BBC News AfricaApr 9, 2020
In this first episode, Zeinab Badawi travels across the continent examining the origins of humankind; how and why we evolved in Africa – Africa is the greatest exporter of all time: every human being originated in Africa.
During her journey Zeinab is granted rare access to the actual bones of one of the most iconic discoveries in the field of palaeontology, ‘Lucy’ in Ethiopia, or as she is known in Amharic, ‘Dinkenesh’, which means ‘you are marvellous’.
Zeinab also spends time in Tanzania with a tribe that is unique in the world because they live in the way our ancestors did, as hunters of big animals and gatherers. This community who have rarely been filmed provide a fascinating insight into how we have lived for most of our history.
Acclaimed critic, curator and museum director Clémentine Deliss explores possible functions for anthropological museums in a postcolonial culture
Anthropological museums in Europe, as products of imperialism, have been compelled to legitimate themselves for some while now. The very basis of their exhibitions, the history of their collections, which came about all too often through colonial appropriation and outright theft, is now widely contended.
In this brilliant intervention in this often irresolvable-seeming conversation, the London-born curator, researcher, publisher and director of the Frankfurt Weltkulturen Museum Clémentine Deliss (born 1960) offers an intriguing mix of autobiographically informed fiction and scientific argument to address the topic and explore the possible future role of anthropological museums in culture.
Deliss conjoins reflections about her own work as the director of the Frankfurt Weltkulturen Museum with discussions of filmmakers, artists and authors to argue for an entity she calls the Metabolic Museum―an interventionist laboratory that opens up the potential of anthropological collections for the future.
In The Metabolic Museum, Clémentine Deliss, since last year an associate curator at the Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin, outlines her radical curatorial vision and chronicles her attempts to transform the Weltkulturen Museum from a moribund storehouse of artifacts into a laboratory and educational center for critical engagement with the material cultures of non-European societies. — Coco Fusco ― New York Review of Books
Publisher : Hatje Cantz/KW Institute for Contemporary Art (November 10, 2020)
Should museums be made to give back their marbles? Is it even possible to ‘decolonise’ our galleries? Must Rhodes fall?
From the stolen Wakandan art in Black Panther, to Emmanuel Macron’s recent commitment to art restitution, and Beyoncé and Jay Z’s provocative music video filmed in the Louvre, the question of decolonising our relationship with the art around us is quickly gaining traction. People are waking up to the seedy history of the world’s art collections, and are starting to ask difficult questions about what the future of museums should look like.
In The Whole Picture, art historian and Uncomfortable Art Tour guide Alice Procter provides a manual for deconstructing everything you thought you knew about art, and fills in the blanks with the stories that have been left out of the art history canon for centuries.
The book is divided into four chronological sections, named after four different kinds of art space:
The Palace The Classroom The Memorial The Playground
Each section tackles the fascinating and often shocking stories of five different art pieces, including the propaganda painting that the East India Company used to justify its control in India; the Maori mokomokai skulls that were traded and collected by Europeans as ‘art objects’; and Kara Walker’s controversial contemporary sculpture A Subtlety, which raised questions about ‘appropriate’ interactions with art. Through these stories, Alice brings out the underlying colonial narrative lurking beneath the art industry today, and suggests different ways of seeing and thinking about art in the modern world.
The Whole Picture is a much-needed provocation to look more critically at the accepted narratives about art, and rethink and disrupt the way we interact with the museums and galleries that display it.
About the Author
Alice Procter is an historian of material culture based at UCL. She has six years of tourguiding experience at heritage sites and galleries, and curates exhibitions, organises events, makes podcasts and writes things under the umbrella of The Exhibitionist. Alice’s academic work concentrates on the intersections of postcolonial art practice and colonial material culture, settler storytelling, the concept of whiteness in the 18th and 19th centuries, the curation of historical trauma, and myths of national identity. She has has recorded material for the Tate’s newly updated audio guides showcasing different voices. Alice is Australian but mostly grew up in England.
Walk into any European museum today and you will see the curated spoils of Empire. They sit behind plate glass: dignified, tastefully lit. Accompanying pieces of card offer a name, date and place of origin. They do not mention that the objects are all stolen. Few artefacts embody this history of rapacious and extractive colonialism better than the Benin Bronzes – a collection of thousands of metal plaques and sculptures depicting the history of the Royal Court of the Obas of Benin City, Nigeria. Pillaged during a British naval attack in 1897, the loot was passed on to Queen Victoria, the British Museum and countless private collections. The story of the Benin Bronzes sits at the heart of a heated debate about cultural restitution, repatriation and the decolonisation of museums. In The Brutish Museum, Dan Hicks makes a powerful case for the urgent return of such objects, as part of a wider project of addressing the outstanding debt of colonialism.
Reviews
“A startling act of conscience. An important book which could overturn what people have felt about British history, empire, civilisation, Africa and African art. It is with books like this that cultures are saved, by beginning truthfully to face the suppressed and brutal past.”
Ben Okri ― Endorsement
‘If you care about museums and the world, read this book’
New York Times ‘Best Art Books’ 2020 ― Review Published On: 2020-11-26
‘Hicks’s urgent, lucid, and brilliantly enraged book feels like a long-awaited treatise on justice’
Coco Fusco, New York Review of Books ― Review Published On: 2021-02-03
‘Dan, your words brought tears to my eyes. I salute you’
MC Hammer ― Endorsement
“In his passionate, personal, and, yes, political account, Dan Hicks transforms our understanding of the looting of Benin. This book shows why being against violence now more than ever means repatriating stolen royal and sacred objects and restoring stolen memories”
Nicholas Mirzoeff ― Endorsement
“Unflinching, elegantly written and passionately argued, this is a call to action.”
Bénédicte Savoy ― Endorsement
About the Author
Dan Hicks is Professor of Contemporary Archaeology at the University of Oxford, Curator at the Pitt Rivers Museum, and a Fellow of St Cross College, Oxford. His award-winning research focuses on decolonisation in art and culture, and academic disciplines, and on the role of cultural whiteness in ongoing histories of colonial violence and dispossession.
Across the globe, global commercial demand for arable land is on the rise. One of the most profitable new agricultural hotspots is Ethiopia. [Online until: February 4, 2019]
Farmland – the new green gold. In the hopes of huge export revenues, the Ethiopian government is leasing millions of hectares of land to foreign investors. But there’s a dark side to this dream of prosperity.
The results are massive forced evictions, the destruction of smallholdings, state repression, and a vicious spiral of violence in light of environmental devastation. Global institutions like the EU, World Bank and DFID are contributing to this disaster with billions of dollars in development money every year. Whoever gets in their way is met with severe consequences. The young Ethiopian environmental activist Argaw learned that the hard way when he tried to raise awareness for his country’s plight.
Are transnational land investments bolstering the economy or selling out the country? While some hope for financial gains and development, others are losing their very livelihood. In pursuit of the story, we meet investors, bureaucrats, persecuted journalists, struggling environmentalists and farmers who have been evicted from their land. Swedish director Joakim Demmer’s shocking real-life thriller ‘Dead Donkeys Fear No Hyenas’ starts in apparently remote corners of Ethiopia and leads through global financial centers, right to our dining tables.
The dark side of agriculture in Ethiopia | DW Documentary (Farming documentary)
Farmland – the new green gold. In the hopes of huge export revenues, the Ethiopian government is leasing millions of hectares of land to foreign investors. But there’s a dark side to this dream of prosperity.
The results are massive forced evictions, the destruction of smallholdings, state repression, and a vicious spiral of violence in light of environmental devastation. Global institutions like the EU, World Bank and DFID are contributing to this disaster with billions of dollars in development money every year. Whoever gets in their way is met with severe consequences. The young Ethiopian environmental activist Argaw learned that the hard way when he tried to raise awareness for his country’s plight.
Are transnational land investments bolstering the economy or selling out the country? While some hope for financial gains and development, others are losing their very livelihood. In pursuit of the story, we meet investors, bureaucrats, persecuted journalists, struggling environmentalists and farmers who have been evicted from their land. Swedish director Joakim Demmer’s shocking real-life thriller starts in apparently remote corners of Ethiopia and leads through global financial centers, right to our dining tables.
New China TVAug 28, 2021
Did you know paper was invented in China? To ancient Chinese, along with the calligraphy brush, ink and ink stone, it was one of the “four treasures in the study.” In this third episode of four, English teacher Mark Dinning from the UK learns how to make “royal paper”
Al Jazeera EnglishAug 28, 2021
The man convicted of assassinating US Senator Robert F Kennedy has been granted parole, after trying for his freedom sixteen times. Sirhan Sirhan, 77, has served 53 years for shooting Kennedy at a campaign event at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles in 1968. Al Jazeera’s Phil Lavelle reports from Los Angeles, California
Al Jazeera EnglishAug 28, 2021
The issue of voter rights will take centre stage in the United States on Saturday. Protesters will march in Washington, DC, to demand an end to voter suppression. The House of Representatives passed a bill that would roll back many of those restrictions, but it is unlikely to pass in the Senate. Al Jazeera’s John Hendren reports.
Economist and Professor Richard Wolff analyzes the deficiencies of modern capitalism, articulating the benefits of a socialist system and the road to a more equitable society. He promotes not a radical shift in economic system, but a gradual transformation involving a shift in consciousness from profits before people to people above all else.
Welcome to Transition Studies. To prosper for very much longer on the changing Earth humankind will need to move beyond its current fossil-fueled civilization toward one that is sustained on recycled materials and renewable energy. This is not a trivial shift. It will require a major transition in all aspects of our lives.
This weblog explores the transition to a sustainable future on our finite planet. It provides links to current news, key documents from government sources and non-governmental organizations, as well as video documentaries about climate change, environmental ethics and environmental justice concerns.
The links are listed here to be used in whatever manner they may be helpful in public information campaigns, course preparation, teaching, letter-writing, lectures, class presentations, policy discussions, article writing, civic or Congressional hearings and citizen action campaigns, etc. For further information on this blog see: About this weblog. and How to use this weblog.
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