Dear Kitty. Some blog

By Christine Lindey in London, England:

Made In Porto-Novo

October Gallery, London WC1

Wednesday 21 October 2009

The Benin Republic’s Romuald Hazoumé is one of Africa’s most eminent artists.

He addresses contemporary life while also drawing upon his Yoruba cultural tradition to create works which are visually accessible yet redolent with multilayered allusions to historical, cultural and political issues.

He works with a wide variety of mediums but the petrol cans from which the Benin people get their fuel unite most of them. …

The spiked headdress on Liberty recalls the Statue of Liberty, a symbol of the so-called free world which has so damaged post-colonial African economies that also evokes Christ’s crown of thorns, symbol of the religion of the Portuguese slave-traders and French colonists who ravaged the Benin region.

The discovery of traditional African wooden carvings had inspired early 20th century artists like Picasso to liberate themselves from a tired European classicism to create the Modernist aesthetic. Hazoumé’s masks made from contemporary found materials playfully challenge western preconceptions about African and Western art.

In contrast, his photographs bear witness to social injustice in Beninese life.

Their subjects are the Kpayo, young farmers, dispossessed of their land by agribusiness, who are forced to scrape a living by transporting contraband petrol across the Nigerian border. Pedalling their bicycles with loads as heavy as 250 litres of cans strapped to their bodies, they are human bombs. Many lose their lives as their cargo explodes in street accidents.

Known by locals as Benin Roulette - the title of one of Hazoumé’s images - this shameful job provides 90 per cent of Benin’s fuel. Hazoumé uses his influential status to draw attention to the exploitation of “the little people.” “At home I am a rebel,” he says, “because I am not afraid to speak out. No government has paid them any attention.” …

Bristling with intelligence and pertinence to contemporary issues, this is art which exposes human exploitation while affirming the will to combat it with humour and subtlety.

Exhibition runs until November 28 (closed Sundays and Mondays). Admission free.

Archaeology course unlocks silent history of the slave trade in West Africa: here.

On October 18, 2009, United States artist Nancy Spero died.

From Wikipedia:

Nancy Spero (August 24, 1926 – October 18, 2009) was an American artist. Born in Cleveland, Ohio, she had long been based in New York City. She was married to and collaborated with artist Leon Golub (1922–2004).

As both artist and activist, Nancy Spero’s career has spanned fifty years. Her continuous engagement with contemporary political, social, and cultural concerns is renowned. She has chronicled wars and apocalyptic violence as well as articulating visions of ecstatic rebirth and the celebratory cycles of life. Her complex network of collective and individual voices was a catalyst for the creation of her figurative lexicon representing women from prehistory to the present in such epic-scale paintings and collage on paper as Torture of Women (1976), Notes in Time on Women (1979) and The First Language (1981). …

Spero and Golub returned to New York in 1964, where the couple remained to live and work. The Vietnam War was raging and the Civil Rights Movement was exploding. Affected by images of the war broadcast nightly on television and the unrest and violence evident in the streets, Spero began her War Series (1966-70). These small gouache and inks on paper, executed rapidly, represented the obscenity and destruction of war. The War Series is among the most sustained and powerful group of works in the genre of history painting that condemns war and its real and lasting consequences.

An activist and early feminist, Spero was a member of the Art Workers Coalition (1968-69), Women Artists in Revolution (1969), and in 1972 she was a founding member of the first women’s cooperative gallery, A.I.R. (Artists in Residence) in SoHo. It was during this period that Spero completed her “Artaud Paintings” (1969-70), finding her artistic “voice” and developing her signature scroll paintings: Codex Artaud (1971-1972). Uniting text and image, printed on long scrolls of paper, glued end-to-end and tacked on the walls of A.I.R., Spero violated the formal presentation, choice of valued medium and scale of framed paintings. Although her collaged and painted scrolls were Homeric in both scope and depth, the artist shunned the grandiose in content as well as style, relying instead on intimacy and immediacy, while also revealing the continuum of shocking political realities underlying enduring myths.

In 1974, Spero chose to focus on themes involving women and their representation in various cultures; her Torture in Chile (1974) and the long scroll, Torture of Women (1976, 20 inches x 125 feet), interweave oral testimonies with images of women throughout history, linking the contemporary governmental brutality of Latin American dictatorships (from Amnesty International reports) with the historical repression of women. Spero re-presented previously obscured women’s histories, cultural mythology, and literary references with her expressive figuration.

HERE WE go again. Another study is out to show how the women’s movement ruined women’s lives: here.

By Jennifer Viegas:

Most scholars have assumed that all prehistoric artists were male, but new evidence suggests women and even young girls produced at least some cave drawings, according to a study in the latest Oxford Journal of Archaeology.
 
The study focused on finger flutings made on the walls and ceiling of Rouffignac Cave in the Dordogne, France.

The flutings — lines drawn with the fingers on soft surfaces — as well as other art in the cave are thought to be 13,000 to 14,000 years old, based on stylistic considerations.

The figures pictured here were likely created by a 5-year old girl. The researchers came to this conclusion based not only on her hand dimensions but also on the height of the places where she had been able to reach.

This video is called Honduras de facto government piles pressure on media - 28 Sep 09.

From British daily The Guardian:

‘Comic’ retells Honduran coup and Manuel Zelaya arrest

Graphic history frames overthrow of president in relation to century of US skullduggery in central America

* Rory Carroll, Latin America correspondent
* Wednesday 21 October 2009 12.11 BST

At first glance it could be a children’s comic – but in fact it’s a journalistic take on the Honduran crisis with an attention to context that puts conventional media coverage to shame.

The Honduran Coup, A Graphic History by Dan Archer and Nikil Saval frames the overthrow of the president, Manuel Zelaya, in relation to a century of US skullduggery in central America.

Most media reports go back only to June this year when conservative opponents ousted the leftist leader because he was getting cosy with Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez.

With a leftist slant, Archer, a “comix journalist and instructor” at Stanford University, and Saval, a PhD candidate at Stanford, zip through the main events: Zelaya’s arrest and exile, his sneaking back into Honduras last month, his refuge in the Brazilian embassy and the security force crackdown on his supporters.

But to explain how and why it came to this, the authors then jump back to the 1900s when – with White House support – two US fruit giants (now known as Dole and Chiquita) turned central America into one big plantation. We fast-forward to the cold war and see the US toppling leftists and propping up rightwing governments and their murderous militaries.

Archer and Saval do not accuse Obama of fomenting Honduras’s current trauma but they do suggest, like many analysts and Latin American leaders, that the administration could be doing more to restore Zelaya to power. By flipping the pages of history this graphic novel reminds us why the White House is dragging its heels.

This video from the USA is called Emory Douglas artwork.

By Paul Benedek, in Brisbane, Australia:

Black Panther artist launches exhibition

10 October 2009

Emory Douglas, former “Minister for Culture” in the US Black Panther Party, spoke at Brisbane’s Institute of Modern Art on October 1. Douglas is now a part of the Artist Rights Society, and remains a committed activist artist and campaigner for social justice and empowerment.

Indigenous activist Sam Watson, a founder of the Australian chapter of the Black Panthers, introduced Douglas. Watson described how the writings of Huey P. Newton, Eldridge Cleaver and other Panther leaders helped Aboriginal activists also fighting racism.

“My art is in your face, without apology”, Douglas told the 50 people gathered at the gallery, as he displayed 170 images of his work.

For each image, Douglas recounted a political struggle that the Panthers were engaged in — from the struggle against the brutal police (always portrayed as pigs in his art) and for community control of police, through to campaigning against the Vietnam War.

Much of Douglas’ art was featured in the newspaper The Black Panther, which had a circulation up to 250,000 a week in 1971.

Crucially, Douglas used his images to incite the disenfranchised to action. He portrayed the oppressed with real empathy, not as victimised but as angry, unapologetic and ready to fight.

His art played two roles — illustrating the conditions that made revolution necessary, and visually showing the potential power of the people that were victimised.

Douglas paraphrased Muhammad Ali to describe the Panther’s opposition to the Vietnam War: “We were opposed to the war, the Vietnamese didn’t call us nigger, didn’t provide substandard education, didn’t make us live in poor housing.”

Douglas also spoke of the community programs the Panthers had run. “The free breakfast meals for children [provided by the Panthers] were crucial to empowerment. How can they learn if they are hungry?”

Other community programs included a Panther ambulance, Panther health clinics, and Panther buses to prisons so families could visit imprisoned loved ones.

Much of Douglas’ art still resonates as true today as when it was created.

Douglas still paints and recently created a work entitled “as much as things change they stay the same“, showing a handcuffed young black man shot in the back. It was inspired by the point-blank police shooting of a handcuffed, black man in Oakland in January.

[The “All Power to the People” exhibition is at Milani Gallery until October 17. Visit www.milanigallery.com.au.]

Southern GOP Senator David Vitter refuses to comment on justice of the peace who won’t marry inter-racial couples: here.

The former mayor of a small Alabama town boasted about attending Ku Klux Klan meetings and threatened to burn a cross in a councilwoman’s front yard, according to a discrimination lawsuit filed in federal court by two African-American city employees: here.

This video is the documentary “Visiting Antarctica”.

From Denver News in the USA:

Life in Antarctica is cold — but bloggers there can still get burned

By Jonathan Shikes

Published on October 06, 2009 …

The United States has three permanent stations in Antarctica — McMurdo, Amundsen-Scott South Pole and Palmer — and conditions there are tough, especially during the winter (our summer), when it’s dark 24 hours a day. The crew members have to be very careful when they go outdoors, and the constant darkness robs them of their normal circadian rhythms and the vitamin D that humans need. After a few months on the ice, many of them develop a condition they call “brain freeze,” in which they start mumbling, and it can take seconds, even minutes, to complete a thought or form a cohesive sentence.

The three stations are operated by Raytheon Polar Services, a Centennial-based division of Raytheon, the $23.2 billion, multinational defense contractor that has 73,000 employees worldwide. Raytheon won the ten-year, $1.12 billion Antarctic Support Contract from the National Science Foundation in 1999 and reapplied this year, but it’s facing competition from six other conglomerates that have spent millions of dollars just to prepare their bids. The new, thirteen-and-a-half-year contract is valued between $1.5 and $2 billion; it was supposed to be awarded October 1, but the NSF recently delayed its decision without explanation.

The contract involves not just supporting the NSF’s scientific research — on climate change, astronomy, biology and atmospheric and environmental science — that has to be justified to Congress and to taxpayers, but also constructing and maintaining the buildings and equipment at the U.S. bases, providing water production and fuel operations, planning missions, transporting personnel and cargo, and maintaining communication. The contractor must also hire, train, feed, house, pay and protect the small army of support staffers who live in Antarctica, whether for five months or twelve, keeping them alive, warm, fed and happy.

That’s not always easy, as Raytheon has discovered. …

Bloggers have also criticized Raytheon and its corporate policies. As a result, say a number of current and former employees, Raytheon has cracked down both on blogging and on some of Antarctica’s odder traditions — particularly as the new contract deadline approaches.

“What is most disturbing is the censorship,” one Raytheon employee says in an e-mail. “We are told to never speak to the press. Raytheon fears a PR black eye and doesn’t want things to get out. Two people who are blogging down here have been told to stop.”

Raytheon spokeswoman Valerie Carroll says the company has no anti-blogging policies, but employees insist that posts are closely watched and that critical ones have resulted in retaliatory actions. …

Midwinter’s Day is a tradition that dates all the way back to 1898, when the crew of the Belgica became the first people to spend the winter in Antarctica after the Belgian ship got stuck in the ice. Since then, the day has been celebrated to some degree by nearly everyone who’s spent the coldest month on the Continent, including explorers like Ireland’s Ernest Shackleton in 1907, Norway’s Roald Amundsen in 1911, and American Richard Evelyn Byrd in the 1940s. …

In 2008, Raytheon canceled the extra day off.

The decision wasn’t explained, and on June 11, 2008, blogger Nick Johnson posted the following message on his site, BigDeadPlace.com: “For those who haven’t heard, someone in Denver has decided that U.S. Antarctic stations this year won’t have the day off for Midwinter’s Day dinner (June 21st). No big deal. However, coincidentally, on June 21, [Raytheon Polar Services] is sponsoring, for its 250+ employees in the office, a ‘Summer Picnic’ at a Denver-area amusement park called Elitch Gardens, including a picnic and a Randy Travis concert.”

This wasn’t the first time that Johnson, a heavy equipment operator at McMurdo, had been critical of his employer. …

Johnson managed to remain employed after the book came out, and he started signing his name to his blog. And in May 1998, he began posting questions from Raytheon’s anonymous suggestion box, along with management’s answers. The exchanges seemed innocuous enough — but not to Raytheon. So instead of partying on Midwinter’s Day in 2008, Johnson was called in for a teleconference with Sam Feola, the program director for Raytheon Polar Services.

“He told me I had made some blog posts that involved ’sensitive information,’” Johnson remembers. “I didn’t say I would take anything down, I didn’t say I wouldn’t, but I asked, ‘What information, specifically, do you want me to take down?’ He replied, ‘All the information.’ I wasn’t going to do that.”

Although Johnson had worked in Antarctica off and on for a decade, Raytheon didn’t renew his contract for the following year. “I was blacklisted,” Johnson says. “That’s how it works. No one is surprised.”

Raytheon, which kept its Antarctic headquarters in the Denver area after taking over from ASA in 1990, has 354 employees in Centennial, including Feola, who declined to be interviewed for this story. …

Still, the perceived censorship, along with the cancellation of Midwinter’s Day in 2008 and other issues, remain a concern. “I have seen a big change in the way the companies have handled morale over the years,” the employee, who also has a blog, says. “When I started, there was a big recreation department, dedicated to keeping us happy and busy. This winter there was zero recreation, at least fostered by the company or NSF. I used to tell my non-ice friends that the USAP program went out of their way to provide good morale to cut down on random drinking and negativity. There is no sign any more that anyone cares about that at all, at least in the winter.”

“One of the most fun things we used to do is Bingo. We’d sell Bingo tickets for a buck or two, and the winners would get small cash prizes. My understanding is that Raytheon put an end to that, saying it was immoral.”…

When Johnson started BigDeadPlace.com in 2002, he knew of no other blogs about Antarctica. “Pre-Internet, there were a bunch of photocopied underground newsletters that people had made. Two important ones were called The Shadow and The Antarctic Moon, from the early ’90s, I believe,” Johnson says in an e-mail from Afghanistan, where he now works for another private contractor. Because of that, he adds, BigDeadPlace.com got a lot of attention. …

Today there are dozens and dozens of Antarctica blogs — written not just by Raytheon employees, but also by scientists and people who work on bases owned by other countries. Some of them detail daily life, while others focus on science or photography. Examples include:

Antarctiken.com, from Ken Klassy, a systems admin at McMurdo who posts his gorgeous photos, but also details his daily successes and frustrations.

Icewishes.wordpress.com, which follows the life of a “peripatetic redhead” at the South Pole.

60south.com, which focuses on art and photography at the bottom of the world, but also features a discussion board and other links.

Vagabumming.com, a view from Palmer Station.

Harriettstomato.com, an unusual look at the life of a cook at the South Pole. …

Like most major corporations, Raytheon has a social media policy, but Carroll declines to offer any specifics. …

A Raytheon employee provided the specifics of the social media policy, which begins: “Raytheon Company recognizes that employees may wish to create, maintain, and participate in external social media tools such as blogs, wikis, chatrooms, podcasts, microblogging (e.g., Twitter), discussion boards, and participate in social websites such as Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, LinkedIn.” …

But while the policy says the company “respects its employees’ rights to personal expression,” it also warns that Raytheon retains the right to “direct an employee to refrain from commenting on topics related to the Company or, take steps to remove or mitigate exposure of the offending material on the social media tool, to comply with applicable laws…and/or Company policy.”

While Raytheon’s weapons kill, inter alia, Iraqi civilians, its workers in Antarctica have participated in the worldwide demonstrations against the Iraq war in February 2003.

Cartaxo - Saxicola torquata - Stonechat from Jose Viana on Vimeo

Today, to the beautiful surroundings of Wolfheze.

There is a walk there, called Jac. P. Thysse walk, after the famous early twentieth century Dutch conservationist.

We went from Wolfheze railway station to the Wolfheze heath.

Along the path, fly agaric, and other mushrooms.

Birch bracket fungus on a fallen birch tree.

Sparassia crispa fungus, growing underneath a coniferous tree.

A squirrel.

Porcelain fungus on a fallen tree.

A nuthatch looking for insects on a tree, head pointing downwards.

Honey fungus high up a dead tree.

A group of long-tailed tits.

We pass a famous old pine tree. It is centuries old. It finally fell down in 2006. However, as a big dead tree, it will still be useful for insects and other forest animals in the decades to come.

Then, more famous old trees: the so called Woden oaks. The name suggests that about 2000 years ago, ancient Germanic tribes worshiped their god Woden here. However, the trees are really from the 16th century. They are called Woden oaks only since the middle of the nineteenth century. They got their name from artists, who used to come here then to paint those ancient oaks and Wolfheze heath landscapes.

Then, we leave the forest, arriving at Wolfheze heath. Some common heather plants are still flowering, but most are finished.

A buzzard calling. A green woodpecker flying past.

Three stonechats sitting on the tops of low bushes. Every now and then, a short flight to catch insects.

We walk back.

A robin sitting on a fallen Woden oak.

Sulphur tuft fungus.

A male chaffinch on the footpath.

From ScienceDaily:

Rare Discovery: Engraved Gemstone Carrying A Portrait Of Alexander The Great

(Sep. 22, 2009) — A rare and surprising archaeological discovery at Tel Dor: A gemstone engraved with the portrait of Alexander the Great was uncovered during excavations by an archaeological team directed by Dr. Ayelet Gilboa of the University of Haifa and Dr. Ilan Sharon of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

“Despite its miniature dimensions – the stone is less than a centimeter high and its width is less than half a centimeter – the engraver was able to depict the bust of Alexander on the gem without omitting any of the ruler’s characteristics,” notes Dr. Gilboa, Chair of the Department of Archaeology at the University of Haifa. “The emperor is portrayed as young and forceful, with a strong chin, straight nose and long curly hair held in place by a diadem.”

The Tel Dor researchers have noted that it is surprising that a work of art such as this would be found in Israel, on the periphery of the Hellenistic world. “It is generally assumed that the master artists – such as the one who engraved the image of Alexander on this particular gemstone – were mainly employed by the leading Hellenistic courts in the capital cities, such as those in Alexandria in Egypt and Seleucia in Syria. This new discovery is evidence that local elites in secondary centers, such as Tel Dor, appreciated superior objects of art and could afford ownership of such items,” the researchers stated.

The significance of the discovery at Tel Dor is in the gemstone being uncovered in an orderly excavation, in a proper context of the Hellenistic period. The origins of most Alexander portraits, scattered across numerous museums around the world, are unknown. Some belonged to collections that existed even prior to the advent of scientific archaeology, others were acquired on the black market, and it is likely that some are even forgeries.

This tiny gem was unearthed by a volunteer during excavation of a public structure from the Hellenistic period in the south of Tel Dor, excavated by a team from the University of Washington at Seattle headed by Prof. Sarah Stroup. Dr. Jessica Nitschke, professor of classical archaeology at Georgetown University in Washington DC, identified the engraved motif as a bust of Alexander the Great. This has been confirmed by Prof. Andrew Stewart of the University of California at Berkeley, an expert on images of Alexander and author of a book on this topic.

Alexander was probably the first Greek to commission artists to depict his image – as part of a personality cult that was transformed into a propaganda tool. Rulers and dictators have implemented this form of propaganda ever since.

The destruction of basic social services in the state of Michigan and its largest city, Detroit, have continued in recent days. Detroit has announced drastic cuts to its already limited public transportation system, while lawmakers in the state capital, Lansing, are haggling over massive reductions in social spending in order to meet a budget deficit by the end of September: here.

The economic crisis has had a devastating impact on art, historical and science museums in the United States. Beginning in late 2008, public and private museums began laying-off staff, cutting wages, reducing hours, and, in some cases, closing altogether: here.

From Art for a Change blog in the USA:

Guayasamín: Rage & Redemption

Of Rage and Redemption: The Art of Oswaldo Guayasamín was an important two-year long traveling retrospective of artworks by Latin American master, Oswaldo Guayasamín (1919-1999). The exhibit recently ended its scheduled tour last August 16, 2009 at the Museum of Latin American Art (MoLAA) in Long Beach, California. Guayasamín, hailed in his home country of Ecuador as a national hero and widely acclaimed throughout Latin America and indeed the world – is scarcely known in the United States. What accounts for this near total lack of recognition? Emphasizing the magnitude of his omission from public awareness in the U.S., I overheard someone say while viewing the show, “I’ve never heard of Guayasamín before. I don’t mean to sound sacrilegious, but I think he’s better than Picasso.”

Expertly curated by Joseph Mella, Director of the Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Gallery in Nashville, Tennessee, Of Rage and Redemption first premiered in February of 2008 at the Vanderbilt before moving on to four other national venues, including a run at the Organization of American States’ Art Museum of the Americas in Washington, D.C. The exhibit was laid out as a timeline, starting with the artist’s early figurative works from the 1940s, and culminating with his late period minimalist paintings from the 1980s and 1990s. Walking through the exhibit not only gave insight into Guayasamín’s artistic development over the decades, it presented an overview of history as it occurred in Latin America and throughout the world, since the artist was deeply concerned with real world events. …

I would like to remark on a number of paintings presented in the exhibit, for example, the oil painting titled Napalm. It condemned the incendiary weapon made infamous by its massive use in Vietnam by the U.S. military. Guayasamín’s terrifying canvas looks as if it were made from scorched flesh and coagulated blood. Painted in 1976, the canvas surely alluded to Kim Phúc, the little Vietnamese girl who was severely burned in a napalm attack that took place in 1972.

Photos and motion picture film of Phúc running down a village road, her clothes burned off and her seared flesh hanging in strips, became some of the most unforgettable imagery from the Vietnam War. But Guayasamín was also undoubtedly thinking of how napalm had been used in Latin America as well. In 1965 the Peruvian army bombed guerrilla fighters at Mesa Pelada with U.S. supplied napalm, and in 1968 the Mexican government used the U.S. furnished jellied gasoline against guerrilla groups operating in the southern coastal state of Guerrero.

The canvas Los Torturados (The Tortured) alludes to another tragic moment in history. Painted in the years 1976-77, Guayasamín’s canvas at first glance seems a commentary on the torture of civilians at the hands of military regimes, which indeed it is - but the artist had something more specific in mind. Chile’s democratically elected government of Salvador Allende was overthrown on September 11, 1973, in a brutal military coup backed by the United States. Some 3,000 civilians were killed and thousands more were detained by the military junta.

One of those arrested was Victor Jara, the famous Chilean folk singer and supporter of the deposed socialist government. He was taken by the army to Chile Stadium in Santiago, then being used as a torture and detention camp for thousands of prisoners. Once they realized the celebrated singer was in their custody, soldiers began to savagely torture Jara. Troops broke both of his wrists and crushed the bones in both of his hands with rifle butts before machine-gunning him.

Three years later Guayasamín would dedicate Los Torturados to the spirit of Victor Jara. In 2004 a new democratically elected government honored the memory of the slain singer by renaming Chile Stadium, The Victor Jara Stadium. In 2008 a Chilean government investigation and autopsy confirmed that Jara had been tortured and shot 44 times. Finally, in May 2009, a former low ranking army conscript was charged with the murder of Jara.