{ DESERT BREATH } – El Gouna, Egypt

ON MARCH 7 1997, THE CONSTRUCTION OF “DESERT BREATH” WAS COMPLETED. 

AT SAME MOMENT THE WORK WAS TURNED OVER TO THE FORCES OF NATURE, TO BEGIN THE SLOW PROCESS OF ITS ABSORBITION, BY THE LANDSCAPE THAT GAVE BIRTH TO IT.

THE SYSTEMATIC DOCUMENTATION OF THIS PROCESS IS AS IMPORTANT TO “DESERT BREATH”.

Amandla Stenberg: Don’t Cash Crop On My Cornrows - a crash discourse on black culture

Key quotes:

Appropriation occurs when a style leads to racist generalizations or stereotypes where it originated but is deemed as high-fashion, cool or funny when the privileged take it for themselves

Hip hop stems from a black struggle, it stems from jazz and blues, styles of music African-Americans created to retain humanity in the face of adversity.  On a smaller scale but in a similar vein, braids and cornrows are not merely stylistic. They’re necessary to keep black hair neat.

What would America be like if we loved black people as much as we love black culture?

The conversation becomes so diluted when we discuss cultural appropriation. And especially in the context of blackness and it’s appropriation in American popular culture. No matter how reasonable black critiques, such as Amandla’s, there is always this sick backlash. Instead of actually comprehending and accepting the harms of appropriating blackness, you hear nothing but privileged indignation. They combine the racism of stealing from black culture with racist notions that reasonable black critiques are angry unfair attacks against these innocent fragile naive bystanders.

Female Nude in the Woods

Nils-Udo (born 1937) is a Bavarian artist who has been creating environmental art since the 1960s when he moved away from painting and the studio and began to work with and in nature.