Mar 19 2008
Fishermen from Togo
© Matteo Deiana
Matteo Deiana from Milano, Italy presents on his myspace a beautiful work made in Togo.
Mar 19 2008
Lida Abdul
© lida abdul
“As an artist who works both in performance and video art, Lida Abdul creates poetic spaces that allow the viewer to interrogate the familiar and the personal. Her work is guided by a ritualized formalism that insinuates the immediacy of myth and the playfulness of a mind seeking to understand the surrounding world. In many ways, witnessing her pieces is like attempting to understand the riddles of the gestures and the repetitions that highlight her work. Abdul’s work is located at the intersection between art and architecture; it invites the viewer to see the unfolding of new forms but never resolves the contradictions and the paradoxes, the purpose of which
seems to be to make us doubt our claims of understanding.
Born in Kabul, Afghanistan in 1973, and resides there now. Abdul lived in Germany and India as a refugee after she was forced to leave Afghanistan after the former-Soviet invasion. Her work fuses the tropes of ‘Western” formalism with the numerous aesthetic traditions–Islamic, Buddhist, Hindu, pagan and nomadic–that collectively influenced Afghan art and culture. She has produced work in many media including video, film, photography, installation and live performance. Her most recent work has been featured at the Venice Biennale 2005, Istanbul Modern, Kunsthalle Vienna, Museum of Modern Art Arnhem, Netherlands and Miami Central, CAC Centre d’Art Contemporain de Bretigny, and Frac Lorraine Metz, France. She has also exhibited in festivals in Mexico, Spain, Germany, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Afghanistan; She was also a featured artist at the Central Asian Biennial 2004. For the past few years, Abdul has been working in different parts of Afghanistan on projects exploring the relationship between architecture and identity.”
Mar 05 2008
Wolrd Press Photo 2008
© Philippe Dudouit, Switzerland, for Time magazine.
PKK fighters, Northern Iraq
The winners of World Press Photo 2008 will be presented from 8/05 to 1/06/2008 at the galerie Azzedine Alaïa (18,rue de la Verrerie, 75004, Paris, France)
Feb 20 2008
Free Moussa Kaka now! (RFI journalist jailed)
Moussa KAKA works as a reporter for Radio France International (RFI) in Niger. He is jailed because he interviewed rebels.
He was doing his job and providing the world a fundammental right: the right to access to information.
He is still jailed for complicity of destabilisation of the state !!!
Free Moussa KAKA now!
Feb 10 2008
Terakaft
Terakaft is one of the best saharan band from the “Ishumar” movement.
Terakaft is a gang of guitarists, in the same vein as Tinariwen. Nothing astonishing about that if you consider that Terakaft was founded by Kedou and Diara, two formative and historical guitarists from Tinariwen.
Moreover Kedou accompanied Tinariwen to the very first Festival with the Desert by Chock-Essako in January 2001, and contributes four songs on their first album The Radio Tisdas Sessions.
At that time Keddou decided to take a different path to Tinariwen, which is now famous in the four corners of the globe. He left to live for two years in Algeria, in Tindouf, Tamanrasset, and then for the same period in Libya, in the desert in the south of the country. Finally, he has returned to settle in Kidal, in Mali, to the great joy of his friends and Tuareg brothers.
Kedou is a celebrity in his own land, both thanks to his part in the history of the rebellion as to his songs. He has teamed up with Diara, one of the original members of Tinariwen, and one of the more “rock’n'roll” guitarists in the group, as well as two young guitarists, Sanou and Rhissa.
It was at the Festival with the Desert of Essakane, in January a 2007, that Terakaft performed their ifirst concert, following it with the Festival of the Camel of Tessalit, before going to Bamako, to record this first album, in four days, at the legendary Bogolan Studios.
Terakaft means “the caravan” in tamashek.
Feb 09 2008
Post office
Jean-Luc Cramatte, a swiss photographer, presents his recent work: Post office , my love.
He has shot around 150 post office in his country, as a documentary project.
Feb 04 2008
Spiral Jetty: Oil Drilling Project Threatens Smithson Earthwork
From spiral-jetty.blogspot.com:
Dear Friends,
Yesterday I received an urgent email from Lynn DeFreitas, Director of Friends of the Great Salt Lake, telling me of plans for drilling oil in the Salt Lake near Spiral Jetty. The deadline for protest is 13 of february. Of course, DIA has been informed and are meeting about it today.
I have been told by Lynn that the oil wells will not be above the water, but that means some kind of industrial complex of pipes and pumps beneath the water and on the shore. The operation would require roads for oil tank trucks, cranes, pumps etc. which produce noise and will severely alter the wild, natural place.
If you want to send a letter of protest to save the beautiful, natural Utah environment around the Spiral Jetty from oil drilling, the emails or calls of protest go to Jonathan Jemming jjemming@utah.gov
Every letter makes a big difference, they do take a lot of notice and know that publicity may follow. Since the Spiral Jetty has global significance, emails from foreign countries would be of special value.
They try to slip these drilling contracts under the radar, that’s why we found out so late, not through notification, but from a watchdog lawyer at the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, the group that alerted me to the land leasing for oil and gas near Sun Tunnels last May.
Thank you for your consideration of this serious environmental matter.
Be well,
Nancy Holt
Jan 29 2008
Ryszard Kapuscinski
Polish writer Ryszard Kapuscinski died one year ago, on January 23, 2007, at the age of 74.
As a foreign correspondent, Kapuscinski covered coups and revolutions in the developing world for forty years. Many of his articles appeared in a series of books that made him famous: The Soccer War, Another Day of Life, and Shah of Shahs.
Listen to this interview originally aired in 1988
Saló de lectura. Entrevista a R. Kapuscinski (spanish)
Jan 24 2008
In deep Amazonia
A moment closed to the river in deep Amazonia, from the “Shiwiars Project”, by Valery Grancher.
“(…)I work mostly with media of all kinds, from video, photography, paintings, sometimes advertisement, marketing via Internet and this rebounding relationship with a reality of mediation perceived at the individual level triggers my interest, more than the one understood subjectively or in a phenomenological way, that is concomitant realities, whether collective or societal which intersect, their interactions with identity, memory, temporality, a given space. The Internet is a rather specific media because it allows strange situations as I said earlier which correspond to moments of 24hours, localized or global spaces confronted to a location and one individual experience. I certainly consider the Internet at a more symbolic level in relationship to our daily reality - I do not belong to a technological system which consists of generating new technologies to be grafted upon the Internet and thus supports the modern, progressive or positivist orders- I am only interested in the human experience brought up by this particular media. (…)
Jan 22 2008
Niger Afghanistan
I’m really glad about the freedom for the two french journalists working on the tuareg rebels in the North of Niger. But since they’re back in Paris. No more news from this country. Not a single line in the newspapers. Not a word on TV.
It’s was exactly the same for Afghanistan before 9/11.
I think people don’t realize what’s happening in Niger. I don’t think people understand that if our western countries don’t help Niger others will do it …
My friend Jean-Marc Durou, a photographer, falled in love with Niger 30 years ago. He has published more than 40 books about Sahara, and still wants to convince our politicians to help Niger … Just as Christophe de Ponfilly did for Afghanistan.
You can discover his work and take a few minutes in Niger.
