braudel Center, SUNY, 1978)

Mozambique: From Colonialism to Revolution: 1900-1982 (Westview Press, 1983), written jointly with Barbara Isaacman

Confronting Historical Paradigms: Peasants, Labor, and the Capitalist World System in Africa and Latin America, Co-authored with Fred Cooper, Florencia E. Mallon, Steve J. Stern, and William Roseberry (University of Wisconsin Press, 1993)

Cotton is the Mother of Poverty:  Peasants, Work and Rural Struggle in Colonial Mozambique 1938-1961 (Heinemann, 1996)

Slavery and Beyond: The Making of Men and Chikunda Ethnic Identity in the Unstable World of South Central Africa, 1750-1920 (Heinemann, 2005), written jointly with Barbara Isaacman. Translated into Portuguese published 2009 in Mozambique.

Dams, Displacement, and the Delusion of Development: Cahora Bassa and Its Legacies in Mozambique, 1965-2007  (Ohio University Press, 2013), written jointly with Barbara Isaacman. Translated in to Portuguese and  to be published Fall 2016 by the Universidade Eduardo Mondlane Press

On display this month at the Centro Cultural Franco-Moçambicano in Maputo are Mozambican photographer Mário Macilau’s portraits he made of elderly people all over the continent (Nigeria, Congo, Mozambique, Cameroon, Kenya, Mali, etc.) during the year 2012. The title of the series is “Esquecidos” (Forgotten). In a short email, Mário Macilau explained his project:

A number of studies indicate that the average life expectancy has increased in the last decades. The implementation of technology, agriculture, medicine and sanitation have contributed to this phenomenon. As a result, this significant part of the population is reaching an age that does not permit this population to participate in labour nor to contribute to the production of everyday activities and self-maintenance. The growth of the population over sixty-five years – the age of retirement – is only increasing to such an extent that the elderly population might constitute half of the entire European population in the coming twenty years. Could ageing thus be understood as a blessing?

In affluent societies, the demands of the high-performance labour that is paired with the increasing life expectancy, a culture of care homes has been put in place. Elderly members of the family are placed in these homes under care of professionals who are often strangers to these vulnerable groups. Care homes are part social club, dispensaries and hospices.

This culture of displacement stands in contrast with social values of the traditions of living together and growing old in one homestead, whereby senior members of the family were cared for by their offspring. Such cultures can still be found in rural areas and some parts of African countries.

“Esquecidos” runs until 5 March 2013 at the Centro Cultural Franco-Moçambicano.

What is the international image of Mozambique and its art and how does this correspond with what is really happening in Mozambique?
Deadline for submissions: 10 September 2012

This forthcoming edition of Third Text Africa acts as a platform for national and international perspectives of Mozambican art. The edition will address the historical and the contemporary, the rural and the urban, with an emphasis on art practice and the communities and worlds that support and engage with it.

Themes may include, but are not limited to:
Mozambique’s particular history and geography, and how this has impacted on its art
Identifiable trends or moments in Mozambican art
Individual artists Movements, groups, and collectives
Curating Mozambican art
Public art : murals, monuments and performance
Art education; schools, universities, museums and private initiatives
Cultural Heritage
Art markets, buyers and collectors Art criticism, art history, art journalism and its publics The impact of new media

Third Text Africa is an open access, peer-reviewed online journal that publishes critical perspectives on contemporary art and culture, with a particular interest in facilitating and stimulating critical scholarship on and from the African continent. Third Text Africa was initiated by Rasheed Araeen, the founding editor of Third Text in partnership with ASAI and is published on www.asai.co.za. Third Text Africa accepts papers in English, French and Portuguese- papers will be published in the language in which they were submitted.

Recommended length for articles is between 5000 and 7000 words (excluding notes and bibliographies), however all submissions will be considered. Contributors are asked to include their names, institutional affiliation and short biography (not more than 300 words) with their papers. All essays should be accompanied by a short abstract of between 150 and 250 words. Articles in French and Portuguese must include an abstract written in English.
Authors are expected to follow the formatting and the submission regulations outlined in the style sheet available at http://www.asai.co.za/3rd-text-africa/online-journal.html
Enquiries and papers (Microsoft Word documents) should be emailed to admin@asai.co.za with “Third Text Africa” entered in the subject field. For more information about Third Text Africa please visit http://www.asai.co.za/3rd-text-africa/online-journal.html

Editorial offices: ASAI, c/o Michaelis School of Fine Art, 32-37
Orange Street, Gardens 8001, South Africa I Email: admin@asai.co.za Tel +27 (0)21 480 7131 (Mon – Thurs only)

Critical Interventions Special Issue on: Emerging Platforms for Artistic Production in DRC, Angola, and Mozambique, Fall 2013.

Critical Interventions invites submissions for Emerging Platforms for Artistic Production in DRC, Angola, and Mozambique, an issue that examines recent developments in arts institutions, their
administrative infrastructures, and creative practices in the DRC, Angola and Mozambique. These countries’ political and cultural profiles and influences have changed dramatically with expanding
global demand for minerals and oil. Linguistically and geographically tied to older categorizations (i.e., Lusophone, Central, and Southern Africa), there are new alliances forming among these nations as well
as with ascending cultural players, like Brazil and China. As a result of these engagements, new artistic platforms are constantly emerging: archives, state-funded spaces, independent spaces and workshops, a shifting and expanding pool of global funds for exhibitions, museums, programs, and scholarly engagement.

This issue of Critical Interventions will explore the changing and evolving relationships between artists, the state, and the local and global art markets, and particularly recent scenarios of art platforms as extensions and articulations of state, private, and individual power. We invite contributions that consider the formation and activities of these networks across media in the visual and performative arts. We are also interested in the processes of formation and politics of new artistic networks, and curatorial and exhibition strategies. Writing and work by artists, curators,
scholars, activists and other observers, particularly those working on the continent, are sought.

We invite proposals to be submitted by 15 July 2012. The deadline for the final version of the paper is 30 January 2013. Proposal for articles should be no more than 400 words. Articles should be based on
original research, which is previously unpublished and may be up to 10,000 words inclusive of the bibliography and contain up to ten images. All rights for reproduction of images must be cleared in
advance and submitted along with the final draft of each article.

Editors: Erin Haney and Drew Thompson
Proposals of no more than 400 words should be sent to:
Erin Haney erinlhaney@gmail.com and Drew Thompson thom2429@umn.edu.

Critical Interventions, a peer-reviewed journal, provides a forum for advanced research and writing on global African arts that investigates African and African Diaspora identities in the age of globalization,
as an arena for rethinking African art history and interrogating the value of African art/cultural knowledge in the global economy. The journal inaugurates a formal discourse on the aesthetics, politics and economics of African cultural patrimony as it affects African ownership of the intellectual property rights of its indigenous systems of knowledge and cultural practices.

H-AfrArts
H-Net Network for African Expressive Culture
E -Mail: H-AFRARTS@H-NET.MSU.EDU
web

Jeudi 10 novembre à 19h / entrée libre
Médiathèque de Noisy-le-Sec
Dixième soirée Hantologie des colonies
REJOUER L’HISTOIRE
Séance ouverte par Pauline Curnier-Jardin, artiste en résidence à la Galerie de Noisy-le-sec, qui présentera deux courtes vidéos La Vision de Dédé et Ami. Elle fera le récit de sa rencontre avec la question coloniale et l’impact de celle-ci sur certains de ses travaux.

Avó (Muidumbe)
(10 min, v.o. sous-titrée en français, 2009)

Nshajo (O Jogo)
(8 min, v.o. sous-titrée en français, 2010)
de Raquel Schefer
Dans Avó, Raquel, une étudiante en documentaire à Buenos Aires, réinterprète le passé colonial de ses grands-parents au Mozambique. Elle s’approprie, monte et manipule l’archive familiale super8 enregistrée par son grand-père, ex-administrateur colonial. L’artiste scrute l’imagerie pour en extraire les signes les plus marquants de la domination déguisée derrière la normalité apparente du quotidien familial. Elle essaie de reconstruire la vie familiale qu’elle n’a pas vécu et qu’elle sait être une partie de sa propre histoire. L’artiste convoque ainsi le temps mythique de l’épopée impériale portugaise et opère un mouvement de colonisation de l’imagerie et, au-delà, de l’espace de représentation circonscrit par son grand-père.

et

Joal la portugaise
(6 min, v.o. sous-titrée en français, 2004)
d’Ângela Ferreira
Joal la portugaise est filmé à Joal-Fadiouth, au Sénégal. La vidéo raconte, à la première personne, une des versions de l’histoire de la femme qui donna son nom à la ville, colonisée successivement par les Portugais, les Hollandais, les Français et les Anglais. L’œuvre fait référence aux « signares », femmes d’origine portugaise ayant joué un rôle important dans la politique et l’économie locales, source d’inspiration du poète Léopold Senghor, premier président du Sénégal indépendant, né précisément à Joal en 1906.
Projection en présence de Raquel Schefer suivie d’une discussion avec Pauline Curnier Jardin (artiste en résidence à la Galerie)
Pour en savoir plus sur ce film et avoir accès aux infos pratiques,
rendez-vous sur www.hantologie.com
Retrouvez aussi le Journal fantôme des colonies
sur le blog de Khiasma

JUAN OBARRIO | JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY

If the Holocaust can be considered as the universal equivalent to compare all processes of post-genocide / post-conflict, collective memory, and transitional justice, then the regional example that towers above the aforementioned processes in sub-Saharan Africa is the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, its mandate, its procedures, and its report. Across the border, in Mozambique, a related yet paradoxically different process has taken place in the last 15 years after the connected modes of democratic transition and transitional justice accomplished most of their turns and returns.

Besides national union, what is lacking today in Mozambique is—as some local organic intellectuals put it—“a process of reconciliation between the people and the state.”¹ Emerging from a bloody civil war and eighteen years of an Afro-socialist experiment, the Mozambican state began a deep process of legal and administrative reform in the late 1990s. This extensive post-war legal reform, which to a large extent was engineered and funded by foreign donors, is aimed at developing the internationally mandated goals of decentralization, democratization, and rule of law. In this process, an ambiguous legal recognition crucial to the politics of state decentralization has been accorded by the state to the realm of the “customary” and its authorities. Through policies such as the recognition of chiefs and the legal redefinition of “custom” in terms of “community,” the state implicitly engages with the past and its legacies of violence. Indeed, this legal engineering emerges as a revision of a most conflictive political history and functions as a politics of memory whereby the state attempts, through new legislation and forms of legal inscription, to rewrite colonial and post-colonial history, harnessing it to the project of a democratic future. In the absence of large state-sponsored theaters of truth and reconciliation, this juridico-political process and its quotidian disseminated effects can be seen as an attempt to develop an implicit policy of national understanding. This process also represents a politics of mourning. Yet this veritable process of what could be defined as “reconciliation without truth,” begs the question of an impossible mourning. If mourning takes place within the frame of certain time limits and with the certainty of the presence of the (dead) body, then can some African nations such as Mozambique, as well as many Latin American nations also engaged in unending mourning, be defined as pathological, “melancholic states”?

Colin Darch, known to many of you as a researcher and compiler of reference materials on Mozambique, has organized a website, Mozambique History Net, that organizes scanned newspaper articles and allows users to search for particular topics.  Subjects already covered include a range of historical political topics such as candonga, smuggling, hunger, justice, and the economy.  Special topics include sections on Aquino de Bragança, Cahora Bassa, and Operação Produção.  The site also includes complete scanned issues of the 1980s publications Justiça Popular and Mozambican Notes.

see here