A M Y S A L L

In his essay, George Shepperson notes the ways in which African- Americans and people of African descent have contributed to and influenced the shaping of African nationalism and Pan-African ideology. He cites figures such as Marcus Garvey (Jamaican) and WEB Du Bois (African-American) as individuals who have had a hand in influencing African consciousness on the continent. Shepperson speaks of Marcus Garvey’s influence on Kwame Nkrumah’s vision of independent Ghana, and notes that Garvey’s pride and admiration for his own skin, and blackness at large, inspired African nationalism and fueled a sense of African pride. Particularly during WWI was when Pan-Africanism among African-Americans became quite strong and vocal, and it was during this time that WEB Du Bois published a seminal piece titled “The African Roots of War.” Post WWI was also when Du Bois held the Fifth Pan-African Congress. Shepperson claims that writings from Du Bois and from figures such as James Weldon Johnson heavily inspired Africans because these texts dealt with ideas of self-determination, advancement and the claiming of one’s rights. Arguably Du Bois’ ideologies were guiding principles that then became fundamental, founding principles of African nationalist movements on the continent during independence. Though Shepperson makes clear the influence of African-Americans on African nationalism and thought, he fails to recognize the exchange of influence by not touching upon the ways in which Africans have contributed to African-American cultural/artistic production. Kathy Ogren’s piece seems to provide what Shepperson could not/did not. She offers a re-consideration and re-evaluation of the ways in which Black artistic, literary and intellectual expression came to be in the United States. Ogren makes clear that there was a mutual exchange of ideas and contributions between Africans and people of African descent. She argues Africans and Africa were essential in African-American artistic and literary production during the early 20th century (when the Harlem Renaissance was birthed). She strongly highlights this point by opening her essay with a poem on Africa by Countee Cullen, a prominent figure of the Harlem Renaissance. Ogren notes that African themes/motifs serve as influential devices for “Negro” expression in art, music, and literature, and this is a key point that Shepperson does not venture to mention. Alaine Locke’s anthology “The New Negro,” for Ogren, exemplified the heavy influence of African consciousness on the fashioning of the Black Arts movement. The anthology includes essays that hinge upon Pan-African ideologies and ruminations on or about Africa, and Ogren argues the book served as a way to establish a connection between prominent African-American thought leaders and Africa. For Ogren, the “New Negro" of the 20th century, equipped with cultural, social and artistic agency, is therefore fashioned and conditioned by influences from Africa and an African consciousness.    

Les Amazones de Guinée. Guinée's first all female musical group, formed in 1961.

#ABOUTLASTNIGHT: NeueHouse hosted a lovely "Evening With Njideka Akunyili Crosby" in which the Nigerian artist spoke about the writers, artists, musicians and personal experiences that inspire + greatly inform her work. She spoke about the ways in which she has had to negotiate and traverse different spaces, namely Nigeria + the U.S. In her explanation of these ideas surrounding locality, multiplicity and negotiation, she referenced the great post-colonial theorist Homi Bhabha, and my ears really perked up because his work on traversing these liminal spaces where a number of cultures, languages, traditions, all interact/collide has always interested me. This "space" is what he refers to as the Third Space. I've been meaning to write about the great writers of Indian descent who have moved/influenced me: Mahmood Mamdani, Homi Bhabha, Amitav Ghosh...; but I digress. ANYWAY, I appreciated Njideka's maneuvering through theory, technique and personal inspirations to show us how she arrives at her work. The talk was amazing and she of course also walked the audience through many of her works, including this one pictured titled, "The Rest of Her Remains" (2010).

I've come to understand that it is important to be in search of (and find) new forms and ways to create value + meaning. We seem to be cemented in a banal culture of passivity void of interrogation, void of knowledge exploration, void of research. I attribute this partly to the politics + saturation of social media and partly to, dare I say, laziness. I've observed there is so much attention on the aesthetics of a film, art piece, photo, etc, that it is more often than not stripped of its context, and slapped onto a Tumblr/IG page. Context is key. Whether these works are perhaps dealing with colonial pasts/histories, social conditions, political narratives, they are imbued with meaning. Yet with every repost, regram, reblog, retweet, we inherently do what Walter Benjamin posits in The Age of Mechanical Reproduction. That is, we strip the work of its meaning and aura. It becomes distilled, and removed of its context and intention. The perpetual distillation of a meaningful piece of art --boiling it down to superficial statements-- is a tragedy. Though art is subjective, every artist has an artist statement, and it should be respected. The need to "aestheticize" everything can be problematic. It's worth it to understand what is behind a work. There are scholars and books out there to help you. Read them. You learn something(s) by doing so. Please note, for example, if I post scenes from African films, know that I've actually watched them, read books and scholarship on them (praise to Manthia Diawara), and have written papers on them. Sembene or Cissé didn't make films only for you to think they looked nice. They were communicating (in addition to the cultural richness + beauty) the social conditions and issues that plagued Africa (and continue to) in a way that could be universally understood by everyone--literate or not. This is MEANING. Sometimes -- I'd say most times -- IT IS about the substance. It is about the message. In fact often, "the medium is the message" as Marshall McLuhan famously argues. Yet the problem lies in the fact that with social media (the great double-edged sword), the medium and the message are separated.  This age/culture of passivity is dangerous. I do not respond to questions like "what is the film about?" "Can you tell me more about this photo?"  It is up to YOU to seek and enlighten yourself on all that you wish to know. Learn about a work, sit with it, grapple with it, interrogate it, critique it. Form a substantive opinion on it that goes beyond how it looks. Stuart Hall was not lying when he said "Nothing meaningful exists outside discourse." Not everything is just to be taken at face value. 

Through Pan-Africanism, Africans collectively created a space whereby they asserted themselves as self-reliant stakeholders in the post-colonial era. This consciousness that was formed, which was birthed from the idea of unity and a new, imagined, autonomous Africa, represented the first instance in history where Africans could claim their rights. It was also the first instance where Africans recognized themselves as self-determining, thus shaping and contributing to the discourses surrounding human rights, antidiscrimination and social justice. A fashioning of a new Africa, or a reinvention of Africa, by Africans and the diaspora, began to take form, using the language and essence of human rights as an anchor. Understanding Pan-Africanism as a consciousness, which led to various, sprouted social movements across the continent and in the diaspora (from the grassroots to the political space), requires an excavation and peeling back of the ways in which mass oppression, through colonial rule, gave birth to this global ideology. #frommetoyou // Photo: Algerian Folk Troupe during the First Pan-African Cultural Festival in Algeria, 1969. ©Guy Le Querrec

If only Burkina (and the rest of the world) had more time with this man, a true visionary + revolutionary #ThomasSankara. | Burkina Faso's political history is littered with instability + betrayal. A deadly military coup is currently taking place and the power that they are usurping truly belongs to the people. The manipulative coup leaders are dangling the promise of free + fair elections and killing those who are fighting for their rights and rising up against injustice. Denying citizens their civil liberties and the foremost right to live.

JAGUAR - Jean Rouch (1967)

Stuart Hall on Samuel Fosso: "His work is highly self-reflective, about how the meanings of the body are shifted by the ways it is 'performed'. Fosso thus explicitly undermines the traditional notion of a stable identity that underwrites all its circulating 'appearances'. He adopts a self-regarding attitude to subjectivity an desire that appears, at first sight, rather unusual in African photography." Passage from Hall's book, Different, co-authored with Mark Sealy (2001).

Samuel Fosso, Self Portrait, 1976.

Faustin Linyekula

#mood When jobs could be created/given to thousands of unemployed African youth, but end up outsourced to Asia. When foreign investment means having a chokehold on African countries. When African leaders send their children to schools abroad, but don't invest in improving the quality of education in their own countries...

T'was a great summer. Very grateful. Working towards new goals this fall. Meeting new challenges. Nonstikelelo Mutiti and I during our talk at The Studio Museum in Harlem. ©Damali Abrams for Art21 (at The Studio Museum in Harlem)

Naked woman, black woman Dressed in your color which is life, thy form which is beauty I grew up in your shadow; the softness of your hands bandaging my eyes And now, at the heart of the summer and south, I will discover, Promised Land, from the top of a high calcined collar And your beauty strikes down me in the heart, lightning an eagle Naked woman, dark woman Ripe fruit with firm flesh, dark raptures of black wine, mouth making lyrical my mouth Savannah to pure horizons, savannah shuddered to the fervent caresses of the East Wind carved Tamtam, which stretched tamtam rumbles under the fingers of the winner Ta grave contralto voice is the spiritual song of the Loved Black woman, dark woman Oil that will ride no breath, calm oil to the sides of the athlete, the sides of the Princes of Mali Gazelle celestial ties , pearls are stars on the night of your skin. Délices games of the Spirit, the gold reflections that eats your skin moire In the shade of your hair, my anguish lights next to your suns eyes. Naked woman, black woman I sing your beauty that passes, as I fixed in the Lord Before jealous Fate does not reduce you to ashes to feed the roots of life.

Aimé Césaire in Casamance, Senegal, 1966. ©Rene Burri

           Césaire’s intellectual rumination on colonialism makes Discourse on Colonialism a key text in the spheres of African history and postcolonial theory. His ability to merge literary artistry through his prose with critical analysis makes this text an important and pleasurable read. It is a text which has trans-temporal significance and gravitas.

By Viviane Sassen