A season in a journalist's life...
Dear friends and readers,
I'm not going to lie, this has been a very difficult couple of months... Probably the hardest time in my life since the winter I lost my dad, in 2009, and the February/March/April that followed.
Politically, the UK is crumbling down, and I still love Bristol so much; it's hard to think of these anti-protests and anti-immigration laws without cringing... And the French government only showed despise for the beautiful movement of resistance coming from the anti-pension reform demonstrations.
Work-wise, I had to tackle many jobs at the same time, only to learn that one of my employers cancelled their budget for our work from a day to another.
One of my editors has also cancelled my music column (and another contributor's travel column on the SWANA region), just out of pettiness, and with no justification.
And I received the horrible news regarding the plagiarism of my book, that I worked so long on...
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My book has been vastly copied by a very-privilege younger French white woman journalist, who read and loved my book years ago, wrote to send me praise then entirely copied my work with no reservation.
The type of person you would expect respect and solidarity from, as she's much more well-off, very supported and well introduced by extremely well-known and much older French powerhouses in French media, also, in passing, proper millionaires.
How in France in 2023, a privileged person with no background or experience in England or in the global South can steal my work on a story like Bristol with almost no cultural journalists checking the real origins of the ideas is completely beyond me.
And it only reinforces my utter disillusionment about the current French society, marred with anti-intellectual sentiment.
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I've been complaining about it for too long now: we live through an anti-intellectual time.
Corroborating these feelings and reflections, recents worrying events resonated, especially the arrest of a left-wing publisher from La Fabrique at St Pancras, while on his way to the London Book Fair, apparently on a list sent by the French government.
In parallel, I read more and more often from friends in the academic world that plagiarism is becoming a common practice, and that many young writers even tend to erase the work of previous researchers to posture as pioneers in their own dissertations and journal's articles.
Often, in the same way that in the case of my book, they are young, powerful and well-supported, pushing the mainstream media to congratulate them, without looking into the origins of their so-called personal work.
While I was figuring out that my work had been copied, pasted and used with almost no credit, I read on Twitter complains from brilliant academic researchers, also denounced the practice of young and nepotist newcomers erasing the very work they are supposed to mention, just in the hope of advancing their career a little quicker.
In the meantime, in England, while discussing with the brilliant artist Alfredo Jaar and his close circle of friends in art criticism and academia at his exhibition opening's private dinner, I also learned about similar practice in art history in the UK.
One case: 'The Story of Art Without Men' by the 29-year-old Guardian writer Katy Hessel, which turns out to be rewriting history and erasing the work of two generations of less famous hard-working feminist historians, as you can read here, here and here.
Extract:
Advertising works. I kept seeing this book everywhere—on social media, in the news, on the shelves at my local bookstore. I like art. I’m an advocate for feminism, to use bell hooks’s preferred phrase. Surely, I’d get on well with this book. I bought it and started reading.
Unfortunately, the problems start on pretty much the first page.
The real inspiration for this book: E.H. Gombrich’s 1950 The Story of Art.
(...) The fact that Hessel’s project takes for its centre of gravity a concept so deeply rooted in white supremacy and patriarchy speaks to a lack of critical engagement with feminist histories and historiography.
For art historian Maura Reilly, ‘revising the canon to address the neglect of women and/or minority artists is fundamentally an impossible project because such revision does not grapple with the terms that created that neglect in the first place’.
(...)
Secondly, despite the long parade of names of women artists from the seventeenth century to today, the book’s politics suck. Without any real sense of self-awareness, The Story of Art Without Men enacts a huge erasure of other women. Namely, women (and men) art historians, academics, artists journalists, curators and other art workers. Not a single one of the words written in this 450-page book would have been possible without the vital contribution of the people who have dedicated themselves to the study of the artists mentioned throughout.
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Hopefully, this coming month seems to bring change, like it happens after many ordeals.
In April 2009, I was lucky enough to apply and get a job interview with the BBC World Service, and to be chose for the job.
Mid-May 2009, I moved to London after three months of horrible grief and mourning and a new life started for me. I finally realised my dream to work on African news, not only International news, which in general only cover the global north...
This profoundly changed my life and my work, and also led me to write my book on the African-Caribbean British community and culture, and their counter-cultural allies and activism.
18 months later I moved to Kenya, and from 2010 to 2014, I went to report in 14 African countries, on top of my parents' native Algeria, where I had already been regularly since the age of 8 months... I was actually almost born there, as my mother kept going back to Algiers, missing her family, until the very last weeks before my birth...
In the same way, I now hope that this month for May 2023 will be a time for a new departure and some healing.
Though he would not always have chosen the same methods, a lot of what I do in my work, I do it for the memory of my father, and his family of resistants and freedom fighters, as much as my mother's father was. They lost their brothers, cousins, sons and daughters during a terrible war of resistance again an oppressive regime that never acknowledged publicly or demanded forgiveness for its acts of spoliation, violence and even torture, over 130 years...
My family re-emerged from this fight owning strictly nothing, and both my parents had to immigrate to find work.
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Of course, this winter and early spring also brought wonderful events my way. First, the latest eye-opening exhibitions I covered, like the photographs of Zanele Muholi at MEP Paris, the new Basquiat exhibition at La Philharmonie, the showing of ‘Grenfell’ by Steve McQueen at the Serpentine Galleries, and the great artist-activist I interviewed: Alfredo Jaar.
My piece on his most recent exhibition for Art UK comes out on 2 May 2023:
Alfredo Jaar: poetic visual interventions
https://artuk.org/discover/stories/alfredo-jaar-poetic-visual-interventions
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I also met wonderfully warm and engaged people, sharing my values, and received comments from readers showing deep support.
All compensating for the few old friends I thought I’d rejoice to see more often in France, now that the Covid crisis is over, but who have been of very little support, unavailable, and for some of them just cynical regarding all the aforementioned issues...
Finally, I'm about to start a new full-time job, working on African news again, and international affairs, more on it very soon!
I hope that this month of May will thus be the start of a new dawn, for my work, art writing. and new, better friendships, the joy of life.
And I wish the same for you.
MC
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My latest articles:
Alfredo Jaar: : poetic visual interventions
Alfredo Jaar is most often referred to as a photographer, and he was even awarded the prestigious Hasselblad Award in 2020. Yet, he sees himself more as a critic of our visual culture, a commentator on the 'politics of images', as he says.
Art UK: https://artuk.org/discover/stories/alfredo-jaar-poetic-visual-interventions
'Two Basquiat exhibitions in Paris shine light on art superstar' (April 2023)
On art: Basquiat has been one of my favourite artists for years, and influenced so many of my other favourite artists! Lucky Parisians!! Read on RFI English's website: https://www.rfi.fr/en/culture/20230415-two-basquiat-exhibitions-in-paris-shine-light-on-art-superstar
Ugandan activists brace for ratification of harsh anti-homosexuality bill
Covering African & International news for RFI English. Latest feature - on Uganda and LGBTIQ+ rights and worries, from April 2023: https://www.rfi.fr/en/africa/20230414-ugandan-activists-brace-for-ratification-of-harsh-anti-homosexuality-bill
All for RFI English on African news:
https://www.rfi.fr/en/author/melissa-chemam-with-rfi/
'Herstory' sings new song for Saudi Arabia's female musicians
An exciting scene of women musicians has emerged in Saudi Arabia. Two filmmakers have decided to document their emergence with a ten-episode series. The result: ‘Herstory’, broadcast on Shahid, the largest streaming platform in South West Asia. Read my feature / interviews for The New Arab here: https://www.newarab.com/features/herstory-sings-new-song-saudi-arabias-female-musicians
Meet Ghoula—Arabic Music Remixed Via Tunisia
This is sadly the last episode of my disappearing monthly column on music & the SWANA region (the review cancelled it without notice)... I chatted with the talented Tunisian electronic music artist Wael Sghaier, aka Ghoula, part of a very select but exciting underground electronica scene from North Africa, who have managed to find in Paris the means to showcase his music.
Read more here: https://themarkaz.org/fr/meet-ghoula-arabic-music-remixed-via-tunisia/
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