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.

05/12/2017

"The Future Starts Here"

EXHIBITION

The Future Starts Here

Exploring the power of design in shaping the world of tomorrow

Opening on Saturday, 12 May 2018

At the Victoria and Albert Museum, V&A, London

From smart appliances to satellites, artificial intelligence to internet culture, this exhibition will bring together more than 100 objects as a landscape of possibilities for the near future.

EXHIBITION HIGHLIGHTS

Anthropocene spike, a golden spike driven into a rockface to mark the beginning of the Anthropocene geological era. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Body Code Animation, Drew Berry, The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research. © E.O.Wilson Biodiversity Foundation

Shooting Stars project, Ale and Co Ltd, 2016. © ALE Co. Ltd

Superflex, Aura-powered bodysuits, Yves Behar. Courtesy of Superflex

Tomás Saraceno, Aerocene, launches at White Sands Natural Park, 2015. Courtesy the artist; Pinksummer contemporary art, Genoa; Tanya Bonakdar, New York; Andersen’s Contemporary, Copenhagen, Esther Schipper, Berlin. © Photography by Studio Tomás Saraceno, 2015

Protei, autonomous sailing ship that cleans up oil spills, 2014. © Scoutbots LTD, Cesar Jung-Harada

Luchtsingel, pedestrian bridge crowdfunded by citizens, ZUS, 2011 – 2015, Rotterdam. Photography: Ossip van Duivenbode. © ZUS

Radical Love, DNA portrait of Chelsea Manning, by Heather Dewey-Hagborg, 2015. Courtesy of Heather Dewey-Hagborg and Fridman Gallery, New York City

Living Network, dummy antenna around fake tree, Jalila Essaidi. © BioArt Laboratories

Masdar City, the world's first carbon-neutral, zero-waste city, Foster + Partners. Photography by Eteienne Malapert, 2006. © Etienne Malapert, The city of Possibilities, Ecal

Technology in Bed, Hanif Shoaei, 2014. Courtesy of Hanif Shoaei

Turner Prize 2017

This year’s Turner Prize will be known tonight:

The Turner Prize is awarded annually to an artist born, living or working in Britain, for an outstanding exhibition or public presentation of their work anywhere in the world in the previous year.

The four shortlisted artists for the Turner Prize 2017 are:

Since 2011 the Turner Prize has been staged outside of London every other year. For 2017 it will be presented at Ferens Art Gallery in Hull as part of the UK City of Culture 2017 programme.

Since it was established in 1984 the Turner Prize has become one of the most prestigious international visual arts awards and has both reflected and contributed to a growing public awareness and interest in contemporary art.

The members of the Turner Prize 2017 jury are:

Dan Fox, Co-Editor at Frieze
Martin Herbert, art critic
Mason Leaver-Yap, Walker Art Center’s Bentson Scholar of Moving Image in Minneapolis, and Associate Curator at KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin
Emily Pethick, Director, Showroom

The jury is chaired by Alex Farquharson, Director of Tate Britain.

My bet:

Lubaina Himid

Lubaina Himid
Naming the Money 2004
Installation view of Navigation Charts, Spike Island, Bristol 2017
Courtesy of the artist, Hollybush Gardens, and National Museums, Liverpool
Photo: Stuart Whipps

Portrait of Lubaina Himid with a painting in the backgound

Lubaina Himid, 2017
Courtesy of the artist and Hollybush Gardens
Photo: Edmund Blok for Modern Art Oxford

Lubaina Himid was born in 1954 in Zanzibar, Tanzania. She studied Theatre Design at Wimbledon College of Art and an M.A in Cultural History at the Royal College of Art. She is Professor of Contemporary Art at the University of Central Lancashire. Recent solo exhibitions include Navigation Charts, Spike Island, Bristol, UK and Invisible Strategies, Modern Art Oxford, Oxford, UK (both 2017). Recent group exhibitions include The Place is Here, Nottingham Contemporary, Nottingham, UK (2017); The 1980s Today’s Beginnings?, Van Abbe Museum, Eindhoven, Netherlands (2016); Keywords, Tate Liverpool, UK (2014); and Burning Down the House, Gwangju Biennale, South Korea (2014). From 1986–1990 Himid was director of the Elbow Room and has curated exhibitions including Carte de Visite, Hollybush Gardens, London, UK (2015); The Thin Black Line, ICA, London, UK (1986); and Critical, Donald Rodney, Rochdale Art Gallery, Rochdale, UK (1989).

Himid makes paintings, prints, drawings and installations which celebrate Black creativity and the people of the African diaspora while challenging institutional invisibility. She references the slave industry and its legacies, and addresses the hidden and neglected cultural contribution made by real but forgotten people. In Naming the Money 2014, 100 cut-out life size figures depict Black servants and labourers who Himid individualises, giving each of them a name and story to work against the sense of the powerless mass. She often takes her paintings off the gallery wall so that her images become objects that surround the viewer. Whether working on Guardian newspapers or directly onto porcelain tableware, Himid continually subjects painting to the material of everyday life in order to explore Black identity.

Himid repeatedly questions the historical role of portraiture, as in works such as A Fashionable Marriage 1987, recently exhibited in The Place is Here at Nottingham Contemporary (2017). Inspired by William Hogarth’s Marriage a la Mode 4 (The Countess’s Morning Levee) 1743, this installation features a brightly coloured stage set with a cast of characters taken from Hogarth’s morality tale. Incorporating painting, drawing and collage on cut-outs, the installation relates its historical inspiration to our current climate by including contemporary newspaper headlines and images of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. Himid’s satirical approach takes aim at the politics of the time as well as its legacy today. In works such as these, the artist appropriates and interrogates European painters and combines aspects of her African heritage to question the role of visual power.

Alongside her artistic practice Himid has curated exhibitions to showcase underrepresented Black artists. As an artist, advocate and curator she has facilitated and celebrated the role of Black artists and their contributions to contemporary society.

Lubaina Himid is 62 and lives and works in Preston.

Link: Tate Modern

http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/ferens-art-gallery/exhibition/turner-prize-2017

03/12/2017

'I Am Not Your Negro' now among all-time highest grossing documentaries

Sharing because it is indeed one of the best films I've seen this year, because it is very necessary to see it, because he brought back to life a powerful writer, and because I've been working with this unique filmmaker since 2006 and I couldn't be prouder.

If you haven't seen it, it is available in DVD in the US, will be in France from Dec. 5th and is also available on different online platform.

Don't miss it!

'I Am Not Your Negro' now among all-time highest grossing documentaries & is director Raoul Peck's top grossing film ever

November 27th 2017

Two noteworthy accomplishments worth calling attention to.

First, a 2017 Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary to its credit, Raoul Peck's universally critically-acclaimed, and much-discussed I Am Not Your Negro, ended its USA theatrical run over the summer after 126 days, with a total box office gross of $7,123,919, earning it the number 33 ranking on the all-time USA box office of the highest grossing documentaries of all time.

The list is topped by provocateur Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 which grossed $119 million over the course of its entire theatrical run in 2004.

Three key things to keep in mind: Fahrenheit 9/11 was something of an outlier. Documentaries just don't earn that kind of box office; not even close to that. It's the only documentary to have grossed over $100 million (not adjusted for inflation). The next film on the list is March of the Penguins with $77 million - a significant $40+ million separating number 1 from number 2. Also note that the vast majority of films on the list (75% of them) grossed between $2 and $9 million, putting I Am Not Your Negro above the average. And finally, it's should be pointed out that I Am Not Your Negro's widest theatrical release was just 320 screens - nowhere near the 2,000 to 3,500 screens that most of the films in the top 10 were released on.

So with all that in mind, a roughly $7.1 million gross - especially given the film's challenging subject matter - is noteworthy. And it's not done yet, as it continues to open in new cities/countries outside the USA, expanding its reach, with openings this year in Australia, France, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, the United Kingdom and more.

Secondly, the film is also director Raoul Peck's highest grossing release in the USA by a substantial margin. His still woefully underseen great work Lumumba (2001), grossed just $352,00 at the box office. One can only hope that the critical and commercial success of I Am Not Your Negro has helped raise Peck's industry profile, urging audiences to seek out his past work (documentaries and scripted features), affording him even more opportunities to make the kinds of films he wants to. He's most certainly a necessary voice.

While not a primer for those unfamiliar with James Baldwin - more like a tribute to a project that Baldwin himself didn't live to see completed - to put together I Am Not Your Negro, Peck mined Baldwin’s published and unpublished oeuvre, selecting passages from his books, essays, letters, notes, and interviews that are every bit as incisive and pertinent now as they have ever been. Weaving these texts together, Peck brilliantly imagines the book that Baldwin never wrote. In his final years, Baldwin had envisioned a book about his three assassinated friends, Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King. His deeply personal notes for the project have never been published before. Peck’s film uses them to jump through time, juxtaposing Baldwin’s private words with his public statements, in a blazing examination of the tragic history of race in America.

Why a film on Baldwin? Peck's response: "Because Baldwin is my life... I started reading Baldwin when I was 14 or 15, and I realized as an adult a lot of the things I was saying came from him."

Prior to the film's release, Aramide Tinubu interviewed Peck about the film for Shadow and Act (read it here), and also reviewed I Am Not Your Negro (read her thoughts here).

Narrated by Samuel L. Jackson, the film is now widely accessible in the USA on various home video platforms. You're strongly encouraged to seek it out if you have yet to see it.

Trailer:

Everyday can be our "Groundhog Day"

December Super Full Moon mood :)

Eckhart Tolle on the movie "Groundhog Day":

! Careful though ! Spoiler Alert !
If you haven't seen the film, don't watch the video until the end ;)

And... Watch the film!

Merry December, folks.

02/12/2017

Alone In Translation...

Just for the music and the feeling:

'Alone in Kyoto' - Lost in Translation (HD)

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Just for the message:

Bill Murray gives a surprising and meaningful answer you might not expect.

Published on 1 Jan 2015

Bill Murray is asked what he wants that he doesn't yet have. His answer is honest, candid, and resonates with many of us. This is an excerpt and the full 53 minute length interview can be found here. http://charlierose.com/watch/60340546

Bristol à la Médiathèque musicale de Paris (MMP) : samedi 13 janvier 2018

On prépare 2018...

Premier rendez-vous : Nantes, le 11 janvier
Puis la Médiathèque Municipale de Paris le samedi 13 janvier

Et enfin, une petite surprise bristolienne autour de mon anniversaire...
Novembre a été un mois merveilleux. Janvier s'annonce plus chaleureux que d'habitude!

A bientôt,
m

ANIMATION

Mélissa Chemam :

En dehors de la zone de confort

Médiathèque musicale de Paris (MMP)

Rencontre littéraire avec Mélissa Chemam, auteure du livre "En dehors de la zone de confort, de Massive Attack à Banksy, sur la ville de Bristol" (éd. Anne Carrière)

Melissa Chemam, journaliste indépendante, a publié en 2016 En dehors de la zone de confort, un ouvrage qui témoigne de l'histoire et la vie artistique de la ville de Bristol, construit autour du parcours du groupe Massive Attack et de son leader, Robert Del Naja.

Elle y explore, à travers une foule de témoignages, les florissantes scènes musicales et le street art d'une cité qui a hérité, de son passé complexe et parfois peu avouable, un métissage d'une richesse inouïe.

A l'occasion de cette rencontre littéraire, elle abordera les thèmes de son ouvrage : la place de la musique dans nos sociétés, du street art, de l'engagement en art...

INFORMATIONS
PRATIQUES

Médiathèque musicale de Paris (MMP)

8 porte saint eustache
75001 paris

VOIR SUR LA CARTE

DATE

Le samedi 13 janvier 2018 de 16h à 18h

S'Y RENDRE

Ligne 4 : Les Halles (89m) ou 4 : Étienne Marcel (283m)

PLUS D'INFOS

--

Lien vers Que Faire à Paris ?

https://quefaire.paris.fr/39649/melissa-chemam-en-dehors-de-la-zone-de-confort

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The Art of Semaan Khawam

Displaying the art of a Syrian artist, who left for Beirut and is now in London, UK.

Portraits (oil on canvas) and drawings:

Paintings and landscapes:

Words, in French:

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His work is available; check his Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/Semaan-Khawam-Art-650398968326816/

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Introduction, by the Sana Gallery:
http://www.sanagallery.com/semaan-khawam

Semaan Khawam is a Lebanese painter, designer, graffiti artist, actor, writer and poet, born in 1974. His work has been featured at personal or collective exhibitions at, amongst others, Galerie Janine Rubeiz, the Joanna Seikaly art gallery and the Nada Debs gallery.

In his work, Khawam shows the power of art to challenge official state censorship, sectarianism and limits on freedom of expression in the Middle East.

Albareh Art Gallery:

http://www.albareh.com/en/artists/biography/88.html

The self-taught multidisciplinary Khawam is a painter, sculptor, graffiti and installation artist whose work is informed by the daily reality of the city that he lives in.

Khawam’s uses his work to draw attention to political contradictions, social injustice, the lack of cultural appreciation and other uncomfortable realities.

Early in 2012, he spray painted an armed soldier on a wall in Gemmayzeh to remind people of the Lebanese Civil War, something that he feels has been forgotten.

His arrest for this act drew international attention to the limits on free speech and artistic expression that Khawam and other Lebanese artists work within inadvertently but also ironically reinforcing his earlier messages.

Extract from an article:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/semaan-khawam-bird-birdman-rawiya-bikhazi/

Semaan Khawam - Bird and Birdman

Published on Published onMarch 1, 2015

"He draws heavily on his Syrian identity, but he is also Lebanese, having spent much of his youth in the city’s hot neighborhoods along the fiery sectarian strife’s demarcation lines of the late 80s and early 90s. Like the community of displaced contemporary Syrian artists that has carved a place within the fabric of the Lebanese capital’s bohemian districts since the beginning of the Syrian crisis two years ago, he grapples with issues of injustice, discrimination, war, totalitarianism, nationalism, and his own identity.

But his is a world apart from defeatist homilies they produce en masse and that are filling art repositories from Beirut to Dubai. He is restless and defiant, butting his head against institutional and social suppression and daring to raise a finger at a tepid discourse ushering an ever rising tidal rehash of abated artistic performances across the Arab world. An insomniac with an impoverished style and rebellious young looks, he casts himself as the protagonist in his own work."

Last words: