You are an old fashioned person. You believe in keeping things and not forgetting the old ways. You are honest. You always said exactly what is on your mind. At a time when being an immigrant and being a woman wasn’t easy, you became a businesswoman. You didn’t succeed by making yourself invisible, you spoke out and spoke up. You are a spontanous speechwriter, never at a loss for words - everyone knows this about you.
Visual Artist, Cinematographer & Film Director
In the fading twilight,
Everything in the world becomes one and the same,
Silhouettes of the same shade
In her face, he sees the moon, serene and still. Inching closer, Lucas carefully pulls their covers up around her shoulders, so her sleep turns sweeter, as morning blooms.
“Here was an ugly little girl asking for beauty… A little black girl who wanted to rise up out of the pit of her blackness and see the world with blue eyes.“ The Bluest Eye.
In The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison tells the story of Pecola, an African-American girl who blames her dark skin color and African features for being mocked and ridiculed by her classmates. Hoping to feel accepted instead, Pecola prays God to give her blue eyes.
Morrison’s novel isn’t a mere fictional portrayal. At the origins of the character of Pecola is the author’s encounter with an African-American classmate who admitted asking God to gift her with the eyes of a “white girl.”[1]
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11337.The_Bluest_Eye
Morrison’s little friend’s confession reflects more than a superficial longing for beauty. It can reflect the desire of a portion of African-Americans, -or black people living in a predominantly white society-, to erase attributes associated with ‘blackness’ and assimilate themselves with what is taken to be the dominant category.
A large portion of people having such a desire comprises people whose vision of the world and the self was informed by depictions distinguishing between people’s human values on the basis of their race, favoring white Americans.
http://dubois-doubleconsciousness.blogspot.com/2014/04/double-consciousness.html
What Pecola’s story reveals is that this desire can take extreme forms and have damaging consequences on a person’s psyche and sense of self. A poignant illustration of it is the manifestation of a type of double-consciousness in African-American psyche during the Jim Crow period.
In his collection of essays, The Souls of Black Folk (1903), African-American sociologist, activist and author, W.E.B Dubois, digs deeper in the specific feelings, experiences, and roots at the origins of this phenomenon.
Portrait of W.E.B Dubois
In his essay “Souls of Black Folk,” Dubois contends that a portion of African-Americans living under the Jim Crow laws suffer from a psychological phenomenon referred to as double-consciousness. He defines it as a “sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, (…) in a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world.“(17) He argues that Black Americans’ experience of the self is fragmented into two “unreconciled” senses of identity: that of being American, and that of being African. At the origins of such an experience is the process of splitting of one’s sense of identity into two identities, perceived as distinct and antagonist to one another.
“Double Consciousness” (https://hacejarilo.janettravellmd.com/)
In his essay “On Being Ashamed Of Oneself” (1933), Dubois explains that such a phenomenon results out of a process of internalization of negative stereotypes and attributes associated with one’s racial group at an early stage of life. Such stereotypes are rooted in specific power dynamics initiated by white Americans under the Jim Crow laws establishing the racial inferiority of African-Americans. During that period, white Americans associated black Americans with : “poverty, ignorance, suppressed and disadvantaged people, dirty and with bad manners, uncultured, etc.“
As a result, a portion of black Americans internalized the ‘white gaze‘ and developed a second self, distinct from the ‘African’ one, to be accepted into mainstream America and survive as a minority.
“Face Reality”, Laurie Cooper
Having a second ‘acceptable’ self led some of them to abandon the specificities of their cultural heritage, adopt an anti-racial patriotic attitude, and, in some cases, lighten their skin color to assimilate with white Americans.
Having established that the African-American experience of double-consciousness, result of the internalization of the ‘white gaze’, can lead one to desire to erase their ‘African self’, we can wonder whether an emancipation from such deeply ingrained feelings is possible.
https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/05/20125111291883222.html
Our contention is that black people’s presence as agents in these power dynamics itself presupposes the possibility for them to emancipate from them.
In Subject and Power, French sociologist, Michel Foucault, argues for the possibility for alienated agents to transcend oppressing power relations.
Portrait of Michel Foucault
He proposes a redefinition of the concept of power, affirming that the very fact of being an agent in these relationships presupposes the possibility of emancipating from them.
He begins by arguing that power only exists through the exercise of it, in the context of power relations existing between two,-or more-, agents. He later distinguishes between relation of power and relation of violence. While the latter is as an act “upon a body or upon things (…) which it forces, bends, breaks, destroys“ (340), a power relation is one in which the act of a subject is directed to act upon another’s action.
For Foucault, it presupposes two things: that the one whom power is exercised on is “recognized, and maintained to the end as a subject who acts,“ and that he is able to react and operate on “a whole field of responses, reactions, results“. That entails that the agent has to be free in order for him to be involved in a relation of power.
The sociologist concludes that power presupposes a form of freedom and agency.
https://quotefancy.com/michel-foucault-quotes
Thus, Foucault’s redefinition of power allows us to read one’s experience of double-consciousness as leaving room for their emancipation from it.
In his historical inquiry on the self, Foucault attempts to prove that an agent’s understanding of himself is the product of purely contingent historical configurations and developments. What an oppressed agent can interpret as objective proofs for their ‘inferior’ position is but a set of subjective, contingent, and escapable beliefs mistakenly taken for true.
Yet, undergoing such a project of emancipation requires from the agent to question every belief that informed their vision of the self, in order to establish what counts as justified true belief, and what doesn’t.
Undertaking such a historical work is the only way for an oppressed agent to reach a field of mobility from pathos to freedom.
Bibliography:
[1] Interview with Toni Morrison, “On the inspiration for The Bluest Eye“ published on 1 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02x9ybx , 2015.
Morrison, Toni, The Bluest Eye, New York : Plume Book, 1994.
Dubois, W.E.B, The Souls of Black Folk, Essays and Sketches, Chicago, A. G. McClurg, 1903.
Foucault, Michel, “Subject and Power,” Critical Inquiry, Vol. 8, №4, pp. 777–795, The University of Chicago Press, 1982.
Come, have a seat!
Would you like to sip from the glass I just have had drank water?
Or shall we begin without it?
In my dreams I became mad too many times,
Interview with Mariam Al-Ali
When one thinks of calligraphy, the first words that come in mind are preciseness, distinctness, measure, and beauty.
At the crossroads of Africa, Europe and the Middle-East, Morocco’s musical culture is at the image of the country’s ethnical diversity. In his Tableau de la musique marocaine, Alexis Chottin reminds us of Morocco’s unique spot as both a “member of the Muslim family” and Northern-African country. As such, its musical culture bears witness to its complex history of slavery, racism and Islamic spirituality, interwined in Gnawa culture.
As the entire globe experiences the difficulties and dangers of Covid-19, many areas of life are being affected. Not only have restaurants and malls closed to promote social distancing and prevent further spread of the virus, art galleries, museums, and artist all around the world are struggling to show their work.
I open John Ruskin’s “Work” which he delivered at the Working Men’s Institute at Campbell. I try to tempt myself with the deception that I would enjoy preparing for this class as the topic of class disparity is close to my heart.
Time is one of the elements that everybody in the world experiences. As we encounter time in the present, this moment instantly becomes the past and the future becomes the present. However, according to the spacetime continuum, time is relative to space on a constant world line.
During this quarantine period, the world seems extra surreal. The outside is unsafe, close contact with other human beings are discouraged and the digital world is taking over our lives more distinctly than ever. All of these resulted in forming hyper realistic but highly stressful and disruptive dreams.
For me, I like that I can create images that connect with other people as well as educate them on the forgotten history of American History. I focus on Black history and the Black experience because that is the history I grew up with but as I got old I realized that others around me had no idea what I was talking about.
Inspired by Géricault's Raft of the Medusa (1819), the paintings and cyanotypes show what Europe is planning today: free exchange of goods on a global scale and rejection of human beings in exile at its borders.
Wüthrich considers that after having colonized the world (for its own profits), our continent forgets its own migratory history and curls up on its achievements. The many tragedies in the Mediterranean Sea are just one of the obscure consequences. Paintings, sculptures and photos to question the current world and its dysfunctions. An extension of the Horizons and Orange vests series presented during the Tour du Monde event in 2 p.m. in September 2019 at the Cité internationale des arts. Emmanuel Wüthrich (Switzerland) is in residence at the Cité internationale des arts through the program of the Republic and Canton of Jura. Send feedback History Saved Community
Inspirés par le Radeau de la Méduse de Géricault (1819), les peintures et cyanotypes donnent à voir ce que l'Europe envisage aujourd’hui : libre échange des marchandises à l’échelle de la planète et rejet de l’être humain en exil à ses frontières.
L'artiste considère qu'après avoir colonisé le monde (pour ses propres profits), notre continent oublie sa propre histoire migratoire et se recroqueville sur ses acquis. Les nombreux drames en mer Méditerranée n’en sont qu’une des obscures conséquences.
Des peintures, sculptures et photos pour questionner le monde actuel et ses dysfonctionnements. Un prolongement des séries Horizons et Gilets oranges présentées lors de l'événement Tour du Monde en 14h de septembre 2019 à la Cité internationale des arts.
Emmanuel Wüthrich (Suisse) est en résidence à la Cité internationale des arts par le biais du programme de la République et Canton du Jura.
Born in Dijon, he works at Maison-Alfort. Starting from the observation of a reversal of the perception of the world which is constantly observed and watched over, the artist quips by watching himself. Victim, suspect or director, he puts himself at the heart of ambiguous situations. It parasitizes the video surveillance system by viewing it as a narrative point of view; fiction plays with reality. The artist freezes, deconstructs and reveals his videos, through drawing and print, which he sees as a filter, reproducing the deformations inherent in the recording of a screen by a lens. Through a game of scale, the images obtained are both figurative and fixed from afar, and abstract and kinetic from close up. Like stopping the video image and moving the still image. These psychedelic freeze frames take us on a journey through the history of art by going back and forth between present and past where video and etching engrave take turns in an anachronistic relationship. This work echoes a work of shots and various experiments carried out in the district of square Clara Zetkin in the 13th arrondissement in Paris with the association Art Exprim in 2017.
Né à Dijon, travaille à Maison-Alfort. Partant du constat d’un retournement de la perception du monde qui s’observe et s’épie en permanence, l’artiste ironise en se surveillant lui-même. Victime, suspect ou metteur en scène, il se met au cœur de situations ambiguës. Il parasite le système de vidéo-surveillance en l’envisageant comme un point de vue narratif ; la fiction se joue de la réalité. L’artiste fige, déconstruit et met en abyme ses vidéos, par le dessin et l’estampe, qu’il envisage comme un filtre, reproduisant les déformations inhérentes à l’enregistrement d’un écran par un objectif. Par un jeu d’échelle, les images obtenues sont à la fois figuratives et fixes de loin, et abstraites et cinétiques de près. Comme pour arrêter l’image vidéo et mettre en mouvement l’image fixe. Ces arrêts sur image psychédéliques nous font voyager dans l’histoire de l’art par des aller-retour entre présent et passé où vidéo et gravure à l’eau forte se relaient dans un rapport anachronique. Cette œuvre fait écho à un travail de prises de vues et d’expérimentations diverses menées dans le quartier du square Clara Zetkin dans le 13e arrondissement à Paris avec l’association Art Exprim en 2017.
Artist
Art will remain important after the era of transition to digital sources. Again, the price will be created by the hands of art.
Artist
Art and the creative process allowed me to return to a deeper identity than the one I had built for myself to survive. In doing so, I was able to discover the energy that inhabited me beyond the vicissitudes of life.
Painter · Videographer
The questions of movement and fiction are at the heart of my practice. Throughout my projects, I wonder about the very technique of animation, going from experimental video to creating complex stories.
I believe deeply in art as a tool of transformation, both individually and socially. Contemporary artistic practices enable dialogue with issues that affect all of us as inhabitants of the same world, affected and affecting by the same imaginaries, symbols and dreams.
Artist
Yumiko Ono’s theme is utopia/utopian architecture, an ideal world that exists in imagination.
The Creative Process: Podcast Interviews & Portraits of the World’s Leading Authors & Creative Thinkers
Inspiring Students – Encouraging Reading - Connecting through Stories
The Creative Process exhibition is traveling to universities and museums. The Creative Process exhibition consists of interviews with over 100 esteemed writers, including Joyce Carol Oates, Hilary Mantel, Neil Gaiman, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Tobias Wolff, Richard Ford, Junot Díaz, Marie Darrieussecq, Michel Faber, T.C. Boyle, Jay McInerney, George Saunders, Geoff Dyer, Etgar Keret, Douglas Kennedy, Sam Lipsyte, and Yiyun Li, among others. Artist and interviewer: Mia Funk.
