Basquiat soundtrack... @ Philharmonie!

 

More soon.

"Racism makes people physically ill"

 

Reading this revealing interview; may have found a name for a certain form of pain...

Guardian Interview

Extraordinarily stressed and vigilant? How racism makes people physically ill

Arline Geronimus was once called the biggest threat to youth in the US. But her theory of how injustice affects our health is more influential than ever

by Nesrine Malik, a Guardian columnist and the author of We Need New Stories: Challenging the Toxic Myths Behind Our Age of Discontent

Extract:

After decades of research into public health, Geronimus is an expert in what she calls “weathering”, a term she coined: “the physiological effects of living in communities that bear the brunt of racial, ethnic, religious and class discrimination”.

Read the entire interview here: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/apr/04/extraordinarily-stressed-and-vigilant-how-racism-makes-people-physically-ill

Weathering, she adds, “is critical to understanding and eliminating population health inequity” and involves not just the physical and environmental stressors of being marginalised, but the “psychosocial” ones as well – high stress, constant vigilance, a lack of trust that things will be OK.

The process, she has observed in her research, leads to premature ageing, chronic conditions and early death.

In her new book, Weathering: The Extraordinary Stress on the Body of an Ordinary Life in an Unjust Society, the pandemic seems to vindicate her thesis.

It wasn’t just a person’s age that made them vulnerable to the virus, it was also their weathering.

It was already established that Covid killed people in racialised communities at a much higher rate than white ones, but that, according to Geronimus’s research, was because they had higher rates of heart diseases, diabetes and inflammation; all risk factors that made Covid more deadly.

Even before the pandemic, people in these communities scored high on the “allostatic load score” – the presence of stress hormones such as cortisol along with inflammation, their belly fat distribution linked to stress, and high blood pressure – leading her to conclude that “if you have a weathered body, you’re more likely to die of infection at a younger age”. That, tragically, has turned out to be consistent with the patterns of death in the pandemic.

(...)

Geronimus has always faced fierce resistance. “That’s why I wrote the book,” she says. “Earlier in my career, people were very cold. There were headlines in books and newspapers like: ‘Research queen says: let them have babies’. This was the early 90s, the height of neoliberalism and underclass rhetoric. I had no constituency. It wasn’t just that I ran up against more rightwing or neoliberal people. In the popular press, I was a heretic. I got death threats. It was all ideological.”

(...)

She doesn’t receive nearly as much vitriol as she used to, but she still thinks that we’re not there yet. People are so brainwashed by the myths of the American dream, social mobility and self-improvement that they are led to believe that one way or another it’s minorities’ own fault for not thriving.

In the US, Gerominus says, the belief is that “black Americans are not working hard enough” or are fatalistic and “stress-eating, lying on the couch”. The truth she has seen is that they are in fact constantly resourceful, pulling together as a community and “solving the unsolvable” in the face of daily, structural challenges.

To this day, only “part of the idea” of weathering has been incorporated into mainstream public-health consciousness. “There’s language to talk about it that we didn’t have 30 years ago, of structural racism or systemic racism, social determinants of health – everybody’s now conversant in these concepts.” This covers the part “where your body is eroded by the corrosive effects of being a part of an exploited, oppressed group”.

But the other part of weathering is still not widely grasped: the coping part, the part where the people being weathered “stand up, try to be resilient, and try to withstand all the structural barricades and the exposure or the exhaustion. Weathering means both things – it is both shelter and storm.”

This second part is often ignored, reducing community or group-based dynamics and demands to identity politics positions in a culture war. “What we misread as selfish competitive identity politics is about social identities that have been imposed on groups. But many of the hardships and adversities they face are because they’ve been racialised.”

(...)

Her biggest hope is that people start to think about things in terms of weathering and that it leads them in different directions, away from the same old failed policies. She hopes that solutions are offered for public-health crises outside the usual ones relating to urban development and lifestyle improvements.

(...)

“We tend to think of social mobility as moving up to something better,” she says. “But whatever moves you to opportunity also moves you away from things that give your life purpose and meaning, and people who validate your view of the world and don’t just assume what your moral fibre is or your intellectual abilities are just because of what social identity has been imposed on you.” There are, she says, “real minuses to social mobility and even the pluses don’t get you out of weathering. If we really think that being socially mobile is a sign of good character then we need to make sure that persistence and tenaciousness and sacrifice doesn’t make you sick or disabled or die young. We shouldn’t stand for that.”

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Weathering: The Extraordinary Stress of an Ordinary Life in an Unjust Society is published by Little, Brown (£25)

Journalist at RFI English

Covering African & International news 

for RFI English

DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO

Call for investigation after head of DRC broadcasting body attacked in Paris

Text by:Melissa Chemam with RFI

The Head of the broadcasting body in the DR Congo, Christian Bosembe, was attacked in Paris while on a tour to meet with European media and francophone institutions.The Congolese authorities want the perpetrators caught.

Christian Bosembe, president of the audiovisual authority in the DRC (CSAC), was attacked in Paris on Saturday night, 1 April, by members of the Congolese diaspora. 

Speaking to RFI on Monday, Bosembe denounced an "attempted kidnapping and assassination" and said he was waiting for French justice to do its job.

“The attack was filmed by the attackers, the perpetrators are known. They must be arrested and prosecuted," he added.

Verbal attack

He said he was returning with his adviser to his hotel in Argenteuil, a town located about ten kilometers north-west of Paris when he was attacked in the parking lot of the establishment by several men, who first shouted at him in the Congelese language of Lingala.

The people who beat him up described themselves to him as “fighters” (combattants), a term that refers to violent militants, opposed to the current Congolese government.

During the assault, they insulted him and called him a “collabo”, the name frequently used for those working with the Congolese regime.

A video recording of the attacks has gone viral on social media and shows Christian Bosembe fighting back. Most of those involved in the attack appear to be Congolese.

Bosembe has been on an official visit of Schengen countries since Friday, 31 March, which started in Paris.

The visit aims to reinforce the relations between the Congolese CSAC with broadcasting bodies and the French-speaking community representative bodies including Canal +, Radio France Internationale (RFI), France 24, and l'Organisation internationale de la francophonie. 

Demand for 'clarifications'

In the DRC, the news has been met with dismay and anger.

On Sunday, the CSAC met and issued a statement calling on the French authorities for “clarifications” about the incident.

Serge Ndjibu, of the CSAC, denounced an “attempted murder” and called for investigation.

Speaking to RFI’s correspondent in Kinshasa, Pascal Mulegwa, Ndjibu said:

"That a president of an institution supporting democracy was brutally and cowardly attacked, without any intervention, while President Christian Bosembe is on an official mission, in consultation with the French authorities, is shocking. 

“It was an attempted murder on an official of the DRC [...]

“The CSAC demands clarifications from the French was well as the arrest, judgement and condemnation of the perpetrators of these crimes.” 

The attack was also condemned by the Congolese Minister of Communication, Patrick Muyaya, who said the DRC authorities would work with France to get justice.

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My work here:   https://www.rfi.fr/en/author/melissa-chemam-with-rfi/ 

Reports from Bristol here: https://www.rfi.fr/en/environment/20150427-bristol-european-green-capital-2015-series-part-1-3

‘Dirty, Difficult and Dangerous’

 

The best film I've seen in a while!

At AFLAM film festival, Marseille, cinema Les Variétés, March 2023

The feature film DIRTY DIFFICULT DANGEROUS directed by Wissam Charaf, has won the Europa Cinemas Label as Best European film at the 79th Venice International Film Festival, as it was announced today by a Jury of four Europa Cinemas Network exhibitors. 

The jury issued the following statement: “Wissam Charaf’s DIRTY DIFFICULT DANGEROUS is a delight – a very original and surprisingly uplifting film, and our unanimous choice as the winner of the Europa Cinemas Label here in Venice.  Yes it deals with many of the tragic issues that confront us all – war, refugees, trafficking – but Charaf comes up with a love story that even has strong fairy tale elements. Set in Beirut and on the Lebanese/Syrian border, we follow the heartening relationship between an Ethiopian girl and a Syrian man. There is a lightness of touch here – a pleasing lack of lecturing and some darkly funny moments. The film will give audiences a real sense of hope born from courage, and we feel strongly that it will appeal well beyond arthouse audiences across Europe.”

Synopsis: Beirut, Lebanon, the present. Ahmed, a Syrian refugee, and Mehdia, an Ethiopian migrant domestic worker, are living an impossible love of stolen kisses on street corners. While Mehdia tries to free herself from her employers, Ahmed struggles to survive by selling scrap metal, while affected by a mysterious disease. The two lovers may have no future, but they also have nothing to lose. One day, they seize their chance and flee Beirut, in a desperate attempt to start over elsewhere, as Ahmed’s physical condition starts to gets worse. 

Wissam Charaf is a Lebanese/French director, cameraman and editor. In 1998 he began to work with the French/German channel ARTE as a news cameraman, editor and journalist, covering major political hotspots. He has directed six shorts: HIZZ YA WIZZ, A HERO NEVER DIES, AN ARMY OF ANTS, AFTER, UNFORGETTABLE MEMORY OF A FRIEND and DON'T PANIC as well as the documentary IT'S ALL IN LEBANON. His first feature film HEAVEN SENT premiered at the ACID section of the 2016 Cannes Film Festival. DIRTY DIFFICULT DANGEROUS is his second feature film.

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'Dirty, Difficult, Dangerous' 

 Wissam Charaf 

With Clara Couturet, Ziad Jallad, Darina Al Joundi, Rifaat Tarabay 

Sortie France le 26 avril 2023

Akilla's Escape - soundtrack

 

Restless Leg

Provided to YouTube by Reservoir Media Management, Inc. Restless Leg · 3D · Euan Dickinson Music From The Motion Picture: Akilla’s Escape ℗ 2019 Robert Del Naja and Euan Dickinson Released on: 2023-03-31 Producer: Robert Del Naja Producer: Euan Dickinson

Chaos Coaltition

Provided to YouTube by Reservoir Media Management, Inc. Chaos Coaltition · 3D · Euan Dickinson Music From The Motion Picture: Akilla’s Escape ℗ 2019 Robert Del Naja and Euan Dickinson Released on: 2023-03-31 Composer: Robert Del Naja Composer: Euan Dickinson Auto-generated by YouTube

Count Of Zero

'We Get What You Deserve'

 

We Get What You Deserve · 3D · Euan Dickinson · Saul Williams Music From The Motion Picture: Akilla’s Escape ℗ 2019 Robert Del Naja and Euan Dickinson Released on: 2023-03-31 Composer: Robert Del Naja Composer: Euan Dickinson Auto-generated by YouTube.

Affaire d'appropriation : Suites

 

Un petite mise à jour pour ceux qui s'intéressent toujours à mon affaire (si vous pensez que les droits d'auteurs sont obsolètes, c'est un autre sujet!) : 

Un avocat m'a rappelée, a lu mon document (sans charger 300€ de l'heure pour l'instant, c'est bien généreux!), et il pense qu'il s'agit d'un cas de plagiat en mosaïque, oui, d' "appropriationnisme", et de parasitisme.

C'est malheureusement à nous de le démontrer, ce qui va me rajouter des heures de travail... et un coût majeur.

Je suis déjà particulièrement stressée par le choc, le contexte, le mépris de ces gens, leur cynisme et leur absence d'intérêt pour mes convictions sociales et politiques.

Pour infos : Je ne fais pas ça pour "vendre des livres", d'ailleurs il semble qu'ils soient en rupture de stock. 

Mon livre est un hommage à un mouvement culturel, avec lequel j'ai vécu et grandi, et à des artistes issus de l'immigration, avec un discours politique fort. 

Comme moi...

Pour ceux qui ne lisent pas, n'achètent pas de livres, j'ai écrit de nombreux articles en accès libre, et participé à plusieurs émissions. L'une des plus synthétique et réussie : avec l'ami Olivier Rogez, toujours brillant.

Lien - RFI : 
https://www.rfi.fr/fr/emission/20161014-melissa-chemam-auteure-livre-dehors-zone-confort

INVITÉ CULTURE

Melissa Chemam, auteur du livre «En dehors de la zone de confort»

Publié le : 13/10/2016 - 22:27

Bristol, la ville portuaire anglaise est devenue un mythe depuis les années 1990. C'est là que sont nés plusieurs courants artistiques majeurs. Le trip hop, côté musical. Et le Street art, côté arts plastiques. De Massive Attack à Banksy, la ville a donné au monde des artistes célèbres. La journaliste Melissa Chemam a consacré un ouvrage à cette ville et à ces artistes. En dehors de la zone de confort, paru aux éditions Anne Carrière.

Exposition Basquiat Soundtracks - du 6 avril au 30 juillet 2023

 

Basquiat & Music in Paris !

La Philharmonie de Paris organise la première exposition consacrée à la relation puissante de Jean-Michel Basquiat à la musique. Donnant à entendre autant qu’à voir, Basquiat Soundtracks s’offre comme la bande-son héroïque, multiple et foisonnante d’une œuvre fulgurante, pour laquelle la musique se révèle une clé d’interprétation essentielle – de Beethoven à Madonna, du zydeco à John Cage, de Louis Armstrong à la Zulu Nation.

DÉFERLANTES NO WAVE ET HIP-HOP

Émergeant parmi la communauté artistique du New York de la fin des années 1970, où la pluridisciplinarité est de mise, le talent de Jean-Michel Basquiat se révèle à la confluence de deux vagues musicales majeures : la no wave et le hip-hop. Poète, styliste, sculpteur et surtout musicien avant même d’être peintre, Basquiat est le leader officieux du groupe Gray qui partage la scène avec des formations phares de la no wave, tels DNA ou The Lounge Lizards. Ses premiers pas créatifs se font dans les clubs downtown qui servent de repaire à une génération d’artistes marquée par le punk qui, entre performance et expérimentation, cherche à repenser ses pratiques et ramener l’art à la vie. Simultanément, Basquiat subit de plein fouet la déferlante du hip-hop, révolution culturelle qui développe uptown ses propres codes et manières de faire, tant sur le plan de la musique que sur celui de la danse et des arts visuels. Il s’investit dans la communauté des artistes qu’il fédère au point de produire un single de rap intitulé Beat Bop (1983), mettant en vedette un pionnier du genre : Rammellzee.

LE JAZZ EN HÉRITAGE

Si les rappeurs se présentent alors comme les petits-fils des be-boppeurs, le jazz occupe aussi une place essentielle dans la peinture de Basquiat. L’artiste s’inscrit ainsi dans l’héritage culturel noir new-yorkais qui le rattache à une généalogie artistique sans équivalent dans le champ des beaux-arts. Hantée par la destinée tragique de Charlie Parker, figure du génie foudroyé, son œuvre regorge de références aux disques et aux musiciens de jazz. Sa compréhension du genre modifie en profondeur la composition de ses tableaux. Du delta du Mississippi, terre de naissance du blues, aux côtes de l’Afrique en passant par la Caraïbe à laquelle le rattachent ses ascendances haïtienne et portoricaine, l’œuvre de Basquiat explore l’Atlantique noir, ce continent immatériel et diasporique où la musique est un lieu de mémoire : elle témoigne d’un continuum spirituel à travers les âges, qu’incarne la figure ancestrale du griot.

PLONGÉE IMMERSIVE DANS UNE ŒUVRE FOISONNANTE

Réunissant un ensemble exceptionnel de près d’une centaine d’œuvres, cette exposition s’offre comme une expérience immersive dans les lieux et les sons qui ont façonné le parcours de Basquiat et alimenté son inspiration. Audacieuse, la scénographie montre sous un jour nouveau une invention picturale où la photocopie prend valeur de sample et où le mix agit comme principe structurant. Complétée d’archives rares, d’instruments emblématiques et de documents audiovisuels inédits, Basquiat Soundtracks remet en perspective une œuvre qui, tout en restant étroitement liée à la club culture – depuis l’underground jusqu’aux boîtes de nuit les plus flamboyantes des eighties – a désormais révélé sa dimension universelle.

COMMISSAIRES

Vincent Bessières
Dieter Buchhart
Mary-Dailey Desmarais

Une exposition co-organisée par Le Musée des Beaux-Arts de Montréal et la Philharmonie de Paris

Bristol research: How a French 'journalist' copied dozens of pages of my book... in her work

 

Friends in England, I want to explain my previous post...

Last week was a very sad day for me: a text came out in France, in French, (I won't call it a book), which is just a butchered version of my book, with dozens of pages directly copied, retaking all my ideas, but transforming the main angle, and plagiarising hundreds of sentences...

If you read my book and liked it, do not hesitate to amplify this post...

Followers of my blog and Facebook page know how obsessive I was about this project, for 8 years!

The so-called journalist just met Tricky last December in Berlin, and invited him on a big TV show in Paris, as she has a job in broadcasting there, and now claims that Bristol is the project of her life.

She'll well connected in France (including with the infamous BHL...), and already got a lot of attention.

I wouldn't even say anything if she had "only" stolen my idea... But it's practically word for word my book in half the text!

She also followed me on Instagram for years, then wrote to me to say she read my book, and followed my talks. And finally blocked me 6 months ago.

I'm sending the details to journalists, experts, advisers, lawyers...

Hence some pathetic Amazon links posted here and there...

Link to find the book online, in French.

(PS. Books make very little money for authors, unless you write crime novels. And I don't get any money from the UK version, the local publishers gave me a lame deal, and keep refusing to share the figures... I just gave up)

Plagiat en mosaïque - Tricky - Bristol

 

Melissa Chemam

Journaliste bilingue, indépendante, productrice radio

Contact : melissa.journalist@gmail.com 

Auteure du livre En dehors de la zone de confort - De Massive Attack à Banksy, l'histoire d'un groupe d'artistes, de leur ville, Bristol, et de leurs révolutions, sorti en octobre 2016, je viens de recevoir un livre sur Tricky, qui se présente comme différent, personnel et complémentaire, mais reprend de fait des dizaines et des dizaines de pages de mon livre.

Des phrases, titres de chapitres, intertitres sont copiés-collés, des paragraphes entiers constituent de la paraphrase pure et ce que l’on appelle du “plagiat en mosaïque”.

Définition:

 "L’un des types de plagiat les plus déroutants est le plagiat en mosaïque car il englobe de nombreux comportements différents. Il peut être plus difficile à détecter car il entrelace les phrases ou le texte de quelqu’un d’autre dans sa propre recherche. Il est également connu sous le nom de plagiat patchwork et il est intentionnel et malhonnête car vous remplacez certains mots ou sections par un travail paraphrasé pour tenter de le rendre unique. Le plagiat en mosaïque peut être considéré comme un acte de plagiat délibéré parce que certains auteurs essaient d’utiliser des mots pour tromper le fait qu’ils ont volé une idée d’un autre auteur."

Voici ci-dessous par écrit un début de comparaison de passages en question.

La pseudo auteure m’avait contactée avant d'écrire, en simple lectrice, expliquant avoir découvert la scène de Bristol grâce à moi, et vouloir venir à mes conférences dans la ville, où je vis et travaille depuis 2015.

Je réalise en conséquence un podcast sur la question des “emprunts” journalistiques, de l’inspiration, la copie, le plagiat et l'appropriation.

Toute contribution est la bienvenue. Je collecte en ce moment des interviews et témoignages d’autres auteur.e.s et journalistes concerné.e.s.

Si c’est votre cas, n’hésitez pas à me contacter : melissa.journalist@gmail.com 

Pour réaliser ce livre, j’ai interviewé des dizaines d’artistes, pendant des mois, dont en principales sources Robert Del Naja, connu sous le pseudonyme de 3D, ses ingénieurs du son, ses collaborateurs, ses invités au chant, des historiens, et bien sûr Tricky. 

Mais ce dernier a une mémoire très évasive des faits… 

L’essentiel des détails sur la musique, l’histoire, le contexte, la politique, nous en avons parlé, reparlé, et échangé pour les détails par email, avec 3D! Qui accorde très peu d’interviews, et n’apprécierait que très peu d’être ainsi utilisé à travers mes recherches dans un but d’appropriation, dans un intérêt purement personnel, par cette pseudo-auteure et cet éditeur.

J’ai depuis donné des dizaines de conférences, souvent gratuites, réécrit le livre en anglais, et été inventée à enseigner le journalisme musical à Bristol même, ainsi que le journalisme et les métiers des médias en général, puis invitée à de nombreux festivals artistiques et politique de la ville.

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Tous les détails et passages copiés que j'ai pu recenser à la première lecture sont listés ici :

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PC-S6dNNrYAcF05waCQjTDl7CTDOckWwspbbuwv38Zs/edit?usp=sharing