Melissa on the road

Journalist at RFI (ex-DW, BBC, CBC, F24...), writer (on art, music, culture...), I work in radio, podcasting, online, on films. As a writer, I also contributed to the New Arab, Art UK, Byline Times, the i Paper... Born in Paris, I was based in Prague, Miami, London, Nairobi (covering East Africa), Bangui, and in Bristol, UK. I also reported from Italy, Germany, Haiti, Tunisia, Liberia, Senegal, India, Mexico, Iraq, South Africa... This blog is to share my work, news and cultural discoveries.

02/06/2015

An early Banksy work sold £445,792 at an auction in Paris

I tried to get it but...

Banksy's Silent Majority fetches more than £445k in Paris

An early Banksy work painted on the side of a festival worker's trailer has fetched £445,792 ($676,668). at an auction in Paris.

Silent Majority, painted during the 1998 Glastonbury Festival, shows soldier-like figures landing on a beach with a speaker in an inflatable raft.

Its Norfolk owners say it "depicts the ...rave and hip hop scene of the time".

The work is unusual for a Banksy piece, as it is largely freehand with little use of stencils.

Auction house Digard said it was thought to be one of the artist's oldest works.

The metal piece, painted over three days outside the festival's Dance Tent, measures 2.4m (7.8ft) by 9.9m (32ft).

Its message reads: "It's better not to rely too much on silent majorities ... for silence is a fragile thing... one loud noise and it's gone."

The elusive graffiti artist's team has provided a certificate of authenticity as part of the auction lot. It was painted in collaboration with fellow Bristol artist Inkie.

The owner, who prefers to be known by his first name, Nathan, said he organises infrastructure at festivals and lives in the trailer.

He said Banksy approached him in 1998 - before he rose to fame - to ask if he could use it as a canvas for a piece commissioned by the festival.

Nathan agreed, in return for some tickets and his expenses.

Now he says he has no definite plans for the proceeds although he may choose to build a house.

Street art specialist Mary McCarthy said the piece was "quite special" as an example of a Banksy work which did not rely heavily on stencils.

"This one really is a rare piece," she said.

It was one of more than 150 "urban art" pieces auctioned on Monday including work by artists Jeff Koons, Damien Hirst, Pure Evil and Conor Harrington.

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link: http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-bristol-32955713?SThisFB

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En français:

Une œuvre de Banksy présentée à Paris sur un semi remorque

"Silent Majority" sera mise en vente, lundi, avec une estimation comprise
entre 400 000 et 600 000 euros, selon l'hôtel des ventes Drouot.

L'&oelig;uvre de Banksy "Silent Majority" présentée à Paris, le 30 mai 2015.

C'est "l'une des plus grandes et des plus anciennes pièces réalisées par Banksy". L'hôtel des ventes parisien Drouot a exposé, samedi 30 mai, une fresque signée en 1998 par le roi du street-art mondial, le Britannique Banksy, et son comparse Inkie.Silent Majority, une œuvre de près de dix mètres de long, sera mise aux enchères, lundi, avec une estimation comprise entre 400 000 et 600 000 euros, indique Drouot sur son site.

Particularité de cette pièce monumentale : elle a été réalisée à la bombe sur un camion semi-remorque, pendant une performance graffiti du festival anglais de Glastonbury. On y voit des personnages habillés en soldats avec un radeau de sauvetage équipé d'une enceinte. "Le silence est une chose fragile... Il suffit d'un son et c'est parti", y est-il écrit, en hommage aux rave parties des années 90.

Le camion a parcouru Paris lundi

Cette œuvre de Banksy, rendu célèbre par ses peintures anonymes au pochoir dans l'espace public, a été à nouveau présentée au public en amont de la vente, au cours d'une exposition itinérante dans les rues de Paris, précise Drouot.

Bristol's Old Vic presents: "50 Voices for Malcolm X"

Great news in Bristol's theatre too:

50 Voices for Malcolm X

Presented by Ujima Radio in association with Bristol Old Vic

IF YOU WANT TO MAKE A CHANGE, YOU'VE GOT TO MAKE SOME NOISE

Across three nights, 50 Bristolian voices from all walks of life will share their quest for social change, celebrating 50 years of the civil rights movement and commemorating the anniversary of the death of civil rights leader Malcolm X.

Launching a new creative relationship between Ujima Radio and Bristol Old Vic, 50 Voices for Malcolm X will provide a platform for 50 community members, artists and groups to share their stories and hopes for civil rights in a five minute piece through their chosen art form.

Be inspired by these unique stories in our relaxed Studio cabaret space, have a drink and soak up the post-show live music at the in-theatre bar as we reflect on the humanitarian challenges that we have overcome and those we still face.

I'm for truth, no matter who tells it. I'm for justice, no matter who it's for or against"

MALCOLM X

50 Voices of Malcolm X
11-13 Jun
Studio | 7pm
Relaxed club style with bar
£6 (plus booking fee)
More details to be announced

@BristolOldVic
#50Voices

More here: http://www.bristololdvic.org.uk/50voices.html

Bristol's Big Green Week starts on June 6th...

... the day I arrive.

BIG Green Week festival will be back in the centre of Bristol from Saturday 6th to Sunday 21st June 2015. We’re updating this site daily with new events, so whether you’re a culture vulture, upcyclist or DIY enthusiast, we’re sure to have something for you.

Part of the programme:

Big Green Gig

The BIG Green GIG is an evening of African rhythms from Helele and young talent from Sophronie, hosted by your friendly neighbourhood one-legged existentialist stand up beat poet Chris Paradox, hosted at the Greenbank pub in Easton.

Helele is inspired by the rhythms of West Africa’s Bantu Forest. Alphonse Daudet Touna from Cameroon formed the band to ‘enrich and share his music with the world.’ Alphonse plays the Balafon (African Marimba) he made himself – adding an exotic and original sound to the music.

Chris Paradox is Your Friendly Neighbourhood One-legged Existentialist Stand-up Beat Poet and Life Engineer. “The two most important days of your life are the day you were born and the day you find out why.” Chris’s mission has evolved into helping people escape the rat race, find their purpose and make a living doing work they love.

Sophronie‘s debut single Eyes Wide is already mesmerising audiences around the UK and giving them a taste of this new artist’s sublime talent. Sophronie has been singing all her life but it was in the wake of her father’s death four years ago that she picked up his guitar, taught herself to play, started writing lyrics, and discovered music was going to be her future.

Details

Date:: June 20
Time:: 20:00 - 23:00
Cost:: £5

Banksy back to Bristol

Or at least, one of his pieces will be!

Banksy's Grim Reaper

From June 3: Banksy’s Grim Reaper, M Shed
One of Banksy's earliest works, his Grim Reaper will go back on public display.
www.bristolmuseums.org.uk/m-shed

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See you there :)

01/06/2015

The UK and electoral reforms

The UK is in the middle of lots of political interrogation. The tories has won a majority in the last parliamentary election and their leader David Cameron promised if reelected to organise a referendum on the country's membership in the European Union. This brings Europhiles and anti-austerity groups in real despair, as well as Scots, more attached to the EU, to wonder again about partition.

Here is a op-ed in the Guardian about the attempt at reforming the electoral system and why it failed.

Link: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/may/31/electoral-reform-general-election-results-2015-first-past-the-post

The real reason David Cameron is sitting on a Commons majority

Andrew Rawnsley

Electoral reform

Comment is free

A new study shows that the most disproportionate result in UK history cheated millions of voters out of representation

Sunday 31 May 2015 00.03 BST

Chosen extracts:

"the main explanation for why David Cameron is at Number 10 enthroned atop a Conservative parliamentary majority":

"There is a big, basic and brute reason why we have just heard a Tory Queen’s speech, will soon be listening to a Tory budget and have five years or so of Tory law-making ahead of us. It is so bloody obvious that no one is talking about it – it is the electoral system.

"By no normal definition of the word popular were the Conservatives popular at the election. They received 36.9% of the vote. By no normal definition of the word mandate did they get the endorsement of the electorate to fully implement their manifesto. Nearly two-thirds of voters did not put their cross in the Tory box. Factor in the turn-out and the Conservatives secured the backing of less than a quarter of the registered electorate. It is first past the post that alchemises a minority vote share into more than half of the seats in the House of Commons, every seat in the cabinet and the power to pursue an entirely Tory agenda for the next five years.

"The other party greatly favoured by winner takes all were the Scottish Nationalists. (...) the size of Nicola Sturgeon’s clan, now the third largest group in the Commons, will entitle them to lots of significant perks in the party pecking order. (...) Half of Scotland’s voters wanted to be represented by the SNP. They have now got 56 of its 59 MPs to give megaphonic expression to their views; 50% of Scots did not want to send a Nationalist MP to Westminster. That half of the nation is represented by just three MPs, one each for Labour, the Tories and the Lib Dems".

(...)

"For the electoral system has more than one distorting effect. Having turned votes into seats in a wildly disproportionate way, it then reinforces that by skewing the shape of political argument in the years afterwards. During the coalition period, producers of TV and radio discussion programmes would want to have a Lib Dem on the panel just about every week. In the years to come, I suspect sightings of Lib Dems on programmes such as Question Time will be much rarer and there will be a lot more MPs from the SNP sitting around David Dimbleby’s table. The Lib Dems beat the SNP in votes, but because of the relative weight of their MPs, there will be much more amplification of nationalist views in the media than there will be of liberal views".

"The Greens were another victim. They quadrupled their support to a million plus, but still have just the one MP – Caroline Lucas – to speak for them in parliament.

(...)

(The people worst treated by the electoral system were those who voted for Ukip. There were approaching 4 million of them, making them third in share. For all those votes, they were rewarded with just the one MP, Douglas Carswell.

(...)

Electoral Reform Referedum Sought by Downing Street

Britain's first-past-the-post system means millions go unrepresented. Photograph: Andy Rain/EPA

"The Electoral Reform Society will tomorrow publish a study that marshals the evidence to argue that this was the most disproportionate result in British election history. It also makes a compelling case that the electoral system is now working to cleave an already fractious kingdom by artificially exaggerating our regional and national divides. Look at one of those maps with constituencies coloured to show the party of the MP. The sea of blue in the home counties leads you to think that there are virtually no Labour voters there when, in fact, there are quite a lot. The sea of red in the big cities of the north suggests that there are no Tory voters there when, in fact, there are quite a lot. Looking at the map you’d think there was barely anyone who wasn’t a Nationalist voter north of the Tweed when, in fact, half of Scotland voted for a unionist party. These many millions of voters have been cheated out of representation".

" I was recently in conversation with some European diplomats. All of their countries used some form of more proportional voting. They expressed amazement that we still turn votes into power in a way that is so self-evidently unfair and some surprise that there was not a great popular outcry about it.

"One reason that electoral reform has not gained enough traction in this country to force change is that the two biggest parties have never seen it to be in their interests to embrace the cause.

"Some people do get cross about it. Shortly after the election, a petition was organised and 478,000 names signed the call for electoral reform. It was delivered to Number 10. Unfortunately for reformers, that is the one address in the UK least likely to be interested in changing the way we elect governments. David Cameron is the last person who is going to be interested in reforming a voting system that has just converted a minority of the vote into all the spoils of power. When he looks at first past the post, far from seeing a broken system, he sees one that has just worked perfectly for him".

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See the Electoral Reform Society's website here:
http://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/

29/05/2015

Music&Politics: Massive Attack - 'Saturday Come Slow' - and Reprieve's campaign against music torture

Massive Attack promo film raising awareness of Reprieve's

zero dB - against music torture campaign (2010).

The song, 'Saturday Come Slow', is from Heligoland.

To support the cause visit www.reprieve.org.uk

Directed by Adam And Olly and filmed in Cambridge

University's anechoic chamber.

Read more here:

http://www.reprieve.org.uk/press/2008_12_10zerodbpressrelease/

A Reprieve project: Zero dB musicians lead silent protest against music torture

Press | December 10, 2008

On the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights musicians are uniting against the use of music to torture by joining Zero dB. The Zero dB project (zero decibels = silence) was launched today by legal charity Reprieve which represents over 30 prisoners in Guantanamo Bay. Many of Reprieve’s clients - and hundreds more held in US secret prisons across the world - have been subjected to deafening music played for hours, days and often months on end in order to ‘break’ them.

(...)

There is a long and growing list of supporters who are outraged by the use of music to torture: James Lavelle of UNKLE, Matthew Herbert, Tom Morello of Rage Against The Machine, Massive Attack, The Magic Numbers, Elbow and Bill Bailey have so far pledged their support of the initiative and made statements against the use of music to torture.

New favourite track: 'Mad Lifeline'

Battle Box blows my mind.

Here is the next best thing, produced last year, between 3D from MA and Tunde Adebimpe from TV on the Radio and Higgins Waterproof Black Magic Band:

https://soundcloud.com/battle-box/higgins-in-3d-mad-lifeline-1

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Listen to the stunning original version here:

https://soundcloud.com/higginswbmb/sets/debut-ep

And read about the collaboration here:

http://www.spin.com/articles/higgins-waterproof-black-magic-band-massive-attack-3d-mad-lifeline-remix/

3D’s Thumping Remix of Higgins Waterproof Black Magic Band’s ‘Mad Lifeline’

Massive Attack man reworks two Tunde Adebimpe-led tunes for limited-edition vinyl

By: Kyle McGovern // March 18, 2014

When Tunde Adebimpe isn’t leading TV on the Radio, he’s singing for Higgins Waterproof Black Magic Band and, in turn, inspiring remixes by Massive Attack’s Robert “3D” Del Naja. To wit, 3D has reworked two HWBMB tracks for a special edition vinyl that’s limited to 500 copies and out now on Battle Box. “I constantly stalk Tunde with instrumentals,” 3D tells SPIN. “In revenge he sent me the Higgins album and I picked two tracks that I thought would be fun to remix. Now that’s sorted, I’ll get back to harassing him with loops.”

One of the aforementioned tracks is “Mad Lifeline,” a nearly eight-minute highlight from HWBMB’s self-titled, debut EP, released last year through the band’s own ZNA Records. In 3D’s hands, the run time shrinks to five minutes and the focus shifts from prowling bass to percolating percussion, clearing the path for Adebimpe’s always-soulful vocals. Stream the “Mad Lifeline” remix below, purchase the two-track vinyl, and look out for the second cut — a redux of HWBMB’s “WPIC” — on Stereogum, where it will debut later this week.

René Vautier, dimanche 31 mai, au Palais de la Porte Dorée / Cité de l'Immigration

Hommage à René Vautier, dimanche 31 mai

Le Musée de l’Histoire de l’Immigration et le Maghreb des Films rendent hommage à René Vautier le Dimanche 31 mai à 15h30 au Palais de la Porte dorée

293, avenue Daumesnil
75012 Paris
En métro : station Porte Dorée (ligne 8)
En tramway : ligne T3
En bus : 46

Qui est René Vautier ?

René Vautier est mort il y a quelques mois à 86 ans dans sa Bretagne. Cinéaste militant, anticolonialiste, engagé auprès du FLN durant la guerre d’Algérie, résistant à 16 ans, etc., on lui doit des films qui ont marqué des générations : Afrique 50, premier film anticolonialmiste, Avoir vingt ans dans les Aurès, Marée noire, colère rouge, La Folle de Toujane, sur la question de la coopération avec les pays du Sud, À propos de… l’autre détail, sur Le Pen et la torture, Un homme est mort, sur la mort de l’ouvrier Édouard Mazé lors des manifestations et des grèves de Brest, etc.
C’était caméra au poing qu’il filmait le monde, toujours du côté de ses frères humains, combattant toutes les injustices.
« J’ai toujours considéré une caméra comme une arme de témoignage. Mais ce n’est pas une arme qui tue. Au contraire, ça peut être un instrument de paix. C’est pour cela que je me suis bagarré pendant cinquante ans pour qu’il y ait des dialogues d’images, et tous les ﬁlms que j’ai faits, je considère que ce sont des dialogues d’images. Le réalisateur prend parti. Il s’engage d’un côté, mais il donne aussi la parole aux gens d’en face. »
René Vautier
Comment choisir dans une filmographie aussi riche et diversifiée ? Ont été retenus un film qui témoigne de son engagement aux côtés du FLN, tourné dans les maquis, deux films traitant des conditions de vie des émigrés, un film portant sur l’engagement politique :

Algérie en flammes(20’) : Un reportage sur le mouvement de résistance algérien
Les Trois Cousins (10’) : Fiction tragique sur les conditions de vie de trois cousins algériens à la recherche d’un travail en France. Logés dans un étroit réduit, le poêle à charbon provoque leur asphyxie. La face cachée de l’immigration…
Les Ajoncs (10’) : Fable poétique et humoristique dans laquelle un immigré algérien (Mohamed Zinet) traverse la Bretagne à la recherche d’un travail. Il trouve une carriole et se met à vendre des ajoncs dans un village. À la sortie de l’usine, les ouvrières en signe de solidarité ramassent les fleurs dispersées et les lui paient.
Et le mot frère, et le mot camarade (50’) : Peut-on écrire l’histoire en poèmes ? C’est ce qu’a tenté René Vautier, à la demande du Musée de la Résistance Nationale, avec l’aide de grands poètes (Aragon, Eluard, Desnos).Retour ligne manuel
Et aussi en s’appuyant sur des poèmes écrits dans les prisons et les camps de déportation, des poèmes de fusillés

A la suite des projections, un débat rassemblera :Peggy Derder, historienne, responsable du Département des Actions pédagogiques au Musée de l’Histoire de l’Immigration, Moïra Vautier, Bruno Muel qui a assisté René Vautier dans de nombreux films, Gilles Manceron, historien.
Mouloud Mimoun coordonera les échanges.

Melissa on the road

02/06/2015

An early Banksy work sold £445,792 at an auction in Paris

Banksy's Silent Majority fetches more than £445k in Paris

Une œuvre de Banksy présentée à Paris sur un semi remorque

"Silent Majority" sera mise en vente, lundi, avec une estimation comprise
entre 400 000 et 600 000 euros, selon l'hôtel des ventes Drouot.

Le camion a parcouru Paris lundi

Bristol's Old Vic presents: "50 Voices for Malcolm X"

50 Voices for Malcolm X