Do androids dream of electric... devices?

Do androids dream of electric... devices? 

Ah Apple... My original (and now vintage) made-in-2003 i-Pod is living its final hours... 

How could you leave me little android machine? 

This piece of technology has been me with ever since my Czech adventures and through that trip in Chicago when the war in Iraq was launched, up until my walk-to-work days in Nairobi, my trips to India and Mexico, my dozens of other journeys through Africa and of course my London hours of bus- and tube-rides. 

The very same little machine! 

Do I need a 2049 version? Or maybe simply some new music...?

Most listened-to tracks? 
Radiohead competes with Arcade Fire, Tori Amos, and a certain band from Bristol...

'Carriage For Two' - Tricky live in 1998

Tricky - 'Carriage For Two' -  Live at Chris Rock Show 1998

"Carriage For Two"

Water, now I've got me a daughter
Carriage for two
I call my baby Boo

Hey T, I've got a little black girl
And this little black girl's beautiful
Carriage for two
Now come on, yeah

Carriage for two
I call my baby Boo
Hey T, I've got a little black girl
And this little black girl's beautiful
I try to do what's dutiful

Water, water, now I've got me a little daughter
Carriage for two
I call my, I call my baby Boo
Hey T, I've got a little black girl
And this little black girl's beautiful

I try to do, I try to do
I try to do what's dutiful
I'll teach her to lead
And no, never must she let go

Your father's rich
I teach her to lead
But never must she let go
Your father's rich
Your father's from the get-go

Them that's got shall get
And them that's not shall lose
It's all the Bible says
It's easy when you lose

Mama may have and Papa may have
But God bless the child
But God bless the child
That's got his own

Them that's got shall get
Them that's not shall lose
It's all the Bible says
It's easy when you lose

Mama may have and Papa may have
But God bless the child
That's got his own
But God bless the child
That's got his own

Beautiful, just beautiful
Is beautiful, is beautiful, is beautiful
And water, it's beautiful that daughter

And God bless the child
That's got his own
God bless the child
That's got his own
Got his own, got his own

Your father's rich
Your father's from the get-go
Your father's rich
Your father's from the get-go

And so many times never was this easy
I wish you're strong, baby, don't you cry
So tiny

John Akomfrah - "Purple"

 If there is one talent that I would trade for all others though, if I really had to pick one, I think he'd be him: John Akomfrah.

Ok, maybe I exclude the talents I've worked with and am too closed to, like Raoul Peck, who's a very good friend of Akomfrah's anyway. Just to be fair!

If you haven't seen any of his films, more artworks through video that simple "films" however, you must fix this gap!

John Akomfrah has now a new show at the Barbican Centre, in London, I mentioned it here a few moth ago: Purple.

John Akomfrah. Still frames from Purple, 2017. Six screen film installation

John Akomfrah

Purple

6 Oct 2017—7 Jan 2018,The Curve

British artist and filmmaker, John Akomfrah creates his most ambitious piece to date - an immersive six-channel video installation addressing climate change, human communities and the wilderness.

At a time when, according to the UN, greenhouse gas emissions from human activities are at their highest levels in history, with people experiencing the significant impacts of climate change, including shifting weather patterns, rising sea level, and more extreme weather events, Akomfrah’s Purple brings a multitude of ideas into conversation. These include animal extinctions, the memory of ice, the plastic ocean and global warming. Akomfrah has combined hundreds of hours of archival footage with newly shot film and a hypnotic sound score to produce the video installation.

Winner of the 2017 Artes Mundi Prize.

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And here is what the Guardian has to say about it (extracts):

Link to read the whole article:
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2017/oct/01/john-akomfrah-purple-climate-change?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

John Akomfrah: ‘Progress can cause profound suffering’

For the British artist, global warming, the subject of his ambitious new video installation, is a process rooted in technology and exploitation

Sunday 1 October 2017

John Akomfrah grew up in the 1960s, in the shadow of Battersea power station in south London. As a child, he remembers “feeling as if I was enveloped in something whenever I played on the street. You could sense it in the air, you felt it and saw it, whatever was emanating from the huge chimneys. We were being poisoned as we played, but no one spoke about it. The conversations in the pub tended to be about football rather than carbon monoxide poisoning.”

Fifty years on, the local has become the global. Akomfrah’s latest art work, Purple, is an immersive, six-channel video installation that attempts to evoke the incremental effects of climate change on our planet. Shot in 10 countries and drawing on archive footage, spoken word and music alongside often epic shots of contemporary landscapes that have been altered by global warming and rising temperatures, Purple eschews a linear narrative for an almost overwhelming montage of imagery and sound.

Like all of Akomfrah’s work, it requires the viewer to surrender to sensory overload, while remaining alert to the often oblique connections being made throughout. “I kept thinking back, while making this work, to the local, working-class community I grew up in and how innocent we were in terms of trusting authority. One of the complex questions I am asking is about the relationship between our locality and the bigger issue of how we belong on the planet. Who can we trust with our collective future?”

(...)

More than once, Akomfrah describes Purple as “a response to Anthropocene”, the term coined by scientists for the geological age in which we are now living, a period defined by the influence of manmade activity on climate and the environment. A major source of inspiration for Purple is a 2013 book called Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology After the End of the World. Written by Timothy Morton, an English academic, it posits the idea that global warming is the most dramatic illustration of a “hyperobject” – an entity of such vast temporal and spatial dimensions that it baffles our traditional ways of thinking about it and, by extension, doing something about it.

(...)

All these big themes are embedded in Purple, but may remain elusive to those unfamiliar with the tropes of conceptual art and experimental, non-narrative film-making. I was baffled, for instance, by recurring appearances of those mysterious silent figures who stand mute before often elemental landscapes on Alaska, Greenland and Skye. “In a very real way, I’m present in the film. I’m the figure in the brown shirt who gets rained on,” says Akomfrah, laughing. “It sounds a bit mystical, but for me everything starts with place. Wherever we filmed, it began with me asking the landscape the same question: ‘What can you tell me about the nature of climate change?’ As an artist and film-maker, I’m dependent on the responses I get from the environment.”

Is he aware, given the often bitterly contested nature of the public climate change debate, that a multiscreen, non-narrative conceptual art film that provides no answers may be greeted by a degree of scepticism, if not outright dismissal, from those on both sides demanding hard facts and evidence? “Well, I’m an artist. I make work for a gallery. I’m not attempting to make a science documentary. I’m coming at it from a different perspective by asking the question: what is philosophically, ethically and morally at stake here if we continue on this course? I don’t think you need to be licensed by the scientific community to ask that sort of question about the times we live in or to reflect on the anxiety many of us feel about the future of the planet. My son is old enough to become a father. On a purely personal level, it certainly felt like the right time for me as an artist to be asking these questions.”

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Purple is exhibited from 6 Oct to 7 Jan at the Curve, Barbican, London

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More of John Akomfrah's work:

The Stuart Hall Project (2013) - John Akomfrah (Trailer) | BFI

Published on 16 Aug 2013

The Stuart Hall Project (2013) - John Akomfrah (Trailer) | BFI. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/subscribetotheBFI

Released on BFI DVD on 20 January 2014
http://www.bfi.org.uk/blu-rays-dvds/s...

A John Akomfrah film about revolution, politics, culture and the New Left experience.

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Nadine Khouri

 One of my current favourite female voices, produced by the fantastic John Parish and inspired, among others, by the irreplaceable and very much missed Lhasa De Sela:

Nadine Khouri & band - Live at the Lexington 12.07.17

Published on 4 Oct 2017

with
Basia Bartz (violin, BVs)
Huw Bennett (double-bass, BVs)
Jake Long (drums)
Lizzie O'Connor (BVs)

filmed and edited by Andy Ash


The Salted Air, produced by John Parish, available on:
Exclusive Coloured Vinyl - https://www.roughtrade.com/music/the-...
CD - http://smarturl.it/NadineKhouriAmzCD
Digital -  http://smarturl.it/NadineKhouriit




Follow Nadine:
https://open.spotify.com/artist/3129g...
http://www.twitter.com/nadine_khouri
http://www.facebook.com/nadinekhourim...
http://www.instagram.com/nadine_khouri
http://www.soundcloud.com/nadine-khouri

 Everything in the Ibeyi Twins is a delight :)

Ibeyi - Ash Tour Teaser

Published on 6 Oct 2017

'Deathless' taken from Ibeyi's new album 'Ash', available everywhere now on XL Recordings - http://x-l-r.co/ash

See Ibeyi on tour - www.ibeyi.fr

2017 

EUROPE

06-10-2017 – LILLE (FR)  • L’Aéronef
12-10-2017 - NANTES (FR) • Stéréolux
18-10-2017 - BRISTOL (UK) • Thekla / SOLD OUT
19-10-2017 - LONDON (UK) • Shoreditch Town Hall / SOLD OUT
20-10-2017 - MANCHESTER (UK) • Band on the Wall  / SOLD OUT
24-11-2017 - PARIS (FR) • Casino de Paris – Les Inrocks Festival
02-12-2017 - KÖLN (DE) • Club Bahnhof Ehrenfeld
03-12-2017 - BERLIN (DE) • Lido / SOLD OUT
04-12-2017 - HAMBURG (DE) • Knust
05-12-2017 - AMSTERDAM (NL) • Paradiso Noord
07-12-2017 - LOUVAIN (BE) • Het Depot

US
28-10-2017 - MIAMI (US) • North Beach Bandshell
30-10-2017 - ATLANTA (US) • Variety Playhouse
01-11-2017 - WASHINGTON (US) • 9:30 Club
04-11-2017 - PHILDELPHIA (US) • Union Transfer
05-11-2017 - BROOKLYN (US) • Brooklyn Steel
06-11-2017 - MONTREAL (CA) • Corona Theatre
07-11-2017 - TORONTO (CA) • Phoenix Concert Theatre
09-11-2017 - DETROIT (US) • Magic Stick
10-11-2017 - CHICAGO (US) • Metro - Red Bull Sound Select
11-11-2017 - MINNEAPOLIS (US) • Fine Line Music Cafe
14-11-2017 - SEATTLE (US) • Neptune Theatre
15-11-2017 - VANCOUVER (CA) • The Commodore Ballroom
16-11-2017 - PORTLAND (US) • Revolution Hall
18-11-2017 - SAN FRANCISCO (US) • The Fillmore
19-11-2017 - LOS ANGELES (US) • Theatre at The Ace Hotel

2018

28-02-2018 - LONDON (UK), Electric Brixton
01-03-2018 - BRUXELLES (BE), Ancienne Belgique
02-03-2018 - LUXEMBOURG (LU), Den Atelier
06-03-2018 - CENON (FR), Le Rocher du Palmer
07-03-2018 - TOULOUSE (FR), Le Bikini
09-03-2018 - AGEN (FR), Le Florida
10-03-2018 - PERPIGNAN (FR), El Médiator
11-03-2018 - MONTPELLIER (FR), Rockstore
13-03-2018 - DIJON (FR), La Vapeur
15-03-2018 - ANGERS (FR), Le Chabada
16-03-2018 - SAINT-MALO (FR), La Nouvelle Vague
17-03-2018 - RENNES (FR), L'Étage
20-03-2018 - NANCY (FR), L'Autre Canal
21-03-2018 - MUNICH (DE), Kammerspiel
23-03-2018 - ZURICH (CH), M4Music Festival
24-03-2018 - ANNEMASSE (FR), Château Rouge
25-03-2018 - GRENOBLE (FR), La Belle Électrique

Independence: double standards

Such a sadly worsening situation in Spain. Whoever started fueling the dream of independence, they don't seem to have a plan for after the referendum...

British friends, reminds you of something?

Now the Spanish government will have to authorize a legal vote for everyone in Catalonia, but what will come next? Do people realise that they are not going to become a magically happy nation just because they throw the other Spaniards out...? What kind of future are they building for themselves?

 Odd, scary times in Europe.

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Catalonia: hundreds of thousands join anti-independence rally in Barcelona

Police say 350,000 have protested against regional government’s separatist course, but organisers say 930,000 joined in

The Guardian

Sam Jones in Madrid and Stephen Burgen in Barcelona

Sunday 8 October 2017 15.03 BST

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/08/catalonia-spain-prime-minister-refuses-rule-out-suspending-autonomy

Hundreds of thousands of people have taken to the streets of Barcelona to protest against the Catalan government’s decision to push for independence, as Spain’s prime minister warned that he was prepared to suspend the region’s autonomy to stop it splitting from the rest of the country.

Sunday’s rally – organised by Societat Civil Catalana, the region’s main pro-unity organisation – comes a week after the independence referendum that has plunged Spain into its worst political crisis in four decades.

The march, whose slogan is “Let’s recover our common sense”, was intended to call for a new phase of dialogue with the rest of Spain and featured such luminaries as the Nobel-winning novelist Mario Vargas Llosa and Josep Borrell, former president of the European parliament.

Societat Civil Catalan said as many as 930,000 people had taken part, but Barcelona police put the turnout at 350,000.

The Catalan president, Carles Puigdemont, is under growing pressure to stop short of declaring independence. The political uncertainty has already led some businesses – including Spain’s third-largest bank – to move their bases from Catalonia.

According to the Catalan government, 90% of participants voted for independence in the referendum, 7.8% voted against and almost 2% of ballot papers were left blank. 

Puigdemont is due to appear in the Catalan parliament on Tuesday to “report on the current political situation” and to put the referendum results to MPs.

The move – seen as an attempt to circumvent the Spanish constitutional court’s ban on a similar session scheduled for Monday – could potentially provide an opportunity for the region’s promised unilateral declaration of independence.

(...)

Despite the Spanish authorities’ efforts to stop the referendum, 2.3 million of Catalonia’s 5.3 million registered voters took part, although many Catalans who oppose independence boycotted the poll for fear of lending it legitimacy.

A full count of the votes has been complicated by the fact that police removed many ballot boxes from polling stations. The regional government said police had shut down polling stations where up to 770,000 people could have voted.

--

Meanwhile, the Kurdish people of Iraq have been fighting for their independence for decades and they are facing the consequences of 20 years of war and political turmoil, plus ISIS... 

The Catalans are mainly angry about the past dictatorship of Franco. But it is indeed... in the past.

Typical situation of double standards in European newspapers and mainly on social media.

Here is a column that can help understand Kurdish needs. Tough many Middle East's experts fear the current power in Erbil is just reinforcing its grips on the region...

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I was in Kurdistan last year, for the first time, with an international NGO sending doctors in conflit zones. I'm no one to take side but I wish readers in Europe could pay more attention to the rest of the world. Maybe they would stop fostering their own divisions with choice like the Brexit and the Catalan referendums... 

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The Kurds desperately want freedom – why won’t the free world support them?

Amjed Rasheed

"It’s time to end this forced marriage to post-Saddam Iraq"

Friday 29 September 2017 14.23 BST

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/sep/29/kurdish-freedom-referendum-iraq

Despite the huge international pressure to postpone or cancel the independence referendum in Iraqi Kurdistan, it went ahead and 92% voted yes, with a 72% turnout. We Kurds are the largest “nationality” in the world without our own nation – and we were not going to be deterred from having our say.

There are roughly 40 million of us distributed among Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey after the collapse of the Ottoman empire – the victims of the secret Sykes-Picot agreement between the French and British authorities in 1916, which was confirmed at the San Remo conference in 1920.

After the Kuwait crisis in 1991, the Kurds in Iraq enjoyed some kind of “empirical sovereignty” – the right to defend their own areas – and “positive sovereignty”, managing to deliver public services to the citizens. In 1992 they held their first parliamentary elections, and agreed to be part of a future federal Iraq. After the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, Kurds voluntarily took part in building the new Iraq and its institutions, under the protection of the Kurdish peshmerga troops – the only organised armed force in the immediate aftermath of 2003. In 2005 all Iraqis, including the Kurds, agreed on a federal constitution to preserve the rights of all.

But now, after 14 years of post-Saddam Iraq, Kurds believe that our time has come to end that forced marriage to Iraq. The dominant narrative in Kurdistan is that during the first Iraqi republic – between 1921 and 2003 – our people were gassed, bombed, displaced and ethnically cleansed; and now, during this second republic, we are deprived of a proper budget to manage our own affairs, while our political rights are violated.

Among the nearly 55 constitutional articles violated by the federal government is article 140, which deals with disputed areas of the country, including Kirkuk. Kurds also believe that Iraq is in danger of losing sovereignty to Iran, and that it is increasingly becoming a religious state, rather than the civil state agreed on in the constitution. At the same time, the rise of Islamic State and the establishment of the Shia Popular Mobilisation Forces are persistent threats to the region’s security. Being part of “one Iraq” has been an expensive business that Kurds can no longer afford.

Opposition to the Kurdish referendum seems to have brought together rival actors for the first time in the history of the region. Syria, Iraq, Iran, Turkey, the US, the UK and Isis all came out against it: they’ve never agreed on anything before. Baghdad says the referendum is not constitutional. However, the federal government’s violation of the constitution is what has paved the way for the dissolution of the country.

The US and its allies say that the referendum would affect the war against Isis. This argument is also weak. The peshmerga are ready to defend the areas under their control. Isis is operating near Kurdish areas, there’s an obvious strategic interest for Kurds to defeat them – that’s not going to change with independence. Kurdish officials have repeatedly assured Washington and Baghdad of their commitment. They are prepared to fight Isis alongside Iraqi forces in Hawija near Kirkuk.

It should not be a surprise to see democratic governments opposing this democratic referendum – we are seeing the same thing in Catalonia too. But was it not only a few years ago that the US and the UK waged a war supposedly to spread democracy in Iraq? This fresh rejection cannot be described as anything other than a form of neo-colonialism, in which the voice of oppressed people is forcefully muted.

The result of the Kurdish referendum reflects a popular demand. The free world should stop taking sides, and instead help Erbil and Baghdad to achieve a peaceful solution. Instead of insulting democracy, they should respect the will of the Iraqi Kurds. They should value the sacrifices our people have made in the fight against Isis by addressing the grievances that we have had for over a century now. I think Abraham Lincoln said it best: “Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves.”

• Amjed Rasheed is a research fellow at the Institute for Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at Durham University

Raoul Peck sur James Baldwin

Raoul Peck a participé à l'émission La Grande Librairie de France 5 hier soir :

James Baldwin : porte-voix de l'Amérique noire

Published on 6 Oct 2017

Le cinéaste haïtien Raoul Peck. Il fait résonner les mots de l'écrivain américain James Baldwin dans « I am not your negro » aux éditions Robert Laffont, livre tiré du film documentaire éponyme.

Le film est devenu un livre :

More about Giles Duley's exhibition "I can only tell you what my eyes see"

 From a great photographer, and everything seems to show, a great human being.

I briefly end up to face Giles Duley in Bristol's festival at the Downs in September 2016.

A few months earlier, we almost crossed paths when I realize we were in Dohuk, in Iraqi Kurdistan, at the same time, in April 2016... He was there with the UNHCR, I with a small NGO of doctors based in between Paris and Beirut.

Complete admiration for so much devotion and an incredible force of resilience.

His last exhibition here:

Giles Duley Photographer

10 hrs · 

"my one hope is that somebody comes to this exhibition and leaves feeling inspired" 

ILFORD PHOTO (Official Page)

ILFORD Inspires presents: 

Giles Duley "I can only tell you what my eyes see"

Published on 5 Oct 2017

The exhibition I Can Only Tell You What My Eyes See is a coming together of stories and storytellers. Over ten days a magical mix of food, music, talks and collaborative art will transform the Truman Brewery into a community where conversations will start. https://icanonlytellyouwhatmyeyessee....

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THE EXHIBITION Wednesday 4th Oct – Sunday 15th Oct 

“My hope is to reflect the hospitality I have received from refugees whilst making the work in this exhibition, and to create an environment that facilities conversation and understanding. Ultimately it’s about creating a space where stories will be shared and action inspired.” 

The exhibition I Can Only Tell You What My Eyes See is a coming together of stories and storytellers. Over ten days a magical mix of food, music, talks and collaborative art will transform the Truman Brewery into a community where conversations will start, and action inspired.

At its heart, a series of a hundred images by the photographer Giles Duley documenting the refugee crisis for UNHCR. From the horror of boats arriving in Lesvos, to stark portraits of people stood against white backgrounds, Duley tells the stories of refugees with the empathy his work is noted for. In the section dedicated to the families Duley has been documenting for years, we get to see the true face of this crisis. But this exhibition is also a celebration of life, of culture, and the human spirit. It is not a place that wants to create pity, rather a place to inspire change. In troubled times, when the refugee crisis can seem overwhelming; this exhibition aims to be a place of hope.

The exhibition is about creating new work and ideas; it is not a full stop, rather a transition, where stories shared lead to further actions and art. The Legacy of War Collective is a loose body of artists who have been affected by conflict, they will act as artists in residence who will perform in the evenings as well as create new art inspired by stories around the show.

These will include:

The artist in residence – Semaan Khawam

The musicians in residence – SEEDS_I play with Mozart – Alaa Arsheed, Isaac De Martin, Panno Celeste and Haian Arsheid

The writer in residence – Sulaiman Addonia

Further collaboration comes from Rob Del Naja of Massive Attack who has created a soundscape for the exhibition. An installation of music that will be played through old radios, breaking the normal silence of an exhibition.

Finally, in a small room off the main exhibition will be some of the most powerful work; a collection of paintings by young Syrian artists living in Zaatari camp. This powerful series, supported by Find A Better Way, gives a unique insight into a child’s mind. The paintings convey the emotions of a young generation that, notwithstanding the tragedies witnessed, is determined to rise.

Duley wanted to take this exhibition away from the normal constraints of photographic show, as he describes it, the ‘Chapel Experience’. The whole point of Duley’s work is to get people engaged and inspired to action, they only way that happens is if conversations start.

So to facilitate that, there will be a supper gathering every evening. A gathering based around food, collaborations and conversations. A hundred guests will sit and enjoy a feast of Levantine cuisine, a chance to talk to strangers and share ideas.

We will sit together at a beautiful table designed by The Future Kept, to enjoy the home cooked food of Nadeen and Louai, a Syrian couple who set up Sakbeh.

During the evening there will be a guided tour of the exhibition by myself, and as we eat – talks, music, a celebration of arts and debates on action that can be taken. Every night, a slightly different mix.

Any profits go to support the work of the Legacy of War Foundation – supporting survivors of conflict.

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Open: 

Wednesday 4th Oct – Sunday 15th Oct         10am – 6.30pm

Supper Club details here

Address: The Old Truman Brewery- F Block T2 - 89 Brick Lane E1 6QL London

"Sometimes in April"

 This film was made 12 yeas ago and shot in Kigali, Rwanda:

Sometimes in April - trailer

Sometimes In April

In Variety, 2006

The 1994 genocide in Rwanda serves as the springboard for emotive but thuddingly didactic drama in helmer Raoul Peck’s “Sometimes in April,” competing in Berlin against similarly themed but glossier “Hotel Rwanda.”

Peck’s pic gets its hands dirtier by swimming in muddy waters of moral responsibility through the story of a fractured family living through the war’s atrocities and still dealing with the aftermath 10 years on.

Oscar-nominated documentary "I am Not Your Negro" in Oxford on 18th October

Art as Activism: Baldwin’s legacy and relevance today - film screening and panel discussion on 18th October in Oxford

21 SEP 2017

Stuart Hall Foundation in collaboration with Merton College, Oxford and TORCH are organising 

a film screening of Raoul Peck’s Oscar-nominated documentary I am Not Your Negro followed 

by a panel discussion on 18th October in Oxford.

In his incendiary documentary, master filmmaker Raoul Peck envisions the book James Baldwin 

never finished. The result is a radical, up-to-the-minute examination of race in America, using 

Baldwin’s original words and a flood of rich archival material.

The film screening will be followed by a discussion with the award-winning artist and 

filmmaker Isaac Julien and writer Caryl Phillips, moderated by Professor Alison Donnell 

(University of East Anglia). Taking the film and James Baldwin’s work as a starting point, the 

speakers will discuss their work and the life of an intellectual dissident in relation to art, politics

and activism.

Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures. Photo credit Dan Budnik

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