By SWAN
Jan 13 2026 (IPS)

Nomadic Jamaican-American writer Claude McKay probably never dreamed that 21^st-century readers would be delving into his private correspondence some 77 years after his death. But that’s probably part of the professional hazard (luck?) of being a literary luminary, or, as Yale University Press describes him, “one of the Harlem Renaissance’s brightest and most radical voices”.

The Press recently released Letters in Exile: Transnational Journeys of a Harlem Renaissance Writer, edited by Brooks E. Hefner and Gary Edward Holcomb.

This is a comprehensive collection of “never-before-published dispatches from the road” with correspondents who have equally become cultural icons: Langston Hughes, W. E. B. Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, Pauline Nardal, Arturo Alfonso Schomburg, Max Eastman and a gamut of other writers, editors, activists, and benefactors. The letters cover the years 1916 to 1934 and were written from various cities, as McKay travelled extensively.

While he’s considered a central figure in the Harlem Renaissance, McKay was a cosmopolitan intellectual - an author ahead of his time, writing about race, inequality, the legacy of slavery, queerness, and a range of other topics

His daughter Ruth Hope McKay, whom the writer apparently never met in life (perhaps because British authorities at the time prevented him from returning to Jamaica), sold and donated his papers to Yale University from 1964 on.

The papers include his letters to her as well, and cast a light on this “singular figure of displacement, this critically productive internationalist, this Black Atlantic wanderer”, as a French translator has called him. But reading another’s correspondence, even that of a long-dead scribe, can feel like an intrusion. It’s a sensation some readers will need to overcome.

Born in 1890 (or 1889) in Clarendon, Jamaica, McKay left the Caribbean island for the United States in 1912, and his wanderings would later take him to countries such as Russia, England, France and Morocco, among others.

His acclaimed work includes the poem “If We Must Die” (written in reaction to the racial violence in the United States against people of African descent in mid-1919), the poetry collections Songs of Jamaica and Harlem Shadows, and the novels Home to Harlem, Banjo, and Banana Bottom.

Years after his death in 1948, scholars discovered manuscripts that would be posthumously published: Amiable with Big Teeth (written in 1941 and published in 2017) and Romance in Marseille (written in 1933 and published in 2020). McKay also authored a memoir titled A Long Way from Home (1937).

While he’s considered a central figure in the Harlem Renaissance, McKay was a cosmopolitan intellectual – an author ahead of his time, writing about race, inequality, the legacy of slavery, queerness, and a range of other topics.

He wrote in a sharp, striking, often ironic or satirical way, and Letters in Exile reflects these same qualities. The collection “reveals McKay gossiping, cajoling, and confiding as he engages in spirited debates and challenges the political and artistic questions of the day,” according to the editors.

Some of the most interesting letters deal with France, the setting of a significant part of McKay’s oeuvre and a place where his literary stature has been rising over the past decade, through a rush of new translations, colloquia, and even a film devoted to his life: Claude McKay, From Harlem to Marseille (or in French, Claude McKay, de Harlem à Marseille), directed by Matthieu Verdeil and released in 2021.

The cover of Letters in Exile

McKay was the “first twentieth-century Black author associated with the United States to be widely celebrated in France,” write editors Hefner and Holcomb in their introduction. They say the letters show that France shaped McKay’s world view, and that he considered himself a Francophile as well as a perpetual étranger.

Through the selected correspondence, we see McKay experiencing France in a variety of ways – dealing with winter insufficiently dressed, participating in the community of multi-ethnic outsiders in Marseille, rubbing shoulders with various personalities during the Années folles, or observing French colonialism in Morocco. And nearly always short of funds.

In Paris in January 1924, after a bout of sickness, he wrote to New York-based social worker and activist Grace Campbell that he’d had the “bummest holiday” of his life: “I was down with the grippe for 10 days and only forced myself to get up on New Year’s day. I suffer because I’m not properly clothed to stand the winter. I’m wondering if anything can be done over there to raise a little money to tide me over these bad times.”

A month later, he wrote to another correspondent about the “cold wave” numbing his fingers and of having to sleep with his “old overcoat” next to his skin, while still not being able to keep warm. He also found the “French trading class” to be “terrible”, complaining that “they cheat me going and coming”.

During his early time in France, he called Marseilles a “nasty, repulsive city”. But a few years later, writing to teacher and arts patron Harold Jackman in 1927, McKay stated: “I am doing a book on Marseille. It’s a tough, picturesque old city and I would love to show it to you some day.”

Apart from references to his work, McKay discussed global events in his correspondence, made his opinions known, and described relationships. His letters, say Hefner and Holcomb, are at the very least “an essential companion to his most revolutionary writings, from the groundbreaking poetry he produced after he left Jamaica through his trailblazing novels and short fiction and into his extraordinary memoirs and journalism.”

While this may well be true, and as insightful as the correspondence proves, many readers will still have to reckon with the uncomfortable sensation of being a literary voyeur. – AM/SWAN

A poster on the outside wall of the MEP. Credit: AM / SWAN.

By SWAN
PARIS, Mar 28 2025 (IPS)

Reggae fans may be initially drawn just by the iconic image of Bob Marley on the Music + Life poster, but once inside this exhibition, they will find themselves immersed in a world of extraordinary photographs.

Music + Life is the first retrospective of work by Jamaican-born British photographer Dennis Morris, and it has been pulling in visitors at the Maison Européenne de la Photographie (MEP) in Paris, where it runs until May 18th.

A banner on the wall of the museum – located in the bustling, historic Marais area of Paris – shows reggae legend Marley in a relaxed pose, his locks streaming out from under his tam and a playful smile directed at someone the viewer cannot see.

Inside, a vast space is devoted to Marley, with a range of depictions: playing football, performing on stage, laughing in his tour bus, posing with accompanying singers the I-Threes (including wife Rita), sitting solemnly alone with his guitar shortly before his death from cancer in 1981.

But this is only one segment of the exhibition. Music + Life is a look at Morris’ overall career photographing ordinary people in London communities, as well as later portraying Marley, the controversial punk group the Sex Pistols and a gamut of other artists – exploring the “intersection of punk and reggae,” as the curators put it. It’s also about the arc of his own life.

Morris arrived in London from Jamaica at age four in the early 1960s, part of the post-World War II “Windrush generation” of Caribbean immigrants to Britain. He says he developed an interest in photography early, as a choirboy at a church in London’s East End, which had a photo club.

“The director of the club was a man called Donald Patterson, and he saw my enthusiasm and my potential, and he took me under his wing and basically taught me more or less everything I know,” Morris told SWAN. “He took me to museums, he took me to galleries, and that’s how things started.”

Morris says he began taking pictures in his teens, documenting life in Hackney in the 1970s. Then, one day, he heard that Marley would be performing nearby, and he headed to the venue with his camera, waiting for hours before getting to meet the Jamaican singer, who subsequently invited him to tour with the band. That crucial meeting would lead Morris into the music world, where his photographs would be published by magazines such as Time Out and NME, providing up-close portrayals of Marley, and many others over time.

A major theme of Music + Life is “story-telling”, according to Laurie Hurwitz, who curated the show with MEP’s director Simon Baker (a huge reggae fan and the force behind developing the retrospective in Paris). The aim, Hurwitz said, was to recount Morris’s journey as a young photographer, moving on to his wide-ranging music portrayals, and then his later activity as an art director in the recording industry.

The exhibition begins with three series Morris photographed as a teenager: Growing up Black, which depicts life in Hackney and its rich Caribbean culture; Southall – documenting London’s Sikh community through an intimate lens; and This Happy Breed – a “blend of humour and resilience that illustrates the spirit of the British working class”.

Morris told SWAN that despite some of the hardships shown in the series, he wanted to focus on the dignity of the communities portrayed, and to give insight into people’s daily lives.

“What I’m trying to show is that with all the hardships, we had dignity and we had pride,” Morris said. “That’s how we made our way through. It’s like in some ways Nelson Mandela. Despite all the things he went through, he was never bitter and he showed people that no matter what they do to you, you have to hold yourself together, you have to keep your dignity, you have to keep believing in yourself, keep moving forward.”

Leaving this section, visitors can progress to the portrayals of Marley, with both recognizable images and unfamiliar shots, in black and white as well as vibrant colour. The museum has covered two walls with massive enlargements of portraits of the singer, but equally striking are the smaller framed portraits, where Marley’s aura shines through.

“Bob Marley didn’t need artificial lighting to be photographed,” Morris says. “He had an inner light and you can see that.”

Asked whether he thinks Marley’s legacy is currently being diluted with rampant marketing of his image and work, Morris said he would agree but explained that he tries to ensure his photographs are used in a way that respects the singer’s art.

After the Marley rooms, the exhibition continues with Morris’ photographs of the Sex Pistols, documenting their “turbulent rise to fame”, and their “anarchic image”, to use the show’s description.

Over the course of a year, Morris covered “their chaotic performances as well as their life behind the scenes,” according to the curators. This includes “seminal moments” such as the controversial release of the album Never Mind The Bollocks in 1977 and their cruise down the Thames for the single God Save the Queen during the royal Silver Jubilee that year.

The “in-your-face” atmosphere of this section was intentional because that was the band’s persona, Morris told SWAN. Viewers will find themselves immersed in the stormy energy of the group through the photographs of Syd Vicious and Johnny Rotten, and of their concerts and “energised” fans.

“Bob represented the new youth of Jamaica, and the Sex Pistols represented the new young white generation of Britain,” Morris says. “It’s the ying and the yang. From Bob, I learned spirituality, how to hold my head high, and from the Sex Pistols, I learned how to kick the door down in the face of obstacles.”

The exhibition ends with a section showing the “breadth” of Morris’ career, with photographs of artists such as Patti Smith, Marianne Faithful, Oasis, Grace Jones, French group Les Rita Mitsouko, dub poet Linton Kwesi Johnson, and many others. His work designing album covers and his stint in a band called Basement 5 are also featured.

Before leaving the show, visitors can enjoy a diverse playlist including Marley songs, booming from a huge sound system that the MEP’s own engineers have constructed. The temptation to dance will be hard to resist. – AM / SWAN

Dr Velma Pollard at her Kingston home. Credit:AM/SWAN

By SWAN
KINGSTON, Feb 24 2025 (IPS)

Jamaican writer Velma Pollard provided a special kind of sunlight in the Caribbean literary space. Known across the region for her warm personality and welcoming nature, she also defied simple classification as she shone beyond genre. The work she has left behind encompasses short stories, poetry, academic writing, and novellas. She was also a keen naturalist photographer.

An early poem, “A Case for Pause”, reflects on the interconnections between all the forms she used: “Arrest the sense / and let the fancy flow / Without design / collecting cloud and air / petal and leaf … Rein in the fancy now / unleash the sense … constructs and theories not yet pursued / rush in perfected, whole,” she wrote.

Her sudden death earlier this month, on Feb. 1, has created a huge gap in the lives of those who loved and admired her as a person and poet and who must now draw solace from reading or revisiting her work. Her generosity to other writers, scholars, and artists was legendary in the Caribbean and internationally. In the days and weeks before her passing, and despite her incapacity from a fall and subsequent operation, she took pains to read and comment on work that young writers sent her, carefully and unsparingly collating her responses.

As fellow Jamaican author and academic Earl McKenzie said after her funeral service on Feb. 21: Dr Pollard “was a friend and supporter of her fellow writers, and we all miss her”. Her long-time friend and colleague, Dr. Elizabeth “Betty” Wilson, added that the service was “an outpouring of love”.

Born in 1937, in the parish of St. Mary on the north-eastern Jamaican coast, Dr Pollard spent her early years in a rural setting along with siblings that include her equally renowned sister Erna Brodber.

She later attended Excelsior High School in the capital Kingston, where she won several elocution contests, and she gained a scholarship to continue her studies at the University College of the West Indies, focusing on languages.

Afterward, she earned a Master’s degree in English at New York’s Columbia University, and another Master’s – in education – from McGill in Canada, followed by a PhD in language education at the University of the West Indies (UWI). She would go on to become dean of the education faculty at UWI, inspiring numerous students, while also raising her three children – one of whom has said she was the strongest woman he knew, with the largest circle of faithful friends.

Dr Pollard lent her presence and expertise to important scholarly and literary conferences around the world, often writing about her experiences. She once joked that a self-important critic had remarked that every time she attended a conference, she “just had to write a poem”. But that talent for acute observation and for recording the places she visited and the people she met forms part of the richness of her work. In the poem “Bridgetown”, she writes for instance: Because the sea / walks here / this city / hands you heaven.

She addressed myriad issues in her work: family relationships, gender, colonialism (and its legacies), history, love, injustice. Many of her poems are tributes to the everyday struggles of ordinary women, the unlettered makers of “hot lunches and hot clothes / cooking and stitching miracles / with equal hand”.

Her landmark scholarly publication Dread Talk: The Language of Rastafari remains a must-read for linguists and others, while her distinctive fiction – including Considering Woman I & II – places her among the Caribbean’s best short story writers. In 1992, she won the Casa de las Americas Prize for Karl and Other Stories (which is being relaunched this year as a Caribbean Modern Classic by a British-based publisher); and, with Jean D’Costa, she also edited anthologies for young readers, including the essential Over Our Way.

Her poetry stands out for its imagery, symbolism and use of Jamaican Creole, or nation language, with collections such as Crown Point and Other Poems, Shame Trees Don’t Grow Here, The Best Philosophers I Know Can’t Read and Write, and Leaving Traces.

Her work has likewise appeared in a range of international anthologies, including Give the Ball to the Poet, which sought to “represent the past, the present and the future of Caribbean poetry”, as Morag Styles, Professor of Children’s Poetry at Cambridge University and one of the editors of the anthology, said when it was published in 2014.

Years before that, Dr Pollard’s writing was included in the ground-breaking 1989 collection Her True-True Name: An Anthology of Women’s Writing from the Caribbean, edited by Wilson and her sister Pamela Mordecai, and including other acclaimed authors such as Maryse Condé and Merle Hodge.

Then in 2018, one of her stories was translated into Chinese and included in the compilation Queen’s Case: A Collection of Contemporary Jamaican Short Stories / 女王案 当代牙买加短篇小说集, among the first such publications in China.
Dr Pollard was perhaps foremost a poet, but she was equally a scholar, editor, educator… an overall literary star. When she contracted meningitis several years ago, messages flowed in from all over the globe (as tributes are now doing upon her passing).

Following her recovery from that bout with meningitis, she told friends she felt the need to do “something worthwhile every day”, as a way of giving thanks for her survival. Part of this naturally included writing, but it also involved taking care of her extended family and being there for her friends and community.

As her sister Erna said at the farewell service, Dr Pollard got “10 out of 10 out of 10 out of 10” for following the commandment: love thy neighbour as thyself. The work she has left behind may be considered a testament of that love, and light, too – A. McKenzie and S. Scafe

Tara Phillips in Paris. Credit: AM/SWAN.

By SWAN
PARIS, Aug 21 2024 (IPS)

For the centenary of James Baldwin’s birth, an international array of literature fans are coming together in Paris at a festival that will honour the life and work of the iconic American author and civil rights activist.

The James Baldwin Centennial Festival, scheduled for Sept. 9 to 13, aims to be a “celebration” that will take place at multiple venues in the French capital, according to Tara Phillips, executive director of La Maison Baldwin, the organizers.

The non-profit group (founded in 2016 in Saint Paul de Vence, where Baldwin spent the last 17 years of his life) essentially wishes to preserve and promote the writer’s legacy by “nurturing creativity, fostering intellectual exchange, and championing diverse voices through conferences and residencies,” according to its stated objectives.

In the eight years since it was formed, however, La Maison Baldwin hasn’t always had smooth sailing, as some of its activities ran counter to the vision of Baldwin’s family on how to honour his uncompromising work and long-lasting influence. But now, with new direction, the organization has the family’s support, including for the festival, Phillips says.

Baldwin – the author of stirring books such as The Fire Next Time, Go Tell It on the Mountain and Giovanni’s Room – remains one of the most revered (and quoted) writers today, decades after his death in 1987. Born on Aug. 2, 1924, he would have turned 100 this year, and the festival might have been held in his birth month were it not for the recent Paris Olympic Games.

According to Phillips, the event will comprise panel discussions, writing workshops, an art exhibition, student participation and an open-mic segment, among the various features.

In the following edited interview, conducted in person in Paris, Phillips discusses the overall goals and the far-reaching power of Baldwin’s works and words.

SWAN: Let’s start with the centenary and why this festival, why it’s taking place in France.

Tara Phillips: La Maison Baldwin was founded in the south of France, and it was intended to provide both writers’ residencies and writers’ conferences. Then the founder moved to Paris in 2022 and left the organization. So, the centennial seems like the perfect opportunity to reclaim the organization and reintroduce it on new footing.

And so that’s why we thought it was important to do a centennial event, and we also wanted to be aligned with the family who had already been thinking about the centennial in early 2023. We were trying to build a relationship with them, and it just made sense that we were all thinking about this as a way to collectively honour his legacy.

(Note: Baldwin’s family held a centennial celebration at the Lincoln Center in New York on Aug. 7, at which Phillips spoke.)

SWAN: How will the family be involved in the Paris festival?

TP: Well, on the first day, there’s a welcoming reception, and I will invite Trevor Baldwin, James Baldwin’s nephew, to say a few words. But then on the following day, we’ll have the very first panel, called “La Maison Baldwin”, and it’s about the idea of home, both literally and also as in the Black literary tradition. Trevor will participate on that panel as somebody who knew his Uncle Jimmy, and can give some insight into the idea of home for James Baldwin. He was a Harlem man, but he lived all over the world, and his idea of home is pretty complex. And what I’m discovering as I get to know more and more members of the family is that a lot of them have this wanderlust and live in different parts of the world. So, that will be a way to engage a familial voice on that issue, particularly for Black people.

SWAN: Is the festival open to the general public?

TP: There’s a festival fee, but anybody can attend. James Baldwin’s followers and admirers are so diverse: you have the Black community, the literary community, the activist community, the LGBTQ+ community, you have students, academics, artists. The idea was to create an experience that would appeal to all those types of people, but always with the idea of centering James Baldwin.

SWAN: What are some of the other aspects of the event?

TP: We’ll have a welcome reception, and that’s going to be sponsored by the US Embassy. It will be just a moment to come together and celebrate the fact that we’re in Paris and to kick things off. Then we will start the next day with a keynote speaker (author Robert Jones, Jr.) and multiple panel discussions where we’ll be thinking about Baldwin and reflecting on the theme of the festival: Baldwin and Black Legacy, Truth, Liberation, Activism.

SWAN: How did the theme come about?

TP: It came about as the centennial committee brainstormed words that came to mind when we thought about Baldwin and his work and his impact. You know, he spoke truth, also in his writing. And for many people, it liberated them. He gave us the language to liberate us from conceptions of ourselves, or our perceptions of the world, and perceptions of our humanity. And that liberation motivates activism for many of us. That’s how we came to that theme.

SWAN: And continuing with the various elements of the festival, there will be an art exhibition?

TP: Yes, we’ll have an exhibition that will be running during the week. It’s called Frontline Prophet. Those works are by Sabrina Nelson, curated by Ashara Ekundayo and Omo Misha. It’s this brilliant collection of art sketches that Sabrina initially did in 2016 at the James Baldwin conference (held at the American University of Paris), and it’s returning, coming full circle.

SWAN: The festival will also have writing workshops (for an additional fee). Please tell us about those.

TP: We will have a fiction track and a creative nonfiction track. These are separate as not all festival participants will be joining.

But if you’re a writer and you want to have a curated experience with some successful writers, we have Deesha Philyaw (author of The Secret Lives of Church Ladies) doing the fiction workshop, and Brian Broome (author of the memoir Punch Me Up to the Gods) is doing the creative nonfiction. And that will be happening for folks who want to have that experience.

SWAN: In addition, there’s a big move to engage students, youth…

TP: Yes, there will be a student activism workshop. We want to engage young people with Baldwin’s work and tap into their own sense of activism. You know, these are such interesting times to be young, right? There have always been things happening in history, in our world, but because of social media, because we have access to see everything all the time, I think young people are engaged in a a very different way than they probably would have been without these mediums. And they’ve been the ones to kind of reinvigorate Baldwin’s language and works in a lot of ways.

So, we wanted to give them a space where they could explore the idea of activism through leadership, through creativity and through community. For those three days, they will have their own space together to look at some of Baldwin’s works, to engage with each other and talk with each other. We’re partnering with the Collectif Baldwin (a local organization) on that. I actually think this is the most important part of the festival.

SWAN: Where will the students be coming from?

TP: We basically would like to see students from everywhere who have the time or interest to attend. But we also think it’s very important that there’s a presence of French students as well because what I’m discovering, particularly as a I make more connections here in Paris, is that there is so much to be learned from Baldwin in the context of France and their relations around racism and cultural identity. So, to be able to engage French students in this conversation would be to discuss their own activism. After the workshop, they will also do a presentation – on what they learned and on how they can take Baldwin into the future.

SWAN: Let’s talk about your background coming into this. What is your personal relationship with Baldwin’s work?

TP: It’s interesting because I don’t remember the first time I ever really read James Baldwin. I know I don’t remember reading him when I was in high school – I remember reading Richard Wright and Lorraine Hansberry. But I was in high school in the Eighties before there really was an infusion of black literature, so it was hard to come by.

Then, I ended up reading The Evidence of Things Not Seen, which was interesting to read because it wasn’t the ones he’s known for. It was about the Atlanta Child Murders, which were happening around the same time that I was a kid. There’s something about being immersed in that specific topic and getting it from his perspective that was really interesting for me.

Then he would pop up in my psyche over the years, and now he kind of haunts me because I’m constantly doing this work. And the connection for me, with respect to taking on this work, is that I have moved to Paris as a Black American (in 2018), and I started writing then, and I could just really connect to his sense of freedom coming here. I mean, being in the United States as a Black American and then also as the mother of a Black son, there’s just a weight that you carry, and people who don’t have our experience, they don’t understand what it’s like, and they don’t understand how persistent it is: how you can try to live a life of joy, and of peace, and of intellectual curiosity and all of these things as a Black American, but there’s always a moment when you’re kind of smacked back to the reality of, like, our positioning in society and our history. His words became so important to me, especially after George Floyd’s murder. Baldwin just understood. He had the language.

Another connection for me, and I’ve written about this, is that my father’s name is James and my father was born in Harlem and grew up there, like Baldwin. Turns out that they both went to the same high school but 20 years apart. I think about my dad’s connection to Harlem, his Harlem pride, and how he left because things got so bad in the Sixties and Seventies. He moved my whole family out because he wanted something better for us. And in some ways, I feel that that was James Baldwin’s understanding: another black Jimmy from Harlem saying: “I’ve got to get out of here if I’m going to be true to my own humanity and live the life that I need to live.”

SWAN: In light of all this, what are your hopes for the festival overall?

TP: My hopes for the festival are that it’s really seen and viewed as a celebration of James Baldwin. That’s why I’ve been really keen on calling it a “festival” and not a “conference” because a conference tends to suggest an academic event, with people sitting and providing an analysis of his work, and what I’m hoping is: let’s just celebrate Uncle Jimmy and what he has given us.

Let it just be a party of writers and artists and creatives and scholars, just experiencing one another and Paris, and why this place was important for him and his own experience and development as a human. And let’s just celebrate young people, and their potential and their possibilities, which I think Baldwin really cared about. He had a word for everybody, you know. And it’s funny because Duke University Press has donated 300 copies of Little Man, Little Man, which Baldwin wrote for his nephew, and I love that this is a children’s book… this is what it’s really about – passing on the word for another generation. – AM / SWAN

Cover of the Cultural Olympiad programme

By SWAN
PARIS, Jul 31 2024 (IPS)

As cheers from beach-volleyball fans fill the air at the Eiffel Tower Stadium on a steamy, sunny day, pedestrians just down the road are enjoying another kind of show: an outdoor exhibition of huge photographs gleaming on the metal railings of UNESCO headquarters.

Titled Cultures at the Games, the exhibition is among hundreds of artistic and cultural events taking place across France during the 2024 Olympic Games (hosted by the French capital July 26 to Aug. 11), and they’re being staged alongside the numerous athletic contests.

The events even have an umbrella name – the Cultural Olympiad – and include photography, painting, sculpture, fashion, and a host of attractions linking art and sport. Most are scheduled to run beyond the closing ceremony of the Games.

UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) is a “partner” in the Cultural Olympiad, arranging not only the usual meetings where bureaucrats give lofty speeches, but also showcasing a series of works to highlight diversity and inclusion.

Cultures at the Games, for instance, comprises some 140 photographs portraying memorable aspects of the opening and closing ceremonies of the Olympics since 1924 and is presented in association with the Olympic Museum of Lausanne.

Images show how national delegations have transmitted their culture during these extravaganzas, and the pictures depict athletes such as Jamaica’s Usain Bolt, whose “lightning bolt” pose has become part of the Games’ folklore even as he has helped to make the green, gold and black colours of his country’s flag more recognizable.

Inside UNESCO’s Y-shaped building, meanwhile, a collection of panels focuses on how sport can “Change the Game”, a theme running across all of the organization’s “Olympiad” events. (At the “World Ministerial Meeting” that UNESCO hosted on July 24, just ahead of the Olympics, officials discussed gender equality, inclusion of people with disabilities, and protection of athletes, for example.)

A notable section of the indoor exhibition features historic photographs that pay tribute to athletes who sparked change through their achievements or activism. Here, one can view an iconic picture of American athlete Jesse Owens, the “spanner in the works that completely disrupted the Nazi propaganda machine set up during the 1936 Berlin Olympics,” according to the curators.

Owens won four medals at the Games, but “received no immediate (official) recognition from his own country” despite being welcomed as a hero by the public, as the exhibition notes. The racism in the United States meant that President Franklyn D. Roosevelt refused to congratulate him “for fear of losing votes in the Southern states.” The photo shows him standing on the podium in Berlin, while behind him another competitor gives a “Hitler salute”.

Jesse Owens at the Berlin Olympics, in Athletes who changed the world at UNESCO;

Athletes who changed the world equally features boxer Mohammad Ali, who in 1967 refused to fight in Vietnam and was stripped of his world championship title and banned from the ring for three years.

Perhaps the most famous image, however, is that of athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos at the 1968 games in Mexico City. They “removed their shoes and walked forward in socks to protest against the extreme poverty faced by African Americans,” as the caption reminds viewers. “With solemn faces, Smith and Carlos bowed their heads and raised their gloved black fists, aiming to raise global awareness about racial segregation in their country.”

A photo of Tommie Smith, in Athletes who changed the world at UNESCO

The exhibition outlines the long battles faced by women athletes as well, and it highlights the work of Alice Milliat who, as president of the French Women’s Sports Federation, “campaigned for women’s inclusion in Olympic sports”. She organized the first Women’s Olympic Games in Paris in 1922, bringing together five countries and 77 athletes.

Although Milliat “died in obscurity” in 1957, her “legacy endures today, with the Paris 2024 Games highlighting gender equality in sports, largely thanks to her visionary efforts,” says the photo caption.

Similarly, the exhibition spotlights the contributions of disabled athletes such as Ryadh Sallem, who was born without arms or legs, a victim of the Thalidomide medication that was prescribed to pregnant women in the 1950s and Sixties and caused deformities in children.

Sallem won 15 French championship titles in swimming and later turned to team sports such as wheelchair basketball and rugby. At UNESCO, his photograph is prominently displayed, along with the story of his hopes for the 2024 Paralympics and his mission to “promote a positive vision of disability”.

Elsewhere in the city, artists and museums are also paying tribute to Paralympic competitors, ahead of the Paralympic Games from Aug. 28 to Sept. 8 in Paris.

On the fencing around the imposing Gare de l’Est (train station), colourful works by artist Lorenzo Mattoti show disabled athletes competing in a variety of sports, while the Panthéon is presenting the “Paralympic Stories: From Sporting Integration to Social Inclusion (1948-2024)”. This exposition relates the “history of Paralympism and the challenges of equality,” according to curators Anne Marcellini and Sylvain Ferez.

For fans of sculpture, Paris has a range of “Olympiad” works on view for free. In June, the city unveiled its official “sculpture olympique” or Olympic Statue, created by Los Angeles-based African-American artist Alison Saar, who cites inspiration from Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America.

The sculpture, located near the famed Champs Elysées avenue, depicts a seated African woman holding a flame in front of the Olympic rings, and it “embodies Olympic values of inclusivity and peace,” according to the office of Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo.

When it was inaugurated on June 23, however, it sparked a flurry of hostile remarks from some far-right commentators on social media, who apparently felt threatened by the work.

Another statue of a woman, that of Venus de Milo or the mythical goddess Aphrodite, has been “reinterpreted” in six versions by artistic director Laurent Perbos to symbolise “feminine” sporting disciplines, including boxing, archery and surfing. The statues stand in front of the National Assembly, and the irony won’t be lost on most viewers: French women secured the right to vote only in 1944.

Of course, Paris wouldn’t be Paris without another particular artform. As the much-discussed Opening Ceremony of the Olympics showed, fashion is an integral part of these Games, and those who didn’t get enough of the array of sometimes questionable costumes can head for another dose with “La Mode en movement #2” (Fashion in Motion #2).

This exhibition at the Palais Galliera / Fashion Museum looks at the history of sports clothing from the 18^th century, with a special focus on beachwear. Among the 250 pieces on display, viewers will surely gain tips on what to wear for beach volleyball.

For more information, see: Olympiade Culturelle (paris2024.org)

Amanda Hernández and Nicole Cecilia Delgado, co-directors of La Impresora. Credit: courtesy of La Impresora

By SWAN
SAN JUAN / PARIS, Jun 19 2024 (IPS)

On meeting Amanda Hernández, one is immediately struck by her infectious energy and her generous sharing of information about Puerto Rican writers and books. At a recent literary festival in the Caribbean – the BVI Lit Fest in the British Virgin Islands – she urged participants for instance to check out the works of several emerging authors from her home territory.

A poet and publisher, Hernández is carving out a place not just for Puerto Rican poetry but also for independent publishing on the island, producing attractive volumes through specialist methods.

She and fellow poet Nicole Cecilia Delgado run La Impresora, which they describe as an “artist-led studio dedicated to small-scale editorial work and allocating resources to support independent publishing.”

Based in the north-western Puerto Rican town Isabela, La Impresora specializes in Risograph printing, a mechanized technique that is also referred to as digital screen printing. Risograph uses “environmentally friendly” paper, ink and other materials, and is becoming increasingly popular among independent graphic artists and publishers worldwide.

Along with this, Hernández and Delgado state that one of their main objectives is the “learning, use and improvement of traditional publishing, printing, and hand-made book-binding techniques.”

“We acknowledge that English is not our mother tongue and represents complicated colonial power relationships in Puerto Rican history. However, we also know it works as a lingua franca that allows for communicating with people from all over the globe, enabling alliances and collaborations”

Another important objective is the translation of poetry and other genres by Puerto Rican writers, especially underrepresented authors. Such translations are published in bilingual, handcrafted books, as La Impresora seeks to “strengthen the link between literature and the visual arts”, and to reach readers both within and beyond Puerto Rico, the directors say.

“Our poetry reflects on our shared context of resisting injustices and finding new ways of creating revolutionary practices and dynamics, battling the austerity measures and violence imposed upon us,” Hernández and Delgado explain on La Impresora’s website.

Regarding language, the poets say that this is essential “when creating content and thinking about accessibility, distribution, outreach, and possible networks.” Although they have mostly edited and published Spanish literature written by Puerto Rican authors from the island and the diaspora, they have been “integrating more bilingual (Spanish/English) publications” and translation projects.

“We acknowledge that English is not our mother tongue and represents complicated colonial power relationships in Puerto Rican history. However, we also know it works as a lingua franca that allows for communicating with people from all over the globe, enabling alliances and collaborations,” they explain.

Hernández expands on different aspects of the poets’ work in the following interview, conducted by fellow writer and editor Alecia McKenzie, SWAN’s founder. The discussion forms part of an on-going series about translators of Caribbean literature and is done in collaboration with the Caribbean Translation Project, which has been highlighting the translation of writing from and about the region since 2017.

SWAN: How important is translation for your mission of editing and producing “contemporary literature in Puerto Rico, with particular emphasis on Puerto Rican poetry written by underrepresented authors”?

Amanda Hernández: We recognize the importance of translation as an overall way of tending to accessibility; reinforcing the distribution of our titles outside of Spanish-speaking countries; as a means of establishing new collaborations and possible co-editions, and as a way of growing our network of readers and collaborators.

We started publishing mostly in Spanish, and we still do, but we’ve been acknowledging how translation projects (Spanish/English) have helped us widen our scope as an independent editorial project, throughout and outside of the Caribbean, at the same time helping us carry out our mission of publishing and sharing the work of contemporary Puerto Rican underrepresented authors.

SWAN: You’ve stated that “language is essential when creating content and thinking about accessibility, distribution, outreach, and possible networks.” But you acknowledge that English is not your mother tongue and “represents complicated colonial power relationships in Puerto Rican history”. Can you tell us how you navigate these issues when La Impresora publishes bilingual / translated work?

AH: The nature of our written and graphic content, the poetry we publish, the artists, writers, and projects with whom we collaborate, including our personal views, politics, and editorial methodology, are based upon alternative and subversive practices that challenge precisely these complicated colonial power relationships that have forcefully tried to shape our Puerto Rican history and literature.

We decide to use the colonizing language as a weapon, as a vehicle to suggest new and politically committed ways of writing, publishing, and thinking about our context and geography.

SWAN: You both speak several languages, including Spanish and English. Where and how did you begin learning languages?

AH: We are both fully bilingual (Spanish and English). In Puerto Rico, currently, the education system teaches English as a second language. It started in 1898, when we became a colony of the U.S. territory, having been a Spanish (Spain) colony before that since 1493.

During the 1900s, English was forced upon the Puerto Rican education system in an attempt to assimilate the population, but failed to be stated as the primary language. In 1949 Spanish was again reinstated as the official speaking and learning language all through primary and secondary school, and English became a “preferred subject” that has been officially taught in schools until the present time. So, we both grew up learning to read and write in English in school, also through television and movies.

SWAN: How did your interest in translation begin?

AH: My interest in translation has developed alongside my desire to work on and publish my poetry, and the poetry of other writers and colleagues. The possibility of being able to participate in a broader network of readers, writers, publishers, literary festivals, and so on, has proved to be a gratifying and important formative experience.

Recognizing the value of translation as a practice that considers the importance of broadening the scope and circulation of the literature and books we create has been a realization I have assumed both as a poet and editor.

Producing Las horas extra by writer Mara Pastor; Image courtesy of La Impresora

SWAN: You’ve translated and published works by several writers. Can you tell us about the particular challenges of bilingual publishing?

AH: We have published translations of our work, either translated by us or by other colleague writers. In some cases, we’ve worked with and published writers who also self-translate their work, like the Puerto Rican poets Ana Portnoy Brimmer and Roque Raquel Salas Rivera. We greatly admire their work.

We’ve also published bilingüal broadsides including poetry from the Cuban writer Jamila Medina and the Puerto Rican poet Aurora Levins Morales, alongside others. One of the first bilingüal projects we worked on (2018) was a reedition of a book by the Peruvian poet José Cerna Bazán titled Ruda, originally published in Spanish in 2002.

Our edition included a translation and notes made by the North American Hispanic Studies professor Anne Lambright. This project was funded by Trinity College, Connecticut. More recently we published Calima, by the Puerto Rican literary critic and professor Luis Othoniel Rosa.

This bilingüal publication includes two experimental historic-science-fiction narratives, an interactive graphic intervention by the Puerto Rican artist Guillermo Rodríguez, and was translated to English by Katie Marya and Martina Barinova.

Some of the challenges we’ve faced working with bilingüal publishing, aside from the aforementioned complicated relationship we Puerto Ricans have with the English language, have had to do, mostly, with our approach to design and with the complexity that comes with poetry translation.

Poetry requires the translator, and editor, to pay attention to many more details aside from the literal meaning of the written word. There is also what is suggested but not literally stated, idioms, the flow and rhythm of the poem, the versification, its metric structure, tone and style, and these all have to be simultaneously translated.

Regarding the design of bilingüal poetry publications, finding new and well-thought-out ways of addressing format, aesthetics and the overall reading experience and fluidity of the books we publish has given us the chance to experiment and challenge our editorial approach.

We don’t have a standardized composition and/or design for the books we publish, so each one involves an original conceptualization process that takes into account the weight of their content in relation to their physical materialization.

SWAN: How important is translation for today’s world, especially for underrepresented communities?

AH: As publishers we mostly work on the editing, designing, printing, and distribution of contemporary Puerto Rican poetry, focusing on content that represents our true motivations, struggles, and rights as Puerto Ricans.

We recognize the power and autonomy poetry provides as a shared practice and cultural legacy, as a way of reflecting upon and passing down to younger generations a critical and compromised poetic that intends a genuine portrayal of the underrepresented history of our archipelago. Translation becomes a way of widening our reach and sharing our true experiences as Caribbean islanders with the world.

SWAN: In the Caribbean, as in other regions, it sometimes feels as if countries are divided by language. How can people in the literary / arts / educational spheres help to bridge these linguistic “borders”?

AH: Including translation practices in the work we do and publish as a Caribbean community is a great step towards bridging these linguistic gaps or borders.

Publishing bilingüal editions; including interpreters in the work we do and the events we organize, not only for the written or spoken language, but also considering sign language and braille; allocating resources intended for the discussion, research, and workshopping of translation as a way of strengthening our creative networks are achievable ways of connecting the geographically disperse and linguistically diverse Caribbean we live in.

SWAN: How do you see literary translation evolving to reach more readers?

AH: New technologies and editorial practices are constantly reshaping our views and the ways in which we circulate our content and share our literary resources with a worldwide network of readers and writers.

The possibility of developing new readers, writers and literary communities and coalitions gains strength as we consider the importance of accessibility, representation and circulation. Translation is a key factor to consider when assuming strategies to achieve these goals.

SWAN: La Impresora combines graphic art, handicraft, poetry, and translation in its overall production. Can you tell us more about the significance of this combination?

AH: Our practice revolves around the sharing and learning of skills that combine poetry, graphic art, book art, translating, editing, editorial design and risograph printing. We edit, design, print, bind by hand and distribute the books La Impresora publishes.

This combination of practices helps us sustain an autonomous and independent operation where we can envision, decide upon and construct the type of books we enjoy and the content we consider relevant in our Puerto Rican context.

The artisanal approach to our publications is of great significance to the work we do, since all of the content we publish is handmade, and we celebrate the ways in which this has shaped the relationship we have with independent editorial work.

SWAN: What are your next projects?

AH: Regarding bilingüal and/or translation projects, we just recently printed and published La Medalla / The medal by Marion Bolander, under a grant awarded by the National Association of Latino Arts and Culture (NALAC) and the Fondo Flamboyán para las Artes.

Bolander is a Vietnam veteran and this book includes poems written by him during his time in service, poems written later on in his life and a compelling interview that contextualizes the author’s relationship to military service, the United States, Puerto Rico and to poetry.

We have been working with the poet and self-translator Urayoán Noel on the publication of his next book titled Cuaderno de Isabela / Isabela Notebook, which includes texts written by the poet during his visits to our workshop in the coastal town of Isabela, in the span of three consecutive years, as part of a residency program for writers we recently established.

We are also starting to work on two publications by Central American women poets. In collaboration with the curator Vanessa Hernández, who runs a local art gallery called El Lobi, we invited the Guatemalan poet Rosa Chávez to Puerto Rico as part of a collaborative residency program between El Lobi and La Impresora.

The possibility of a bilingüal poetry publication is currently being discussed regarding her residency and visit. The Salvadoran poet Elena Salamanca will also be visiting us in Puerto Rico, accompanied by her translator, the North American independent publisher Ryan Greene, and we will be working on the publication of a bilingüal edition of her latest book Incognita Flora Cuscatlanica.

SWAN: the Decade of Indigenous Languages began in 2022, launched by UNESCO. What does this mean to translators?)

AH: The mobilization and resource allocation, regarding preserving and circulating the work of black, brown, and indigenous people, writers, and artists is long overdue.

The role native languages have played in our development as artistic, cultural, and political civilizations is beyond question, and this recent recognition could be seen as an opportunity to honor their worldwide importance. There is still a long way to go in the search for reparations and equal opportunities for BIPOC communities at a global scale, and concerning translators, this provides an opportunity for the consideration and visibility of translation projects that uphold these standards. – AM / SWAN

A still shot of Robert Wilson's Star and Stone: a kind of love...some say, picture by AM/SWAN

By SWAN
NORMANDY, France, May 27 2024 (IPS)

On a clear, chilly evening, the words of African American poet Maya Angelou filled the air in the centre of Rouen, as a vivid light show played across the façade of the French town’s imposing cathedral, and as a bright full moon rose in the sky.

Images of explosions, falling debris, a cheetah fleeing in the darkness – all sent a message that the world is in a precarious situation on many fronts and that urgent restorative action is needed.

Yet, along with the tangible sense of angst, the show seemed to call for hope, with the intoning of Angelou’s famous line: “But still, like dust, I’ll rise.”

The 25-minute projection, by Texas-born experimental theatre artist Robert Wilson, forms part of the massive Normandie Impressionniste festival, now in its 5^th incarnation and this year celebrating the 150^th anniversary of impressionism, the art movement that scandalized critics when it emerged in the late 1800s.

Running until Sept. 22, and with a head-spinning 150 events taking place throughout Normandy – the region most closely associated with famous impressionist artists such as Claude Monet – the festival comprises exhibitions, installations, theatre pieces, concerts, and other shows.

Running until Sept. 22, and with a head-spinning 150 events taking place throughout Normandy - the region most closely associated with famous impressionist artists such as Claude Monet - the festival comprises exhibitions, installations, theatre pieces, concerts, and other shows
It features both renowned and emerging artists, from across France as well as from countries including India, Japan, China, South Africa, the United States and Britain … all “in dialogue” with impressionism, and history, according to festival director Philippe Platel.

“We wish to show what’s happening now, to update the view of art, even as Normandy remains central,” Platel said in an interview.

The 1874 Paris exhibition that sparked the term impressionism (from the Monet painting Impression, soleil levant) was met mostly with disdain as conventional painters and critics opposed the breaking of academic rules. But the movement, with its focus on a different way of seeing and capturing light, would go on to have global impact.

Still, while the impressionists were seen as radicals, their first shows featured just one woman artist, Berthe Morisot. Now, the festival has made it a point to include almost as many contemporary women artists (47 percent) as men, said Platel – although it’s clear that the “blockbuster” exhibitions centre on male painters.

The Wilson / Angelou show, titled Star and Stone: a kind of love…some say” is presented as one of the highlights of the festival, and Platel emphasises that Angelou (who died in 2014) was an “immense feminist poet”.

Her words are transmitted in the original English and in French translation (read by French actress Isabelle Huppert), alongside music by composer Philip Glass. (Wilson and Glass have previously collaborated, most notably for the opera Einstein on the Beach.)

With its moving, intense images, Star and Stone evokes historical atrocities, including slavery and two world wars. It recalls the damage inflicted on Normandy during World War II, but it also reflects current brutal conflicts. (During the projection on May 22, a woman strode past, and, obviously angered by the visuals, or mistaking the show for a demonstration, shouted out the word “anti-Semitic” several times, to the apparent bafflement of spectators.)

Some of the projected scenes, especially against the full-moon backdrop on this particular night, conjured Monet’s iconic paintings of the Rouen Cathedral, works that themselves hang in an exhibition opening May 25 in Le Havre.

The harbour town, which saw entire neighbourhoods flattened in World War II bombardments, has over the past decades embarked on a cultural and architectural renaissance, and it hosts an impressive museum of modern art (MuMa) which is showcasing 19^th-century photography in Normandy, as part of the festival.

Photographier en Normandie: 1840-1890 juxtaposes photographs and impressionist paintings, giving an idea of the medium’s development and the concerns of artists at the time: the rapidly changing landscapes caused by the industrial revolution, for instance.

It pulls together several iconic paintings of landmarks and the sea, while the photographs too capture marine scenes, daily life, and environmental transformations brought on by the building of railway lines during the 19^th century. The show caters to both painting and photography buffs, or anyone interested in early picture-taking processes and their global impact, not least on artists.

Back in Rouen, another highlight of the festival is an exhibition by 86-year-old English artist David Hockney, who has been living and working in Normandy since the Covid-19 pandemic. His show Normandism at Rouen’s Musée des Beaux-Arts offers a different kind of impressionism, mixing pop art with the quality of light so important to his predecessors.

Here, vibrant greens, yellows and blues pull spectators into the landscapes for which rainy Normandy is famous, and the exhibition also features striking portraits as well as paintings that Hockney has created via iPads.

The latter record his individual technique and take viewers on a journey from the first line traced to the colourful completed work.

In the “dialogue” between contemporary artists and the impressionists, a main theme is water – the sea, ponds, rain – with echoes of climate change. In one standout show, Oliver Beer, a British painter and musician, reinterprets Monet’s famous Water Lilies series, transforming soundwaves into visual depiction on huge azure canvases.

In another, renowned French artist Marc Desgrandchamps incorporates human forms into his portrayal of water and landscapes, suggesting fragility as well as the need for environmental protection.

While these artists have consciously accepted the call to use impressionism in their shows, the impressionists themselves drew from others, especially from Japanese artists, whose work Monet collected. The festival highlights these international links with an exhibition set to begin June 22 in Deauville: Mondes flottants: du japonisme à l’art contemporain / Floating Worlds: from “Japonism” to Contemporary Art.

Meanwhile, Tokyo-born, France-based artist Reiji Hiramatsu will hold a solo show, Symphonie des Nymphéas / Water Lilies Symphony in Giverny, the town where Monet lived, painted and created his water gardens. The exhibition starting July 12 will comprise 14 screens, inspired by certain Monet works… which themselves were inspired by Japan.

Other international artists include Shanta Rao (Indian-French), with an exhibition titled Les yeux turbides / Turbid Eyes in the commune Grand Quevilly, where she invites viewers to see how objects change with light; and South African Bianca Bondi who uses mounds of salt to create luminous landscapes for a show in Le Havre.

With the emphasis on light and dialogue across the festival, the words of Maya Angelou almost seem to form a refrain, calling out from Rouen, to rebut oppression and exclusion: “Leaving behind nights of terror and fear / I rise / into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear“. – 

Maryse Condé. Credit: MEDEF

By SWAN
PARIS, Apr 12 2024 (IPS)

Maryse Condé, the acclaimed Guadeloupean author who died in France last week at the age of 90, will be bid an official farewell April 12, amidst an outpouring of tributes from across the world, and particularly from the Caribbean.

Her funeral service will take place at a famed church in Paris, and the French government has announced there will be a national homage to her April 15.

This follows the community wake organized by authorities and family members April 6 in Pointe-à-Pitre, where the public could join in communion to celebrate the life and work of a writer who “always carried Guadeloupe in her heart”.

Born in 1934 on the Caribbean Island (a French overseas department), Condé studied in mainland France, lived and taught in Africa and the United States, and wrote more than 20 books over her lifetime. She particularly addressed the history and legacies of slavery and colonialism and spoke out against racism, in Europe and elsewhere.

In 2018, she won the “alternative” Nobel Prize for her work, and she said she wished to share the honour with her family, her friends and, “above all, with the Guadeloupean people who will be so thrilled and touched by seeing me receive this award”.

(The honour replaced that year’s official Nobel Prize in Literature, which was postponed to 2019 following a scandal. Condé’s award, formally called The New Academy Prize, was set up by “a wide range of knowledgeable individuals” who accepted the nominations of authors from Sweden’s librarians.)

In its citation, the New Academy declared: “Maryse Condé is a grand storyteller. Her authorship belongs to world literature. In her work, she describes the ravages of colonialism and the postcolonial chaos in a language which is both precise and overwhelming. The magic, the dream and the terror is, as also love, constantly present.”

Paying homage after the announcement of her death April 2 at a hospital in Apt, southern France, French President Emmanuel Macron wrote on X (formerly Twitter): “A literary giant, Maryse Condé paints a picture of sorrow and hope, from Guadeloupe to Africa, from the Caribbean to Provence. In a language of struggle and splendour that is unique, universal. Free.”

Condé’s best-known books include the internationally lauded novels Ségou (Segu), Moi, Tituba sorcière (I, Tituba: Black Witch of Salem) and, her final publication, L’Évangile du Nouveau Monde (The Gospel According to the New World).

Her writing has been rendered into numerous languages, by translators including her husband Richard Philcox, and she will be remembered for work that moved readers across the world and influenced students at institutions where she taught – such as Columbia University in New York.

“Her life and writing have been an inspiration to many young scholars, students, writers – and will continue to be so,” said Madeleine Dobie, professor of French and Comparative Literature at Columbia.

(For Columbia’s full tribute to Maryse Condé, see: Tribute – Maryse Condé

Although Condé wrote in French, her work has long transcended linguistic lines in the Caribbean, where a range of Creole languages as well as English, French, Spanish and Dutch are spoken.

“Her contribution is beyond measure,” said Jamaican professor, writer and translator Elizabeth “Betty” Wilson. More than 30 years ago, Wilson and her sister Pamela Mordecai edited an anthology of Caribbean women writers titled Her True-True Name, which carried a story by Condé in English translation.

“I am so sad that she is gone,” Wilson said. “She lived life to the full.”

Ambassador Symone Betton Nayo at the premiere of "Bob Marley: One Love" in Brussels. Credit: A.M./SWAN

By SWAN
BRUSSELS, Feb 15 2024 (IPS)

Judging from the audience reactions at a screening of Bob Marley: One Love in Brussels, the music may touch international viewers, but the memories and some of the “insider” comments belong to Jamaicans and those closely connected with the country.

It was clear from discussions after the premiere that attendees who had lived in Jamaica understood the context of the songs, and got certain jokes, while others felt adrift, even as they appreciated the world-famous tracks such as No Woman, No Cry and, yes, One Love. This may account for some of the less-than-positive reviews that have started to emerge.

“The film was surprisingly authentic,” said Stefanie Gilbert-Roberts, a Jamaican communications and culture professional who resides in Belgium. “But perhaps so authentic that it might seem out of this world for those not connected to the culture.”

Bob Marley: One Love, directed by Reinaldo Marcus Green and coming nearly 43 years after the iconic singer’s death, focuses on the Seventies and on two concerts that Marley and his band performed in Kingston, the Jamaican capital. Both events took place amid surging political violence on the island and were aimed at unifying the population. But before the first concert, gunmen stormed Marley’s home and shot him, his wife Rita, and his manager Don Taylor – an assault that shocked Jamaicans and international fans.

The film depicts the attack quickly, without dwelling on what must have been deep trauma for Marley’s family. Watching it, one can’t help but wonder at the effects on those who have now gone on to co-produce this movie: his widow Rita, their children Ziggy and Cedella, and the other family members involved such as Stephen.

Bob and Rita performed with their wounds at the Smile Jamaica concert in December 1976, and then left the island: he eventually for London, and she with the children to the United States.

The film shows Marley’s time in England, which is perhaps the least interesting part of the story – as viewers don’t really get an idea of how he dealt again with life away from “home” (he had lived in London before, in the early Seventies, signing to Chris Blackwell’s Island label). Instead, we’re given scenes of him jogging, playing football with his bandmates, joking with record executives, and getting inspiration for the title of the album Exodus, a global hit after its release in 1977.

Marley’s “relationships” are also not dwelt upon, as a viewer remarked after the screening. The most well-known of these, with Cindy Breakspeare (Miss World 1976 and mother of Damian Marley), is shown fleetingly in a scene where she watches him perform in a studio. Breakspeare is named in the credits as a consultant to the film.

Following his self-imposed exile in England, Marley would return triumphantly to Kingston to play the One Love Peace Concert in 1978, when he brought Michael Manley and Edward Seaga, leaders of the opposing political parties, together on stage to clasp hands.

It was a message again to Jamaicans to unite. By the time of the next general election in the country, in 1980, more than 800 people had been killed, and citizens were leaving the island in droves, taking their grief with them.

In the film, Rita (played by British actress Lashana Lynch) refers to one of the most shocking incidents during this period, when attackers set fire to a charitable institution, with residents inside burned alive.

For those who experienced these turbulent years, the film brings the memories crashing back, of both the horrific incidents and the music. Marley recorded his island’s troubles in song after song: Johnny Was, Concrete Jungle, Rat Race, Ambush in the Night, Them Belly Full (But We Hungry) and others.

In addition, there were the more playful tunes such as Roots, Rock, Reggae (with the opening lyrics “Play I some music”), and then the love songs, which the film highlights as well: Turn Your Lights Down Low being among them.

In the movie, Marley is seen playing this on the guitar to Rita, and it is then that one realizes that the whole biopic might actually be a love song to her, formulated by her children.

As portrayed by Lynch, Rita is a force, an artist in her own right, who needs to be both a backing singer for Bob and a parent to their children (as well as to his “outside” ones) – a situation she angrily describes in one argument scene. Lynch’s performance is perhaps the most memorable, and the writers could have given her greater scope by including more of Rita’s story.

Playing Marley, British actor Kingsley Ben-Adir works hard to capture the intensity and charisma of the singer, and he gives a credible performance. But the script needed more substance for a complete portrayal. Not shown, for instance, is Marley’s stance on relationships.

At an early interview in Kingston, he was once asked about these views, and his response was: if a woman loved him, she would love his other women. When questioned whether this might be acceptable were the situation reversed, he replied: She don’t do that. Still, he adopted the two children Rita had with other partners.

So, yes, artists are complex people, and certain aspects of his life might have been depicted, alongside the far-reaching and undeniable impact in addressing injustice, inequality, and marginalisation. This is a minor criticism, however. The film is worth watching – for the man, the music, the memories… and the question of how far the world still has to go in solving major ills.

At the screening in Belgium, co-organized by Paramount Pictures, Sony Brussels and the Jamaican Embassy, Marley’s importance was summed up by Ambassador Symone Betton Nayo, who gave a short speech before the film began.

“His ability to connect with people through his music, transcending cultural and geographical boundaries, has made him a symbol of unity, strength and hope,” Betton Nayo said. “He was not only a prolific writer of music, and a talented performer, but an inspiring messenger. Many of his anthemic compositions such as One Love, Get Up, Stand Up, Redemption Song remain relevant as we reflect on current global realities.”

With “Reggae Month” being celebrated in February, the film’s release is timely, paying tribute to an iconic Jamaican artist whose music lives on, with the call for peace, love, hope, and justice, Betton Nayo added. – AM/SWAN

Scenes from Moon Over Aburi. Credit: courtesy of the film.

By SWAN
PARIS, May 18 2023 (IPS)

Some movie scenes keep replaying in one’s mind long after one has left the cinema, and this is certainly true of Moon Over Aburi, a short film shot in Ghana that has been gaining accolades since its release earlier this year.

Based on a story by the prize-winning Ghanaian-Jamaican writer and poet Kwame Dawes, the film addresses subjects such as sexual abuse, society’s view of women’s roles, and the gender-based perspectives from which experiences are recalled and retold. It will have a special screening this month at the prestigious Calabash International Literary Festival in Jamaica (May 26-28), and while viewers can expect to be moved by the whole story, they will be haunted by one stunning, unexpected scene.

In its minimalist mise-en-scène, Moon Over Aburi is reminiscent of a play, with two main actors in the spotlight, or rather the moonlight, playing off each other – Ghanaian-British actress Anniwaa Buachie and her Ghanaian compatriot Brian Angels (whose credits include the 2015 feature Beasts of No Nation, starring Idris Elba).

Buachie plays a mysterious woman, the owner of a small food kiosk who seems tied to something in her past. Angels plays the man who visits the kiosk on a moonlit night and asks for a meal. As the two exchange cryptic words and stories, it becomes clear that the man knows more about her than he lets on, and the colossal secret she carries is gradually revealed, as enigmatic shots of the full moon emphasise the mystique.

Anniwaa Buachie. Credit: Courtesy of the film.

Buachie, who produced the film and co-directed (with Sheila Nortley), has a background in both cinema and theatre, having performed at London’s Old Vic and other venues. She has also appeared in guest roles in popular television series such as Eastenders. But making Moon Over Aburi was not a shoo-in for her, she says. She and her team had to overcome certain obstacles for the work to see the light of day – because in a world where the number of films seems to be ever growing, only a selected few filmmakers acquire the resources to pursue their art.

In the following, edited, interview, Buachie speaks with SWAN about the film’s journey to the screen.

SWAN: Moon Over Aburi is a shocking, thought-provoking film that is beautifully made. How did it come about?

Anniwaa Buachie: As an actor, I provided the voice of the audiobook in the anthology Accra Noir, edited by Nana Ama Danquah [and published by New York-based publisher Akashic Books]. I fell in love with the story Moon Over Aburi by Kwame Dawes.

I remember when I started reading this story, I immediately had goose bumps. The story was honest, visceral, poetic, chilling… a dance of cat and mouse between two people, a man and woman, secret and lies, making one question whether two wrongs can make a right.

It sat with me, it was in my heart, my mind, my body. I had never read a story that highlighted the vicious cycle of domestic violence, but also explored how a woman ruthlessly and unapologetically takes back her power.

Society tends to excuse the faults of a man and blame the women in that man’s life. The woman who raised him, the woman who married him, the woman who rejected him. Power is given to a woman to birth and nurture a child, yet it is taken from her as soon as she seeks equality, acknowledgement, and respect. It is a story that pushes the brutal subject matter of domestic violence into the light, a much-needed conversation that often lies in the shadow, swept under the carpet. I had to bring this story to light.

SWAN: What were some of the challenges in adapting the short story to suit the demands of a different medium, film?

A.B.: Kwame Dawes’ writing is beautiful, lyrical and poetic, and it was important to me to ensure that the film produced stayed true to the mystical element of the original.

Many stories are written in the first person, and the reader already is biased as they often

attach themselves to the main narrator / protagonist. However, with Moon Over Aburi, Kwame had already written it in a dialogue format. The story was a script in the first instance, so adapting it to film was a joy, to be honest.

What was tricky was deciding how much detail to pack from a 20-page short story into a 10-page script. The world that Kwame had created was so intricate, intimate through words, and heavily reliant on the reader’s interpretation. However, with a screenplay, you have to make definitive decisions and find ways to utilise camera shots, sounds, and the colour palette to influence the viewer’s perspective.

Film also demands a particular structure that a short story can forego. Screenplays require scenes that establish each character and a clear breaking point in the middle of the script that take characters to the emotional extreme – into fight or flight mode. The audience needs to be taken on an emotional ride, and this is influenced by the whole creative team: producer, director, cinematographer, etc.

Personally, it was a challenge for me to maintain a balance between being an actor and being the producer, and co-directing.

The actor inside me wanted to play forever and fully immerse myself in the character. However, there was a part of my brain that, as the producer, always had to be focused on the practicalities, thinking about if the budget is being used effectively, if everyone is happy on set, if cast and crew have been fed and have what they need to maintain a high quality!

Also, once a film project is done, an actor can switch off and think about their next project, whereas the role of the filmmaker doesn’t stop there – now it’s about implementing, marketing, sourcing additional finance, distribution. Good thing I am a great multi-tasker!

SWAN: The shots of the landscape, the moon, and the setting overall, are artistic and evocative. Can you tell us more about the photography and where it took place?

A.B.: The story takes place in the Aburi, the eastern region of Ghana, and in Accra, the main city. Whilst the story leaves room for the imagination, I am so thankful to Ghanaian-based cinematographer extraordinaire Apag Annankra of Apag Studios and art director Godwin Sunday Ashong. Their knowledge of the neighbourhood and the scenery enabled us to find places within Aburi and Accra that provide a magical realism.

We used drone shots to capture the vastness of Aburi and correlated this with the earthy green and blue colours and rural setting in the country scenes, and juxtaposed this with our city location – with intimate shots, highly saturated neon colours, and an abstract setting. The city locations were based in Jamestown, the vibrant heart of Accra, and Cantonments.

SWAN: The films you’ve produced carry a social message – about the treatment of girls and women – but it is left up to viewers to draw their own conclusions, or to see the light, so to speak. How do you balance artistic subtlety and activism?

A.B.: It is important to me, as an artist, to present situations that encourage conversations, a reflection of self and to identify how one contributes or blocks the development of girls and women. The best teaching is when the viewer has space for analysis themselves, as opposed to being force fed an opinion.

I simply ensure that the films I produce have in-depth perspectives, of extreme impactful situations, drawing the viewer in on an emotional, human level.

SWAN: What are some of the difficulties in making a film without major studio backing, and are things changing?

A.B.: Budget. A studio-backed film would have a large budget and with that the creative team has space to make mistakes, to experiment, to spend hours on a scene taking multiple shots. With a big budget you can secure your ideal location, block off streets and build a set if needs be, to get the right look for the film.

Whereas when you are working on an independent or a low budget, everything you do has to be specific, and with the right intention, because the repercussions are greater. Planning is key, and ensuring everyone in the crew and cast understands the overall vision of the film is important. There cannot be a weak link, everyone needs to work together to bring their A-game. You cannot go back and re-shoot, money is tight, which also means time is limited. You just have one chance to make sure you get the right shots, the right lighting, etc.

I do think things are changing but not quickly enough. Independent filmmaking is an art that is not given the same respect as the big studio movies and TV. Which is a shame, because independents are a great way to platform new and upcoming talent and inject society with stories that are often forgotten, hidden, or discarded. But nowadays the art of filmmaking is more about the return on investment, and for that reason independent filmmaking is always a risk, but that is what makes it exhilarating and rewarding… if you make people’s heads turn in an age where attention is so competitive, you know you have something really special.

SWAN: What do you hope viewers will take away from Moon?

A.B.: This film focuses on giving attention to overlooked narratives, concerning social issues such as: gender-based violence, misogyny and gender inequality, which shroud many cultures. It will open doors to a diverse audience offering intelligent insight into the social and political consciousness of the invisible and the marginalised. While this story is in a fiction anthology, it is a reality that most women face. Through the screenings, I am hoping viewers can identify how cultural constructs contribute to the way in which women are viewed, and how this can change, how this MUST change and, ultimately, that it’s down to us, the new generation to take control and rewrite the social narrative. A narrative that allows us, me, as a woman, to learn from the present, and construct a future that uplifts gender equality, suppresses elitism, and eradicates poverty. This is the foundation of social cohesion and the start of a new African legacy.

SWAN: What’s next for you?

A.B.: Kwame and I are touring with this short in many film festivals in the UK, Ghana, and the States as well, developing Moon Over Aburi into a full feature and exploring production companies and talent. Personally, I have my show coming out on the BBC (teen drama Phoenix Rise), and I have a couple other things in the works that I can’t announce yet, but it’s an exciting time! – SWAN

By SWAN
PARIS, Mar 28 2023 (IPS)

It’s a new direction for UNESCO, getting involved in movies, so to speak. The United Nations’ cultural agency and Netflix – the global streaming and production company – have partnered to “support” and “promote” Africa’s new generation of filmmakers, and the results will be revealed to the world from March 29, when six short films by young directors will be available in 190 countries via the video-on-demand platform.

The films are the winners of an “African Folktales, Reimagined” competition that was launched by both entities in 2021, attracting more than 2,000 entries, according to UNESCO.

Ernesto Ottone Ramírez, the agency’s assistant director-general for culture, said the joint initiative “pays homage to Africa’s centuries-old tradition, passing wisdom from generation to generation, from elders to the youngest”. He acknowledged that this is a departure for UNESCO whose work with streaming platforms have mostly focused on regulatory and policy issues.

Meanwhile Tendeka Matatu, Netflix’s director of film for Sub-Saharan Africa, said the company believes that “great stories are universal and that they can come from anywhere and be loved everywhere”. He said that what Netflix and UNESCO have in common is the desire to “promote the multiplicity of expression”.

The submissions to the film contest went through a first selection process, before being narrowed to 21 candidates, who presented their projects to an international jury. The judges – including film mentors – then selected six finalists: from Kenya (Voline Ogutu), Mauritania (Mohamed Echkouna), Nigeria (Korede Azeez), South Africa (Gcobisa Yako), Tanzania (Walt Mzengi Corey) and Uganda (Loukman Ali).

Each finalist won $25,000 and a production grant of $75,000 to create their short movie with a local production company, UNESCO said. The films were completed earlier this year, and their streaming (as an “anthology”) will begin with the 6th Kalasha International Film and TV Market in Kenya, a three-day trade fair taking place March 29 – 31.

Speaking at an in-house “advance” showing of the films at UNESCO headquarters in Paris, Ottone Ramírez said the agency was “particularly pleased” that the short films captured “not only the culture of Africa, but also the cultural diversity within Africa”.

Some observers privately expressed concerns, however, that any association with global streaming platforms could lead to formulaic storytelling or could undermine local film ventures – a fear that Ottone Ramírez said was unfounded.

He told SWAN that the filmmakers had complete freedom, and that the films were their own vision. What Netflix “put at their disposal”, he said, was access to an experienced film partner, as well as financial and technical support. (The “Netflix-appointed supervising producer” was Steven Markovitz from Big World Cinema, an African production company based in Cape Town, South Africa.)

UNESCO says the partnership illustrates a “shared commitment to the continent’s audiovisual industries, which generate jobs and wealth” and that the creative industries “are an asset for the sustainable development of the continent”.

The creative industries are also an opportunity for companies seeking to expand into new markets, which could be mutually beneficial, observers say. While Nigeria and a few other countries have well-established filmmaking sectors, many African directors might benefit from international support.

Anniwaa Buachie, a Ghanaian-British actress and filmmaker, told SWAN that “budget” is one of the biggest constraints for independent films. “You cannot go back and re-shoot, money is tight, which also means time is limited. You just have one chance to make sure you get the right shots, the right lighting, etc.”

Some of the industry challenges are highlighted in a report UNESCO produced in 2021 on Africa’s film sector, titled The African film Industry: trends, challenges and opportunities for growth. The report found that the sector could create some 20 million jobs and generate 20 billion dollars in annual revenue on the continent. With the survey, UNESCO could identify the need to create capacity building and to “scale up” efforts by policy makers – using Nigeria as one model, Ottone Ramírez said.

(Read here: The African film Industry: trends, challenges and opportunities for growth – UNESCO Digital Library)

It was on the completion of the report that UNESCO decided on the current project, Ottone Ramírez told SWAN. At the same time, Netflix was also seeking to launch a project in Africa, so talks began on a partnership, with “months” of discussion about the format and the call for applications, he added.

As for “priorities”, UNESCO hoped to include indigenous languages and gender equality in the project, he said. Alongside English and French, the winning films are made in a variety of languages including Hausa, KiSwahili, Runyankole, Hassaniya Arabic, and isiXhosa – reflecting the UN International Decade of Indigenous Languages (2022-2032).

Many of the stories also centre on women characters, with topics including domestic violence and the struggle for equality within patriarchal structures.

“It shows us how important this subject is for the young generation of African filmmakers,” Ottone Ramírez said. “I would say it was the main theme in each of the 21 pitches before the final selection. We’re seeing another way of storytelling.”

Part of the aim was equally to boost opportunities for women filmmakers – something that has already been happening with the long-running FESPACO film festival in Burkina Faso – and to focus on directors living in Africa, Ottone Ramírez told SWAN.

During the selection of the winning pitches, UNESCO and Netflix acted as observers, leaving the choice to the international jury, he said.

Aside from being able to produce their films, perhaps the biggest advantage to the winners is that they have access to a global platform, which Netflix said it is “proud” to provide.

“We know Africa has never lacked in talent and creativity” said Matatu, the Netflix director. “What has been in short supply, however, is opportunity. Emerging talents often struggle – they struggle finding the right resources and the visibility to fully unleash their potential and develop their creative careers.”

The winning short films will potentially reach some 230 million subscribers of the video-on-demand platform around the world, he said – an unprecedented opportunity for these young filmmakers. – SWAN

Industry mentors were Bongiwe Selane, Jenna Bass, Pape Boye, Femi Odugbemi, Leila Afua Djansi, and Tosh Gitonga.

Opal Palmer Adisa in Jamaica. Credit: SWAN

By SWAN
PARIS, Mar 8 2023 (IPS)

For the past six years, Jamaican writer and scholar Opal Palmer Adisa has been one of the voices crying out against the prevalence of gender-based violence in the Caribbean and elsewhere. To highlight this human rights issue, she launched “Thursdays in Black” – holding public protests throughout the year and, on Thursdays, making use of social media to spread her message and raise awareness.

Palmer Adisa, a former director of The Institute for Gender and Development Studies at the University of the West Indies, Mona, is also known as one of the forces highlighting Caribbean artists “at home and in the diaspora” (alongside SWAN, which was launched in 2011). She’s the founder of Interviewing the Caribbean, a journal where artists from all genres discuss their craft and the arts in general.

But it is her work on gender that is now coming to the fore and which is a focus in her latest publications – she has written some 20 books, including novels and collections of stories and poetry. Her most recent work, The Storyteller’s Return, looks at misogyny and examines how women find healing amidst violence.

For International Women’s Day, SWAN spoke with Palmer Adisa about her writing and her continuing fight to end GBV both in her homeland and globally. The edited interview follows.

SWAN: The United Nations defines gender-based violence (GBV) as “harmful acts directed at an individual based on their gender”. The organization cites estimates that “one in three women will experience sexual or physical violence in their lifetime”. Why isn’t the world calling this for what it is and doing more?

Opal Palmer Adisa: As much as some people claim that feminists are always blaming patriarchy, the reason why gender-based violence is not declared for what it is – life-threatening to women and damaging to the entire society – is because of patriarchy and the institutions that are patriarchal; hence gender-based violence is really not taken very seriously.

There are band-aid things that are being done in Jamaica and elsewhere to address the issue, but the issue is deeper and encoded in our social/religious institutions and, therefore, has to be attacked or resolved at those levels.

We have to look at the various interpretations of religions that make men in charge of women. So, in order to change gender-based violence, we’re talking about a complete reframing of the entire society starting with the institutions. We have to project and reinforce that women are equal to men and should be treated equally in all areas.

A question that I have been grappling with, even in my new novel, is: why do men rape? Why is it something that they feel they can and do do? It is a form of terror and control of women. There is definitely some progress, but the various governments have to declare GBV as war, which it is, and treat it as such.

SWAN: Campaigns to stop violence against women – the main victims of GBV – are generally highlighted every International Women’s Day (March 8) and every Nov. 25 – International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. What are these campaigns achieving on the international level?

OPA: International Women’s Day and the 16 days of elimination of violence against women have brought international attention to this issue, and this has forced more governments and people worldwide to stop and pay attention, and understand the long-term effect of gender-based violence, not just on the woman and man who are involved (because 80% of the perpetrators are men), but it impacts the children, it impacts the elders, it impacts the health industry, the economy – because women have to seek help through medical care, lose work time, etc.

More importantly, because of these specific days, a growing number of women globally understand that they don’t have to be victims and that there are resources now for those who are in abusive situations to get some kind of respite. The changes that are needed are still a long time away, but these days bring attention and awareness and education.

However, we need to understand that we live in a world that prescribes violence as a solution, and GBV is an obvious consequence. There has to be a major paradigm shift – what we’re talking about is non-violent conflict resolution, which for me is one of the important things in my struggle against gender-based violence: teaching men and women how to talk with each other and how to disagree with each other without resorting to physical harm.

We must teach men to deeply respect women, not just to say it, but to respect women and to understand that women are not here to be of service to them, to wash their clothes or cook their meals, to take care of them sexually – that woman are their partners and deserve to be treated with mutual respect.

International Women’s Day and November 25th through December 10th are very important because they bring tremendous awareness to the ills and plight of women and offer some solutions to ameliorate these conditions.

SWAN: According to the Caribbean Policy Research Institute, Jamaica is among the nations that have the highest rate of femicide (intentional homicide of females) and of “intimate partner violence”. You have been highlighting these issues through both your scholarly and creative work. How did your initiative in this area begin?

OPA: As you’ve indicated, Jamaica has a very high femicide and gender-based-violence rate, and, as a child growing up, I saw this. I grew up on a sugar estate where poverty was a reality for those cane cutters and their families who toiled daily under the sun, and violence fed by anger was also part of that reality. There were numerous whispered stories of gender-based violence.

This lived experience influenced my work, so my very first collection Bake-Face and Other Guava Stories explores this issue as well as sexual abuse. In my creative work, I always felt it was important to illuminate these issues to bring about awareness. My advocacy of “Thursdays in Black” is really just a continuation.

As a writer, my work is intended to address those issues that impact both women and men and try to offer solutions. Growing up, I felt that not many people were doing anything about these issues, dismissing them as “man-and-woman” business.

Honestly, I think that many people didn’t understand the social and long-lasting impact it had on children, on the entire family unit, and so I feel it’s my duty to do that, to write about these things, and expose the theme in the hope of bringing about change. My writing is really about healing – how do we heal from these historical traumas of enslavement but also the daily traumas that we inflict on each other.

SWAN: At the 2021 Bocas Lit Fest (an annual literary festival in Trinidad), you did a powerful online reading of How Do I Keep Them Safe. Can you tell us what motivated this poem?

OPA: In the last 6 years, I have been working specifically to look at issues impacting women and children. Living in Jamaica, you can’t help but hear about the tremendous atrocities done to girls, raping, and mutilation. It’s just awful, quite devastating, and in some instances debilitating.

So, I wrote that poem for mothers. Seeing them in the newspaper or the news, underlining their lament and grief is how do we keep our girls safe. I am a mother, and even though my girls are young adults, it was my constant concern – how to keep them safe. The poem is the voices of women, the community, the voice of fathers who are searching for ways to keep their children safe, specifically their girl children from sexual harassment, which is rampant, and from rape and mutilation.

SWAN: Your most recent collection of poetry, The Storyteller’s Return, explores misogyny and women’s survival and healing in hostile spaces. What do you want readers to take from it?

OPA: The Storyteller’s Return is a love story to Jamaica, a book of gratitude about being able to return. It’s for all the returnees and for all those who want to return but don’t feel they can. While it asserts that Jamaica is unsafe and misogyny is pervasive, it also reveals that there are safe havens and beautiful wonderful people still present in Jamaica.

I want readers to really take away from this book that in the midst of the hostility there is redemption, and all of us have a role to play. The collection is really a homage to those who are away and who have returned and who are wanting to return and who cannot return – to understand that even in the midst of the seeming chaos and hostility, there is opportunity and joy and peace.

SWAN: Not all artists can be activists, but what are some of the ways in which everyone can join the fight to end GBV?

OPA: In order for gender-based violence and violence in general to change in Jamaica, and anywhere else, everyone has to do their role. You don’t have to be an activist and go on marches and carry out other conscious acts of protest like I do, and you don’t have to make this your weekly assignment, but there is a lot you can do on a personal individual level.

Start by having meaningful conversations about some of the ills you see in your society and what each of us as individuals can do to help eradicate and address those ills. Almost everyone has seen, heard and/or witnessed GBV. We have to adopt the African motto: “Each one teach one.” Start on the individual level, talking with each other, acting peacefully with your friends and colleagues and whenever you see injustice or wrong, be brave and speak up against it; do not ignore it or pretend it doesn’t exist. So, that’s how do our part – be a witness, speak up, help a victim when and wherever you can.

Youn Sun Nah in Brussels (photo by A.M.)

By SWAN
BRUSSELS, Jan 31 2023 (IPS)

When the parents of Korean jazz singer Youn Sun Nah realized that the COVID-19 pandemic had begun, they called and urged her to return to Seoul from New York, where she was based at the time.

“They said buy the ticket immediately,” the singer recalls. “There’ll be a total lockdown and you might never be able to come home. When I watched television and heard that borders would be closed, I packed my bags and I got the last ticket. I thought I would come back in three months, but not a year.”

In Korea, under travel restrictions like most of the world, Sun Nah wondered how she could fight the blues that threatened to overwhelm her. She began writing lyrics and composing music for what would become the extraordinary Waking World (Warner Music), her 11^th album, released in 2022.

The songs are an exploration of the life of an artist, confronting angst and despair, and their haunting beauty – as well as experimental range of styles – may help Sun Nah to broaden her already substantial international audience, as she embarks on a “Spring Tour” beginning in March. With the memorable track Don’t Get Me Wrong, the album also contains a message about the dangers of spreading misinformation and hate, the “other” ills of the pandemic.

Born in Seoul to musician parents (and named Na Yoon-sun), Youn Sun Nah learned to play the piano as a child but grew up focusing on the usual curriculum at school. She graduated from university in 1992 with an arts degree, having studied literature, and she thought this would be her career direction. She didn’t want to pursue music, she says, because she had seen her parents – a choir director and a musical actress – work too hard.

Still, when the Korean Symphony Orchestra invited her to sing gospel songs in 1993, she began taking her first steps in the world of performing and recording, eventually moving to France to study music, as she relates. In Paris, she followed courses in traditional French chanson and enrolled at the prestigious CIM School of Jazz and Contemporary Music, where she had to overcome certain artistic challenges.

In the years since then, she has performed worldwide, sung at the closing ceremony of the Sochi Winter Olympics in 2014, contributed to a Nina Simone tribute album, and taken part in the 2017 International Jazz Day concert which was held in Havana, Cuba. (International Jazz Day is an initiative of legendary jazz pianist Herbie Hancock and the United Nations cultural agency, UNESCO.) In addition, she has received the Officier des Arts et des Lettres award from the French Ministry of Culture, the Sejong Culture Award from Korea, and a host of other music prizes and accolades.

In an interview with SWAN before a recent concert in Brussels, Youn Sun Nah spoke of her career with self-deprecating humour, discussing the effects of the pandemic on her art and the meanings behind the songs on Waking World. She shed light, too, on the experience of being a jazz singer amidst the global Korean pop music phenomenon. The edited interview follows.

SWAN: How would you describe yourself?

Youn Sun Nah: I’m a jazz singer from Korea. I studied jazz in France, and I travel around the world, and I’m kind of all mixed up, but I’m very happy with that.

SWAN: Are you now based in France?

YSN: No, I used to live in Paris for a long time, but actually, I don’t have a place to stay in France now. Every time I go there, it’s just for the tour, so I go to different places. I could say I live in Korea, but it’s a nomadic life.

SWAN: Let’s speak about Waking World, which was released last January. You’re doing a tour to promote it now, as that wasn’t possible earlier, during the pandemic.

YSN: Yes, we couldn’t really do the promotion thing, but c’est la vie. My manager called in 2021 to say: now you can come, you can take the plane now. So, I quickly bought the ticket, came back to France and recorded the album in Paris, and then I did some shows.

SWAN: A lot of artists have had to find ways to keep going during the pandemic, and it’s been especially difficult for many musicians who couldn’t tour, couldn’t be on the road. Has that been the case for you too?

YSN: As you know, jazz is really live music, and I think most jazz musicians feel the same way. You want to do as many gigs as possible. I don’t know if people listen to my music on platforms like Spotify or iTunes, but I feel very lucky to perform live music. More than 400 jazz festivals exist in France, so it’s a privilege.

SWAN: How did Waking World come about, and what does it mean for your fans, for you?

YSN: When I went back to Korea at the start of the pandemic, I was kind of optimistic that things wouldn’t last long. Everyone was wearing masks, but we could move around, just not take the plane. Then … six months, seven months, eight months. From that moment, I got really depressed, and I thought that maybe I should change my job, that maybe I would never be able to go back to Europe and perform. What can I do, I thought. All the musicians I played with were in Europe because I studied jazz in France, and I don’t know that many jazz musicians in Korea. So, I had a kind of homesickness even though I was home. But in Korea, we never lose hope, so I think that’s in my DNA. I told myself: you should wake up, and you should do something else; you can’t disappoint the people who’ve supported you for a long time, you should have something to present to your audience. So, I started writing some new tunes. Without the musicians I usually work with, I had to do it all by myself.

SWAN: But you’re used to singing in English?

YSN: Yes, after I started studying jazz. You know, when I came to France, I didn’t know what jazz was. If I’d known, I would definitely have gone to the States. I was so naïve … and maybe stupid? One day I’d asked one of my musician friends in Korea what kind of music I should study to become a good singer, and he’d said: do jazz. What is jazz, I asked him. And he said: jazz is original pop music, so if you learn how to sing jazz, you can sing anything. And I said: oh, it sounds great!

I’m a huge fan of French chanson, so he said one of the oldest jazz schools in Europe is located in Paris, so go there. Oh, great! I arrived there, and what you learn at school is American standards, and everything was in English. I actually studied in four different schools at the same time because, well, I’m Asian, and I’m used to that education system where you don’t have to have any free time for yourself! When I had only six hours of lessons, I thought: what am I gonna do with the other eighteen hours? (Laughter.)

SWAN: That kind of approach must have helped with the album?

YSN: Well, I didn’t know when I could record this album, so I just kept writing and composing. And arranging by myself, as I had a lot of time. But, as you know, jazz is like … we should gather together and arrange in the moment. When I could finally fly to France, I just gave all the material to the musicians. And they said, oh, we’ll respect your scores. And I said, no, no, do what you want. But they played exactly what I wrote, every single note. I’m embarrassed.

SWAN: Tell us about the inspiration behind some of tracks, such as Bird On The Ground, the first song, which has the refrain “I want to fly. I want to fly. I want to fly.”

YSN: Well, “bird on the ground” – that’s me during the pandemic.

SWAN: Don’t Get Me Wrong, the second track, has an infectious melody, but the message is clear: the world “has no chance with those who lie and lie”. Tell us more.

YSN: During the pandemic, I could only watch TV or go on the internet to know what was happening. But sometimes the information wasn’t true, and even though it’s a lie you end up believing everything. Yeah, so I thought the world has no chance with people who lie.

SWAN: The sixth track has an intriguing title – My Mother. (Lyrics include the line: “How can you keep drying my eyes every time, my mother?”) What’s the story behind it?

YSN: With the touring, I usually don’t spend that much time at home. But with the pandemic, I was home for a whole year, and I spent a lot of time with my mother, and I really had the chance to talk about everything, about her life and what she experienced. She’s my best friend, and we became even closer.

SWAN: And the title song Waking World?

YSN: I wanted this to be a dream and not real, but at the same time this is the reality, so it was kind of ambiguous for me. Where am I? Am I dreaming? No, you’re wide awake.

SWAN: Tangled Soul, track eight?

YSN: My soul was completely tangled. (Laughter.) And then one day, I felt: it’s okay, everything will be all right.

SWAN: Speaking about music in general, K-pop has become a global phenomenon. Are you in the wrong field? (Laughter.) More to the point, are you affected by the huge interest?

YSN: At every show, I’m really shocked or surprised because the audience says “hello” and “thank you” in Korean. Unbelievable! There are many people who’ve told me about their experience in Korea, too, saying they’ve spent a month or six months there. It’s something that my parents’ generation couldn’t have expected because the country was destroyed during the war – it’s not that long ago – and they had to build a completely new country. They worked so hard, and because of them, we have this era. People know Korea through K-pop, through Netflix.

SWAN: Then there’s this Korean jazz singer – you. When listeners hear your work, the “soul” comes through. Can you talk about that?

YSN: When I arrived in Paris, not knowing what jazz was, as I mentioned, I told my parents: Oh, I’m gonna study jazz for three years, and I think I can master it, and then I’ll come back to Korea and maybe teach. And afterwards, I felt so stupid, and so bad because I can’t swing, and I don’t have a voice like Ella Fitzgerald, and I could barely learn one standard song. So, I tried everything. On Honeysuckle Rose, I think I wrote down every moment that Ella breathed in, breathed out. But … I couldn’t sing like her, it sounded so fake. So, I said: No, I’ll never be able to sing jazz, this is not for me. After a year, I told my professors that, sorry, I made a wrong choice, I’m going to go back home. And they laughed at me. They said: What? Youn, you can do your own jazz with your own voice. And I said, no, I can’t. Then they recommended some jazz albums of European jazz singers, such as Norma Winstone, who’s an English singer, and my idol. She has a kind of soprano voice like me, and when she interprets, it’s like a whole new tune. And I said, oh, we can call this jazz too? I didn’t know.

So, I learned to try with my own voice and my own soul, with my Korean background, and the more I used my own voice, the more I did things my own way, the more I felt accepted.

SWAN: What is next for you?

YSN: Well, everyone has told me that this album is not jazz, but that’s what I wanted to do. Herbie Hancock always said that jazz is the human soul, it’s not appearances, so you can do whatever you want to do. We’ll see. It’s been a while that I’ve wanted to do an album of jazz standards, so we’ll continue this tour in 2023 and then we’ll see. – A.M. / SWAN

Youn Sun Nah’s Spring Tour runs March 9 to May 26, 2023, and includes concerts in France, Germany, and the Netherlands.

Delvin Lugo at High Line Nine Galleries in NYC. Credit: A. McKenzie

By SWAN
NEW YORK, Oct 7 2022 (IPS)

For two months over the summer, Caribbean-American artist Delvin Lugo presented his first solo show in New York City, exhibiting large, vibrant canvases at High Line Nine Galleries on Manhattan’s West Side and featuring queer communities in his homeland, the Dominican Republic.

The exhibition, titled “Caribbean Summer”, pulled visitors in with its vivid colours and animated characters and also exemplified the success of alternative art events. The gallery space was provided by non-profit arts group Chashama, which describes itself as helping to “create a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive world by partnering with property owners to transform unused real estate”.

These spaces – including galleries that normally close their doors for the summer – are used for “artists, small businesses, and for free community-centric art classes”. According to Lugo, the organisation’s assistance made his show possible and has also provided motivation to continue producing work.

The 44-year-old artist said he’s particularly interested in portraying LGBTQ activists and in expanding his work to include more countries of the Caribbean. The following (edited) interview took place in Manhattan during the exhibition.

SWAN: How did the show come about?

DELVIN LUGO: So, this exhibition is a response to work that I was doing before. I had just finished a series that was about my childhood, growing up a young, gay man in the Dominican Republic, because I lived there until I was twelve years old. And I’d spent so much time kinda dealing with the past that it got to the point that I was like: you know what, I actually don’t know anything happening with the queer culture and the lives of people in DR right now. Yes, I do go back and visit, but when I go back, I go to see my relatives in the countryside, so this was a way to really educate myself and really connect with the queer community in the Dominican Republic. And in this case, it’s Santo Domingo that I’m focusing on.

SWAN: What steps did you take to make the connections?

DL: Well, I really started by reaching out to individuals on social media that maybe I’d seen stories written about, or things that caught my eye on Instagram… so, I reached out to them, and we kind of started a dialogue first. Then when I was ready to start painting, I decided to go meet them in person, and the theme that I had in mind was “chosen family”. I had a few ideas about what the situation was like there, but I really, really didn’t know.

It wasn’t until I started meeting people and they started telling me that basically they had no rights… and so I wanted to focus on artists and activists – people I really admired, people that are doing the work and doing the fight. That’s really how it started. I went there, I told my contacts to bring their chosen family, and we hung out and took pictures, and I came back here and that’s how the paintings were formed, from all the information that I had. And I usually don’t just work from one picture, I do a collage of many photos, and then I paint from that collage.

Credit: A. McKenzie

SWAN: So, there’s no painting that comes from just one photo?

DL: Well, in some cases, I borrowed pictures from an association that hosts Gay Pride marches, and I used the people pictured, but I added myself, or the car, or different aspects. With these images, I was inspired by the spirit – the spirit of celebration, the spirit of individuality… and I kind of just worked around the image, adding myself as the driver and so on.

SWAN: The paintings are super colourful, really striking – was that the intention from the start?

DL: I’ve been working with vibrant colours recently, and I knew that it was gonna be very bright… the Caribbean is bright, colourful, and also I wanted to make the paint symbolize the heat, the climate in DR as well. It also feels like summer with the hot pink. But I really do know most of these individuals. Except for some young people in one picture, I know everyone, like Agatha, a trans woman and gay activist from the Bahamas who lives in the Dominican Republic.

SWAN: Can you tell us about your own journey – have you always wanted to be an artist?

DL: I did, you know. It was one of those things that when I was done with school, I really needed to work to survive, so I took jobs and somehow I was always able to get jobs in fashion, and that really kept me busy for a long time.

“Seba’s Ecstasy” by Delvin Lugo. Credit A. McKenzie

SWAN: What did you do in fashion?

DL: When I started, I did sales, like showroom wholesale, but most of the time I was working as a fashion stylist, being an assistant and then doing my own work. And that’s a fulltime job. Then slowly but surely, I started doing my own projects, like ink drawings, just things for myself, to be creative.

And that developed into my drawing more and playing with oils, which is something I had done before. To get back into it, I went to continuing education classes. I needed to be reintroduced to oils because I’d forgotten so many techniques and things that you need to know.

From then, I kept painting, praying for more time to work at it. Then Covid happened, I was let go from my job, and, in the beginning, I kept thinking that they might call me back any minute, and I truly worked around the clock on my painting for the first two months. The job didn’t call me back, but at that point it was great because by then I’d got used to an everyday practice. I can tell you that from the beginning of 2020 to even now, the way that I’ve seen my work grow and even the way that I think, and the way that I approach painting, it has been quite a learning experience.

SWAN: So, this is your first real solo show?

DL: Yeah, it really is. I’ve done a number of group shows, but this opportunity came with Chashama and I applied for it. I was already working on all these pieces, so this was the right time. It’s an introduction to my work, it’s not like a full solo show in a way.

SWAN: How long have you lived in New York?

DL: So, my family left DR in 1990, when I was twelve, and we lived in Rhode Island and then I made my way to New York in ’97 and I’ve been here ever since.

SWAN: Where next, with the art?

DL: I want to continue painting, because it’s such a privilege to have a studio, to have a full-time practice, and I really do want to continue that. I’ve been painting from home up until October last year, and when I got my first studio – even though it’s the size of this table here – I couldn’t wait to get to the studio.

I was there to do my own thing. Still, I actually get annoyed when people tell me: “Oh, it must be so wonderful, you’re in your studio, doing your art…” It is great, but it’s also really frustrating because I’m hitting my head against the wall many a day, or leaving angry because something didn’t go right. It’s a fight.

So, for me, it’s truly just to continue creating, to continue painting, following my instincts, following the stories. I really want to continue in the same path of representing and bringing a focus to the LGBTQ community, not just in DR, but in any other parts of the world. I think it would be an interesting project actually to go elsewhere to meet the queer culture and showing them in the painting, even like in other places in the Caribbean, like Puerto Rico, Cuba, Jamaica. That would be really interesting. – AM / SWAN

The agreement outlines the biases that AI technologies can “embed and exacerbate” and their potential impact on “human dignity, human rights and fundamental freedoms, gender equality, democracy … and the environment and ecosystems.”

By SWAN
PARIS, Nov 26 2021 (IPS)

The member states of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) have agreed on a text of recommended ethics for artificial intelligence (AI) that states can apply on a “voluntary” basis.

The adopted text, which the agency calls “historic”, outlines the “common values and principles which will guide the construction of the necessary legal infrastructure to ensure the healthy development of AI,” UNESCO says.

UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay. Credit: AM/SWAN

The text specifies that AI systems “should not be used for social scoring and mass surveillance purposes,” among other recommendations.

The organization’s 193 member states include countries, however, that are known to use AI and other technologies to carry out such surveillance, often targeting minorities and dissidents – including writers and artists. Governments and multinational companies have also used personal data and AI technology to infringe on privacy.

While such states and entities were not named, UNESCO officials acknowledged that the discussions leading up to the adopted text had included “difficult conversations”.

Presenting the agreement Nov. 25 at the organization’s headquarters in Paris, UNESCO’s Director-General Audrey Azoulay said the initiative to have an AI ethics framework had been launched in 2018.

“I remember that many thought it would be extremely hard if not impossible to attain common ground among the 193 states … but after these years of work, we’ve been rewarded by this important victory for multilateralism,” Azoulay told journalists.

She pointed out that AI technology has been developing rapidly and that it entails a range of profound effects that comprise both advantages to humanity and wide-ranging risks. Because of such impact, a global accord with practical recommendations was necessary, based on input from experts around the world, Azoulay stressed.

The accord came during the 41st session of UNESCO’s General Conference, which took place Nov. 9 to 24 and included the adoption of “key agreements demonstrating renewed multilateral cooperation,” UNESCO said.

The text states that AI systems “should not be used for social scoring and mass surveillance purposes,” among other recommendations. The organization’s 193 member states include countries, however, that are known to use AI and other technologies to carry out such surveillance, often targeting minorities and dissidents - including writers and artists

While the accord does not provide a single definition of AI, the “ambition” is to address the features of AI that are of “central ethical relevance,” according to the text.

These are the features, or systems, that have “the capacity to process data and information in a way that resembles intelligent behaviour, and typically includes aspects of reasoning, learning, perception, prediction, planning or control,” it said.

While the systems are “delivering remarkable results in highly specialized fields such as cancer screening and building inclusive environments for people with disabilities”, they are equally creating new challenges and raising “fundamental ethical concerns,” UNESCO said.

The agreement outlines the biases that AI technologies can “embed and exacerbate” and their potential impact on “human dignity, human rights and fundamental freedoms, gender equality, democracy … and the environment and ecosystems.”

According to UNESCO, these types of technologies “are very invasive, they infringe on human rights and fundamental freedoms, and they are used in a broad way.”

The agreement stresses that when member states develop regulatory frameworks, they should “take into account that ultimate responsibility and accountability must always lie with natural or legal persons” – that is, humans – “and that AI systems should not be given legal personality” themselves.

“New technologies need to provide new means to advocate, defend and exercise human rights and not to infringe them,” the agreement says.

Among the long list of goals, UNESCO said that the accord aims to ensure that digital transformations contribute as well to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals” (a UN blueprint to achieve a “better and more sustainable future” for the world).

“We see increased gender and ethnic bias, significant threats to privacy, dignity and agency, dangers of mass surveillance, and increased use of unreliable AI technologies in law enforcement, to name a few. Until now, there were no universal standards to provide an answer to these issues,” UNESCO stated.

Regarding climate change, the text says that member states should make sure that AI favours methods that are resource- and energy-efficient, given the impact on the environment of storing huge amounts of data, which requires energy. It additionally asks governments to assess the direct and indirect environmental impact throughout the AI system life cycle.

On the issue of gender, the text says that member states “should ensure that the potential for digital technologies and artificial intelligence to contribute to achieving gender equality is fully maximized.”

It adds that states “must ensure that the human rights and fundamental freedoms of girls and women, and their safety and integrity are not violated at any stage of the AI system life cycle.”

Alessandra Sala, director of Artificial Intelligence and Data Science at Shutterstock and president of the non-profit organization Women in AI – who spoke at the presentation of the agreement – said that the text provides clear guidelines for the AI field, including on artistic, cultural and gender issues.

“It is a symbol of societal progress,” she said, emphasizing that understanding the ethics of AI was a shared “leadership responsibility” which should include women’s often “excluded voices”.

In answer to concerns raised by journalists about the future of the recommendations, which are essentially non-binding, UNESCO officials said that member states realize that the world “needs” this agreement and that it was a step in the right direction.

Claude McKay is having something of a rebirth in France, thanks to independent publishers and to translators such as Jean-Baptiste Naudy.

Naudy is the French translator of McKay’s novel Amiable with Big Teeth (Les Brebis noires de Dieu), one of two translations that have hit bookstores in 2021, generating renewed interest in the work of the Jamaican-born writer (1890-1948). McKay was a key figure in the Harlem Renaissance, a “cultural nomad” who spent time in Europe during the 1920s and 30s, and the author of the famous poem “If We Must Die”.

The first of the two recent translations – Romance in Marseille (Héliotropismes) – was published under its English title last spring, while Naudy’s Les Brebis Noires de Dieu came out at the end of summer during the so called rentrée, the return to routine after the holidays.

A third McKay novel, Home to Harlem (Retour à Harlem, Nada Éditions), has meanwhile been newly translated and is scheduled for publication in early 2022.

This feast of McKay’s work has resulted in profiles of the writer in French newspapers such as Libération, with Naudy’s expert translation receiving particular attention because of the intriguing story behind Amiable with Big Teeth.

The celebrated “forgotten” work – a “colourful, dramatic novel” that “centres on the efforts by Harlem intelligentsia to organize support for the liberation of fascist-controlled Ethiopia,” as Penguin Books describes it – was discovered only in 2009 by then graduate student Jean-Christophe Cloutier while doing research. His discovery came 40 years after McKay had completed the manuscript.

Cloutier and his advisor Brent Hayes Edwards went on to confirm the authenticity of the work, and it was published by Penguin in 2017. Fully aware of this history, Naudy said it was “mind-blowing” to translate the novel, and he drew upon his own background for the rendering into French.

Born in Paris, Naudy studied Francophone literature at the Sorbonne University and design at the Jan van Eyck Academy in the Netherlands. He describes himself as a publisher, translator and “text experimentalist”, and he coordinates “Déborder”, a book series published by independent publishing house Nouvelles Éditions Place. Within this series, he has translated African Journey by Eslanda Goode Robeson (2020) and now the McKay novel.

As a writer, Naudy, under the name of Société Réaliste, has himself published two books, in addition to essays and experimental texts in journals and reviews; and as an artist he has exhibited work in both solo and group shows internationally. One can find examples of his public art pieces around Paris.

Jean-Baptiste Naudy in Paris (photo by AM)

The following edited interview with Naudy, conducted by email and in person, is part of SWAN’s series about translators of Caribbean literature, done in collaboration with the Caribbean Translation Project.

SWAN: How did the translating of Aimable with Big Teeth come about?

Jean-Baptiste Naudy: In 2019, Sarah Frioux-Salgas and I were invited by Cyrille Zola-Place, director of Nouvelles Éditions Place in Paris, to curate a book series dealing with unclassifiable texts, overreaching genres, intertwining topics. Our common interest for the internationalisation of political and poetical scopes in the 20th century, via the publication of books largely ignored by the classical Western frame of reference, gave birth to this book series, entitled Déborder (To overflow).

The first book to be included was a reprint of Negro Anthology, edited by Nancy Cunard in 1934, a massive collection of poetry, fiction and essays about the Black Atlantic, for which she collaborated with paramount artists and scholars of those years, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, George Padmore and dozens of others.

Since then, we have published five more books in this frame, like the first French translation of Eslanda Robeson’s African Journey, or Sismographie des luttes (Seismography of Struggles), a kind of world history of anticolonial journals, amazingly edited by art historian and writer Zahia Rahmani.

At the beginning of 2020, Sarah told me the story of a newfound book by Claude McKay, Amiable with Big Teeth, edited by Brent Hayes Edwards and Jean-Christophe Cloutier for Penguin Books in 2017.

Searching the archives of a rather obscure New York publisher, Cloutier had found the complete and ready-to-be-published manuscript of a completely unknown novel by McKay. The very fact that such a story was possible – to find out of the blue a full book by a major writer of the 20th century – was unfathomable to me. Nouvelles Éditions Place immediately agreed to the idea of publishing the book in French.

SWAN: Including your translation, there will be three novels by McKay published in French this year and next. Can you explain this surge of international interest in his work?

JBN: The renewed interest in Claude McKay’s oeuvre is global for sure, but also at times pretty local. The critical deconstruction of the Western ideological frame of thought has called for the exposure of another cultural grounding, a counter-narrative of modernity, other stories and histories encompassing the plurality and complexity of dominated voices, visions, sensibilities, positions on their path to liberation.

What was interesting for me was to try to understand or feel what the colonial condition was doing to the language itself. How writing or expressing oneself in a foreign language, an imperial language imposed upon a great variety of cultures, was transforming the language in return

To that extent, McKay is an immense writer, whose very life was bound to this intertwining. Like most of the key figures of the Black Atlantic, he has been largely ignored or under-appreciated by the 20th century literary canon. More than ever, he is a lighthouse for those interested in the interwoven problematics of race, gender, sexuality, and class.

But he is as well a singular figure of displacement, a critically productive internationalist, being at first a Jamaican in New York, then a Caribbean from Harlem in Europe, then a Black writer from France in Morocco, and finally back to the United States, a Black Atlantic wanderer.

Which is also the point of his renewed presence in the French contemporary cultural landscape. The very fact that one of the most preeminent actors of the Harlem Renaissance was, first, a Jamaican, and second, writing from France about the Americas and the global Black diaspora is irresistibly intriguing.

Another important factor is the crucial influence that McKay’s writings had on a number of Francophone literary figures of the 1930s, including the founders of the Négritude movement, the Nardal sisters, Aimé and Suzanne Césaire, Léon Gontran Damas, René Ménil, and many others.

In a nutshell, I would argue that McKay captivates nowadays for all those reasons at the same time. He epitomizes the Black international radical current that rose in the 1920s and 1930s, his critical scope is extremely contemporary, and he is representative of a certain blend of political and cultural cosmopolitanism that happened to exist in the French imperial metropole during the interwar years.

It is interesting to notice that the three books being published now in France deal with different periods of his life: Home to Harlem, his 1928 bestseller (translated Retour à Harlem in the new French translation to be published by Nada Éditions) is a luxurious portrait of Harlem in the 1920s, written while he was in France. Romance in Marseille, released last April by Héliotropismes, another previously unpublished novel from the early 1930s, revolves around the central themes of his most famous novel also set in Marseilles, Banjo. And thus, Amiable with Big Teeth, dating from 1941, being his last fiction and only novel ever written in the United States.

SWAN: In addition to your native French, you speak English and Spanish. Where and how did you begin learning other languages?

JBN: Where I grew up, English and Spanish were mandatory at school. So, I grasped some elements there, quite poorly. Then I had to travel. So, I learned most of my English with Ukrainian artists in Lisbon and bits of Spanish with Brazilian anarchists in Athens. How romantic…

SWAN: How did your interest in translation start?

JBN: My first encounter with the need to translate something happened I guess when I went to London for the first time, in 1997. Following a totally random move – because I liked his name – I bought a washed-out copy of Kamau Brathwaite’s Middle Passages. I had never read anything like that. For sure it sounded like street music to me, half a drunkard rant, half an esoteric psalmody, but the polyphony at work in this single text, the sound and visual poetics of patwa mesmerized me.

So, for the last 25 years, I have been trying to translate exactly that, the very sensation I had in front of this palimpsest of languages. A rant that would be a psalmody, at times unintelligible, at times neat as a scalpel slice. How language can be haunted by the spectre of the past while echoing potentially emancipated futures. What Rimbaud called “the long, immense, rational derangement of the senses”, inscribed on a page where words are sounds are signs are ciphers are colours are noises are tastes are notes and nevertheless, never more than words.

SWAN: Can you tell us more about other works that you’ve translated and how you selected these?

JBN: Last year, I translated African Journey by Eslanda Goode Robeson, and it was a delight. I have an intense admiration for Eslanda Robeson, an amazing transnational feminist networker and anticolonial advocate.

This book was a great success in the USA when it was published in 1945, the first popular book about Africa written by an African American writer. It is a travel diary, at the same time complex and honest, but I particularly liked how Robeson used this genre to create commonality between Africans and Americans.

For the anecdote, Eslanda Robeson and Claude McKay really disliked each other, their writing styles are almost opposite, as well as their social backgrounds and cultural framings; however, I think they were aiming at the same liberation and I love them both!

SWAN: How important is translation for today’s world, especially for publishing underrepresented communities? In the Caribbean, as in other regions, it sometimes feels as if countries are divided by language. How can people in the literary and education spheres help to bridge these linguistic “borders”?

JBN: When I was a student, I had the opportunity to study what we call in my country “Francophone literature”, so literature written by former and present subjects of the French colonial project. Or raised in the postcolonial remains of the French empire.

What was interesting for me was to try to understand or feel what the colonial condition was doing to the language itself. How writing or expressing oneself in a foreign language, an imperial language imposed upon a great variety of cultures, was transforming the language in return.

At its core, Francophone literature has a poetical abundance and a political tumult that always seemed to me in synchronization with the modern condition. Whatever be the scale and the observation point. What people from my neighbourhood in Paris, coming from all corners of the world, were doing via the vernacular popular French slang we were talking every day, the “Francophone” writers were doing the same to literature itself.

Upgrading it to a world-scale. As any other imperial language, French does not belong to French people, fortunately, and that is the main source of its current literary potency as well as the only sound reason to continue to use it.

The political side effects of this linguistic colonial and then postcolonial condition astonished me as well: how this shared imperial language allowed Caribbean peoples, Arabs, Africans, Indochinese, Indians, Guyanese, to relate and elaborate a common ground.

This tremendous poetic force and its radical cosmopolitan perspective bound me to translation, especially when I experimentally realized that the situation was exactly the same with all the other imperial languages, English, Spanish, etc. Suzanne Césaire was maybe one of the first poets to see the Caribbean not so much as separated islands (divided by bodies of water, empires, languages, political status) but as an archipelago, an extremely complex panorama whose unity is undersea and underseen. I consider that my task as a literary translator working on the Atlantic world is to help languages undersee each other. I aim to be a pidginizer.

SWAN: What are your next projects?

JBN: I am working on several translation projects. First of all, an amazingly powerful collection of short stories by South African wonder writer Stacy Hardy. Then, a beautiful and crucial book by Annette Joseph-Gabriel, Reimagining Liberation, dealing with the key role played by Black women in the decolonization of the French empire.

Finally, I will work on the first French translation of The Practice of Diaspora, an essential book by Brent Hayes Edwards, focusing on Paris as a node of the Black Atlantic culture in the interwar years. Its subtitle says it all: Literature, translation and the rise of Black internationalism. This masterwork constructs an analytical frame to relate together René Maran, Alain Locke, Paulette Nardal, Claude McKay, Lamine Senghor, George Padmore, Jessie Fauset, Langston Hughes, C.L.R. James, Tiemoko Garan Kouyaté, and so many more. As you can easily imagine, it is a mind-blowing book, and I am extremely proud to work on it. – AM /SWAN

How does injustice make you feel? Do you see yourself as a perpetrator, or as a victim? Is there any such thing as neutrality? These are some of the questions that Dorian Sari asks through artwork, which includes blurry photographs with violently shattered glass frames.

The award-winning Turco-Swiss artist – who uses the pronoun they – has a solo booth at the current International Contemporary Art Fair in Paris (FIAC), and their work invites viewers to  question reactions and stances when it comes to societal norms. Who, for instance, has thrown the stone that is glued to the cracked glass?

“When people look at this, they rarely see themselves as the perpetrator, but we all do things that exclude others,” says Sari, who is represented by Turkish gallery Öktem Aykut, one of 170 galleries taking part in FIAC this year.

Dorian Sari with artwork at FIAC. Credit: AM/SWAN.

On from Oct. 21 to 24, the annual fair did not happen in 2020 because of Covid-19, and its return sees a range of artwork addressing global political and pandemic issues. Sari, who studied political science and literature before art, wonders however if the world has learned anything from the events of the past two years.

The works on display – a tiny chewed-up whistle, a retractable “wall” with spaces for communication if one wishes, two large photographs and a book titled Texts on Post-Truth, Violence, Anger are meant to spark even deeper reflections about identity and affiliation. (The book was published by the Kunstmuseum Basel when Sari had an exhibition earlier this year, after winning the Manor Art Prize – an award that promotes young visual artists working in Switzerland.)

The intended discomfort is even evident in Sari’s choice of title: “Ding-dong, the itch is back!”, and countries aren’t exempt. Can a nation claim neutrality when they sell arms, the artist also asks, through an illustration showing a gun emitting a red flag that has a white “x” in the middle.

Sari took time out from their busy schedule at FIAC to discuss these concerns. Following is the edited interview.

SWAN: What inspires your work?

SARI: My latest research was on the topic of post-truth, a political adjective for what’s happening in the 21^st century. It means that we’re bombarded with information every day, but at the same time nobody knows if this information is true or not. We also live in a technological period where algorithms … just want people to consume more. To keep you on the platform, they show you something that you like, then a more radical version, and then something even more radical. There is so much polarisation and separation in the world, and this is one of my biggest interests. At the FIAC, I’m showing some of the works I showed at the Kunstmuseum in Basel and also at Öktem Aykut in Istanbul. With this series of photographs, I was interested in seeing the relationship between the victim and the perpetrator because we always think that what we do is the right thing, and it is always others’ fault. I wanted to change this position. Whoever is looking at the photograph is the stone-thrower but even though I give this position, people still prefer to identify as the victim. But even if you’re neither, and you’re just watching and being silent, that third option is also problematic.

The exterior of the art fair venue in Paris. Credit: AM/SWAN.

SWAN: What is behind the “itch” in the title of the photograph series?

SARI: It’s a series of 10 photos, and the “itch is back” means there’s an uncomfortable feeling inside, so you scratch your body. Maybe this discomfort comes because there’s something that the stone-thrower doesn’t want to know, doesn’t want to see. It can be anything.

SWAN: So, the aim is to make us question our own itch?

SARI: Exactly. And to question what we reject, what we throw stones at in daily life, because we do it so much. We exclude so many things. I always believe we’re separated through the adjectives: the moment we’re born, they tell us our gender, they tell us our nationality, they tell us our religion, they tell us our social class, language, everything. Everything is automatically put on us, and it’s already part of our separation because one group doesn’t want the other group, and di-di-di-di-di-di. But after all, I believe in love, and I believe love doesn’t have a gender, race, social class. Love is love.

SWAN: And the whistle?

SARI: There are so many people who wear a whistle as a necklace, or carry it on a keychain or in their bag, so that in case of something violent in the streets, they can raise an alarm, make their voices heard. Or, in case there’s an earthquake… I was thinking that someone could have so much fear and anxiety, waiting for something to happen. And the whistle could be like a pencil – when you don’t use it, you chew on the end. And I thought that someone waiting for something bad to happen would chew on the whistle. So, it’s like auto-destruction: you eat your own voice in order to be heard because of fear.

Maru Aguzzi at the exhibition in Paris, in front of works by Alejandro Magallanes (photo by SWAN).

By SWAN
PARIS, Sep 27 2021 (IPS)

So, what’s the difference between illustration and “art”?  When asked this question, Maru Aguzzi replies with a wry smile: “Perhaps the price?”

Aguzzi is the curator of Gran Salón México-Paris – Contemporary Mexican Illustration, an exhibition taking place at the Mexican Cultural Institute in the French capital until Oct. 26. The show brings together some 40 illustrators, whose work includes painting, drawing, print-making, video and other genres.

‘Autorretrato’ by Rocca Luis Cesar, photo courtesy of Gran Salón México.

The pieces are strikingly artistic, even if they’re being presented as illustrations. All are “original” works created especially for this exhibition, which is the first in France from Gran Salón México, an annual art fair that Aguzzi created in 2014.

The fair’s mission, she says, is to offer a glimpse into the country’s growing illustration “wave”, and to bring to the public some of the best contemporary works in this category – a field that actually “plays” with the limits of art.

“Saying that price makes the difference is perhaps the funny answer, but you can go deeper and see how illustrators choose to explore content or not,” Aguzzi told SWAN. “The way the work is presented, viewers don’t have to dig for content or meaning as with contemporary art, where the work requires some kind of engagement from the viewer for completion. Illustration has an immediate impact, and viewers can like what they see or not. It’s that simple.”

Gran Salón’s participating illustrators use a variety of media just like their “artist” peers, she said. Works in the show range from oil and acrylic paintings on canvas to charcoal drawings on paper. In between, viewers can enjoy watercolours, collage, animation and digital art.

In fact, some of the illustrators do exhibit in art fairs as well, further blurring distinctions, Aguzzi said. They draw on a long tradition of Mexican artists working in various genres, as did renowned painters Diego Rivera and Rufino Tamayo – whose influence can be felt in the current show, alongside that of multi-genre Spanish artist Pablo Picasso, for instance.

‘Creciendo juntos’ by María Ponce, photo courtesy of Gran Salón México.

Picasso and his paintings of women are evoked with a twist in the illustrations of Rocca Luis Cesar (born in Guadalajara in 1986), while the more “veteran” Carlos Rodríguez (born in La Soledad, San Luis Potosí, 1980) draws upon images – such as the watermelon – that appear in the paintings of Tamayo.

Both illustrators convey a strong artistic sensibility, with Rodríguez in particular being inspired by “classical painting, mythology, naïve art and porn” – as his bio states. His two vibrant, erotic paintings in the show were created specifically to conjure a Latin American ambience in Paris, Aguzzi said.

Another notable aspect of the exhibition is its sense of humour or satire, in addition to the addressing of serious topics, such as climate change and language rights. One of the youngest illustrators, María Ponce, born in Oaxaca in 1994, exemplifies this with her colour drawings about daily life and with her “Creciendo juntos” piece, which conveys the message that we have to take care of the environment and trees if we too wish to keep thriving.

Meanwhile, illustrator and filmmaker Gabriela Badillo (born in 1979) uses her work to highlight Mexico’s indigenous languages through her 68 Voces project, a video series with stories told in these languages. Badillo co-founded audiovisual production company Hola Combo with a belief in the social responsibility of media, according to the exhibition, and she and her colleagues have worked with indigenous groups, including children, on creative initiatives.

Her videos, and other film clips and works of animation, add to the unexpected scope of the Gran Salón show.

“The work that illustrators are producing in Mexico includes numerous genres, and I really wanted to show this range,” Aguzzi told SWAN.

Additional information:

https://icm.sre.gob.mx/francia/index.php/fr/ & https://gran.salon/ 

American civil rights icon Dr. Angela Davis. Credit: A.D. McKenzie.

By SWAN
PARIS, Jan 28 2021 (IPS)

Renowned activist and intellectual Angela Davis turned 77 years old on Jan. 26, marking more than five decades of her fight against systemic racism and inequality.

January 2021 also marks fifty years since she appeared before a court in California to declare her innocence after a legendary manhunt and arrest. With sympathisers around the world mobilising to demand her freedom, she was eventually acquitted of the charges of “aggravated kidnapping and first-degree murder” in 1972, following a 16-month incarceration.

Since then, Davis has been an emblem for social justice and has never stopped speaking out. In 2020, her long history of activism saw another chapter when she joined protests across the United States – in the wake of George Floyd’s killing and other acts of police brutality. Magazines such as Vanity Fair wrote articles about her, and she has been profiled in numerous other publications.

Last autumn in Paris, her face blazed from massive posters on newspaper kiosks around the city. The iconic image – huge afro, serious eyes, mouth open in speech – confronted pedestrians, motorists and bus passengers as they travelled through the streets of the French capital.

The cover of Légende.

The posters were announcing a special edition of a new, independent magazine that had devoted its second issue to Davis. Titled Légende, the quarterly magazine is the brainchild of Eric Fottorino, a former editor of the left-wing newspaper Le Monde. At a cost of 20 euros per copy, the publication is not cheap; yet many people bought the Davis issue. According to Fottorino, the magazine had several thousand subscribers by the end of the year.

The figures perhaps indicate the special place Davis holds in the French popular imagination, a place usually reserved for venerable rock stars. In 2018 for instance, when she spoke at a university in Nanterre, just outside Paris, her mere presence elicited deafening applause.

Légende contains contributions from writers such as Dany Laferrière, Gisèle Pineau and Alain Mabanckou, reflecting on what Davis has meant to them, and it recapitulates the events of more than 50 years ago – detailing Davis’ membership of the Black Panther Party in the 1960s, and her activism in the civil rights movement before and after the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King in April 1968.

It also recaps the incident in 1970 that pushed her to international attention: guns she had bought were used by high-school student Jonathan Jackson when he took over a courtroom to demand the freeing of black prisoners including his brother (George Jackson), and left the building with hostages, including the judge.

In a subsequent shootout with police, the perpetrator, two defendants he had freed and the judge were killed, and Davis was arrested and charged following a huge manhunt, although she had not been in the courtroom when the hostage-taking occurred.

These events are captured in bold photographs and illustrations throughout the 90 pages of the magazine. There’s the reproduction of the “wanted” poster, for instance, with the public being warned that Davis should be considered “possibly armed and dangerous”; there are pictures of Davis in handcuffs, and later being freed; of her with family and friends, including writer Toni Morrison; of her lecturing at universities and public events.

Légende ends with an image of Davis standing in the back of a convertible, wearing a mask against Covid-19, her right hand raised in a fist – while nearby, a protester holds a sign that reads “NO JUSTICE NO PEACE”.

To learn more about how the magazine issue evolved, SWAN interviewed editor Eric Fottorino. Below is a shortened version of the interview, which took place at Légende’s offices in Paris.

SWAN: Why did you choose Angela Davis for this issue?

Eric Fottorino: Because when we decided to do this second issue of Légende, there had been the death of George Floyd in the United States, and there’d been in France the demonstrations regarding Adama Traoré, and as we wanted to feature a woman, we choose Angela Davis – to remind people of her work and to show that the combat she fought in the Seventies, and later, for civil rights and feminism is still going on. We thought it was important to speak about Angela Davis’ past at the present time, whether that’s in the United States or France. Quite often we think that the present can only be explained by what’s happening now, but it is essential to know the history.

SWAN: She has spoken of how important international and French solidarity was for her when she was arrested and incarcerated. Can you explain why French supporters took up her cause?

E.F.: For the generation of the Seventies, she incarnated a struggle, a dream for justice, and also exactly the opposite – she embodied a female victim of injustice, but one who would fight with all her forces, energy and intelligence. And for France, that was important because she had studied philosophy at the Sorbonne, and so she received a great deal of support in intellectual circles, whether from Jean-Paul Sartre, Jean Genet, or Louis Aragon, and also from the Parti communiste français (PCF). She was the subject of a powerful poem by Jacques Prévert as well. So, she had intellectual and political support. There were marches, too, and we have a photo of one of these in which her sister (Fania) marched with Aragon in the streets of Paris, protesting for her freedom.

I think that all these elements made her a popular figure in France, and the famous cry “Free Angela” that could be heard in different countries around the world was taken up in France too. Besides, when she was liberated, she did a tour – to say thanks but also to make it clear that she wasn’t giving up the fight. She appeared on the big literary programs of the time, such as “Apostrophe”, and also in the studio of France Inter and the big public radio broadcasters. She was a huge presence, and then later a popular French singer, Pierre Perret, made a song about an individual who was the victim of racism, and one could see Angela Davis’ story in it, even if he didn’t specifically dedicate the song (Lily) to her.

SWAN: How about the political newspapers of the time? What role did they play?

E.F.: She had the support of the socialist newspapers like L’Humanité, but it must be remembered that the Parti communiste was among the strongest parties in the Seventies, with about 25 percent of the vote. It was even stronger than the Socialist Party. So, the support from people like Aragon (who was a member of the Parti communiste français) sent a huge symbolic signal.

James Baldwin, who supported her as well, was a writer who was very well known in France. He was not a popular author, but, in intellectual and literary circles, Baldwin was someone whose voice carried weight because he had lived for some time in Paris, and the fact that he wrote that Open Letter to his Sister Angela (An Open Letter to My Sister, Miss Angela Davis, 1971) stayed in people’s memory. (The translation by Samuel Légitimus is reproduced in the magazine.)

SWAN: Did you try to speak with Angela Davis for the issue?

E.F.: We tried but she was very busy, and I think she was also quite tired at the time we made the request. But this wasn’t a necessity for us in writing about her life and the past. Of course, if she had been available, we would have interviewed her, but we didn’t think it was indispensable. In a certain way, her actions, and her life, speak for her.

SWAN: Some Black French thinkers say that there is a sort of fascination and veneration in France for African Americans, including Angela Davis. How would you respond to that?

E.F.: In France, social justice fighters aren’t necessarily black, so there hasn’t been emblematic figures like in the United States with Angela Davis, Malcolm X or Martin Luther King and others.

It’s true that in political life in France, Black people have had a limited space, and sometimes people outside France say that there has not been a black minister or anyone prominent, but they don’t know about Christiane Taubira or Kofi Yamgnane. So, it’s not true that people like that haven’t existed. What is true is that there is no huge emblematic political leader like Angela Davis here.

(Ed: Fottorino has helmed another publication that examines the subject of being black in France, titled Être Noir en France.)