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Sanja Mitrovic tells me: ”My latest show is “Crash Course Chit Chat” that premiered on the 2nd of April in Theater aan het Spui in Den Haag. We have been touring a lot in the month of April through The Netherlands and next weekend we are at the Festival aan de Werf on the 19th and 20th of May. The show is invited to festivals in Basel, Switzerland in August and will also be shown at Reims Scenes d’Europe Festival in France in December this year. ‘Crash Course Chit Chat’ is and international co-production, a piece for 5 performers from 5 different European countries in search for a common European identity. It is based on the one hand on the performers’ stories about their homelands, families and personal experiences and on the other hand on historical facts, clichés and prejudices relating to nationality. In this new work I continue my investigation of documentary in theatre and focus on the relation between the national and European identity.” ‘Chrash course chit chat’ is on show twice at this Festival aan de Werf, with a debate on European identity following the show at the 19th. Starting point for the debate will be the performance itself. See you there?
With the birth of hip hop behind us for almost three decades it seems like the wave of political and generational demands it put forward back then now make a comeback. Earlier on, this blog posted about the new street art scenes in Northern Africa and the Middle East, and more recently we paid attention to Omar Offendum, who came over to Utrecht to perform at the Liberation Festival. His presence didn’t go unnoticed as shows the feature on the national television here. But this new wave of engaged and empowered hip hop artists may look very strong to us, outsiders, the new regimes in many of the post Arab Spring countries aren’t the biggest fans. Unfortunately the case of Mouad Belghouat, a rapper who goes by the name El Haqed — Arabic for “The Enraged” or “The Sullen” —in Morocco proves just that. He was sentenced last week in connection with his song about the country’s police force, “Dogs of the State.” In the song, about police corruption in Morocco – widespread, and hated among the Moroccans – one of the police officers heads was replaced by the head of a donkey. This insult was too much for authorities – the text wasn’t the biggest problem apparently. Still, lyrics as “You are paid to protect the citizens, not to steal their money,” “Did your commander order you to take money from the poor?” were not allowed at all a few years back. A video clip without donkey heads is still viewable, click here. The 24-year-old Mouad Belghouat, who also writes his name alphanumerically as l7a9ed, is an outspoken critic of the government and his music is closely associated with Morocco’s February 20 protest movement. He was jailed in September for fighting with a supporter of the Moroccan government, released after four months, and he was arrested again in late March for the song. The great people at Freemuse wrote a good piece about it. Human Rights Watch condemned his trial and harsh sentence as a breach of Morocco’s constitutional guarantees of freedom of expression. For more Human Rights Watch reporting on Morocco and Western Sahara, please visit their site.
Shame: “a painful emotion caused by consciousness of guilt, shortcoming, or impropriety” The Standaard, a Belgian newspaper known for its highly informative and qualitative news coverage, recently paid attention to the topic ‘shame’ in one of their specials. Besides the written articles on the topic ‘shame’, nineteen photographers chose one image that, in their opinion, represents the topic. They were asked to choose one image out of the impressive Magnum photo collection, a collection often described as hard, engaged photography. The result: Nineteen different kind of images (for an impression of the photos chosen, see following link): from the food distribution at the Salvation Army (NYC, 1979) to a dog pooping on the street (Paris, 1973) to a sex tourist in the Thailand (Pattaya, 1991). One photo caught me: Yes, this photo and no, I am not one of those people who usually get touched by photos of crying kids (not even mentioning the third world underfed crying kids – photos). With great attention I have been paying attention to the current debate, mainly in NGO-field, around ethics and photography (the blog of Linda Raftree highlights the NGO-point of view) and I am certainly one of those people arguing in favour of showing the defensibility of kids instead of their vulnerability. Back to the photo, which was taken by Steve McCurry, an American photojournalist best known for his ‘Afghan girl’-photo which appeared on the National Geographic front page in 1985. On this photo, we see a young boy standing in front of a building. He has tears in his eyes and holds a gun in this hand pointing at his head. I see a picture that doesn’t fit: A sad, angry little boy and a gun that’s way too big and pointing in the wrong direction. Shame? I see no shame neither do I feel any shame. I can only imagine some people might feel something we’ve called guilt.
All over Europe festivities take place – for the ninth of May is Europe Day. In Utrecht, home to this blog, an European literature festival took place two weeks ago already. At the website of City 2 Cities you will find an exhausting overview of the program of that festival: writers, poets, critics, and the likes all were enjoying eachother’s company, the fine arts and some sunshine. One of my personal heroes, Patrick Ourednik, was one of the guests. His great book Europeana got a reprint in the Netherlands, and will be distributed by publishing house IJzer. The organizers of the festiavl were as kind to ask me to introduce Patrick Ourednik and his book to the Dutch audiences. It is with their friendly consent that I can share that introduction with you here: “It is a great honor to have been invited to introduce this second print of the book “Europeana. A Brief History of the Twentieth Century” in the Netherlands. In preparation for this occasion I have been reading the paragraphs of the little treasure, such as I consider Europeana, for the so manieth time in my life. There are parts in the book where I even don’t need reading to know what’s written. In repetition the sentences and images of Patrik Ourednik have gained such a continuous flow, such consequent wanderings, that my brain while reading jumps in happy advance of what is to come. Because people, it is a great book. A book to cherish. A book to buy your friends. For many years, since 1998, the first phase of the Kosovo war, I have been keeping a little published letter to the editor from a Dutch daily in my wallet. It is a small anecdote written by a mother. She wrote: “Whilst watching the evening news my eldest daughter, seeing Albanians fleeing, asked me whether some of those refugees would be allowed to come to the Netherlands. My affirming answer was responded with a spontaneous exclamation: Yippie, more people in the Netherlands, there might be good friends among them.” It is a little story, and no quote for eternity, but apparently it is one that sticks to me. Like parts of Europeana reading this little piece of paper reminds me there are numerous ways of dealing with a fact. Fact: war in Kosovo. First reaction: there always was war. Another reaction: future friends. A bit absurd perhaps, but friendly. Although the little girl’s stream of thought is divisible into what, when, where, who, why and how, she just doesn’t, but rather thinks of a because. Picking two dots on the thread of history she made a decision – the other possibilities don’t matter. It is a certain kind of naivete which Ourednik shares with her. But since he wasn’t a young boy anymore writing Europeana his view is different. Rather than focusing on his personal story, Ourednik in Europeana concentrates on the Twentieth Century. Along the girl’s line of thought chronology is not too important for Ourednik. He moves from one era in the century to another, in an irresistible rhythm. Neither [...]
Both Foreign Policy and NRC, one of the leading Dutch quality newspapers, dedicated a valuable article to the recent work of war correspondent Anna Badkhen and photojournalist Thorne Anderson. In short: For a year, Badkhen travelled through the remote Northern provinces of Afghanistan without protection from neither American nor Afghan troops and wrote down her experiences in an e-book titled “Afghanistan by Donkey”. Anderson, on the other hand, was responsible for the visuals, the photographs (see following link). The project of Thorne Anderson and Anna Badkhen is not war journalism in the conventional sense of the word. It’s not some kind of “disaster porn”, on the contrary. It gives a unique view into the lives of Afghans living in a conflict area and is in sharp contrast to most of the often bloody images we receive about Afghanistan. Peter Bergen, a well-known journalist specialized in topics concerning international security, wrote the preface to the book and states that “If you can’t understand a country just from looking at the cities, you certainly can’t understand a war just from reading about the battles.” In a way, he’s right: Many diverse stories create a more objective image. Nevertheless, war journalism, whether disaster porn or not, is and will always be a one-sided view. It’s about telling a story, one story. The story of Badkhen and Anderson touches upon the story that, to my knowledge, has never been extensively described before and is, in that sense, a must read!
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