Arnolfini 2020: Angelica Mesiti + Amak Mahmoodian

The Arnolfini gallery in Bristol has just announced its programme for the first part of 2020!!

Two internationally renowned female artists, Angelica Mesiti and Amak Mahmoodian, who will come after the experience of 'Still I Rise', a large exhibition on feminisms, gender and resistance.

I've had the chance to meet Angelica and to listen to Amak recently, amazing prospects ahead! And more writing soon :).

Details here:

ASSEMBLY – ANGELICA MESITI

Saturday, 18th January 2020 to Sunday, 26th April 2020, 11:00 to 18:00
Open Tuesday - Sunday, closed on Mondays.
Free

An immersive video installation exploring a new democracy of movement, poetry, and song.

“At a time when the inhabitants of this planet are more mobile than ever before, non-verbal forms of creativity can facilitate profound interactions between strangers. This is the beating heart of Angelica Mesiti’s work. With great sensitivity, she has portrayed the talent and individuality of various members of migrant and refugee communities via performances of rare beauty.” – Jennifer Higgie for Frieze.

Angelica Mesiti’s three-channel video installation opens with the ‘Michela’, a 19th century machine modelled on a piano keyboard and used in the Italian senate for official parliamentary reporting, to ensure transparency within the democratic process. Here, Mesiti has re-purposed the Michela to translate an abstract musical score – a lilting thread of stops and starts, taken up by a shifting ensemble of musicians; zaffe drummers, Iranian santūr, choral ensembles, and dancers – a community of multiple ancestries that gather, grow, disassemble, and reunite. In ASSEMBLY, this communal gathering is a means for making those with authority recognise the collective power of the people.

“Through both the metaphor of translation and the act itself, I am exploring the very human and increasingly urgent need we have to assemble in a physical way, in a physical space, in these complex times,”  – Angelica Mesiti

ASSEMBLY originally formed part of an internationally acclaimed presentation at the Australian National Pavilion at the 2019 Venice Biennale. ASSEMBLY begins as an evolving set of translations from the written word to stenographic codes then music, and performance. Filmed in the Senate chambers of Italy and Australia, the three screens of ASSEMBLY travel through the corridors, meeting rooms and parliaments of government while performers, representing a multitude of ancestries, gather, disassemble and re-unite, demonstrating the strength and creativity of a plural community.

Angelica Mesiti’s ASSEMBLY lays out a series of foundational arguments for our Winter/Spring 2020 programme – that communication is difficult and requires an ongoing effort of clarification; that communities are ever-changing, with members joining and falling away constantly; that this rotation and change means the project of society is never fixed and must always be responsive; and that harmony is hard-fought, never guaranteed, and – in fact – in order to resist stasis, requires the risk of new sounds and new provocation.

ASSEMBLY was commissioned by the Australia Council for the Arts on the occasion of the 58th International Art Exhibition–La Biennale di Venezia, courtesy of the artist and Anna Schwartz Gallery, Australia and Galerie Allen, Paris.

Angelica Mesiti (b. 1976) lives and works between Paris and Sydney. She has previously held solo exhibitions at the Palais de Tokyo Paris, MAXXI Rome, Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montréal, O Space, Aarhus, Williams College Museum of Art Massachusetts, and Nikolaj Kunsthal Copenhagen. Her work is held in national and international collections including the National Gallery of Australia, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, FRAC Franche-Compté France, and Kadist Art Foundation Paris/San Francisco. ASSEMBLY was presented at Biennale, Venice in 2019.  Angelica Mesiti is represented in Australia by Anna Schwartz Gallery and in Paris by Galerie Allen.

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ZANJIR – AMAK MAHMOODIAN

Saturday, 18th January 2020 to Sunday, 22nd March 2020, 11:00 to 18:00

Open Tuesday - Sunday, closed on Mondays.

Free 

Amak Mahmoodian’s Zanjir (Translation: “chain”) presents a body of photographs that cross great distances – reaching through history to bring the earliest images of Iranian photography into the present, across oceans to invite Mahmoodian’s family and friends; and across the border between life and death.

In 2004, Mahmoodian visited the Golestan museum and undertook an archival research project lasting two years. The Golestan Archives are located in central Tehran, which was once a home for Qajars, the kings’ wives, Harem women, and their relatives. Mahmoodian uses selected historical photographs as masks, asking her loved ones to hold the prints in front of them, framing her own kingdom and centering the sorrow of separation she feels for them as she lives and works three thousand miles away.

Still
in front of him
(his Camera)
The power that keeps her still
is not inward
She
sitting on a chair
her hair
clipped to her scarf.

Amak Mahmoodian, excerpt from Zanjir

The images will be surrounded by fragments of an imagined conversation – between Amak, and Princess Taj al-Saltanah, an Iranian princess who lived at the end of the 19th century. Considered a trailblazer for women’s rights in 19th century Iran, she defied her family and government and advocated for equality and democracy. In al-Saltanah, Mahmoodian has found a mirror, and in each other, these women find the opportunity to be vulnerable; ruminating on their individual experiences of family, distance, powerlessness, yearning, and hope.

Amak Mahmoodian (b. 1980) is a photographer born in Shiraz and lives in Bristol, UK. In 2015, Mahmoodian completed a practice-based doctorate in photography at the University of South Wales, having previously studied at the Art University of Tehran. The artist’s work questions Western notions of identity, expressing personal stories that pertain to wider social issues which draw on her experiences in the Middle East, Asia and the West. Her previous project, Shenasnameh, has been widely exhibited internationally and the accompanying artist photobook won many awards and critical acclaim in publications as diverse as Time Magazine, Foam Magazine, and the Guardian.

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And here: https://arnolfini.org.uk/whatson/

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I've been chosen as the writer in residence as the Arnolfini art gallery, Bristol, to create a body of texts along their exhibition, 'Still I Rise' (September - December 2019).  The main themes are feminisms, gender and resistance.

'Still I Rise' – Writing for the Arnolfini:

Here is the first text:
Episode I - The Stories Women Carry
https://melissa-on-the-road.blogspot.com/2019/12/still-i-rise-writing-for-arnolfini.html

And the second:
Episode II - Women’s and Men’s Voices
 http://melissa-on-the-road.blogspot.com/2019/12/writing-around-still-i-rise-episode-2.html

Episode III to come soon.

And Episode IV later in January, once these two exhibitions have opened.






  

Friday 13 Dec. 2019: UK - Post-election summary

The British voted yesterday, Thursday, in the United Kingdom, in an early parliamentary election caused by the blockages on Brexit.
The final results came in this morning and the Conservatives were given a majority with a large lead: 364 seats.
Although the polls have multiplied since 2015, this election could be decisive for the implementation of Brexit.

The experts were waiting for a close call, maybe a 'hung parliament', with no majority.

But the results, on the contrary, revealed a comfortable advance for the Tories in power.

The Labour Party appears as the big loser of the election, with one of their lowest score since the Second World War...

As a result, the leader of the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, has decided to not lead the party in the next election. He will only stay for now to lead a transition, he said.

The leader of the Liberal Democrats, Jo Swinson, also lost her own seat in Scotland and decided to quit, while her party has also been deserted by voters.

In Scotland, the independence party SNP retain a large lead, opening the way for a new referendum on their independence, and therefore a partition of the United Kingdom.


Many issues at stake, but Brexit dominated


The day of the election, for many voters, multiple issues were at stakes, I poke to a few of them in Bristol, and national questions were key for many: the fight against climate change, against austerity, public transport's and health budget, university fees ..

But the issues of Brexit now clearly appears at the main priority of the electoral campaign, and was for sure its raison d'être.

The primary objective of Prime Minister Boris Johnson was to obtain a clear result, to allow his party to push their policy to pursue Brexit.

Successful bet.

According to the former speaker of Parliament too, John Bercow, this is evidence that Brexit has dominated the concerns of voters. A sign in particular: the Brexit Party seems to have taken no seat, their voters having turned to the Conservatives.


Next step: Brexit... and more British divisions?


If the British are still very divided on the issue of Brexit, now remain very little space for the pro-EU.

It has been postponed until January 31, 2020 to allow this election ... It is likely that, for the first time, the date is finally respected. At the risk of paving the way for the independence of Scotland and therefore the end of the United Kingdom.


By Melissa Chemam

UK election day 12.12.2019

Mon dernier reportage - en français (translation at the bottom of the page)

Pour écouter: https://www.dw.com/fr/un-air-de-référendum-bis-sur-le-brexit/a-51648837

Un air de référendum bis sur le Brexit

Les législatives anticipées ont été fortement dominées par le débat sur le Brexit. Les résultats devraient indiquer si le Premier ministre Boris Johnson a des raisons de croire à la sortie du pays de l'Union européenne.

Les électeurs du Royaume-Uni étaient aux urnes ce jeudi (12.12.). Il s'agit d'un scrutin essentiel pour l'avenir du pays car les Britanniques choisissent entre le Brexit de Boris Johnson ou un nouveau référendum sur la sortie de l'Union européenne avec l'opposant Jeremy Corbyn.

Dès l'accomplissement de leur devoir civique, certains électeurs ne cachaient pas qu'ils ont été influencés par le débat actuel du Brexit. "On a voté pour que le Brexit ait lieu", avoue un électeur soutenu par une femme pour qui il y en a "vraiment assez après trois ans de rien d'autre sauf ça".  

Pour d'autres, les enjeux sont multiples

Même si la discussion sur la pertinence de la sortie de la Grande Bretagne de l'Union européenne s'est invitée dans ces élections législatives anticipées, un autre électeur interrogé à Bristol estime qu'il y a beaucoup d'autres préoccupations et que pour lui "le plus important est la crise climatique qui affecte le monde entier".

"La question des bourses universitaires et des frais d'inscription est plus importante", confie un jeune étudiant qui pense que "seul le parti travailliste semble y répondre".

Christian Weale, membre du mouvement "We Deserve Better" tient à sanctionner le gouvernement sortant de Boris Johnson. Selon lui, il est plus que probable que le parti conservateur va à nouveau former un gouvernement. "Mais nous essayons de réduire sa majorité, pour lui demander des comptes sur ses politiques et ses actions. Le principal problème pour moi est la façon dont la campagne a été menée : elle a été basée sur une série de mensonges… Et au-delà de cela, je suis vraiment inquiet pour les droits de l'homme. En tant qu'activiste, je suis vraiment inquiet et je pense que nous vivons une crise nationale", conclut-il.

Les Conservateurs en tête des sondages

Selon Paula Surridge, politologue à l'université de Bristol, "les derniers sondages montrent qu'il y aura probablement une majorité conservatrice, et dans ce cas ils pourront pousser leur politique pour poursuivre le Brexit mais il se pourrait qu'il y ait un parlement suspendu, sans majorité, et dans ce cas ils auront un problème car aucun autre parti ne veut plus s'allier avec eux. Donc ils auraient alors du mal à former un gouvernement".

Les résultats sont attendus vendredi matin (13.12.) et pour l'instant le Brexit est toujours prévu pour le 31 janvier 2020.

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Translation:

"The early elections were strongly dominated by the debate on Brexit. The results should indicate whether Prime Minister Boris Johnson has reason to believe the country's exit from the European Union.

Voters from the UK were at the polls this Thursday (12.12.). This is an essential ballot for the future of the country as the British choose between the Brexit of Boris Johnson or a new referendum on the exit of the European Union with the opponent Jeremy Corbyn.

As soon as they fulfilled their civic duty, some voters did not hide the fact that they were influenced by the current Brexit debate. "We voted for the Brexit to take place," admits an elector supported by a woman for whom there is "really enough after three years of nothing but that".

For others, the stakes are multiple

Even if the debate on the relevance of Britain's exit from the European Union was invited in these early elections, another voter interviewed in Bristol believes there are many other concerns and that for him "the most important is the climate crisis that affects the whole world".

"The question of university scholarships and registration fees is more important," says a young student who thinks that "only the Labor Party seems to respond."

Christian Weale, a member of the "We Deserve Better" movement wants to sanction the outgoing government of Boris Johnson. According to him, it is more than likely that the Conservative party will again form a government. "But we are trying to reduce his majority, to hold him accountable for his policies and actions.The main problem for me is the way the campaign was conducted: it was based on a series of lies ... And beyond I am really worried about human rights and as an activist, I am really worried and I think we are living in a national crisis, "he says.

Conservatives top polls

According to Paula Surridge, a political scientist at the University of Bristol, "the latest polls show that there will probably be a conservative majority, and in this case they can push their policy to pursue the Brexit but there may be a parliament suspended, without a majority, and in this case they will have a problem because no other party does not want to ally with them anymore, so they would have a hard time forming a government ".

The results are expected Friday morning (13.12.) And for now the Brexit is still scheduled for 31 January 2020.

Pour écouter: https://www.dw.com/fr/un-air-de-référendum-bis-sur-le-brexit/a-51648837

UK: New migrant scandal...

   My first column on migration in The Independent - Indy Voices:

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/immigration-migrants-refugees-home-office-hostile-environment-a9241246.html

The Home Office's ‘advice sessions’ expose the sinister trickery of the hostile environment

Such trickery will not prevent people from coming to the UK. It will simply make them more vulnerable while they are here.

Melissa Chemam5 hours ago

• Melissa Chemam

2019 has seen Britain become an increasingly hostile environment for immigrants.

A couple of cases struck me in particular. In August, Anna Amato, an Italian woman who has lived in the UK for 52 of her 55 years, was refused her settled status. Then in November, Hubert Howard died three weeks after being granted British citizenship – 59 years after arriving in UK as part of the Windrush generation.

Yet while these cases of outright refusal of legal status are well-known, what is less so are the many subtle and insidious ways the Home Office makes immigrants feel unwelcome and unsafe.

One of these ways was exposed on Monday, when the Financial Times reported on the work of the Home Office’s invitingly-named National Community Engagement Team (NCET).

According to the FT, NCET has been holding a number of “advice sessions” aimed at immigrants, and advertised as a “valuable opportunity to learn more about what support is available to local people who may feel they are in vulnerable circumstances”, such as “people who had been victims of modern slavery or other crimes.”

Yet the FT revealed that, rather than pointing these vulnerable people in the direction of help, these advice sessions were an opportunity for Home Office agents to urge illegal immigrants “to return to their home countries”. In other words, the government has been exploiting the very vulnerability it claimed to address in order to uproot migrants.

What is particularly galling is that many of these “advise sessions” – at least twenty of which have been held to date – have been held in places of worship. At one such event, a legal adviser told the FT that the NCET team “appeared to be using trusted and public community spaces to ‘trick’ vulnerable migrant victims of crime into making themselves known to immigration officials,” thus “corrupting spaces that should be safe for victims.”

Yet while shocking, NCET exemplifies the sinister, deceptive tactics that, in the twelve years I have been reporting on migration, I have seen used increasingly across the world. Take the hundreds who enrolled in the University of Farmington, a fake university created by the US Department of Homeland Security to apprehend people committing immigration fraud (up to 250 people have been deported as a result of the sting). 

The case of the NCET shows how cruel our immigration system has become. Such cruelty will not prevent people from coming to the UK. It will simply make them more vulnerable while they are here. Many people come to Britain because they see our country as morally upstanding. The Home Office’s cheap trickery has proven them wrong.  

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@melissachemam

 Melissa Chemam is freelance journalist, associate lecturer in journalism at UWE Bristol and author of the book Massive Attack - Out of the Comfort Zone (2019). She has reported on migrations issues in East/Central Africa and Western Europe for the BBC World Service and other international broadcasters for many years.

Writing around ‘Still I Rise’ – Episode 2: Women’s and Men’s Voices

I'm currently the writer in residence as the Arnolfini art gallery, Bristol, to create a body of texts along their exhibition, 'Still I Rise', on feminisms, gender and resistance.

Here is the second episode:

‘Still I Rise’ – Episode 2: Women’s… and Men’s Voices

While I was settling in Bristol this autumn 2019, I interviewed again one of the artists that brought me to the city: rapper and music producer Adrian Thaws, mostly known as Tricky.

Tricky released his autobiography in October and we talked about his youth, his family, his music, and his hometown of course, Bristol. Though he spent a large part of his adult life running away from here, Bristol had shaped him in many ways. Like Paris shaped me, then forced me to leave…

One of the most touching thoughts Tricky shared with me was his strong belief in the fact that his mother Maxine (who died when he was only 4 years old) had been talking through him for all these years… His lyrics, he insisted, were women’s words, and hers in particular. This, he said, explains why he has written so many songs for female singers, with female storied.

He learned not so long ago that his mother had been writing poetry. She remained unpublished and most probably unread. As a Caribbean woman living in an impoverished area of Bristol in the 1960s, she could simply not hope to see her poems ever get printed and shared, Tricky added. That was how these times were. Her voice was unheard...

A voice for the voiceless

This idea stayed with me.

During this residence at the Arnolfini on feminism and resistance, I wanted to reflect on the feminism that “people of colours” and community groups who are called as “minorities” had needed to go through. And Maxine's story came to resonate with theirs.

There are so many of them represented here in ‘Still I Rise’, women from Iran, African-American women, women from Botswana, South Africa, Argentina, India, Iraq and so on. These women were never fighting for individual rights, they were often fighting for others: for their children to have food, for the community to be heard, for their disabled relatives to be acknowledged, for their husband to be freed from political imprisonment. 

In the way Tricky had been the voice of his mother for most of his artist’s life, these women had been for other women; and some men, photographers, storytellers, have been for some other women.

I have often had this feeling: that as a writer, I have been trying to be a voice for so many others… Women I interviewed but also women from the past, whose opinion would never have been asked. Women from my own family tree, as well, who were never taught how to read or write, who never had a passport, who never had the right to vote.

  

As a broadcaster, I tried to be a voice for many, many men as well. Living in Europe, and broadcasting from the BBC World Service’s main studio, I have, dozens of times, called men – mainly African men, exposed their opinion on air, while reading the news. A position that women were not allowed to hold until quite recently, in the 1950s and in some part of the UK and Europe even later…

Genders versus colours

For people with a history of colonial violence in their family, having a voice is in itself a form of resistance. Being a voice for others even more. 

Let’s not forget that while it took half a decade to some in Europe to liberate their countries from the Nazis, in Africa or Asia freedom from oppression took more than a century. And for their heirs who happen to be born in the former colonial power, an added challenge has been to define themselves.

Many, countless actually, women took part in that resistance. To gain rights as so-called “minorities”. Not only for them as female citizens, but for their community. Yet, they were often forgotten by the historians. 

And in some occasions, feminist resistance and protesting against race-based oppression were two very different fights… That many women in the “Global South” and in diaspora had and still have to hold in parallel. 

One example: while I was sitting in the ground floor of ‘Still I Rise’ mid-November, a woman and I started to discuss about these themes. We were both watching the film about sexual violence featuring Suzanne Lacy and Corey Madden in the first room. She started talking to me about her experience as a woman “of colour”, as we now say. She’s British, her mother is English. Her dad was from an Afghan/Indian background but he didn’t raise her. Until this day, people ask this lady: when did you move to the UK? Because she has a “brown skin”. But she almost didn’t know her father… Let alone his country of origin. Unwillingly, she’s a face – and therefore a voice – for a man she hardly knew, and a colonial history that is haunting her despite her reality.

So, like Tricky and myself, this woman comes from a family that has seen women suffer not only from gender inequality but also from social injustice and post-colonial prejudice. It’s a difficult discussion to have but it’s needed more than ever. 

Connection through common experience

For women like her, being themselves and being here is in itself an act of resistance… Against prejudices and projections. Working and claiming the same rights as men and as (other) British people is an act of resistance.

When you face this sort of prejudice, you know it’s not easy to deal with. As it more often than not takes generations, not a lifetime, to overcome racially motivated bias…

This is why it matters so much to me, after 15 years of journalism, to keep on meeting with people, to get to hear their story in person and witness their experience. Not only to use technology to get my questions across and receive some answers back more quickly, via the telephone or email. But to connect with them. To connect us all. Because in every story there is a potential for understanding a common fight, for a convergence in our fights. I actually wrote an entire novel about this…

And to perceive it, we also have to feel it.  

This is the power art has, the power writing has: to make a collective act, to connect us via real human experiences, even in the times of virtual isolation and technological individualism. Luckily, with ‘Still I Rise’, and throughout Bristol, these sorts of connections remain a gift that keeps on giving…

   -  Melissa Chemam

Bedminster through the lens

Hello friends,

how are things your side?

Last week, I've moved from St Paul's (BS2) to Southville (BS3) and have been lucky to participate to my friend Colin Moody's new street photography workshop, nearby, on North Street, Bedminster.

It's a lovely area in South Bristol, host of the internationally acclaimed street art festival called Upfest. We started the tour in their office, around 5pm, and ended at the Tobacco Factory.

As the light was getting darker and darker, I chose to focus my explorations on black & white photography.

Here is a little visual representation of our journey, through my lens...

A mix of iconic shops and venues, people walking along the street and a few portraits:

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Follow Colin in Instagram for more: @moodycolin319
or https://www.instagram.com/moodycolin319/

Bristol's 'People of the Year 2019'

A lovely gesture to wrap up a very intense, very fulfilled year!

The local magazine Bristol 24/7 has published a list of the 'People of the Year 2019' and added me and my book :))

In a list of truly great people who have done a lot for the city:

 Congratulations to Yola, Joe Talbot from IDLES, Thangam Debonnaire, Olivette Otele, Aisha Thomas & all the other fantastic Bristol lovers 🌟

In my case: Thanks to BIMM Bristol, Tangent Books, Rough Trade, and of course Massive Attack for letting me create a special book: 'Out of the Comfort Zone'!

I received so much love from this city... From Day One.

It is so heartwarming, you can’t imagine. No one remains a nomad for so long without a bit of melancholy.

Now I have you, my city ❤️🖤.

Special thanks to my lovely friends here. You’re amazing and you’re all my "people of the year"!

 xx


Thank you so much, Bristol!

Free, brainstorming, interviewing, discussing and writing

Intense days of that sort of freelance life... 

Today I started writing that feature on the most politically aware artist I’ve ever interviewed, more on Alfredo Jaar and his Rwandan project '25 Years Later' currently shown in London soon!

A single gaze... 

Two amazing pieces

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Then I went to another meeting about music, culture and world history. Promising. 

Later in the afternoon, I recorded a phone interview with a sociologist on Brexit, citizenships and what’s wrong with out current society... 

All this between replying to dozens of emails, noticing who didn’t bother to reply... Tends to be the same persons. Maybe busy themselves, maybe we just cannot find the right way to communicate?

And still brainstorming about feminism, gender, inequality and resistance. More than ever. 

Maybe, or surely, because of that deeply moving talk by Iranian photographer Amak Mahmoodian, held yesterday at the Martin Parr Foundation. More on her soon too, in 2020. 

Images don’t reflect reality, do they? As we discussed with Alfredo last week.

Yet they rule our world, and oh darlings how do I love photography... 

Images of my day, at least, don't reflect my reality. Maybe there is something to do about this, indeed. Here they are though...

Bristol in wintery December 2019:

A decade is ending, and do I know if all of this is really, deeply useful? I hope so, as an eternal melancholic optimist...

One thing is certain though, I couldn't be doing any of this without music! 

So here is one for you, en français:

Hindi Zahra - 'Un Jour' - Live @ Les Contes du Paris Perché

Talk to you soon.

m