Sharjah Biennial 2013

The Call - from the city into the Biennial from Universes in Universe on Vimeo.

Variations for 10 drummers and an electronic musician fortissimo (ff). Sharjah Biennial programme of sound compositions, conceived by Tarek Atoui.

Jumana Manna & Sille Storihle: The Goodness Regime. 2013 from Universes in Universe on Vimeo.

Magdi Mostafa - sound cells: FRIDAYS. 2010 from Universes in Universe on Vimeo.

Wael Shawky: Dictums 10:120. 2011–13 from Universes in Universe on Vimeo.

renzo martens: enjoy poverty

Issues of representation come to the fore in Renzo Martens' Episode 3 - Enjoy Poverty.

In this 90-minute self-reflexive documentary, Martens travels throughout the Congo. As he witnesses dire humanitarian conditions, he keeps the camera trained on his own face, registering shock, anger, sorrow, and perhaps a touch of madness.

Martens continually links the micro and the macro, the personal encounter and the workings of global capitalism. His great innovation is to see poverty itself as a resource - a resource that is mined both by foreign aid workers (who profit from the generosity that poverty motivates) and journalists (who make images of the poverty, and sell these images).

In one encounter with a foreign journalist, Martens asks whether the photographic subjects retain any portion of the copyright or royalties of an image; they are, after all, the authors of the 'situation.' The journalist objects, saying that his subjects may have made the situation, but he is the sole author of the image.

Martens effectively wants to nationalize the poverty industry. He gathers together a group of Congolese photographers and convinces them that they would make more money if they make images of misery rather than photographing weddings and babies for a few cents a picture. It's really quite difficult to watch as Martens pushes the photographers toward the most miserable people in poverty-stricken areas and the sickest children in the hospital.

Soon, Martens comes to a disheartening realization: the images made by his local aspiring journalists are simply not good enough for Western audiences. He concludes that the effort will fail. It turns out that authoring the situation is not, in fact, enough. the image itself does have its own authority and its own authorship, quite separate from the underlying situation that it represents.

Such debates about the politics of representation are old hat; what makes Enjoy Poverty truly compelling is in the end the artist's own performance. He appears to be totally willing to open himself up to an absolutely desperate situation, to become emotionally involved and to be transformed by it. Enjoy Poverty is less a portrait of the Congolese situation than a self-portrait by a Westerner attempting to come to terms with the dire inequities of the world we live in. It is a portrait of the transformation of one Renzo Martens.

discussion (2 hours)

criticism (frieze)

The first thing that struck me about Renzo Martens’ new film Episode III – Enjoy Poverty (2008) – confusingly, the second in a trilogy – is the artist’s resemblance to the young Klaus Kinski. The numerous close-ups of his sweaty, troubled face (filmed by the artist himself on a hand-held digital camera) echo those of Kinski in Werner Herzog’s Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972), Fitzcarraldo (1982) and Cobra Verde (1987). The second thing that struck me, despite its supposed exploration of the exploitation of third world poverty by aid organizations and news agencies, is how the film rehearses themes present in Herzog’s films. Each depicts a European living outside their comfort zone struggling to assert themselves in harsh, unfamiliar terrain, and ultimately realizing the futility of their endeavours. The third thing that struck me, after sitting through 90 minutes of Martens meeting aid agencies, photographers, plantation workers, guerrilla fighters, singing Neil Young songs to himself and attempting to convince the residents of a small village to let him set up a neon sign flashing the message ‘Enjoy Poverty Please’ – was how contradictory the film was.

Episode III… follows Episode 1, in which Martens visited refugees from the war in Chechnya, asking them deliberately insensitive questions such as ‘Am I handsome?’ in order to elicit a response that would, supposedly, give the viewer a sense of their individuality rather than see them as generic representations of suffering. Martens’ latest film repeats this gonzo strategy, with him playing the same narcissistic character. His central idea is that not only are the people of the Democratic Republic of the Congo unable to benefit from the wealth of their country’s natural resources, but that they are also being exploited by Western media organizations who, in cahoots with aid organizations such as Médecins Sans Frontières (a claim unsupported by anything like evidence), make money from images of poverty and violence. Martens persuades a small group of Congolese photographers, who make a living from photographing weddings or formal portraits, to try and sell images of suffering to Western news agencies, in order to take control over their media representation. Martens’ slogan for his doomed project is ‘enjoy poverty’ – the neon billboard that he takes with him on his journey.

Martens’ thesis is elementary stuff for anyone with half an interest in media studies. Its deliberately crass expression – the ‘art’ bit of what is essentially an average artist-plays-news-reporter film – is incoherent rather than revelatory, not least because Episode III… attempts to do too much at the same time. In its first half, for example, there is the unsubstantiated suggestion that Médecins Sans Frontières is complicit in the exploitation by Western corporations and UN-led forces. Unfortunately, Martens is too caught up playing the self-obsessed artist to really dig deep which results in very little actually being revealed.

Aside from questions of exploitation that are closer to home – the film’s presentation in a commercial gallery, for one – the most tiresome aspect of the work is the way it perpetuates the very things it is critiquing, such as the vicarious pleasures of watching other people in dangerous situations (it features images of rotting corpses and desperate malnourishment), and, in its quasi-Conradian narrative, a fascination with an exotic ‘other’. In not showing any aspects of their lives other than those necessary to advance his thesis, Martens’ portrayal of Congolese plantation workers or local photographers performs the same reductive stereotyping that the film supposedly criticizes. Martens’ knowingly gauche persona does not alter the fact that Episode III… exploits art audiences’ desires for work that demonstrates ‘authentic’ political engagement. By acknowledging his own complicity Martens does not legitimize it.

Dan Fox

"Iraqi Kid is singing Sad Song"

Akram Zaatari, The Uneasy Subject / MUAC Mexico

The Uneasy Subject / MUAC Mexico from akram zaatari on Vimeo.

Simon Critchley: 'There's no justice without terror' - video

macdermott's war song (project)

Jingo Karaoke
Multimedia Performance
We don't want to fight but by Jingo if we do ...
We've got the ships, we've got the men, we've got the money too!

It was 1878 when in the United States Edison patented the phonograph that later was developed into gramophone and was the most common device for playing recorded sound until the 1980s.
In the same year across the ocean the music-hall singer G. H. Macdermott (aka "the Great Macdermott") introduced in London Pavilion his song By Jingo (means By God in Old English).
This is one of the very first examples of modern propaganda since Macdermott was commissioned to change the public opinion in Britain with a popular song in the middle of the political crisis between the British Empire and Russia, after the war with Turkey in the Balkans and Caucasus.
The crisis ended with a diplomatic triumph of Britain's Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli and after the song a politician from the opposition Laborist Party invented the term jingoism that now is used for describing "extreme chauvinism or nationalism marked especially by a belligerent foreign policy".
It is amazing how political life changed forever since audiovisual mass media and propaganda charged pop culture were invented and eventually became an intrinsic part of the public life. In 2008 exactly one hundred and thirty years after, we can celebrate an anniversary of audiovisual industry and jingoism, with Russia becoming again the world's Evil, with the US presidential campaign in which a remote war that can be seen as a perfect example of jingoism was described as "God's Plan" and the Blue Ray (probably the last hard copy media) becoming world standard.
To remind for all these events media artist Petko Dourmana invited in his Chain Reaction Pavilion everybody who wanted to sing Macdermott's war song By Jingo with a karaoke set that uses a New Edison-Style Cup Phonograph.
In the plastic cups used as recording media visitors got free beer after singing.
By Jingo Karaoke performance was presented from September 11-14th, 2008 at Macedonia Square in Skopje, Macedonia as part of Upgrade International

Glasgow International Let's Get Lyrical Event

Glasgow International Let's Get Lyrical Event from GI Festival on Vimeo.

Tom Leonard on Language and social status

'The City' Constantine P. Cavafy (1910), translations

You said: “I’ll go to another country, go to another shore,

find another city better than this one.

Whatever I try to do is fated to turn out wrong

and my heart lies buried as though it were something dead.

How long can I let my mind moulder in this place?

Wherever I turn, wherever I happen to look,

I see the black ruins of my life, here,

where I’ve spent so many years, wasted them, destroyed them totally.”

You won’t find a new country, won’t find another shore.

This city will always pursue you. You will walk

the same streets, grow old in the same neighborhoods,

will turn gray in these same houses.

You will always end up in this city. Don’t hope for things elsewhere:

there is no ship for you, there is no road.

As you’ve wasted your life here, in this small corner,

you’ve destroyed it everywhere else in the world.

Translated by Edmund Keeley/Philip Sherrard

You tell yourself: I'll be gone
To some other land, some other sea,
To a city lovelier far than this
Could ever have been or hoped to be -
Where every step now tightens the noose:
A heart in a body buried and out of use:
How long, how long must I be here
Confined among these dreary purlieus
Of the common mind? Wherever now I look
Black ruins of my life rise into view.
So many years have I been here
Spending and squandering, and nothing gained.
There's no new land, my friend, no
New sea; for the city will follow you,
In the same streets you'll wander endlessly,
The same mental suburbs slip from youth to age,
In the same house go white at last -
The city is a cage.
No other places, always this
Your earthly landfall, and no ship exists
To take you from yourself.
Ah! don't you see
Just as you've ruined your life in this
One plot of ground you've ruined its worth
Everywhere now - over the whole earth?

Translated by Lawrence Durrell (in the novel Justine)

TEDxRamallah: Munir Fasheh-Occupation of Knowledge

The worst conquest is that of knowledge. It led to conquering diversity and pluralism in living by a modern superstition: the belief in a single universal path for knowing, learning, and progressing. Transforming ahaali (no synonym in English; the closest is 'people-in-community') into citizens has been instrumental in the conquest and disastrous to human communities. Whereas the basic relationship in the case of citizens is to a state and institutions, it is in the case of ahaali to one another, to a place, culture, and collective memory. Knowledge, learning, and religion of ahaali have been gradually replaced by institutional ones. Examples from Palestine and what happened in Cairo...

Wenn Ich Ens Nit Mih Existiere (cultural identity)

Wenn ich ens nit mih existiere,
wenn ich die Auge zojedonn.
Wenn ich mich bovve präsentiere,
janz hoch am Himmelspöötzje stonn.
Dann soll d'r Petrus dat schon maache,
hä sök d'r schönste Platz mir us.
Hä weiß et jitt dann jet ze laache:
ich bin en Kölle am Ring zehus

When I am gone

When I close my eyes.

When I present myself at heaven's gates

St Peter will find for me the holiest place.

Don't laugh at me, it's true

Because I was from Cologne.

la memoire dure (memory resists)- Rossella Ragazzi

Ibrahim lived with his uncle in the woods in Mali, for a few days he attended Koran school. Alpha comes from Liberia, and during the war his family was dispersed. Nawel lived in Algeria where his large family was forced to have him adopted and taken to France. All these children attended the same preparation class for learning French in a compulsory school in Paris that is aimed at inserting them as soon as possible in normal primary school classes. For 9 months, the film director filmed these children, showing how they were received in France and the relationship established between teachers and pupils. The children learn not only the language but also the values of their host society.

Research Project- يما مويل الهوا

يما مويل الهوا يما مويليا

Oh Mother the sad song …oh mother is my song

(It is a preface usually said to express how much pain the speaker has)

ضرب الخناجر ولا حكم النذل فيا

Hitting by daggers but not being ruled by rascal

ومشيت تحت الشتا والشتا رواني

And I walked under the rain ,and the rain wets me

والصيف لما أتى ولع من نيراني

And when the summer had come , he was burned by my fires

بيضل عمري انفدى ندر للحرية

My life will stay ransom and vow for the freedom

يما مويل الهوا يما مويليا

Oh Mother the sad song …oh mother is my song

يا ليل صاح الندى يشهد على جراحي

Oh night.. the dew hollers and witness on my wounds

وانسل جيش العدا من كل النواحي

And the enemy army attacked from all directions

والليل شاف الردى عم يتعلم بيا

And the night was witness on what the death had done to me

يما مويل الهوا يما مويليا

Oh Mother the sad song …oh mother is my song

بارودة الجبل أعلى من العالي

The mountain rifle is best of the best

مفتح درب الأمل والأمل برجالي

Key of the hope path and the hope depends on the men

يا شعبنا يا بطل أفديك بعينيا

Oh our people oh heroes … my eyes are ransom for you

يما مويل الهوا يما مويليا

Oh Mother the sad song …oh mother is my song

(special thanks to the person who translated this for me)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmq-AO1306A&feature=related

There is a Happy Land

There is a happy land down in duke street jail,

Where all the prisoners stand hangin fae a nail,

Ham and eggs you never see,

Dirty water for your tea.

There you live and there you dee,

God save the Queen.

Then the corporation came wae a great new plan,

build multi-storey flats on the happy land,

Now there's rows a hooses there,

Mind you step gon up the stair,

Ghosts'll come and pull your hair,

God save the Queen.

Why Orthodox Jews May Have the Hottest Sex Lives, 2011

Secular Israeli man in his late 20s, reciting from a text by an American Orthodox Jewish woman.
Made in Jerusalem.

Rives- Kite

Kite


I mistook a garbage truck for thunder.

The morning after the first night we made love,
I dreamt thunder was chasing rain
through your neighborhood,
flooding the streets and keeping the two of us
indoors for days or even weeks,
until some old prophet could drop, by in an ark,
to take us and the rest of the paired-up animals
to a very high place, or an island maybe,
where we could just
sleep naked for a living.

But the thunder was a garbage truck.
And when my eyes woke up
a note on your pillow said:
"Good morning, Sparkle Boy!
I'll be back around noon.
You--make yourself at home."
And so I did.

Maybe.

I'm saying maybe I put on your slippers,
which were as comfortable as bunnies
because they were bunnies,
and then shuffled over my new favorite
hardwood floor to the bathroom
where maybe I took a bubble bath,
which is not something I can do at my place
because, frankly, my tub is way too skanky
to ever sit my bare ass down in.
And then maybe I got so caught up in the romance of the suds
I started quoting old Latin poetry from my college days
like: "fulsere quondam candidi tibi soles..."
You know: "Verily a bright sun does favor me this morning...muthafucka!"

And then maybe I...played with myself.
But it’s not what you’re thinking--
I’m saying possibly I just sorta
stuck my hand up from the water, going:

hand!(HERE I HOLD MY HAND UP LIKE A SOCK PUPPET
hand!WITHOUT THE SOCK AND MY HAND TEASES ME
hand!IN A HIGH, SMUTTY VOICE):

HAND: "Somebody got laid last night!
Ha-ha-haaaa!
It was youuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu!!!"

Or whatever.

And then maybe I...played with myself,
and it's exactly what you're thinking.
But if I did, it was only to put
the mental motion picture of our naked night together
on replay and replay and replay
so touching myself was just like...
Tivo in a way.

And yes, I was still wet when I borrowed your bathrobe.
And yes, I baked apples in your oven
and then ate them with your honey, honey.
And yes, I scared the birds away from your balcony
with my antics, dancing full-blast
to your old Prince CD's--
but please let’s just keep that my little secret,
because nothing is as private as a solitary dance
unless--maybe--it's standing in front of a full-length mirror
in a borrowed pair of bunny slippers,
slipping off a bathrobe and then wishing to a lightbulb
that my name, or my game, or my whatever were bigger,
wondering: "What kind of woman wants this skinny kid for her warrior?"

And so I made for you a kite, enormous,
out of coat hangers, brown paper bags
and the masking tape from that drawer in your kitchen,
and I hung it in the hallway
where you couldn’t hardly miss it,
and I tagged that kite with my words,
I wrote:

Just so you know--

My weird mind wanders and my brave heart breaks.
I've nailed some milestones, but I've made mistakes,
Cuz I got more faults than a map of California earthquakes.

I am taking a nap beneath your covers.
Wake me if you like me.
Wake me if you want me
Wake me if you need another poem.

Your once and future lover
has made himself at home.

Rives on 4 am

Tuli Kupferberg: I Am an Artist for Arts Sake

R.I.P

Protest Songbook A project by Big Hope: Miklós Erhardt & Dominic Hislop | Radio Broadcast

CLICK HERE

My Father is a Certain Kind of Man, December 2010 (Israel)

My father is a certain kind of man.

A few years ago we were in Greece together. He sat on a bench with another man. And they understood each other.

Their Language was their cigarettes,

Their ears grown large with age,

Their noses red from good times and bad times,

What a life we’ve had

Their hands ingrained with dirt from long ago

My father’s a certain kind of man.

And I sometimes wish I was too

(accompanying music: Mrs McGrath: The Sergeant Said)