opmaak journal #3 p. 01-47

Transcripción

Contents
Contenu
Contenido
p. 2 Organisation of the Prince Claus Fund
Organisation de la Fondation Prince Claus
Organización de la Fundación Príncipe Claus
p. 3 Editorial
1999 Prince Claus Awards
Slavery
La Création d’Espaces de Liberté
Arte y Guerra
p. 7 Charles Jencks
Ken Yeang: The Reinvention of the Skyscraper
p. 9 Adriaan van Dis
Coming to Terms with the Past
p. 13 Duong Thu Huong
Liberté, un espace irréel pour la naissance et la
survie d’une écriture
p. 18 Adriano Mixinge
Arte y Guerra en Angola
Respuestas estéticas para un conflicto de siempre
p. 24 Rory Bester
Siguiéndole el Rastro a una Guerra
Architecture
Arquitectura
p. 31 Works of Art Oeuvres d’Art
Obras de Arte:
p. 32 Charles Correa, India
The Ritualistic Pathway
p. 36 Ricardo Legorreta, Mexico
The Wall in Mexico
p. 40 Bruno Stagno, Costa Rica
Mimetismo, Contraste, Evolución
p. 44 Rahul Mehrotra, India
Working in Bombay
p. 48 Kenneth Yeang, Malaysia
Design Aims
Mother Tongues
p. 50 Al Creighton
(M)other Tongues
p. 55 Olive Senior
Mad Fish
p. 61 Hassan Musa
Le second regard: Le corps comme espace des
mutations culturelles
Beauté et Contexte
p. 67 Activities supported by the Prince Claus
Fund Activités soutenues par la Fondation Prince
Claus Actividades patrocinadas por la Fundación
Príncipe Claus
p. 72 Recent publications Publications
récentes Publicaciones recientes
p. 77 Contributing authors Auteurs participants
à ce numéro Contribuidores
p. 80 The Prince Claus Fund
La Fondation Prince Claus
p. 81 La Fundación Príncipe Claus
Prince Claus Fund Journal # 3
1
Board of the Prince Claus Fund
Comité de Direction de la Fondation Prince Claus
Junta Directiva de la Fundación Príncipe Claus
HRH Prince Claus of the Netherlands,
Honorary Chairman
Professor Anke Niehof, Chairperson, Professor of
Sociology at the Wageningen University and Research
Centre, the Netherlands
Adriaan van Dis, Vice-Chairman, writer
Edith Sizoo, Secretary, International Coordinator of
Réseau Cultures et Développement, Brussels, Belgium
Professor Louk de la Rive Box, Treasurer, Director
of the European Centre for Development Policy
Management, Maastricht, the Netherlands
Professor Lolle Nauta, Professor Emeritus of Social
Philosophy at the University of Groningen,
the Netherlands
Professor Adriaan van der Staay, Professor of
Cultural Politics and Cultural Critique at the Erasmus
University, Rotterdam, the Netherlands
Ashok Bhalotra, architect and urban planner,
Rotterdam, the Netherlands
o
Office Bureaux Oficina
Els van der Plas, Director
Cora Taal, Executive Secretary
Geerte Wachter, Policy Officer
Marlous Willemsen, Policy Officer
Vivian Paulissen, Projects & PR Coordinator
Fernand Pahud de Mortanges, Secretary
Petra Koeman, PR Awards 1999
Sofie Op de Beeck, Internee
Maurice Sistermans, Internee
1999 Prince Claus Awards Committee
Comité des Prix Prince Claus pour 1999
Comité de Premios Príncipe Claus 1999
Professor Adriaan van der Staay, Chair, member of
the Board of the Prince Claus Fund, The Hague, the
Netherlands
Professor Charles Correa, architect and planner,
New Delhi, India
Emile Fallaux, script-writer and President of the
Hubert Bals Fonds, Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Mai Ghoussoub, artist, writer and Director of Al Saqi
Publishers and Bookshop, London, UK; Beirut, Lebanon
Gaston Kaboré, historian and film director,
Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso
Gerardo Mosquera, curator and art critic, Havana, Cuba
2
Organisation of
the Prince Claus
Fund
Organisation de la
Fondation Prince
Claus
Organización de la
Fundación Príncipe
Claus
1999 Exchanges Committee
Comité des Echanges pour 1999
Comité de Intercambios 1999
Professor Lolle Nauta, Chair, member of the Board
of the Prince Claus Fund, The Hague, the Netherlands
Dr. Pieter Boele van Hensbroek, philosopher,
University of Groningen, the Netherlands
Arvind N. Das, journalist and editor, New Delhi, India
Professor Achille Mbembe, historian and Director
of CODESRIA , Dakar, Senegal
Anil Ramdas, essayist, the Netherlands
1999 Publications Committee
Comité des Publications pour 1999
Comité de Publicaciones 1999
Adriaan van Dis, Chair, member of the Board of the
Prince Claus Fund, The Hague, the Netherlands
Professor Hilary Beckles, historian and Dean of the
University of the West Indies, Jamaica
Professor Leonard Blussé, Professor of the History
of European Expansion at Leiden University, the
Netherlands
Professor Avishai Margalit, philosopher at Hebrew
University, Jerusalem, Israel
Professor Anke Niehof, Chairperson of the Board of
the Prince Claus Fund, The Hague, the Netherlands
1999 Activities Committee
Comité des Activités pour 1999
Comité de Actividades 1999
Edith Sizoo, Chair, member of the Board of the Prince
Claus Fund, The Hague, the Netherlands
Ritseart ten Cate, Director of Dasarts, Amsterdam,
the Netherlands
Huib Haringhuizen, Artistic Director of the Tropical
Institute Theatre, Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Peter Struycken, artist, the Netherlands
The Prince Claus Fund is a platform for intercultural debate. It gives a voice to those who are never,
or hardly ever heard. In this third issue of the Prince
Claus Fund Journal‚ the subjects under discussion
are not those that usually occupy the limelight.
‘Creating Spaces of Freedom’‚ was the theme of the
Principal 1999 Prince Claus Award, which was accompanied by a publication of the same name.
The article ‘Liberté, un espace irréel pour la naissance et la survie d’une écriture’‚ (‘Liberty, an unreal
space for the birth and survival of writing’) by the
Vietnamese author Duong Thu Huong has been
published in this issue of the Journal. In it she
appeals to other authors to make their voices heard
and not to allow themselves to be intimidated by
regulations, censorship or any other form of restriction. The Principal Award was once again presented at the Royal Palace in Amsterdam.
Ten prizes have been awarded by the Dutch
Ambassadors in the countries where the winners
live and work. This Journal opens with one of the
laudations; it was written by the celebrated architecture critic Charles Jencks on the Malaysian architect and 1999 Prince Claus Award winner Kenneth
Yeang.
The colour section is dedicated to the work of five
outstanding architects with whom the Fund has
worked: Ricardo Legorreta from Mexico, Charles
Correa and Rahul Mehrotra from India, 1997 Prince
Claus Award winner Bruno Stagno from Costa
Rica, and of course award winner Kenneth Yeang.
These contributions come under the theme of
‘Cities’‚ which the Prince Claus Fund will focus on in
the year 2000. The Prince Claus Fund is interested
in the development and growth of Third World
cities and the inventive ways the inhabitants deal
with the problems typically associated with large
urban areas. These may be architectural and urban
planning concepts, examples of which are included
in this issue, or social and cultural approaches.
In the publication ‘Het Verleden onder Ogen:
Herdenking van de Slavernij’ (‘Coming to Terms
with the Past: Commemoration of Slavery’),
published this year by the Prince Claus Fund and
Arena Publishers, the forms the commemoration
of slavery takes around the world is described by
authors from different countries. The book could be
regarded as an attempt to map the range of
experiences with the aim of advising the Dutch
government on how it should address with these
dark pages of Dutch history. The book was presented on 30 June 1999 in the Old Hall of the
Parliament’s Second Chamber in The Hague, the
Netherlands. The speech given by Adriaan van Dis,
e
Vice-Chairman of the Prince Claus Fund and the
book’s co-author, is presented in this issue.
The war in Angola is once again attracting international attention. It is one of the longest running
wars in Africa and is, lamentably, often a forgotten
war. The Angolan art historian Adriano Mixinge
discusses the role of art in the processing of the
collective trauma experienced by those affected by
Editorial
this war. ‘Aesthetic Answers to an Interminable
The Prince Claus
Conflict’ is the translation of the telling subtitle of
Fund Journal
his paper. The South African art critic, Rory Bester,
reflects the aims
of the Prince Claus goes on to discuss the work of the Angolan artist
Fernando Alvim. Alvim asked artists from the counFund and reports
on the outcome of tries involved it the Angolan war, South Africa,
activities initiated, Cuba and Angola, to take part in the major project
‘Memórias Intimas Marcas’. Both articles are pubsupported and
lished in Spanish.
stimulated by the
With a view to future projects, in June 1999 the
Fund. The Fund
Prince Claus Fund organised a meeting on the
seeks to publicise
theme of ‘Mother Tongues’. One of the participants
the intellectual
and artistic results was the Jamaican literary critic Al Creighton. In his
of its activities and article ‘(M)other Tongues’‚ he addresses the role of
mother tongues in poetry and oral traditions and
to disseminate
also highlights trends such as rap and poetry slams;
these throughout
literary forms that give voice to mother tongues.
the world. The
A short story, ‘Mad Fish’‚ by the Jamaican author
Fund – and likeOlive Senior, who also took part in the meeting, is
wise the Journal –
published in this issue. In this witty story, Creole is
acts as an intergiven a uniquely literary voice.
ested listener, a
Another area the Prince Claus Fund will be looking at
partner in discussion and a catalyst in the coming years falls under the theme ‘Beauty in
Context’. The article by the writer and artist Hassan
in cultural
Musa relates to this theme. It is a reworked version of
innovation and
a paper he presented at a symposium on culture in
development.
Sudan held by the Sudanese Studies Centre, and
supported by the Prince Claus Fund. He addresses
the contradictions and interactions between modernity and traditional life in Sudan. These are illustrated with examples of body decoration, like tattoos
and henna.
Further, the section ‘Activities and Publications’ contains a selection of the many cultural initiatives
supported by the Prince Claus Fund.
3
La Fondation Prince Claus est une plateforme de
débats interculturels. Elle donne une voix à des gens
qui ne sont pas entendus, ou si peu. Ce troisième
numéro du Journal de la Fondation Prince Claus
aborde des sujets qui n’occupent pas toujours le
devant de la scène.
Le Grand Prix Prince Claus 1999 avait pour thème
‘La Création des Espaces de Liberté’. À cette occasion a paru une publication portant le même nom.
On trouvera dans le présent numéro le texte ‘Liberté,
un espace irréel pour la naissance et la survie d’une
écriture’ de l’écrivain vietnamien Duong Thu Huong.
Elle y lance un appel à tous ceux qui écrivent pour
qu’ils fassent entendre leur voix et ne se laissent pas
intimider par les restrictions, les censures ou toute
autre contrainte. Une fois encore, c’est dans le
Palais Royal d’Amsterdam que le Grand Prix a été
remis aux lauréats. Les lauréats des dix autres prix
ont reçu cette distinction des mains des ambassadeurs des Pays-Bas, dans le pays où ils résident et
travaillent. Ce Journal s’ouvre sur l’éloge d’un de ces
lauréats du prix 1999, l’architecte malaysien Kenneth
Yeang, célébré ici par le critique d’architecture très
connu, Charles Jencks.
Notre cahier en couleur est consacré aux œuvres de
cinq architectes remarquables avec qui la Fondation
collabore: Ricardo Legorreta au Mexique, Charles
Correa et Rahul Mehrotra en Inde, le lauréat du Prix
Prince Claus 1997 Bruno Stagno au Costa Rica et
enfin bien sûr le lauréat Kenneth Yeang. Cette
présentation a été réalisée dans le cadre du thème
‘Villes’, qui fera l’objet d’une attention toute
particulière de la part de la Fondation Prince Claus en
2000. La Fondation s’intéresse au développement
et à la croissance des villes du tiers-monde ainsi qu’à
la façon dont les habitants de ces cités imaginent
des solutions pour faire face aux problèmes
typiques des grandes agglomérations. Il peut s’agir
de créa-tions architectoniques et urbanistes – on
peut en voir des exemples dans ce numéro – mais
aussi de concepts sociaux et culturels.
Dans la publication ‘Het Verleden onder Ogen:
Herdenking van de Slavernij’ (‘L’acceptation du
passé, La commémoration de l’esclavage’) éditée
cette année par la Fondation Prince Claus en
collaboration avec les éditions Arena, des auteurs
de plusieurs pays décrivent les différentes façons
de commémorer l’esclavage à travers le monde.
Cet ouvrage peut être considéré comme une
tentative de mise en carte des diverses expériences.
L’objectif est de conseiller le gouvernement néerlandais sur la façon d’aborder la commémoration de
ces pages sombres de l’histoire des Pays-Bas. Le livre
a été présenté le 30 juin dernier dans l’ancienne salle
4
e
Editorial
Le Journal de la
Fondation Prince
Claus reflète les
objectifs de la Fondation Prince Claus
et relate les résultats
des activités lancées,
soutenues et encouragées par la Fondation. La Fondation
tient à publier les
résultats au plan
intellectuel et artistique de ses activités
et à les diffuser dans
le monde entier.
A l’instar de la
Fondation, ce bulletin
agit en interlocuteur
attentif, en partenaire dans les débats
et joue un rôle
catalysateur dans
l’innovation et le
développement
culturels.
de la Chambre des Députés du Parlement de La
Haye. Le discours qu’Adriaan van Dis, vice-président
de la Fondation et co-auteur du livre, a prononcé
lors de la présentation, est publié dans ce numéro.
Bien que, pour un temps, l’on s’intéresse à nouveau
dans le monde à la guerre en Angola, cette guerre,
l’une des plus longues que connaît l’Afrique, est
souvent aussi hélas ‘une guerre oubliée’ de tous.
L’historien d’art angolais Adriano Mixinge analyse
le rôle de l’art dans le traitement du traumatisme
collectif dont souffrent les personnes touchées par
cette guerre; son article porte un sous-titre éloquent: ‘Des réponses esthétiques à un interminable conflit’. Le critique d’art sud-africain Rory
Bester parle ensuite du travail de Fernando Alvim.
Cet artiste plasticien angolais a demandé à des
collègues des pays engagés dans la guerre angolaise – l’Afrique du Sud, Cuba et l’Angola – de
participer à un grandiose projet artistique intitulé
‘Memórias Intimas Marcas’. Ces deux articles sont
publiés en espagnol.
En vue des initiatives à venir, la Fondation Prince
Claus a organisé en juin 1999 une réunion sur le
thème de la ‘langue maternelle’. Le critique littéraire
jamaïcain Al Creighton a été l’un des participants à
ce débat. Dans son article ‘(M)other Tongues’, il
évoque le rôle des langues maternelles dans la
poésie et dans la tradition orale mais étudie aussi
les tendances comme le rap et les ‘poetry-slams’,
formes littéraires qui donnent une voix aux langues
maternelles. Ce Journal contient également la
nouvelle intitulée ‘Mad Fish’ (‘Poisson Fou’), d’Olive
Senior, une femme écrivain jamaïcaine qui elle aussi,
a participé au débat. Dans cette histoire pleine
d’esprit, l’auteur donne à la langue créole une voix
littéraire.
Le thème ‘Beauté et Contexte’ constitue un autre
centre d’intérêt de la Fondation Prince Claus dans
les années à venir. C’est dans ce cadre que l’article
de l’écrivain et artiste Hassan Musa est publié ici. Il
s’agit de la version retravaillée d’une communication qu’il a présentée lors d’un symposium sur
la culture au Soudan qui s’est tenu au Centre
d’Études Soudanaises et que la Fondation Prince
Claus soutenait. Dans cet article, il traite des contradictions et de l’interaction entre modernité et vie
traditionnelle au Soudan, prenant pour exemple la
décoration du corps, comme le tatouage et le henné.
Par ailleurs les sections ‘Activités’ et ‘Publications’
présentent une sélection des nombreuses initiatives que soutient la Fondation Prince Claus dans le
domaine de la culture.
La Fundación Príncipe Claus es una plataforma para
el debate inter-cultural. Es una voz para aquellos
que nunca, o casi nunca son escuchados. En este
tercer número de la revista de la Fundación
Príncipe Claus no se discuten los mismos temas
que usualmente reciben toda la atención.
‘Creando Espacios de Libertad’ fue el tema del Gran
Premio Príncipe Claus 1999 y del libro publicado
con motivo de su entrega. El artículo ‘Liberté, un
espace irréel pour la naissance et la survie d’une
écriture’ (‘Libertad, un espacio irreal para el nacimiento y la sobrevivencia de las letras’) del autor
vietnamés Duong Thu Huong ha sido publicado en
este número. En su artículo hace un llamado para
que otros escritores expresen sus ideas sin dejarse
intimidar por regulaciones, la censura o cualquier
otra restricción. El Gran Premio fue entregado una
vez más, en el Palacio Real de Amsterdam. Otros
diez premios han sido otorgados por los embajadores de los Países Bajos en los países donde los
galardonados viven y trabajan. Esta revista comienza
con un texto del famoso crítico de arquitectura
Charles Jencks, en donde elogia el trabajo del
arquitecto malasio Kenneth Yeang, ganador del
Premio Príncipe Claus 1999.
La sección a color está dedicada a la obra de cinco
arquitectos sobresalientes con quienes ha trabajado la Fundación: Ricardo Legorreta de México,
Charles Correa y Rahul Mehrotra de la India, el
costarricense Bruno Stagno, laureado en 1997, y por
supuesto Kenneth Yeang, laureado en 1999.
Estas contribuciones están dentro del tema:
‘Ciudades’, en que se concentrará la Fundación
Príncipe Claus durante el año 2000. La Fundación
Príncipe Claus está interesada en el desarrollo y
crecimiento de las ciudades del tercer mundo y en
la forma creativa en que sus habitantes resuelven los
problemas típicamente asociados con las grandes
áreas urbanas, incluyendo los enfoques culturales y
conceptos arquitectónicos o de planeación urbana,
de los que algunos ejemplos han sido incluidos en
este número.
En el libro ‘Het Verleden onder Ogen: Herdenking
van de Slavernij’ (‘Conviviendo con el Pasado:
Evocación de la Esclavitud’) publicado este año por
la Fundación Príncipe Claus y la editorial Arena,
autores de varios países describen las formas de
conmemoración de la esclavitud alrededor del
mundo. Este texto puede ser visto como un sondeo
que proyecta las diferentes experiencias con el fin
de asesorar al gobierno de los Países Bajos en el
tratamiento de estas oscuras páginas de la historia
de este país. Su lanzamiento se efectuó el 30 de
junio de 1999 en el Salón Antiguo de la Segunda
e
Editorial
El Journal de la
Claus refleja los
objetivos de la
Claus y reporta los
resultados de actividades iniciadas,
patrocinadas o
estimuladas por la
Fundación. La
Fundación procura
publicar los logros
intelectuales y
artísticos de sus
actividades y difundirlos por todo el
mundo. La Fundación
– y por consiguiente
la revista – actúan
como un escucha
interesado, un compañero en la discusión
y un catalizador para
la innovación y el
desarrollo cultural.
Cámara del Parlamento en la Haya, Países Bajos. El
discurso, a cargo de Adriaan van Dis, vice-presidente
de la Fundación Príncipe Claus y co-autor del libro,
viene incluido en este número.
La guerra de Angola está atrayendo una vez más la
atención mundial; es una de las guerras más largas
de África y es, lamentablemente, a menudo una
guerra olvidada. El historiador de arte angoleño
Adriano Mixinge reflexiona sobre el papel del arte en el
procesamiento del trauma colectivo experimentado
por aquellos afectados por esta guerra. ‘Respuestas
Estéticas para un Conflicto Interminable’ es el diciente
título de este documento. El sudafricano Rory Bester,
crítico de arte, examina el trabajo del artista angoleño Fernando Alvim quien invitó a artistas de los
países involucrados en la guerra de Angola: Sudáfrica,
Cuba y Angola a tomar parte en su gran obra:
‘Memórias Intimas Marcas’. Estos dos artículos han
sido publicados en español.
Como preparación para futuros proyectos, en junio
de 1999 la Fundación Príncipe Claus organizó un
encuentro sobre el tema: ‘Lenguas Maternas’. Uno
de los participantes fue el crítico literario de
Jamaica Al Creighton. En su artículo ‘(M)other
Tongues’, se refiere al rol de la lengua materna en la
poesía y en la tradición oral y también resalta corrientes como la del rap y las trovas, formas literarias
que dan voz a las lenguas maternas. También hay
una historia corta, ‘Mad Fish’ (‘Pez Loco’) del
jamaiquina Olive Senior, que también participó en
el encuentro. En esta ingeniosa historia, la lengua
creole trasciende del espacio oral a la literatura.
Otra área de trabajo contemplada por la Fundación
Príncipe Claus para los próximos años se incluye
dentro del tema ‘La Belleza en Contexto’. El artículo
del escritor y artista Hassan Musa se relaciona con
este materia. Es una nueva versión de su intervención en un simposio sobre cultura realizado en
Sudán por el Centro de Estudios de Sudán y patrocinado por la Fundación Príncipe Claus. Se refiere a
las contradicciones e interacciones entre la modernidad y la vida tradicional en ese país, ilustradas con
ejemplos sobre la decoración del cuerpo como los
tatuajes y hena. Además, la sección de Actividades y
Publicaciones incluye una selección de las muchas
iniciativas culturales patrocinadas por la Fundación
Príncipe Claus.
5
On 8 December 1999 the Prince Claus Awards were presented for
Kenneth Yeang (1948,
Malaysia)
proposal for the ‘Marsham
Street Urban Design’,
Westminster, uk, 1996
in: The Master Architect
Series iii: T.R. Hamzah &
Yeang, Selected Works,
The Images Publishing
Group, Pty Ltd, Australia,
1998
the third time. One of this year’s laureates is the Malaysian architect
Kenneth Yeang. The architect and respected critic Charles Jencks
wrote a laudation for him which was published in ‘The 1999 Prince
Claus Awards’. This Prince Claus Fund publication also containes
the 1999 Awards Committee’s report and laudations for the other
twelve laureates.
Ken Yeang: The Reinvention of the Skyscraper
Ken Yeang (1948, Penang, Malaysia) came onto the scene of international architecture with
the Roof-Roof House, constructed for himself in 1984. This curious-sounding structure,
built as an environmental experiment in the hot and humid climate of Kuala Lumpur, does
indeed feature the roof. It has a gigantic sunshade, a curved white pergola that leaps over the
roof below in the flat arc of a projectile, a white comet tearing down through the blue sky in a
staccato burst of light and shadow. A porous sunshade on top of a covering for the rain; that
is, a Roof+Roof, a poetic and pop architecture made from climatic necessities. In Malaysia the
prevailing temperature is 30 degrees, the humidity 70 per cent, and foreigners who fly in
never forget the first impression of this equatorial sauna. Since constructing this tour de force
in sparkling white concrete (now a bit green with damp), Yeang has developed an ecological
architecture for larger building types and it is this which has made him one of the forces to be
reckoned with internationally.
Actually, he first developed the approach while studying in the early 1970s: at the
Architectural Association in London and at Cambridge University, where he wrote his thesis
in 1972 entitled ‘Design with Nature: the Ecological Basis for Design’. Here, he also did a
thesis on ersatz culture and the simulacrum, under my direction. I can remember several
amusing discussions with him, trying to sort out what is real and what is phoney. (He
pointed out that the Monkeys pop group did rip-offs of the Beatles, so well that they learned
to play and created ‘real’ music.) Abstract thinking and research are essential to his work. By
the year 2000 he will have eight books to his credit and several key papers that analyse the
tall building, climatically considered. This can be seen historically as the hundred-year
answer to Louis Sullivan’s famous paper of 1896: ‘The Tall Office Building Artistically
Considered’. If I am right in predicting his importance, then Yeang will have about the same
century of influence, for, however questionable the skyscraper is as the most assertive of
urban forms, it is going to continue to dominate cities and therefore it will have to be
rethought, environmentally and in other ways.
One should also mention the cultural nature of this research, for that is also a rarity, both
in this building type and this part of the world, where resources are directed elsewhere. As
Ken Yeang has written: ‘The fight for independence (in Malaysia) must be matched by a fight
for an independent architecture based on independent thought.’ Most architectural cultures
remain provincial backwaters and, to open them up, they need the inspiration and freethinking of a creative leader. Regional architecture can challenge global forces of commerce
and culture only where new knowledge is being produced by individuals who can translate it
into a creative art. It no longer grows from within local practice and local materials. Globalisation is much too powerful for the old determinants of form. Basically, in the last hundred years, there have been three types of tall building: the flat slab or ‘sky-scraper’, the point
tower or ‘sky-pricker’, and the spread-out cluster or ‘sky city’. Ken Yeang has challenged the
boring homogeneity with what he has christened the Bioclimatic Skyscraper. The ecological
imperative has made his structures lively not dull, muscular instead of flat-chested and with
6
Charles Jencks
an inviting, gregarious face rather than the blank stare of a Mafioso behind dark glasses. So
many skyscrapers resemble those hermetically sealed stretch-limousines that are meant to
impress you with brazen hostility and smug impenetrability. Not Yeang’s cheerful concoctions; they open out a different face on every side, partly because the climate is different
on every side.
Beyond these considerable aesthetic and symbolic qualities, they have provided several
environmental innovations that are equivalent to traditional and modern techniques. For
instance, whereas low buildings had such climatic filters as verandahs, trelliswork and
louvres, he puts them high above ground; where Le Corbusier introduced the roof garden
and concrete brise-soleil, he combines these elements with atria to produce ‘sky courts’
shaded by reflective aluminium louvres, without Le Corbusier’s problem of re-radiating the
blocked heat back into the house every night. Yeang’s work is empirically driven and
systematic in addressing ecological concerns. While its main points can be gleaned from his
‘The Skyscraper Bioclimatically Considered’ (1996), its most striking embodiment is the
fifteen-storey tower near Kuala Lumpur Airport. This interpretation of the corporate
‘landmark’ skyscraper, called Menara Mesiniaga (1989-1992), explores a new direction for an
often-pompous building type. Instead of an authoritarian and introverted statement of a
multinational corporation, the ibm Tower (ibm Plaza: 1983-1985) is a robust, and picturesque expression of an emerging technology. Most notable of his energy-saving devices are
the two spirals of green sky courts that twist up the building and provide shade and visual
contrast with the steel and aluminium surfaces. The reinforced concrete frame is further
punctuated by two types of sun screens and a glass and steel curtain wall, which, along with
the sloping base and metal crown, make the essentially high-tech image much more organic,
what could be called ‘organitech’, a synthesis of opposites.
7
Architectural theorists have often commented on this synthesis and called him a Modern
Regionalist among other things, but the main oppositions are between technology and
ecology, the pragmatic and the humorous, abstraction and picturesque ornament. For these
reasons I see the ibm Tower and his ideal version of the eco-skyscraper, the Tokyo-Nara
Tower (1992), as essentially postmodern. They play the double coding in a dramatic way: the
vertical columns are strongly opposed by the sliding horizontal sunshades, the spiral of
gardens and planting are juxtaposed with the flat glazing. A green hill leaps over a car park,
nature overcoming the machine, while solid fights against void, the rooftop spikes, meant to
hold solar cells, play off against curves and a sensuous pool. This is not the usual placid
mixture of the Modern and the Regional.
Ken Yeang can enter a field, a speculative development, in an exploding civilisation, and
still think environmentally. Contemplate the contradictions. Remember the country next
door, Indonesia, in 1998, causing the world’s greatest forest fires, pollution by asset-stripping
(much of which wafted into Kuala Lumpur). Imagine the strip-mining and hill-chopping in
Malaysia, or the fact that glitz and glass boxes are the reigning building type, and you can
fathom what might be going on in Ken’s mind as he tries to use commercial building as a test
bed for ecological research. It has led to many tall buildings that are flashy, to be sure, and in
the larger sense unecological, because they are huge and high-tech. But each one is a pragmatic
testing of a green idea, however small, and a step in his construction of a new paradigm. As a
result we are beginning to see the new skyscraper emerge with what he calls ‘valves’, movable
parts (including windows that open!), filters such as exterior louvres, lift and service cores
located on the sides where it is hot, sky courts and vegetation used to cool, contrasts between
sunshades and clear glass (where the view is good and the sun does not penetrate). All this
leads to a new, articulate and dynamic body. It leads to a new theory that, like Le Corbusier’s
Five Points, has been summarised and replicated around the world. If the skyscraper becomes
as responsive to its environment as animals and plants have to theirs, then we can look
forward to its having the variety of the natural world. Every face, and every individual,
slightly different. If it does evolve towards this ecological diversity, then Ken Yeang is to be
thanked. The result would be an alternative to the reigning mode of corporate architecture
and a new synthesis responding to the climate of a particular place, finding inspiration for a
new architectural language in forces that are ultimately cosmic.
For further reading on the architecture of Ken Yeang see also his text on p. 46, 47.
The 1999 Prince Claus Award laureates
The Principal 1999 Prince Claus Award:
‘Creating Spaces of Freedom’, represented by Mohamed Fellag, comedian, Algeria; Vitral,
socio-cultural magazine, Cuba; Al-Jazeera, satellite television channel, Qatar
The 1999 Prince Claus Awards:
Patrick Chamoiseau, writer, Martinique; Paulin J. Hountondji, philosopher, Bénin; Cildo Meireles,
artist, Brazil; Pepetela, writer, Angola; Dessalegn Rahmato, researcher, Ethiopia; Claudia Roden,
culinary anthropologist and historian, Egypt/UK; Juana Marta Rodas and Julia Isídrez, ceramists,
Paraguay; Cheick Oumar Sissoko, film-maker, Mali; Tsai Chih Chung, cartoonist, Taiwan; Kenneth
Yeang, architect, Malaysia
8
The following speech was given by Adriaan van Dis on the
presentation of the Dutch publication ‘Het verleden onder ogen:
Herdenking van de slavernij’ (‘Coming to terms with the past:
Commemorating slavery’), that was published by the Prince Claus
Fund and Arena Publishers (1999). The ceremony took place in the
Old Hall of the Parliament’s Second Chamber, in The Hague, the
Netherlands. Adriaan van Dis is a writer, co-author of the publication
on the commemoration of slavery, and Vice-Chairman of the Board
of the Prince Claus Fund.
Adriaan van Dis
Coming to Terms with the Past
The Prince Claus Fund is active in the field of culture and development, in particular in those
parts of the world where culture has been diminished by poverty. For it is culture which
gives meaning to people’s lives. The Fund aims to provide financial support to artists and
intellectuals in so-called developing regions, so that the voices of other cultures, besides the
western culture, might also be heard. Not so much here in the Netherlands, as in the
countries themselves.
Building roads and sinking wells is important work. But poor countries have equal need
for a cultural infrastructure, an independent press, writers and readers, critical thinkers who
will propagate a different voice to that of the ruling party. They have a need for beauty which
has the ability to shock. It is not uncommon for countries to be totally closed to the uncomfortable activities of artists and thinkers and the desire of an audience to be involved. The
Fund has the capacity to sponsor activities such as these, after careful evaluation by an
international panel of interested parties and specialists.
As you will gather, the Prince Claus Fund is careful but certainly not deferential. After all,
our goal is to stimulate people and communities to rediscover their own voice. If those
voices are shouting or swearing, or raised in heated debate, so be it. The publication ‘Het
verleden onder ogen’ is a contribution to this debate. In the three years that the Fund has
been active, the word slavery has cropped up more than once. We find that a great need exists
to exchange views on this subject; and not just in individual countries, but across borders.
What have been the consequences for Africa, some parts of which saw some 40% of their
coastal populations abducted over a period of one or two centuries? And how are the
Caribbean region and the Americas dealing with this burdensome legacy? To what extent is
the white world interested in knowing that millions of black people were once forcibly taken
from their homes forever? Does a past of slavery affect the daily lives of the slaves’
descendants? Is there any sense in speaking of guilt and victimisation?
Mourning and guilt
If such a subject is too painful to speak about openly for those involved, we often fill the gap
with fabrication and mythology. There is a tendency towards denial (‘it wasn’t that bad’, ‘it’s
all in the past’, ‘look to the future’) or rivalry in suffering (‘their plight was much worse’,
‘there were many more victims’). These are the issues which the contributions in this book
address.
A few years ago, when I spent several months at the former slave post Gorée, a corruption
of Goeree, a name which hints at the involvement of Dutch people from Goeree Overflakkee
in the province of Zeeland, it struck me that slavery is still very much a current issue among
Africans visiting the island. There is a slave museum which thousands of people visit each
9
year, but in truth the whole island is a monument. It was mainly educated people, rich
people, or, at least, less poor, who could afford the trip to Dakar and the crossing to Gorée.
And who allowed themselves to realise that, only a few generations before them, something
terrible had taken place on that island, the incarceration, branding and transportation of tens
of thousands of people. When I say they ‘allowed themselves’, I don’t mean it mockingly. It
is no luxury to ask yourself where you come from and where you are bound. But for too long,
the conditions of everyday life were too severe for many Africans to concern themselves
with their own history. Or perhaps the silence, the denial and the shame were too great. For
the African-American visitor, Gorée has become an island of mourning and reflection. The
‘Dachau of Africa’, as many call it. Which brings us right back to ‘competitive suffering’, a
painful subject. The war in Kosovo received more attention here than the skirmishes
between India and Pakistan in Kashmir. Rivalry in suffering cannot be regarded as tactful or
sensible, but it happens. Particularly if you don’t feel listened to. Moreover, it’s very human.
It happens among victims, and among outsiders.
In Kosovo we are once again reworking the traumas of the Second World War. And this
time we are all on the right side. Together we react and donate money against ethnic cleansing. In the meantime, our reporting is ethnically so clean that the civil war in Sierra Leone
virtually disappears from Dutch newspapers, even though many thousands of children and
10
Adriaan van Dis delivers his
Frank Martinus Arion,
speech on the occasion of
author from Curaçao and
the presentation of ‘Coming
contributor to the book
to Terms with the Past’,
‘Coming to Terms with the
30 June 1999, Old Hall of the
Past’ presents the first issue
Parliament’s Second Chamber,
to H.E. Roger van Boxtel
The Hague, the Netherlands
photo: Hans Kouwenhoven
fist row from the left:
Chairperson of the Board of
the Prince Claus Fund, Anke
Niehof; HRH Prince Claus,
Honorary Chairman;
H.E. Roger van Boxtel,
Minister of Metropolitan
Policy and Integration, the
Netherlands
photo: Hans Kouwenhoven
young people were slaughtered there in the early months of this year. Kosovo is closer to us,
and therefore it is worse.
African newspapers take a very different view. On hearing the words ‘humanitarian war’,
many an African will burst into bitter laughter. Did Western schoolchildren fill parcels for
Rwanda at Christmas with that same shocking festive spirit? Did our collective broadcasting
companies send another horde of sloppy journalists to Sierra Leone? Now that the war in
Kosovo has run its course, at least temporarily, the world is once again taking notice of
misery elsewhere. ‘The situation in Sierra Leone is far worse than in Kosovo’, said the United
Nations High Commissioner for Refugees recently. And, of course, the papers will start writing about Africa again. After all, it’s summertime and column inches need to be filled. But
the impression remains that Africans matter less. That black people, wherever they are in the
world, matter less. And you see that in the debate on slavery, too. Listen to the murmurs of
assent which accompany the unveiling of yet another plaque dedicated to victims of disasters in our own country over centuries past. Contrast them with the resistance evoked by the
suggestion that there should be a monument in the Netherlands to commemorate slavery.
I have attended a few gatherings where this question was posed. One of those discussions,
in Cultural and Political Centre De Balie in Amsterdam, was particularly emotional. A monument? What would be the point? ‘They should be paying!’ one man called out, to loud applause.
11
L’auteur vietnamienne, Duong Thu Huong (1947), a publié de
There were demands for damages, compensation, an apology, and the apparently inescapable comparison with the Second World War. ‘People listen to the Jews!’, ‘Yes, the
Portuguese Jews were involved in the slave trade.’ ‘Columbus was a Jew, too.’ Many reckless
things were said and little attention was paid to the scholars. Justice had to be done. There
was a debt to be repaid. For many of those present, this was the first time they had talked
about this subject in a group. There was swearing and there were tears. Several times, I felt
uncomfortably white.
Among my acquaintances, too, this subject creates a division between black and white.
The white people who don’t know about it don’t like being personally confronted with a
past they had no part of: ‘Reject the legacy? They never accepted it in the first place. It’s all so
long ago. Guilt, damages? Who would pay? And to whom? How do you decide who gets
what? Apologies are empty gestures. It’s all nonsense.’ White people who know something
about it, are quick to say, ‘Of course the European countries played a disgraceful role, but
don’t gloss over the part that Africans themselves played. Black enslaved black. One tribe
delivered up another. Just like the Balkans. And the Arabs were the biggest slave traders of all.
Have the Islamic authorities offered their apologies yet? Our guilty conscience won’t buy the
slaves’ descendants anything.’ And the non-whites say, ‘You have no idea what it is to be a
different colour in a world that thinks white’.
Historical injustice
Being the victim is ‘in’. In ‘The Moral Significance of Crime in a Postmodern Culture’, a
recently published thesis by Hans Boutellier, he showed that victimhood is a binding
element in our fragmented culture. Or is that observation already out of date? For, after all
the attention for the victims, it is now becoming fashionable to resist victimhood, particularly if you yourself come from those circles. In his essay ‘Joys and Perils of Victimhood’
(New York Review of Books, April 8, 1999) Ian Buruma convincingly demonstrates the
extent to which suffering is used as a pretext. We must not conclude that it’s too late for a
monument devoted to the slave trade. The crimes committed were too great to ignore, the
consequences are still felt today. We can’t wriggle out of this one.
It is all terribly complicated, this talk of ‘historical injustice’. It’s about time we started
knowing more about it. About time that sober and factual passages started appearing in our
history books. That demands documentation centres, here, in Africa and in our former colonies. If we know, that monument will not be long in coming. ‘Het verleden onder ogen’
represents a small stone in its construction.
12
nombreux romans, nouvelles et analyses sociales, dont certains ont
remporté un succès international: ‘Roman sans titre’ (1991),
‘Les paradis aveugles’(1988) et ‘Au-delà des illusions’ (1985). Elle a
écrit le texte ci-dessous pour la publication ‘La Création d’espaces
de liberté’. La Fondation Prince Claus fait paraître ce livre le
8 décembre 1999, à l’occasion de la remise du Grand Prix Prince
Claus. Le Grand Prix Prince Claus 1999 et le livre s’inscrivent dans
le thème de ‘La Création d’espaces de liberté’, en référence à
l’inventivité d’artistes et d’intellectuels qui, confrontés à des
situations restrictives, ‘font de la place’ pour leur liberté d’opinion.
Duong Thu Huong
Liberté, un espace irréel pour la naissance et la survie d’une écriture.
Flamme originelle de tous les brasiers révolutionnaires, la liberté est aussi le déluge final qui
les éteint. Parmi toutes les aspirations humaines, aucune n’attire autant les foules. Depuis
Spartacus jusqu’à Gandhi, sous toutes les formes d’opposition, dans les domaines les plus
variés, la lutte des hommes pour le droit de vivre résonne du chant de la liberté. À travers les
tourbillons poussiéreux de l’histoire, on reconnaît dans cet écho le visage d’une humanité
meurtrie, inquiète, apeurée, angoissée, révoltée, passionnée, cruelle jusqu’à la folie, et qui
finit par sombrer dans des crépuscules mornes et déserts.
courtesy of Medisch Comité
Nederland – Vietnam
Aucune aspiration ne se paye si cher.
Aucun défi n’est plus impitoyable.
Nous la désirons et nous la craignons.
Suis-je en train de ressasser des pensées surannées? Certainement. Pour l’Occident, la liberté
est une donnée aussi banale qu’un lampadaire ou qu’une enseigne au coin d’une rue, que plus
personne ne remarque. Mais je parle d’un délire né dans un monde de boue. Où la liberté
reste un rêve en plein jour. Qui hante les hommes. Sans pitié. Permettez-moi de ranimer ici
l’appel à la liberté qui résonne dans les âmes affamées.
Pour nous, la liberté, comme notre existence, a sa propre histoire. Elle n’accompagne pas en
permanence l’humanité. Elle sème ses semences partout, mais inégalement. Ici, elle donne
naissance à des forêts touffues, là, à des buissons décharnés ou à des plantes grimpantes. Chez
certains peuples, elle bouillonne dans le sang des hommes. Chez d’autres, elle passe comme
une pluie fugitive à travers un ciel morne, fermé.
La soif de liberté serait-elle un élément constitutif des civilisations et des traits nationaux ?
Même s’il n’en est pas tout à fait ainsi, on cherche dans l’histoire des peuples l’étendard de la
liberté comme l’inévitable critère qui marque l’émergence de la dignité des hommes et la
nature des États. Quelle que soit la société où ils vivent, les écrivains et les artistes sont les
premiers à éprouver le besoin de liberté. Ce n’est pas sans raison qu’on a attribué à la
littérature et à l’art trois marraines: la liberté, le luxe, l’oisiveté.
C’est une évidence dans les pays civilisés. Mais le soleil de la civilisation n’éclaire qu’un
tiers des terres de notre planète. Le reste sombre dans les ténèbres ou la pénombre. Nous qui
vivons sur ces terres désertées par ce soleil, que ferons-nous de nos plumes? Allons-nous
obliger la littérature à changer d’apparence au gré de son environnement comme un
caméléon ou à se faufiler dans les anfractuosités des rochers pour survivre misérablement
13
comme la mousse des montagnes? Ou bien accepterons-nous que nos œuvres viennent au
monde comme des enfants difformes, avec un bec de lièvre, un nez fendu, des pieds et des
mains paralysés? Peut-être, et encore peut-être… Accepter un visage défiguré, tordu, un
corps tronqué est la condition d’existence naturelle et permanente des écrivains sous un
régime dictatorial. Devraient-ils, de leurs propres mains, éteindre la flamme de la liberté au
fond de leur âme? Oui, il en est ainsi… Mais la liberté est l’essence, la condition préalable à
l’émergence de la littérature et de l’art. Éteindre cette flamme, c’est détruire la moelle de la
culture, anéantir la dimension spirituelle de l’écrivain. Dans ces conditions, il vaut mieux
courir après un fauteuil chez les mandarins ou les fonctionnaires pour s’assurer une existence
paisible. Et pourtant, c’est parfois impossible… Parfois, la littérature vous hante comme un
philtre, un démon, une dette d’amour contractée dans des vies antérieures. Impossible de la
fuir, de s’y soustraire. L’écrivain ne peut pas congédier son rêve de créateur en échange d’une
existence banale. De ce fait, comme les suppliciés des temps féodaux, il vit écartelé entre deux
attelages. D’un côté, la peur du pouvoir et les chaînes de la vie. De l’autre, la passion de la
littérature et de l’art. Dans ces conditions, la liberté survit comme des braises enfouies sous
une mer de boue. De temps à autre, par-ci par-là, elle fuse comme des étincelles pour
s’éteindre aussitôt. Dans ce marécage, sous ce ciel morbide, ces étincelles éphémères excitent
le désir de liberté et, en même temps, augmentent la peur. La terreur et la soif secrète de
liberté, comme deux loups affamés, déchirent en permanence le cœur de l’écrivain. Le
complexe de supériorité, voire la folie des grandeurs hantent ses rêves littéraires secrets,
splendides, ainsi que la haute idée qu’il se fait de lui-même. Il s’oppose violemment et se
combine aussi au complexe d’infériorité né de sa minable condition d’existence dans la vie
réelle pour devenir un acide virulent qui, nuit et jour, ronge son âme. Dans son regard se
mélangent l’ambition et l’effroi, la révolte et la soumission, les larmes de honte et les nuages
annonciateurs des orages.
Et la vie s’en va, et l’homme s’épuise jour après jour, mois après mois, année après année dans
cette lutte intérieure sans issue. Dans un tel état d’esprit, la littérature tourne autour du pot et
ne peut produire que des chefs-d’œuvre d’insinuation. Une manière de procéder particulièrement intelligente et touchante, mais qui risque de la vider de toute authenticité car il
est difficile, ce faisant, d’éviter d’abuser des procédés. Les références au passé, les citations, les
métaphores, l’art d’utiliser des images et des mots ambigus, vaguement évocateurs, celui de
tronquer, de dévier le sens des mots… L’écrivain déploie tous ces artifices, non pour rendre
son style plus dense, plus séduisant, mais essentiellement pour masquer ses pensées
secrètes, éviter les ciseaux de la censure. Il se censure en écrivant. Au lieu de consacrer son
énergie à construire ses personnages, à décrire leur évolution, à peser ses mots dans
l’édification de sa phrase…, il prépare ses réponses aux autorités pour le jour où l’on
dénoncera son œuvre. Ces justificatifs servent à gommer les pensées profondes, essentielles
que, justement, il voulait apporter au lecteur. Aussi, qu’il le veuille ou non, l’écrivain se
transforme en sophiste professionnel, en menteur permanent. Le mensonge est le trait
fondamental de l’homme vivant sous les dictatures. Il en va naturellement ainsi, comme
l’eau des sources se déverse nécessairement dans les ruisseaux.
Il existe pourtant des gens qui, même avec tous les efforts du monde, ne pourront jamais
s’adapter à cet environnement. J’en fais malheureusement partie. Je ne peux pas, je ne sais pas
mentir. C’est mon plus grand défaut en venant au monde dans ce marécage, une petite langue
de terre ravagée par de nombreuses guerres et tempêtes. Autour de moi vivent des gens qui
me sont à la fois proches et étrangers. J’ai toujours vécu avec mes compatriotes, mais je n’ai
jamais compris comment le héros et l’esclave pouvaient coexister en eux. Pendant de longues
années, je n’ai pas compris mes collègues. Quand, finalement, je les ai compris, je m’en suis
éloignée. Je n’ai aucun talent pour la rhétorique de mauvaise foi. J’aurais honte si je devais un
jour renier mes écrits bien que je comprenne clairement que le reniement de soi est un
comportement asiatique intelligent et efficace, qui sauve la face aux détenteurs du pouvoir,
assure la paix à l’écrivain et à sa plume. Les rois, les seigneurs et les chefs de clan en Asie
14
Duong Thu Huong,
Novel without a Name,
Penguin Publications, 1995
raffolent des écrits larmoyants – ils aiment voir leurs domestiques et leurs serfs courber la
tête, trembler, se répandre en pleurs sous leurs yeux. Depuis toujours, les Orientaux
gouvernent traditionnellement selon le bon plaisir et non selon la loi. Dans la génération qui
m’a précédée, dans la mienne et même dans celle qui nous suit, partout s’étale ce sentimentalisme d’opérette. Il suscite en moi ce que Jean Paul Sartre a nommé avec précision
dans son œuvre: ‘La Nausée’. J’ai décidé de mesurer ma vie à l’aune du bonheur et non au
nombre des années. J’ai décidé de vivre libre. Je me suis créé un soleil de liberté sur cette terre
de boue. À l’instant même où j’ai pris cette décision, je me suis sentie transformée: heureuse.
Totalement heureuse dans la solitude absolue et la souffrance extrême.
Serais-je folle? Me serais-je efforcée, par vantardise, de créer des sensations illusoires pour
me consoler, me duper? D’aucuns le pensent. Ils ne peuvent pas croire à ma liberté. Qui peut
prétendre être libre quand la police convoque son entourage et ses amis, les oblige à le
surveiller et, qu’ils le veuillent ou non, les transforme en mouchards. Qui peut l’être quand
un flic s’installe immédiatement dans son dos dès qu’il met les pieds trois fois de suite dans
un même café? Qui peut l’être quand son courrier ou toute autre forme de correspondance
avec autrui sont contrôlés, confisqués sans condition? C’est ainsi…
Pourtant, je me sens libre. Je dis ce que j’ai l’intention de dire, j’écris ce que je veux, même
si mes textes ne reçoivent pas l’autorisation d’être publiés. En 1991, pendant les mois où on
m’a emprisonnée, j’ai conservé intact ce sentiment de liberté. Je pensais ce que je voulais. Je
15
vivais, émue, avec tout ce qui était enfoui dans mon cœur. Les interrogatoires et les trois
hommes en face de moi faisaient partie d’un autre monde. Ce monde-là n’avait rien à voir
avec mon monde intérieur, avec l’essentiel dans ma vie. La cellule pullulait de moustiques. Il
suffisait d’étendre la main pour en attraper. J’en ai attrapé beaucoup. Je capturais aussi les
punaises noires qui grouillaient dans la vieille couverture en coton déchirée qu’on m’avait
donnée. Elle était tachée du sang desséché d’un précédent prisonnier frappé par la dysenterie.
Je pourchassais les punaises dans les fissures du bois du lit. Je composais des champs de
bataille avec leurs cadavres: le passage de l’Elbe dans le film ‘Libération‘ de Boldartchuk et la
bataille de Waterloo dans le film ‘Napoléon’. Je comparais la mise en scène du Russe et du
Français. Depuis toujours j’étais passionnée de cinéma bien que dans ce pays de boue, de
famine et de misère, le cinéma soit un rêve trop lointain, trop luxueux. Je rêvais. Je continuais
de rêver. Avec des cadavres de punaises pour chars et pour canons, des cadavres de
moustiques et d’insectes pour corps d’armée, je me rappelais les films qui autrefois
m’enchantaient. Et je me souvenais de mon père. Un homme que j’aimais avec colère et
ressentiment. Un père à la fois si tendre et si injustement sévère. Il m’aimait, mais il était
incapable de se libérer des principes pétrifiés de la morale féodale. Je l’aimais, mais je ne
pouvais pas ne pas être une enfant désobéissante. Dans ces moments-là, il me manquait. Son
souvenir submergeait mon âme, en dehors de mes rêves d’art. Je me justifiais, je me disputais
avec lui, je l’accablais de reproches. Avec lui, révoltés, nous sanglotions. Parfois, cela arrivait
en plein interrogatoire pendant que j’écoutais les questions et répondais comme une bande
magnétique que l’on déroulait.
Grâce à l’expérience que j’ai vécue en ces journées, j’ai compris pourquoi Cervantes a pu
écrire ‘Don Quichotte’ en prison. Certainement, il était libre, dans un espace qu’il s’était
réservé. Il était libre en pleine geôle. Cette liberté illusoire était néanmoins si puissante que,
sous son emprise, le monde extérieur se diluait, s’affaiblissait, s’anéantissait. Impuissant, il
n’avait plus aucune prise sur la pensée et les sentiments de l’écrivain. Cette liberté est son
œuvre. Une liberté chimérique. Le genre de liberté qui naît d’un défi à l’hostilité du monde.
La liberté d’exister. Un soleil féerique réservé au regard d’un seul homme, qui n’éclaire et ne
réchauffe que lui.
Cette liberté est le pouvoir suprême de l’écrivain, l’acte sacré de voler le feu. Personne ne
peut la lui apporter, sauf lui-même.
Cette liberté, c’est l’espace vital de l’écriture.
Naïveté démesurée ou pure folie, la quête d’une pareille liberté? Peut-être... Mais il faut
choisir: mourir ou vivre libre pour écrire ce qui mérite d’être écrit. Le talent? C’est le ciel qui
nous le donne. Mais la liberté, seules la confiance en soi et la dignité peuvent l’édifier. Il y a
d’innombrables chemins de par le monde. Je ne suis pas idiote et dégénérée au point de croire
que la voie que j’ai choisie est la seule juste. Mais je sais qu’en ce monde tout a un prix, que
chaque humain est à la fois l’auteur de son destin et la victime des réactions que ce destin
suscite. Quand le mur de Berlin s’est écroulé, on croyait que l’univers allait exploser dans les
cris de joie de centaines de millions d’humains. L’État stalinien s’effondrait. La dictature du
prolétariat se disloquait. Les gens regardaient, stupéfaits, le bleu lointain de l’horizon dont ils
rêvaient. Le bleu de la liberté. En cet instant, des dizaines de milliers d’artistes de l’ex-Union
soviétique et des pays de l’Est européen pleurèrent de bonheur. L’avenir de la littérature et de
l’art s’ouvrait sous leurs yeux. Enfin, libres… Mais les larmes de joie n’eurent pas le temps de
sécher que déjà jaillissaient à flots des larmes de douleur. Un silence long, embarrassé,
penaud. Puis, quelques rares écrivains osèrent exprimer leur anxieuse incertitude et, finalement, ils reconnurent en masse leur impuissance. Ils ne pouvaient plus écrire. Je me rappelle la parole amère d’une célèbre poétesse bulgare:
Elle est venue maintes fois au Vietnam. Une femme intelligente, gracieuse, belle. Sa confidence m’a serré le cœur. Mais je savais que je ne pouvais rien faire pour elle, elle et ceux qui
avaient connu son sort. Car la liberté n’est pas un trésor enfoui au fond d’un palais, qui
retrouverait toute sa valeur trois mille ans après quand on l’en sortirait. La liberté est comme
l’existence humaine. Une compagne de route. Nous devons apprendre à vivre avec elle et la
mériter. Jadis, un empereur de Chine n’aimait que la chair d’un certain oiseau sauvage. Les
mandarins ordonnèrent de capturer ces oiseaux et de les élever dans les jardins recouverts de
filets de la Cité interdite. Ils fourraient les oisillons à peine éclos dans des troncs de bambou
d’où seuls dépassaient leur bec et leurs pattes. On les nourrissait de céréales précieuses et de
fruits fins. En grandissant, leur corps prenait la forme du tronc de bambou, il était dodu mais
avait des membres atrophiés. Quand le cuisinier fendait le tronc de bambou, les libérait pour
les tuer, ces oiseaux obèses esquissaient quelques pas et s’écroulaient par terre… C’est cela,
l’adaptation. Des dizaines de milliers d’écrivains et d’artistes ont été ainsi élevés sous le
régime socialiste. Que de douleurs, que de regrets! Combien de talents se sont ainsi fanés,
détraqués?
Néanmoins, quelles que soient les circonstances, il existe toujours des oiseaux libres. Ces
familiers des cimes vertigineuses trouvent leur bonheur à les franchir. A travers les ouragans.
Seuls. Fiers, même dans le malheur et la solitude. Je peux citer le nom d’un homme parmi eux:
Boulgakov. Il n’a pas choisi l’exil comme Soljenitsyne. Comme Pasternak, il est resté en
Russie, acceptant de longues années d’oppression. Il a été isolé, espionné. Il a dû travailler
dans une briqueterie, faire d’autres besognes harassantes pour survivre. Mais il a vécu, il a
écrit en homme libre. Ses œuvres, ‘Cœur de chien’, ‘Le Maître et Marguerite’, ont été rédigées
sous le soleil de la liberté. Ce soleil, c’est lui, une âme russe noble et forte, qui l’a créé.
L’histoire des hommes, selon le calendrier chrétien, va bientôt avoir deux mille ans. Vingt
siècles. Avant l’ère chrétienne, l’Orient a connu l’époque des Royaumes combattants.
L’Occident a connu celle des croisades. L’humanité a connu la tristesse et la joie, la douleur et
le bonheur. Elle a réfléchi. Elle s’est transmis des contes et des légendes, accumulant ces
alluvions dans le subconscient des hommes. C’est notre héritage, auquel se mélangent les
talents et les handicaps que nos ancêtres ont semés dans notre âme. Pour un écrivain, cet
héritage spirituel importe plus que tous les héritages matériels en ce bas monde. Dans ma
jeunesse, je ne sais plus par quel hasard, j’ai pu lire une comédie d’Ésope. La figure de cet
esclave m’a tout de suite conquise. Grâce à lui, j’ai compris que la liberté est la plus puissante
de nos aspirations, le défi le plus impitoyable pour l’homme. Elle donne la mesure de son
humanité.
Avant de se jeter dans l’abîme, il a dit:
‘Pour l’amour, je suis encore trop vert.
Mais pour la liberté, je suis déjà mûr.
Viens, abîme, la voie que j’ai choisie
Je mourrai, car en mourant je deviendrai un homme libre…’
L’esclavage a disparu depuis longtemps, mais la soif de liberté est toujours une exigence
neuve. Pour les écrivains qui vivent dans un monde de boue, la mémoire de l’esclave Ésope
reste utile, s’ils veulent écrire dignement. La liberté réelle d’Ésope, c’est la liberté irréelle de
l’écrivain. La liberté irréelle de l’écrivain pose les prémisses de la liberté pour les foules qui
l’entourent. C’est pourquoi, je vous en prie, chers frères écrivains, malgré l’oppression, la
misère, l’opprobre, la prison, voire la mort, n’y renoncez jamais.
Traduit du vietnamien par Phan Huy Duong
‘Pendant de longues années, autrefois, nous rêvions de pouvoir écrire librement.
Maintenant, la liberté est là et nous n’avons plus rien à dire…’
16
17
En el siguiente ensayo el historiador y crítico de arte Adriano
Malanja, Angola, 1999
fotografía: Michel
Mixinge comenta dos proyectos de los artistas angoleños Fernando
Szulc Kryzanowski,
(Países Bajos)
Alvim y Orlando Fortunato, colocándolos en el amplio contexto de
© del fotógrafo
la función desempeñada por el arte en el procesamiento del trauma
colectivo experimentado por la guerra en Angola. La Fundación
Príncipe Claus patrocina la elaboración de un CD como parte del
proyecto artístico ‘Memórias Intimas Marcas’ de Fernando Alvim y el
documental ‘Peace is Necessary’ (‘La Paz es Necesaria’) del cineasta
Orlando Fortunato. Ambos se centran, independientemente en el
tema de la guerra en Angola.
Arte y Guerra en Angola:
Adriano Mixinge
Respuestas estéticas para un conflicto de siempre
A pesar de sus estragos, la comunidad internacional, sus personalidades y países, no están
haciendo ningún esfuerzo significativo para contribuir a frenar la guerra en Angola. Por ello,
no pasó desapercibido el hecho de que incluso alguien como el nigeriano Wole Soyinka, por
cierto un vector eventualmente esclarecedor de las conciencias más atentas de este final de
1
milenio, en su artículo ‘Kosovo y sus Innumerables Reencarnaciones’ no le haya dedicado ni
una sola palabra y en ningún momento pareció darse cuenta de que en realidad, es la guerra de
Kosovo la que fue la reencarnación de las otras guerras que persisten por el mundo.
Sin embargo, seguramente la tradición oral no hará sino confirmarlo: la guerra es el leit motiv
más persistente y triste de toda la historia de Angola. En este sentido, el especialista angoleño y jefe de producción cultural del Centro Internacional de Civilizaciones Bantu, Simao
2
Souindoula en su artículo ‘Fuentes Para una Historia General de Angola’ se refiere a por lo
menos cinco libros, de autores ya célebres como Oliveira Cadornega, A.A. Felner y René
Pélissier, sobre las guerras en Angola, ya sea durante el período pre-colonial, durante la
conquista, o a lo largo de una ocupación que sólo vino a hacerse efectiva en todo el territorio
hasta la Batalla de Kalendende (1920). Por su parte en ‘Descolonización de Angola - La Joya de
la Corona del Imperio Portugués’, Pezarat Correia que fuera brigadier del ejército y elemento
destacado del Movimiento de las Fuerzas Armadas (mfa) que derribó la dictadura de Salazar
en Portugal, se encarga de pormenorizar aquellos que son los antecedentes inmediatos de
nuestra actual tragedia.
Pero en lo que nos corresponde, sólo nos circunscribiremos a los últimos veinticinco años.
Tal como lo recuerdo, a finales de 1974 dejé de ir al Colegio Nuestra Señora de la Paz, en
Luanda: soldados de los diversos movimientos de liberación nacional angoleños (Movimiento Popular por la Liberación de Angola, mpla , Unión Nacional por la Independencia
Total de Angola, unita, y el Frente Nacional por la Liberación de Angola, fnla) entraron en
la ciudad; hubo forcejeo por todas partes, había una nube negra sobre la paz y la tranquilidad
del ciudadano común muchas veces indeciso e indefenso, obligado a usar tres carnés de
identificación correspondientes a cada uno de los movimientos de ‘deliberación’, para poder
cruzar la ciudad de una punta a otra.
Ya en 1975, después de un período de tiros y obuses, es decir, de guerra en la ciudad de
Luanda, sólo recuerdo que en noviembre, desde la terraza de mi nueva casa ‘asistí’ a la
proclamación de la independencia de Angola y, como supe después, D.C. mi vecino, fue el
niño que ayudó a izar la bandera de la nueva república. Contra lo que se pensaba, una guerra
independentista empezada en 1961 contra el poder colonial no terminaría allí. Proclamada
18
por Agostinho Neto, la Independencia Nacional (1975) tenía como paisaje de fondo intensas
contraofensivas militares de las tropas conjuntas del mpla y del Gobierno cubano contra la
fnla y todo tipo de mercenarios en el norte, y en el sur contra la unita y tropas sudafricanas. Precisamente en 1974, un año antes de la proclamación de la independencia
nacional, en Dar-es-Salaam (Tanzania), en una conferencia en el auditorio de su universidad,
Agostinho Neto con la lucidez que siempre le caracterizó dijo que ‘...la liberación nacional en
África, seamos realistas, no dispone de premisas sólidas en la arena internacional y no son las
afinidades políticas o ideológicas que cuentan. No son tampoco los propios objetivos, pero
en la mayor parte de los casos, otros intereses dominan las relaciones entre las fuerzas de
3
liberación y el mundo’.
Es decir, hablando con franqueza: a la luz de la actualidad y porque tiene los minerales
(petróleo y diamantes fundamentalmente) como el verdadero fondo de un trauma asociado a
la mala distribución de las riquezas y al arraigo de una cultura de intolerancia, en Angola la
guerra forma parte de una cierta idea de cotidianidad, desarrollada principalmente en los
grandes centros urbanos, o de una arraigada práctica de la tragicidad asumida en las zonas
rurales. Sin embargo, y porque es de arte y guerra en Angola que pretendemos reflexionar, es
1.
pertinente dejar claro que como es obvio, artistas y soldados sienten, miran y tocan la realiEn: El País, 17 de abril, 1999,
dad de manera muy diferente. Las armas y las obras de arte tienen funciones tan distantes
Madrid, España
unas de otras que, aún cuando a veces se entrecruzan, dejan siempre un efecto de conse2.
En: Muntu, Revue Scientifique cuencias imprevisibles. Artistas y soldados se relacionan con la cartografía de muy diversas
formas. El espectador y el productor del arte, el hacedor y las víctimas de la guerra pueden
et Culturelle du ciciba,
9 1er Semestre, Libreville, 1994 (o no) ser el mismo sujeto. Espacios de exposición y escenarios de batallas son locales en los
que se realizan ‘ceremonias’ cuya disparidad convierte al binomio construcción – destrucción
3.
en antítesis por antonomasia.
En: ‘O Pensamento
En este sentido entendemos que el arte es por excelencia una manifestación de paz, aún
Estratégico de Agostinho
cuando sea sólo para representar, contestar y/o evadir las guerras. Actualmente, dada la
Neto de Iko Carreira’,
diversidad de discursos, las artes plásticas angoleñas constituyen uno de los espacios de
Publicações Dom Quixote,
creatividad en que esencialmente se privilegian los factores (existencial y estético) alejados de
Lisboa, 1996
19
ideas maniqueístas e intolerantes. Ocupan un lugar de vanguardia a favor de las sociedades
democráticas que se pretenden construir y/o consolidar en todas partes.
Pero, específicamente a propósito de la guerra, en un ensayo de 1989 denominado ‘Guerra,
Paz, Violencia Estructural y Desarrollo’ el antropólogo angoleño Ruy Duarte de Carvalho
puntualizó: ‘La guerra puede generar dos tipos de discursos, de racionalidad y de práctica.
Uno que la justifica... como medio de llevar las crisis hasta su extremo, a fin de hacer surgir
una paz menos precaria y otro que la denuncia como práctica a extinguir a toda costa y desde
todas las perspectivas. Pero la conciencia más sutil y más profunda de la verdadera dimensión
de la guerra ocurre cuando, al unir al choque permanente de tantas vidas humanas perdidas y
estropeadas, nos damos cuenta de qué forma, por ejemplo, la situación de guerra prolongada
obliga poblaciones y sociedades enteras a regir su cotidianidad, su forma de vivir y de amar, a
través del miedo, del sobresalto y de la violencia’. Y después Ruy Duarte de Carvalho remata:
‘La guerra deja así de constituirse como emergencia de una situación explosiva resultante de
una realidad crítica para instalarse... como una incidencia crónica inscrita en el propio tejido
de la invención social’.
Para ver la omnipresencia del tema de la guerra en el arte, inicialmente, basta con que leamos
las novelas ‘Mayombe’ y ‘A Parábola do Cágado Velho’ de Artur Maurício Pestana dos Santos
4
Pepetela para que podamos reflexionar sobre dos momentos diferentes de la guerra de
Angola, a saber, la lucha de los guerrilleros en el Maquí y la guerra después del conflicto postelectoral. Dos etapas distintas y perspectivas diferentes en el análisis de un fenómeno que de
la lucha por la utopía independentista ante el poder colonial se fue volviendo cada vez más
absurdo al carecer de ideologías, al ser físicamente entre angoleños, al depender de la fuerza
que el mercado de minerales fue teniendo para sustentarla y justificarla.
Desde el punto de vista de las últimas generaciones de jóvenes angoleños obligados a hacer
la guerra Isaquiel Corí escribió ‘Sacudidos por el Viento’, donde fundamentalmente denuncia
la estratificación social de la guerra; una guerra que sólo afecta directamente a los estratos
pertenecientes a la base de la pirámide social, una guerra con héroes diseminados por todas
partes y bandos, una guerra de autodestrucción, una guerra contra los vectores fundamentales de la angolanidad. Con una cinematografía inicialmente asociada al cine etnográfico y a
los nombres de Sarah Maldoror con Sambizanga, Antonio Ole con Pelo Caminho das
Estrelas, Orlando Fortunato con el mítico y no concluido O Comboio da Canhoca, Ruy
Duarte de Carvalho con Nelisita, Zézé Gamboa con Mopiopio, Soufle d`Angola y Dissidência
y más recientemente por la labor de Mariano Bartolomeu, después de sus experiencias en la
Escuela de Nuevo Cine Latinoamericano de la Habana y también en Roma, pero que aún
requiere que se le desarrolle muchísimo, específicamente en lo que a la guerra se refiere, si no
me equivoco, es Caravana, el largometraje coproducido a finales de los años ochenta entre
Cuba y Angola, la única película que se ha realizado sobre la guerra de Angola, aunque además
de centrarse en los años inmediatos a 1975, hay que decir que predominantemente enfatiza el
punto de vista de los cubanos.5
Sin ser un tema central en sus espectáculos, la Compañía de Danza Contemporánea de
Angola, adscrita al Instituto Nacional de Formación Artística y Cultural (infac) en su obra
‘Palmas, por favor!’ (julio, 1994) introduce algunos cuadros de referencia a la guerra de Angola
(a través del uso del sonido de aviones como ‘música’), desde la perspectiva de su incidencia
en el contexto urbano de Luanda ya que por aquellos días era frecuente para la población
sentir la salida y entrada de aviones militares que iban a bombardear posiciones militares de la
unita, en varias regiones de Angola.
Por otro lado, las artes plásticas angoleñas no han estado al margen de la legitimación de los
poderes y de la propaganda en favor o en contra de la guerra. En la década de los años sesenta
las artes plásticas por vía de carteles o de pintura mural, contribuyeron a la divulgación de las
líneas programáticas de los diversos movimientos de liberación angoleños. De la misma
forma que se conoce la labor desarrollada en este sentido a partir de 1977 por la Unión
Nacional de Artistas Plásticos (unap) en favor de la ideología defendida por el mpla, se
conoce, según testimonio de Honório Van Dúnem, que Zavarra ha sido el pintor que en la
20
Lubango, Angola 1992
fotografía: Günay Uluntuncok
(Países Bajos)
© del fotógrafo
4.
Pepetela; ‘Mayombe’,
Edições 70, Angola, 1979
‘A Parábola do Cágado Velho’,
Publicações Dom Quixote,
Lisboa, 1996
Pepetela es uno de los
unita se ha encargado de ello, así como del culto a la personalidad de Savimbi. Además, en
una conferencia realizada en el Instituto Real de Questiones Internacionales de Londres en
las primeras semanas de enero de este año, el ex-biográfo de Savimbi, señor Fred Bridgland,
refiriéndose a la importancia de la familia de Tito Chingunji, un histórico dirigente de la
unita, señaló como sus dos hermanos mayores eran elogiados en canciones de guerra de la
unita, en poesías, pinturas, así como en murales muy altos como héroes y revolucionarios.
Pero, entre muchas obras plásticas hechas para decorar cuarteles o todo tipo de dependencias
militares, Dans le Guerre (1976), pintura de Victor Manuel Teixeira (Viteix), pese a estar
inacabada, es probablemente y teniendo en cuenta la época una de las aproximaciones menos
ortodoxas al tema de la guerra en Angola por la presentación que hace de ella, por la solución
plástica que presenta al distanciarse de un pretendido ‘realismo socialista’ practicado
caricaturescamente en la pintura mural de la época, hoy todavía susceptible de encontrarse en
las paredes del Hospital Militar o en el edificio del famoso Zé Pirao, en Luanda.
En los años ochenta Felipe Salvador, artista angoleño ahora mismo residente en Brasil, fue
el que desde la pintura realizó el mayor y más profundo tratamiento de la guerra desde una
perspectiva maniqueísta, es decir, donde están representados los gladiadores principales: los
angoleños y todos aquellos que antes de la caída del muro de Berlín, se circunscribían en el
concepto del ‘imperialismo internacional’.
ganadores de los Premios
Príncipe Claus 1999 (red.)
5.
Duarte de Carvalho, Ruy;
‘O Camarada e a Câmera,
Cinema e Antropologia para
além do filme etnográfico’,
Instituto Nacional do Livro e
do Disco (inald), Angola,
1984
En los años noventa ha habido varios cambios tanto en la política como en el arte en Angola,
ello ha supuesto además un cambio en el tipo y las formas de guerra, así como nuevas
soluciones a la hora del arte reflexionar sobre la guerra. El multipartidismo, la instalación de la
economía de mercado y la realización de las elecciones generales para intentar de la mejor
manera posible ejercitar la democracia, han sido los mayores cambios en la política y en la
sociedad angoleña.
Pero a partir del momento en que la Unión Nacional por la Independencia Total de Angola
(unita) y su líder no aceptaron los resultados de las elecciones, declaradas por la onu como
libres y justas, el país fue llevado a una guerra que en la actualidad se difiere de cualquier otra
21
por los estragos que ha producido, por las tecnologías que allí se emplean, por carecer de
principios ideológicos, así como por no vislumbrarse, por lo menos a corto plazo, una solución seria y duradera. Sobre los cambios en el arte, dos especialistas, el primero Gavin Younge,
escultor sudafricano y director de la Michaelis School of Cape Town, no podría haber sido
más explícito al afirmar en un texto sintomáticamente llamado ‘Con el dedo en la herida’ que:
‘Si los centros antiguos no se mantienen es en parte porque los artistas en Angola y en otras
regiones han rechazado las definiciones que les fueron dadas por la historia y han reivin6
dicado una percepción basada en la reordenación de los códigos de representación’.
Mientras que el especialista cubano Eugenio Valdés Figueroa se expresa en estos términos:
‘Un impulso revitalizador está provocando una transformación en el panorama artístico de
Angola en los últimos años. Responsable de este paulatino proceso de renovación es un
reducido grupo de creadores que ha ido sustituyendo las fórmulas desgastadas de un ‘vanguardismo tardío’ que no encuentra ya ubicación exacta en la dialéctica de desarrollo cultural
7
del Africa Austral’. Parece ya no caber dudas de que el panorama de las artes angoleñas está en
momento de aciertos. Obviamente, entre el reducido grupo de creadores del que habla
Eugenio Valdés Figueroa están Afonso Massongui, José Rodrigues, António Ole y Fernando
Alvim, entre otros. Sobre este último profesional de las artes plásticas y el cineasta Orlando
Fortunato se pueden hacer varias observaciones.
‘Memórias Intimas Marcas’ de Fernando Alvim
En uno de los momentos particularmente más altos de su novela ‘Qushtumur’, Naguib
Mahfuz, a través de uno de sus personajes, señala que ‘la muerte comienza por la memoria, y
la muerte de la memoria es la peor de todas, en sus manos reside tu muerte mientras sigues
vivo, y sin ser consciente, se te devuelve al analfabetismo’. Efectivamente, esta idea de
Mahfuz dialoga con la estética más reciente de la obra de Fernando Alvim Faria porque él
coloca la guerra, las consecuencias de la guerra en la memoria cultural de los pueblos, en el
centro de la labor artística que viene realizando.
Con la efectivación de ‘Memórias Intimas Marcas’, su último proyecto, la obra de Alvim
que como sabemos abarca la pintura, la escultura y la instalación, e incursiones en el cine
(documentales) sufre una ruptura positiva y, sinceramente podemos hablar de un antes y un
después de M.I.M, un antes y un después de Cuito Cuanavale, la ciudad que sirvió de
escenario para una de las más sangrientas y olvidadas de las guerras en África y en el mundo
contemporáneo. Como parte del proyecto, a Cuito Cuanavale regresaron artistas de los países
que allí se gladiaron para realizar una ceremonia de exorcismo y a partir de la recolección de
datos, señales o evidencias de los crímenes reestructurar el imaginario de un pasado cruento,
en función de un futuro apacible.
Alvim y los artistas que participan en ‘Memórias Intimas Marcas’ unen la arqueología y la
antropología de la guerra para sugerir que el diálogo es indispensable, la historia deberá ser
contada por todos y desde todos los puntos de vista; que sólo con las ‘blending emotions’, las
identidades asumidas y también difuminadas podremos realmente hablar del hombre, de la
razón principal para vivir y querer cada vez más la vida.
No es menos cierto que casi desde sus inicios, la muerte, el horror, lo oscuro y la tristeza
forman parte de los temas sobre los que se basa la obra de Alvim. Pero es con ‘Memórias
Intimas Marcas’, por su magnitud (ha sido expuesto en tres países: Angola, Sudáfrica y
Portugal), por los artistas (Carlos Garaicoa y Sandra Ceballos, cubanos; Gavin Younge,
Moshekwa Langa, Wayne Barker, Colin Richards, Lien Botha, entre otros, sudafricanos;
Paulo Kapela, angoleño) y el formato (abarca exposiciones, cine, música y libro, además del
catálogo como tal), que la relación entre arte y guerra encuentra sustentáculo en una historia
común entre los referidos países, una historia infelizmente anclada en la guerra como razón
primera y última de una serie de rivalidades de marcado cuño político e ideológico, pero que
afortunadamente, no ha podido alejar y/o hacer indiferentes a los pueblos, unos de otros.
22
6.
En: Angola in Africus,
Sudáfrica, 1995, p. 4, 5
7.
Valdés Figueroa, Eugenio;
‘Excavaciones en la Periferia
de la Historia - Angola ,
Aproximaciones a las obras
de Fernando Alvim y
António Ole’, en: Atlantica,
Revista Internacional de las
Artes, numero 21, España,
otoño 1998
Imagen del documental
‘Peace is necessary’ de
Orlando Fortunato, 1999
cortesía del cineasta
El estudio de Orlando
Fortunato, 1999
‘Peace is Necessary’ de Orlando Fortunato
El registro por imágenes cinematográficas del conflicto angoleño y, consecuentemente, su
análisis y estudio carece aún de obras de referencia. Normalmente, trabajado a título noticioso o como reportajes que responden a los intereses inmediatos de las partes del conflicto, la
guerra de Angola y sus tentativas de paz son un material disperso que necesita ser sistematizado. Así es desde esa perspectiva que Orlando Fortunato actualmente está empeñado, a
través de lo que ha denominado ‘Peace is Necessary’, en articular dos documentales que versarían sobre dos momentos fundamentales de la historia de Angola y que posibilitarían
comprenderla más profundamente.
El primer documental del díptico retratará eventos de la historia de Angola entre 1926 y
1975 a saber, las últimas campañas de ocupación, la instauración del Estado Nuevo, las guerras
de liberación nacional, el desarrollo de las fuerzas democráticas en Portugal y su incidencia en
el proceso de descolonización. Mientras que el segundo abarcará el período que viene desde la
independencia hasta los Acuerdos de Lusaka, firmados en 1996 por el Presidente José
Eduardo Dos Santos y el líder de la unita Dr. Jonas Malheiro Savimbi.
Concebidos para durar 245 minutos cada uno y estructurados en un lenguaje cinematográfico que los haga accesibles a todo público y en especial a las nuevas generaciones, ‘Peace is
Necessary’ es un proyecto que basado en archivos de Luanda, Lisboa, La Habana y Pretoria
tratará de dar cuerpo al sueño de su realizador. Como Orlando Fortunato dice: ‘Creo que este
proyecto contribuirá hacia un mejor entendimiento de las esperanzas de aquellos que no
pueden ser escuchados y que efectivamente ayudará a la preservación de la memoria colectiva
de Angola, enriqueciendo su historia y colaborando en la creación de un nuevo instrumento
para la mejor percepción del pasado, el presente y el futuro de este país, para las futuras
generaciones’.
Ya pasaron veinticinco años desde aquel día en que dejé de ir al Colegio Nuestra Señora de
la Paz, en Luanda. En todos estos años, cuando se ha hablado de paz en Angola, nunca ha
dejado de ser desde la perspectiva onírica. La paz es para los angoleños un sueño que se repite
de todas las formas posibles y en todos los pliegues de la invención social. D.C, aquel niño
que ayudó a izar la bandera de la entonces nueva república, actualmente forma parte de los
delincuentes del barrio. La sociedad ha hecho poco por D.C.; vive desilusionado, marginalizado y alejado de cualquier tipo de retórica o simbología de la libertad, incluyendo las de
la praxis del socialismo y la democracia como el mejor de los mundos posibles; la única
libertad a la que aspira es a la de los estupefacientes. Como él, un ejército de seres anónimos
viven en similares o peores condiciones, por debajo del umbral de la pobreza material y
espiritual.
Que no nos olvidemos: todo esto también forma parte de la memoria histórica angoleña,
esa memoria que para perpetuar su vitalidad y no ser totalmente reducida a escombros necesita al menos de paz. Y seguramente cualquier respuesta estética contribuirá a alcanzarla.
23
El crítico de arte sudafricano Rory Bester publicó en el NKA Journal
Alvim, Fernando (Angola)
Cuito Cuanavale I, 1996
of Contemporary African Art (otoño/invierno de 1998) el siguiente
installation
courtesy of the artist
análisis crítico sobre el proyecto del artista angoleño Fernando Alvim.
El NKA Journal se publica desde 1998 con el apoyo de la Fundación
Príncipe Claus.
Siguiéndole el Rastro a una Guerra
Angola ha sufrido los estragos de una de las guerras más largas de este siglo. Una guerra de
independencia contra los portugueses que empezó en los años sesenta y que se convirtió en
guerra civil justo después de que los colonizadores salieran a mitad de los años setenta.
Alimentada y patrocinada en varias etapas por Cuba, Estados Unidos y Sudáfrica, esta guerra
civil parecía haber terminado cuando se realizaron las elecciones controladas por la onu a
principios de los años noventa. Pero el rechazo a los resultados y el incumplimiento a los
acuerdos de paz han logrado que Angola continue siendo demolida por el violento conflicto,
actualmente entre el gobierno del mpla elegido democráticamente y el movimiento rebelde
de unita.
La experiencia sudafricana de esta guerra fue radicalmente distinta a la de Angola,
principalmente porque era el territorio angoleño el que funcionaba como teatro de
operaciones y escenario de combate. Las cicatrices de Angola son tanto físicas como
emocionales. Es innegable que Angola estaba en guerra, mientras que para Sudáfrica,
encubierta por lo que antes era África Sur Occidental (ahora Namibia), era muy fácil (como
muchas veces lo hizo) negar estar involucrada en la guerra de Angola. Mientras abiertamente
reconocía estar en guerra con la Organización del Pueblo de África Sur Occidental (swapo),
fue inicialmente más reacia a reconocer que perseguía a los activistas de swapo dentro del
territorio Angoleño, o que brindaba asistencia logística y financiera desde mediados de la
década de los setenta hasta fines de los años ochenta, al movimiento unita en su guerra
contra el gobierno de Angola.
Para muchos reclutas blancos sudafricanos recién egresados de sus escuelas, ir a la ‘frontera’
significaba eventualmente el cruce del Río Cunene que separaba a Angola de lo que en esos
días se llamaba África Sur Occidental. Como símbolo de la ‘frontera’ entre inocencia y
madurez, ésa era la iniciación que a menudo terminó en atroz desastre. Esta historia de los
reclutas blancos, especialmente la de sus visitas de turno a la ‘frontera’, permanece
ampliamente silenciada, aún en las narrativas de recuperación a cargo de instituciones como
la Comisión de la Verdad y la Reconciliación (Truth and Reconciliation Committee, trc).
Los despojos mortales de esta época de la historia sudafricana están dispersos en álbumes
fotográficos guardados en armarios, en su mayoría olvidados, a menudo abandonados.
La más reciente escalada del conflicto de Angola ocurrió, con gran ironía, cuando terminaba su gira por Sudáfrica la exposición ‘Memórias Intimas: Marcas’, una muestra que incluía
instalaciones con diálogos entre artistas de Angola, Cuba y Sudáfrica. Esta exposición, cuyo
nombre significa aproximadamente ‘Recuerdos, intimidades, huellas’ explora los recuerdos
íntimos, marca de la psicótica guerra de Angola. En lo que constituye su singular fuerza
arrolladora, esta exposición comprende una serie de exploraciones, a menudo líricas (con
cierta regularidad poéticas), de los efectos de una guerra que aún no ha sido propiamente
reconocida por la Sudáfrica del post-apartheid. La política intervencionista de ‘Memórias
Intimas: Marcas’, exposición concebida por el artista angoleño Fernando Alvim, se inclina
hacia el arte del exorcismo, más que a una evidente muestra de imágenes de guerra. ‘No
estamos haciendo una exposición sobre la guerra’, dice Alvim, ‘sino más bien haciendo
preguntas acerca de una cultura de la guerra’. Según él lo asegura, esta cultura de la guerra es
una experiencia compartida entre Angola, Cuba y Sudáfrica: ‘Estaba interesado en la posibilidad de elaborar un archivo de recuerdos íntimos y huellas de esa época. La exposición es
24
Rory Bester
más un diálogo entre víctimas que entre ganadores y perdedores.’ Lo que se busca y es
alcanzado con variados niveles de éxito y profundidad, es la yuxtaposición del tráuma de
Angola, la amnesia de Sudáfrica y la posición ambivalente de Cuba entre estas dos experiencias. El origen de ‘Memórias Intimas Marcas’ se remonta a una estancia de veintiuno días en
Cuito Cuanavale realizada por Alvim junto con Carlos Garaicoa (Cuba) y Gavin Younge
(Sudáfrica). La ciudad cuartel de Cuito Cuanavale fue el escenario de una amarga batalla sostenida entre tropas angoleñas, cubanas y sudafricanas en 1987, cuya significación, para Alvim,
radica en el hecho de que fue la primera ocasión en que las fuerzas sudafricanas abandonaron
una posición. Aquí empezó la retirada de la participación sudafricana en la guerra. ‘Para los
angoleños, Cuito Cuanavale fué una razón para la nación’, dice Alvim, ‘debido a que fue la
primera vez que Sudáfrica perdió y como consecuencia se retiró de Angola.’
El archivo de guerra de Cuito Cuanavale va desde la dramática vista de edificios convertidos
en coladores por las balas que los perforaron, llenos de grafiti y pintados con murales
anónimos, hasta el perturbador silencio de las minas aún enterradas y sin explotar. Cuito
Cuanavale pasó a ser de teatro de guerra a teatro conceptual y exorcismo escénico. Con el
apoyo logístico del ejército angoleño, los tres artistas y su equipo de camarografía hicieron
uso del tiempo pasado en Cuito Cuanavale para generar el proceso de exorcismo de los
tráumas y la amnesia que concierne a una guerra recordada y olvidada. Este intento artístico
por confrontar la realidad de la guerra dió lugar a un material que eventualmente constituyó
la base para una instalación en Luanda y las posteriores exposiciones en tres partes realizadas
en Sudáfrica.
Los diálogos visuales creados para la exposición fueron sufriendo una metamorfosis a medida
que la muestra viajaba entre sus tres sedes sudafricanas. El Castillo de Buena Esperanza de la
Ciudad del Cabo, actual comando regional del ejército y también la base desde donde se dirigía
la campaña publicitaria contra los que se oponían a las oleadas de reclutamiento del ejército,
era probablemente el lugar más políticamente cargado de todos. En agosto y septiembre de
1997 Alvim, Garaicoa y Younge utilizaron el Bloque ‘B’ del Castillo para exponer el trabajo
resultante de sus experiencias en Cuito Cuanavale, reflejando sus ansias por encontrar una
forma de responsabilidad personal respecto a la guerra de Angola. ‘Memórias Intimas Marcas’
25
fué renovada como exposición en el Taller Eléctrico de Johannesburgo durante abril y mayo de
1998, con la adición de Lien Botha (Sudáfrica), Capela (Angola), Sandra Ceballos (Cuba),
Moshekwa Langa (Sudáfrica), Wayne Barker (Sudáfrica) y Colin Richards (Sudáfrica). En este
nuevo espacio la exposición se convirtió, en cierta medida, en una ‘invasión’ cultural (al ocupar
los cubículos construidos para la Bienal de Johannesburgo del año anterior). Para Alvim, con
esta ‘invasión’ se intentaba invocar el asentamiento informal en un edificio en ruinas diagonalmente opuesto al Taller Eléctrico, un lugar que le recordaba a Angola a mediados de los años
setenta: ‘Cuando los portugueses se fueron, la gente había invadido la ciudad, los edificios que
habían sido destruidos durante la guerra’.
El ‘hospital de campaña’ creado en un galpón de almacenamiento del museo Ventana
Africana de Pretoria entre junio y julio de 1998, evocaba la fragilidad del proceso recordatorio
por su pre-determinada temporalidad. La presentación en Pretoria de la exposición incluyó la
adición de Thomas Barry y Jan van der Mewe, ambos sudafricanos. Fué este espacio, más que
cualquier otro, el que concentró al espectador en el laberinto del forzado y frenético recuerdo
del tráuma de la guerra de Angola. El tour europeo de la exposición es un diálogo con los
antiguos poderes coloniales, con la participación adicional de cinco más artistas sudafricanos
(Willem Boshoff, Abrie Fourie, Kendell Geers, Raymond Smith y Minnette Vári).
El interés por el exorcismo en la exposición se basa en un intento por ofrecer respuestas
íntimas a los enigmas emocionales sobre la cultura de la guerra en Angola. Este exorcismo del
tráuma y la amnesia se hacen con el deseo de invocar procesos de curación. Al ampliar sobre la
noción y centralidad conceptual del exorcismo en ‘Memórias Intimas Marcas’, y en su
conexión con los principios de curación, Alvim es rápido en diferenciar esta idea del proceso
de exorcismo y el trabajo de la Comisión para la Verdad y la Reconciliación de Sudáfrica: ‘La
trc es más política. Memórias no es una exposición a nivel político. No estoy interesado en
las disculpas. Estoy interesado en las víctimas de experiencias traumáticas’. Es a este nivel
conceptual que ‘Memórias Intimas Marcas’ empieza a revelarse, primeramente por la falta de
cuestionamiento a sus pre-suposiciones. Deja de cuestionar apropiadamente la noción del
exorcismo (como proceso curativo) dentro del contexto del marco y el espacio de la exposición. Tampoco reflexiona sobre el papel de los archivos, como el espacio negociado para
recordar y olvidar, dentro del proceso de exorcismo y curación. Lo mismo puede decirse en
relación con el tráuma y la amnesia. Al identificar las ‘víctimas’ del tráuma y la amnesia,
¿Cómo puede uno distinguir, por ejemplo, el desorden de estrés pos-traumático (ptsd)
sufrido por los niños-soldados angoleños y los casi niños-soldados de las Fuerzas de
Combate Sudafricanas? Similarmente, ¿Con qué criterio asigna se asignan los efectos
sintomáticos de ptsd, mentiras compulsivas, falta de concentración, esporádicas visiones
retrospectivas de la memoria, al tráuma o a la amnesia?
La plataforma conceptual de Alvim para la exposición es manejada por su experiencia
personal de la guerra: ‘Yo estaba en la periferia de la guerra, viviendo con las consecuencias
más como testigo que como actor’. Es esta experiencia y perspectiva la que impulsa su
preferencia no-liberal (y a menudo inconsistente) por la experiencia no-combatiente de la
guerra de Angola. Dice Alvim: ‘No quería hacer exorcismo con ex-combatientes. Quería un
diálogo entre víctimas. Estoy interesado en los civiles, en la gente que no estaba directamente
involucrada en la guerra’. Mientras se le reconoce a Alvim su experiencia personal, no puede
uno dejar de preguntarse ¿Cómo puede existir una exposición como esta, sin la voz activa de
los ex-combatientes de Sudáfrica, Angola, Cuba y Namibia?
Alvim enfatiza la ‘amnesia conciente’ de Sudáfrica en relación con la guerra de Angola: ‘De
decir al principio que ‘nosotros nunca estuvimos ahí’, el gobierno sudafricano ahora ha
pasado a reconocer su participación en la guerra. Lo que era amnesia se ha vuelto hoy
memoria’. Pero la ansiosa des-memoria del gobierno sudafricano en realidad duró poco.
Desde principios de los años ochenta el gobierno sudafricano había preferido mejor justificar
que negar su presencia en Angola a través de la retórica de la ‘ofensiva total’. Además, el
trabajo de la Campaña por la Suspensión del Reclutamiento es un testamento de, por lo
menos, una sutil forma de recordar durante los años de la guerra. La amnesia de Sudáfrica
radica más bien en la supresión de información sobre la guerra y en resistirse a asumir alguna
26
Fernando Alvim (Angola)
Inseparables I, 1998
instalación
cortesía del artista
responsabilidad por las consecuencias de su participación en la guerra. En este sentido,
tapándose los oidos, la exposición pasa por un lado de la incómoda frontera entre las heridas
abiertas del tráuma y el libro herméticamente cerrado de la amnesia.
Con la revelación y supresión de los archivos del tráuma y la amnesia, se hace necesario
hacer una pregunta crucial: ¿Quiénes son las víctimas de la cultura de guerra en Angola? El
marco de ‘Memórias Intimas Marcas’, al no documentar apropiadamente el espacio de las
víctimas, crea espacios con compromisos ambivalentes y voces ausentes. Los efectos curativos del exorcismo, sea en el espacio artístico de Cuito Cuanavale en Angola o en los lugares
interiores de las instalaciones en Sudáfrica, necesitan ser verdaderamente cuestionados.
‘Memórias Intimas Marcas’ está íntimamente localizada dentro de las políticas de exposición
de la representación de un archivo violento. Con pocas excepciones, la exposición no
cuestiona el marco conceptual de la estetización de la violencia del tráuma y la amnesia.
La blancura (y en especial la blancura colonial) es, en gran parte, construida a partir de la
negrura de la violencia y la amnesia, siendo la participación de Sudáfrica en la guerra de
Angola un óptimo ejemplo del uso de la violencia como apoyo de su autoridad regional y el
privilegio de la Sudáfrica blanca. Mientras que cualquier exploración sobre la participación
27
sudáfricana tendría que, necesariamente, profundizar en los archivos que autorizan la
blancura, ‘Memórias Intimas Marcas’ perpetua la noción de que la guerra de Angola fue
esencialmente una guerra de blancos en África. El reclutamiento de las comunidades Khoisan
de Namibia y Angola para participar en la guerra, primeramente como rastreadores, surge
instantáneamente como ejemplo de la no-tan-blanca participación de Sudáfrica en la guerra.
Desplazados primero por la guerra, luego por los escombros de una olvidada política de
apartheid, estas comunidades Khoisan todavía esperan por un futuro mejor desde sus
campamentos en tiendas de campaña del ejército en la base militar del Cabo Norte.
En la crítica anterior radica el problema fundamental de ‘Memórias Intimas Marcas’, a saber,
un tratamiento uni-dimensional de la guerra y sus repercusiones. Alvim está demasiado
implicado en el espacio histórico de la guerra de Angola para dar un paso atrás y considerar
perspectivas diferentes a la de su íntima experiencia personal del conflicto. La exposición
padece de las abstracciones particulares tomadas por Alvim de los archivos de guerra. Al
integrar un futuro para ‘Memórias Intimas Marcas’, más consideración debe darse a los archivos en sí y al impacto de estos archivos en el significado y el entendimiento de una cultura de
la guerra. Si una exposición como esta se mueve fuera del contexto del ‘arte’, para jugar un
papel en la transformación de la sociedad y afectar a la gente en su vida diaria, tiene entonces
que comprometerse con las contradicciones implícitas en el archivo de guerra.
Este articulo fue publicado en Inglés en:
NKA: Journal of Contemporary African Art, edición Otoño, Invierno 1998.
This article was published in English in:
NKA: Journal of Contemporary African Art, issue Fall, Winter 1998.
Para más información
Further information from:
NKA: Journal of Contemporary African Art
e-mail: [email protected]
On the following pages the work is shown of five
architects with whom the Prince Claus Fund
regularly exchanges thoughts relating to urban
development. Along with the illustrations of
their work, the architects share their personal
views regarding their architectural and design
work.
In the year 2000, the Prince Claus Fund will focus
on Third World cities. Third World cities are, in
the words of Indian architect Charles Correa,
‘the cities of the future’, but they face major
challenges and insurmountable difficulties. The
point of departure will be the massive, largely
uncontrollable urban growth in Africa, Asia and
Latin America. The intention is to identify creative solutions conceived and implemented by the
inhabitants of booming cities in an effort to keep
their world livable; often they succeed. The Fund
will not be concentrating on metropolitan problems, but rather will give an overview of positive
contributions towards a better urban life.
Through the activities to be initiated and funded,
including artistic projects and publications, many
different aspects of the city will be investigated;
small-scale as well as large-scale urban developments will be considered. The aim of the project
is to reflect people’s hopes, dreams and utopias,
and to recognise their achievements.
The project is launched by means of the presentation on the following pages. Together with the
architects concerned and many other experts in
wide-ranging fields, the Fund will formulate various concepts as a framework for its new project,
‘Third World Cities’.
28
Works of Art
Oeuvres d’Art
Obras de Arte
En las siguientes páginas se presenta el trabajo de cinco
arquitectos con quienes la Fundación Príncipe Claus ha
establecido un intercambio de ideas en relación con el
desarrollo urbano. Al mostrar imágenes de su trabajo,
estos profesionales expresan la visión personal sobre
su producción arquitectónica y diseño.
Architecture
Arquitectura
Durante el año 2000, las ciudades del tercer mundo
serán el centro de atención de la Fundación Príncipe
Claus. Según el arquitecto hindú Charles Correa, las
Charles Correa
Ricardo Legorreta ciudades del tercer mundo son ‘las ciudades del futuro’;
sin embargo están avocadas a enfrentar grandes retos
Bruno Stagno
y dificultades insuperables. Para empezar se dará consiRahul Mehrotra
deración al masivo y casi incontrolable crecimiento
Kenneth Yeang
urbano de África, Asia y Latinoamérica. El objetivo será
el de identificar soluciones novedosas creadas e implementadas por los habitantes de las ciudades de rápido
crecimiento, quienes tratan de mantener su entorno
habitable, y a menudo lo consiguen.
La Fundación no se centrará en problemas metropolitanos, sino que hará un reconocimiento de las
contribuciones positivas para una vida urbana mejor.
Entre las actividades que serán iniciadas y patrocinadas,
incluyendo arte y publicaciones, se investigarán muchos
aspectos diferentes de la ciudad; serán considerados
programas de desarrollo urbano pequeños y a gran
escala. Se persigue también reflejar las esperanzas de la
gente, sus sueños y utopías y reconocer sus logros.
El proyecto se da por inaugurado con la presentación
de los arquitectos que aparecen en las siguientes páginas. En coordinación con éllos y muchos otros expertos en diferentes disciplinas, la Fundación formulará los
conceptos que servirán de estructura para su nuevo
proyecto ‘Ciudades del Tercer Mundo’.
29
The Ritualistic
Pathway
Charles Correa,
India
In a warm climate, people develop a very different
relationship to built form. One needs only minimal
protection, such as a ‘chatri’ (an overhead canopy)
during the day. In the early morning and at night, the
best place to be is outdoors, under the open sky.
There are indescribable variations of light and ambient
air as we step from an enclosed room into a verandah…and thence perhaps into a courtyard… which
itself may be shadowed by a pergola covered with
plants…or by the spreading branches of a tree.
Thus in India, the word ‘akash’ denotes much more
that just the sky, and the symbol of enlightenment
is not the little red schoolhouse of North America,
but rather the guru sitting under the tree. Similarly
the monumental temples of South India are experienced not just as shrines and gopurams but as a
movement through the sacred open-to-sky spaces
that lie between them. This movement, almost unknown in a cold climate, is a ritualistic pathway, a
‘pradakshina’, a pilgrimage. To move along such a
path towards a sacred centre must trigger off some
primordial memory, one so embedded in the deep
structure of the human mind that it has appeared in
almost every society, since the beginning of time.
The five projects, all recently completed, have been
generated by these primary experiences. They are
also vehicles for exploring a number of vital issues
for us here in India today, from the position of the
traditional artists and craftsment vis-á-vis contemporary architecture to the role of symbolism in our
lives. Thus the galleries of the National Crafts
Museum in Delhi, displaying the incredibly rich and
diverse crafts of India, are arranged around a succession of courtyards, all interconnected by an opento-sky pathway, which becomes a metaphor for the
p. 30
Charles Correa
Indian street and perhaps for India herself. We start
Jawahar Kala Kendra,
with the Village Crafts (so as to continue the amJaipur, India
biance of the mud houses outside) and then prophoto: Mahendra Sinh
ceed to the sacred precincts of the Temple Crafts,
whence we arrive finally at the opulence of the
p. 31
Durbar Crafts. In the paradox that is India (which
Charles Correa
can simultaneously contain all these separate
Vidhan Bhavan, Bhopal, realities, and many more!) perhaps such a ritualistic
India
pathway is the only device by which each section
can retain its own appropriate ambiance, so crucial
Crafts Museum, Delhi,
for preserving the authenticity of the objects it
India
displays.
photo: Mahendra Sinh
The new Library and Headquarters for the British
Council in Delhi is also structured along such a
Inter University Centre pathway, but organised along a formal linear axis, a
for Astronomy and
series of layers symbolising the various interfaces
Astrophysics, Pune, India, between Britain and India, represented by three
photo: Mahendra Sinh
mythic ‘axis mundi’. At the end of the axis is the
31
oldest one: the interface with Hinduism, symbolised
here by the ancient Vedic ‘bindu’ (the source of all
energy). In the middle is the interface with Islam,
here represented by the ‘char bagh’ (the Koranic
Garden of Paradise). The third axis mundi, brought
by the British who arrived with their own mythic
beliefs in Science and Rationality, is a traditional
European one (precisely that as used by Lutyens in
his Viceregal House in New Delhi).
Presiding over the extrance to all this, is an extraordinary mural by Howard Hodgkin, symbolising
the shade of a giant banyan tree.
The third project, the Vidhan Bhavan, the new State
Assembly for the Government of Madhya Pradesh
was started over a decade ago, but for various reasons, is still under construction. There are several
different pathways. Each independent of the others,
and yet each one formal and ritualistic. Thus every
one of the various users, such as politicians, vips,
visiting peasants and press can, from their own
pathway, experience the main vistas and monumental spaces of this complex. The circular plan of
the Vidhan Bhavan resulted from the nature of the
site (on the top of a hill in the middle of Bhopal) as
well as from its proximity to the Stupa at Sanchi, an
overwhelmingly powerful three-dimensional representation of the ancient Buddhist Cosmographs
(sacred diagrams depicting the entire Manifest
World). With this project, I started to become
increasingly intrigued by architecture which (as
has happened throughout history) expresses the
invisibilia that underlie society.
The Jawahar Kala Kendra in Jaipur and the InterUniversity Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics
in Pune both return to the age-old conception of
architecture as a model of the cosmos. Thus each of
them, in its own way, seeks to express the deeper
realities which underlie the everyday world in
which it exists. The first, the museum in Jaipur, is
based on the ancient Vedic understanding of the
cosmos, namely the ancient ‘Navgraha’ mandala of
the nine planets. The research and teaching Institute in Pune, has been generated by our own contemporary notions of the expanding universe in
which most scientist today believe we dwell.
Charles Correa (1930,
India) is a member of
the 1999 Prince Claus
Awards Committee.
As an architect and
planner he is based in
Bombay and has emerged as a major figure in
contemporary architecture worldwide.
Charles Correa
British Council, Delhi,
India
all photos: courtesy of
Charles Correa
32
33
It is difficult to find a country so identified with an
architectural element as Mexico is with the wall. A
country of architecture without architects, full of
Ricardo Legorreta, mystery, colour, sun and shade, Mexico is so deeply
identified with the wall that it has become a part of
Mexico
its life. To rationalise or to explain this identification
is all but impossible. It is not surprising, that many
people have tried to analyse and describe Mexico in
numerous books, writings, narrations, paintings
and constructions, but only few have been able to
do so - partially.
Mexico is a fascinating, strong, mysterious, complicated and bewildering country, in which very diverse
sentiments and emotions are mixed: sadness and
happiness, peace and war, sun and shade, frankness
and complexity. Because of these characteristics,
the bond between Mexico and the wall is understandable, but impossible to explain. Nonetheless,
Mexicans are not interested in a rational explanation, they simply are born, live and die with the
wall; it is part of their environment, emotions, life
and, of course, death.
For those visiting and actually living in Mexico, the
wall is always present, first of all as a natural element; then, when we begin to look at it more deeply, it assumes a primary role, both governing and
essential, ending as the basic element of true Mexican architecture.
It forms part of our history and is always present, in
many different ways. The pre-Columbian wall was
definitive in its architecture and tells us its history.
In some cases, its mere footprint is enough for us to
feel space, proportions and the presence of our
ancestors. A strong, ancient, stark and sometimes
colourless wall maintains all the dignity and magnificence of its builders, and while contemplating it,
we, the Mexicans feel not only a natural emotion
p. 34
but also the weight of our responsibility to match
Ricardo Legorreta
Renault Factory,
and exceed that greatness of spirit.
Gomez Palacio
The colonial wall, with the Spanish influence, brings
a new religion and a different spirituality but nonetheless maintains those emotions and flavours so
p. 35
Ricardo Legorreta
characteristic of Mexico. It is not a Spanish or Indian
Plaza Reforma Office
wall, it is a new wall, a mestizo wall, maybe the best
Building, Mexico City
and most representative physical element of this
new civilisation, resulting from two races and reliMuseum of Modern
gions. It has the mystery, fantasy and sensibility of
Art, Monterrey, Mexico the indians and incorporates the strength, honesty
and aggressive religion of Spain. The colonial wall is
Private Office Building, the foundation of our nationality; it is where we
Monterrey, Mexico
find our great hopes.
It is interesting to note that when other civilisations and cultures have played a definitive role in
Televisa Corporate
Offices, Mexico City
our life, the wall has almost disappeared. We could
The Wall in
Mexico
35
say that it felt embarrassed and hid. Thus under the
French influence today, the wall does not shout; it
is not present, it just hides and cries...
Throughout these periods, there is a discreet and
humble wall that does not die but it serves the true
Mexican: the wall of the vernacular architecture, a
glorious wall, a source of endless inspiration; a strong,
sweet and romantic wall, full of colour and light,
which clearly reveals how Mexico should be free
from foreign influence, maintaining true values.
When Mexico suffers and reacts, the wall arises and
protests: strong and Mexican. The revolution produces the mural painting in which our great painters show our reality: the struggle and hope for
freedom; a new Mexico taking shape with its own
personality. During this century, new foreign influences have appeared, with their high technology
attempting to destroy the wall. It remains alive,
however, through the vernacular architecture and
true Mexican architects, who lead the way to finding the roots of this wonderful country and challenge us to be worthy Mexicans.
The history of our country will continue and the
wall will never die, because it is our essence. The
day the wall dies, Mexico will die with it.
Ricardo Legorreta
(Mexico) is discussion
partner of the Prince
Claus Fund who is
consulted on matters
relating to architecture
and urbanisation.
He is lead designer and
Principal of Legoretta
Archuitectos in Mexico
City since 1963.
p. 36
Museum of Modern
Art, Monterrey,
Mexico
Renault Factory,
Gomez Palacio, Mexico
Renault Factory,
Gomez Palacio, Mexico
City of the Arts,
Mexico City
p. 37
Plaza Reforma Office
Building, Mexico City
Ricardo Legorreta
36
Mimetismo,
Contraste,
Evolución
Bruno Stagno,
Costa Rica
p. 38, 39
Bruno Stagno
Centro Artístico del
Colegio Humboldt,
San José, Costa Rica
Mirar hacia atrás en la vida de un arquitecto resulta
ser una atractiva experiencia. Hay tantas cosas que
suceden en nuestras oficinas que hacen de la arquitectura una de las profesiones más fascinantes. Una
de las experiencias más interesantes es la de la propia historia del arquitecto y sus obras.
En mi caso las circunstancias me han conducido a
tener que diseñar ampliaciones y nuevas etapas a
edificios que había diseñado varios años antes y
esto me ha conducido a situaciones completamente imprevistas y novedosas.
Estos proyectos de ampliación o nuevas etapas no
previstas originalmente no pertenecen a lo concebido en un plan maestro en el que todo fue diseñado en un solo acto. Me refiero a edificios que
han sido construidos y que por decisión posterior
se resuelve iniciar un nuevo proyecto para una
ampliación o una nueva etapa con un programa
nuevo y a veces complementario.
Un edificio construido por un arquitecto, es un
proyecto realizado en el que se ha materializado
una propuesta y es toda una realidad. En este
sentido es un éxito, independiente de la crítica y
revisión a que se pueda someter.
Esta experiencia me ha enfrentado a un interesante
dilema y ante situaciones complejas y sobre todo
paradójicas. Son situaciones que obligan a revisar lo
que se ha hecho y a valorar la vigencia y actualidad
de lo realizado. Es como hacer una crítica de la
propia obra con la condición que de ella debe surgir
un nuevo edificio a la par.
Iniciar una ampliación no prevista originalmente es
un extraordinario ejercicio que se desarrolla bajo
un aura de certidumbre y aplomo. Es una nueva
oportunidad que surge sobre las certezas de lo ya
construido y que tiene como misión adicional reaccionar ante el original.
Para un arquitecto representa una extraordinaria
oportunidad para perpetuar un discurso y reafirmar
convicciones, y esto, por el deseo expreso de un
cliente satisfecho, lo que además significa un acto
de reconocimiento y apoyo hacia la propuesta arquitectónica. Mimetismo, contraste o evolución son
las actitudes posibles para emprender el diseño de
una nueva etapa. Es interesante como a pequeña escala se experimenta la historia de la arquitectura universal con sus orígenes y sus derivados Neo y Post.
El edificio existente esta allí como un manifiesto
vivo, lleno de aciertos y desaciertos, con un usuario
que busca perpetuarse y reforzar su imagen o tal
vez transmitir un signo de cambio y modificar su
imagen. Lo que resulta paradójico y altamente estimulante es que el edificio original es un proyecto
de mi cuño y sobre el que me corresponde interPrince Claus Fund Journal # 3
39
venir. Varias veces me ha sucedido esto y cada vez
he repensado, reevaluado y recriticado todo y ese
ejercicio puede ser a veces destructivo y probablemente satánico, o al menos y con toda seguridad
masoquista. ¿Es una oportunidad para revisarse
entonces?, ¿Vale la pena retomar ese diseño tantos
años después? Sólo un fuerte deseo de continuidad
puede justificar una decisión así. Un respeto por el
contexto, más que un alarde novedoso.
El estado actual de mi casa es el resultado de 3
intervenciones de diseño y construcción, con un
inicio en 1976 y una última en 1990. En el caso de la
casa Friedlander-Gilmore se construyó en 1979 y
tuvo una segunda etapa en 1998.
Bruno Stagno
(Santiago de Chile,
1943) recibió un premio Príncipe Claus en
1997. Organizó un
Encuentro sobre
Arquitectura Tropical
en Costa Rica en
noviembre de 1998.
Participaron en el
Encuentro entre otros
los arquitectos Kenneth
Yeang y Rahul Mehrotra.
El contraste es justamente lo opuesto. Es hacer
evidente un cambio feroz y violento con el edificio
existente. Es una crítica destructiva que concluye
con una nueva propuesta. Para un arquitecto, es
una situación muy difícil de aceptar. Es una experiencia despiadada que afortunadamente no la he
vivido. Quien sabe si el destino me la tiene reservada para más adelante aguardándome detrás de
uno de mis edificios.
La evolución es la más estimulante de las soluciones y con la que tengo más afinidad. Se trata de
considerar al edificio existente como una tradición
y luego hacerlo evolucionar. Es como crear un hermano joven, que aunque es de la misma estirpe
tiene rasgos diferentes. Es una excelente oportunidad para evolucionar y reafirmar una genealogía
actualizando una propuesta. He experimentado
este proceso en al menos tres proyectos: Country
Day School, Plaza Mayor y el Instituto Pedagógico
para los Colegios Alemanes (1989) que ahora se
complementa con una nueva etapa para el Centro
Artístico en 1999.
p. 40
Bruno Stagno
Casa Stagno, Escazú,
p. 41
Centro Artístico del
Colegio Humboldt,
fotografías y cortesía de
Bruno Stagno
40
Working in
Bombay
Rahul Mehrotra,
India
p. 42
Rahul Mehrotra
Mariwala House,
Mahabaleshwar, India
p. 43
Rahul Mehrotra
Farm House, Bombay,
India
Laxmi Machine Works
Corporate Headquarters, Coimbatore, India
Our approach to working in Bombay has been to
use the city as a generator of practice, thereby not
only attempting to contribute in some way to the
larger urbanisation issue as designers, but more
importantly regarding it as a way for us to evolve an
approach and an architectural vocabulary which
draw their nourishment from what is a powerful
phenomenon, the evolving urban context. In fact,
the city of Bombay has served as a laboratory from
which the practice has extracted lessons, through
its involvement in a wide range of activities in the
city-research, activism, interior design, conservation, urban design and architecture.
The practice is committed to addressing not only
the issues of the contemporary urban landscape
but also to identifying aspects of our historic cities
that have continuing relevance for our emerging
post-colonial urbanism. The practice has thus become actively engaged in urban conservation projects in Bombay, with a view to facilitating the gentle transition of our historic cities into the emerging urban milieu.
Beyond urban design and conservation, the practice is involved with building conservation projects
in Bombay. The emphasis that we have in this area
of work is that of ‘creative conservation’ in which a
critical dialogue is created between the old and the
new. Our interest therefore lies in the recycling of
building and spaces, the revitalisation of a building
through a pattern of contemporary use being seen
as the generator of the conservation process. As
architects we feel equipped to do this, since in our
capacity as designers we can see opportunities that
exist in the reorganisation of a historic building. As
a practice we have learnt a great deal about design
from conservation and this has enhanced our work
substantially. We believe that the design of a good
modern building and involvement with the conservation of historic buildings are not really different
activities.
In fact, this schism and the resulting specialisation
of the architect’s involvement evolved historically
as a result of the impact of the modern movement.
Furthermore, in India, modernism set up a classic
duality, with one part of the contemporary urban
Indian landscape consisting of ‘modern’ buildings
and the other of buildings representing living traditions and the collective wisdom of many generations. And the urban poor, inventive and resilient,
continued to build in squalid conditions, using
minimal means to create shelter. This gave rise to a
situation such as that found today in cities like
Bombay, where two worlds exist in the same space
but build and use the space differently. One is a
43
permanent or ‘pucca’ world, monumental in its
presence and the other is one built of temporary
materials using a highly pluralistic architectural vocabulary of disparate elements that are intuitively
woven together, seamlessly as a response to a basic
need to create shelter.
In this landscape charged with duality, the designer
has to accept these dualities on their own terms as
simultaneously valid. When these kaleidoscopic coexisting images are compressed together, a whole
gamut of stylistic possibilities opens up. Within
this range, the rational and rigorous practice of
modernism (with its social agenda etc.) could perhaps be juxtaposed with spontaneity and conventional wisdom to create an appropriate architecture and aesthetic representing the contemporary
urban Indian reality.
In our architectural projects, the approach has
been to abstract and interpret spatial arrangements and in order to take account, both of contemporary sensibilities and of building vocabularies. An attempt has thus been made to combine
materials, to juxtapose conventional craftsmanship with industrial materials, and traditional spatial arrangements with contemporary space organisation. In short, to give expression to the multiple
worlds, the pluralism and dualities that so vividly
characterises the emerging reality of the Asian
Landscape.
Rahul Mehrotra
(1959, India) was one
of the architects who
participated in the
Tropical Architecture
Encounter organised
by Bruno Stagno in
Costa Rica in 1998.
He has been in private
practice since 1990.
p. 44
Rahul Mehrotra
Mariwala House,
Laxmi Machine Works
Corporate Headquarters, Coimbatore, India
p. 45
Rahul Mehrotra
Mariwala House,
Rahul Mehrotra
44
The work of our firm ‘Hamzah & Yeang’, is focused
on designing with nature, as ‘green’ or (as) ecologiKenneth Yeang,
cal design. Essentially our designs and buildings are
intended to integrate with nature (i.e. with the
Malaysia
ecosystems in the biosphere), and to contribute by
Kenneth Yeang (1948,
design (i.e. by innovation and by improved effiMalaysia) is one of
ciencies) towards an ecologically sustainable futhe 1999 Prince Claus
ture. In this regard, the consequences of our enAward winners.
deavours have varied levels of success, some being
He was one of the
more ecologically-responsive than others, often due
architects who partici- to the vicissitudes of practice and the fact that we
pated in the Tropical
are not in a controlled laboratory environment for
Architecture Encounter research and experimentation.
organised by Bruno
Nevertheless, our overall intentions remain the same,
Stagno in Costa Rica in
namely design which will integrate man-made
1998. He is co-founder
systems with those of the natural environment and
of Hamzah & Yeang.
which will positively contribute where possible to
the natural environment (rather than lead to negative devastation). Briefly, our work is essentially an
r&d-based (or knowledge-based) approach that is
interpreted poetically by design. The emphasis is
on large buildings, not because these are particularly desirable or particularly ecological, but simply
because these building types will not go away
overnight (no matter how hateful they may be to
some). We contend that it is exactly this sort of
buildings that demands the committed efforts of
the best ecological designers in the world, since
they are being built world-wide in large and increasing numbers. Our method of work might be
referred to as ‘rapid prototyping’: initial design
propositions are evaluated and then selectively
simulated very quickly, leading to the construction
of the resultant built form as a prototype (a model
functioning with acceptable level-of-imperfection)
that can be subsequently refined.
However, in the process of working on the design
p. 46
of large buildings, we had the opportunity to work
Kenneth Yeang
Menara Mesiniaga,
on the high-rise built form or the skyscraper builSubang Jaya, Selangor,
ding type. This led us to explore other aspects of
Malaysia
this building typology, such as its geographical and
planning consequences. Early work is on the bioclip. 47
matic aspects of building as this was the easiest way
Kenneth Yeang
to introduce aspects of ecological design to a
Menara Mesiniaga,
commercial clientele. Bioclimatic design might be
Subang Jaya, Selangor,
regarded as a subset of ecological design, as it
Malaysia
involves designing with the climate of the locality
as passive low-energy design. While this is not
Bukit Unggul Golf
ecological design per se, it encompasses aspects of
Driving Range,
ecological design and provides a good starting
Selangor, Malaysia, 1997 point for design in which other ecological aspects
can be incorporated.
Design Aims
Kenneth Yeang
47
In June of 1999 the Prince Claus Fund’s support helped eight poets
and a literary critic from the Caribbean, Mongolia and Zanzibar to
take part in the thirtieth Poetry International Festival, Rotterdam,
the Netherlands. Among them were Lorna Goodison (Jamaica),
Edouard Glissant (Martinique), Alvaro Mutis (Colombia), Olive
Senior (Jamaica), Galsan Tschinag (Mongolia) and Al Creighton
(Guyana). The Fund availed itself of the opportunity to discuss the
theme of ‘Mother Tongues’ with a number of the participants.
The Fund is at present investigating this theme with a view to
possible initiatives in the future. In the following essay literary critic
Al Creighton analyses the role of mother tongues and oral traditions
within international gatherings.
(M)other Tongues
Al Creighton
Poetry across the globe nowadays seems to be preoccupied with a return to its roots which
may be found in oral performance. Some of the world’s most potent forms of oral poetry,
such as the epic, the ballad and the calypso, have exerted a great influence on form in written
literature, which have stolen the focus and monopolised the attention of the literary world.
However, in recent times, the world seems to have been rediscovering orality, the
performance dynamic and the influence of the audience on poetry. Although it took its form
from oral traditions, the scribal tradition maintained a separate existence and commanded
such power that the status of oral forms declined to the extent that they were barely
recognised as poetry. Recently, however, such critics as Ruth Finnegan in ‘Oral Poetry in
1
2
Africa’ and Terry Eagleton in ‘Literary Theory’ have contributed considerably to the
acceptance of the oral text as bona fide literature. Edward Baugh in ‘Critics on Caribbean
3
Literature’ asserts that ‘literature, all literature, begins with language’ . This is echoed by W.
Edward Chamberlin who states that ‘language is where this thing begins’ for the poets of the
4
West Indies . Verse produced and performed in the oral tradition and varieties of nonstandard language have been rediscovered and have had to win recognition through lengthy
1.
debates. Today, there is much more contact between the two traditions. They have moved Finnegan, Ruth; ‘Oral Poetry
much closer together and this has given rise to interesting new forms.
in Africa’, Oxford University
Press, London, 1970
Rotterdam’s ‘Poetry International Festival’ in the Netherlands commemorated thirty years
of annual poetry celebrations with its 1999 festival. It effectively illustrated the importance of
performance to poetry, its oral quality and the inescapable factor of language. Although the
presentations were predominantly literary, ‘Poetry International’ was emphatic in the
symbolic dramatisation of these factors in the way they foregrounded language and
performance. For example, the audience was able to listen through holes in the wall to the
voices of poets reading their own verse. These were creative dramatisations of the oral aspect of
poetry and effective reminders of the medium of theatre; the festival’s main activity was a
collective of international poets reading their work to an audience. Because of the multiplicity
of foreign languages, theatre and oral performance strove to provide whatever limited linguistic
universality was possible. But in addition to this, the festival also carried out what was
undoubtedly a demanding and amazingly speedy translation service. Yet, the literary interest
of the establishment was still in evidence at the literary translation workshop.
48
2.
Eagleton, Terry; ‘Literary
Theory’, Oxford University
Press, London, 1983
3.
Baugh, Edward (ed.); ‘Critics
on Caribbean Literature’,
Allen and Unwin, London,
1978
4.
Chamberlin, Edward W.;
‘Come Back to Me, My
Language’, 1992
From the left:
Galsan Tschinag
Lorna Goodison
Edouard Glissant
courtesy of Foundation
Poetry International
These literary interests were further emphasised by the introduction of a series of critical
symposia which ran concurrently with the readings. ‘Poetry International’ brought together
literary critics, publishers, translators, editors and anthologists to discuss a range of issues
relevant to poetry. But even here, the festival’s main theme seemed to dominate since the
issues had much to do with getting poetry to a wider audience and assessing its impact upon
that audience. The issues included an examination of the state of poetry in the world today:
‘The Audience for Poetry’, ‘Publishing Poetry’, ‘Translating Dutch Poetry’ and ‘Criticism of
Poetry’ treated poetry as literature and as a means for communicating with an audience.
Some poets and critics also met with the Prince Claus Fund to discuss one of the most
relevant topics of the festival: mother tongues. Such an issue is highly crucial, profoundly
cutting to the core of what occurs at the annual poetry festival.
The concept of mother tongues included all the languages represented by poets of
different nationalities from across Europe, Asia, Africa and the Caribbean. Despite the
obvious language barriers, in order to preserve the integrity of the poems and to give the
performance its maximum force, all the poets read in their native language. Several themes
were dramatised: free, creative expression in the first language; the issue and problems of
translation; the audience and the problems of publishing and getting poetry to its audience.
A poet’s choice of language is dramatically illustrated in cases where there is a minority
and poets have chosen to use the minority language as an assertion of regional loyalty. This
choice of language has been a major issue in countries where poets face a very limited
audience because their native language is unknown to the world at large. Poets may then
choose to use a second language which has greater international currency. When the Prince
Claus Fund raised the question of mother tongues, the case of the Caribbean was articulated.
The first language of the majority of people in the Caribbean is not the official standard
dialect, which commands prestige and unlimited international currency. The people’s
language is Creole, which has low status and is associated with the less privileged classes.
Writers, therefore, face a dilemma when choosing their language. Yet poets can command
both dialects and the linguistic continuum which runs between them. Their poetry is enriched by this freedom of choice, which includes code-switching where necessary, and have
no misgivings about speaking to local or international audiences. The language situation is an
asset, not a worry.
49
The following short story ‘Mad Fish’ by Jamaican born author Olive
Universally, in an effort to widen the audience, poems are translated, opening up the world’s
literature to many more readers. Yet the argument persists that poems are untranslatable.
The organisation of ‘Poetry International’ never lost control over the debate, even in their
workshop for literary translation where, sometimes with a good sense of humour, they
demonstrated the possibly problematic variants, while leaving the issue open ended.
There is genuine interest in poetry as a public art with tangible outcomes and a practical
approach. The many steps taken to make poetry readings attractive to an audience will
convince that the entertainment value suffers no neglect. But the attitude is not one of art for
art’s sake, an approach criticised by Eagleton because it holds that poetry should remain
‘gloriously useless; loftily removed from any sordid social purpose’.
Both ‘Poetry International’ and the Prince Claus Fund demonstrated a preoccupation with
poetry’s application to a social purpose. Hence their interest in poetry in society and hence
the focus on the audience.
This returns me to the point I started with, that contemporary poetry is rediscovering its oral
qualities and its ancient roots as something performed before an audience, particularly in
Europe. Oral poetry depends upon recitation for its survival. While neither the performance
nor the audience was ever removed from poetry in the oral tradition, in Africa and the
Caribbean especially the audience participates in the performance. Poetic forms have evolved
in the Caribbean which have brought scribal and oral poetry closer together.
One such form is dub poetry which, closely affiliated to performance poetry, is composed
with a rhythmic, oral quality. Performance poetry has gained ground in Britain to the point
that it has found its way into the London education system where it is studied alongside
other forms of literature.
A popular event in North America and Europe is the ‘Poetry Slam’ with its ready communication with the audience and audience participation. ‘Slammers’ also performed at the
Rotterdam festival. They entertain audiences while keeping pace with the new forms and
events that have contributed to the popularisation of poetry. In the case of dub, dj-ing, rap
and performance poetry, slammers produce utterances in verse with oral performance and
an audience in mind. Dub, dj-ing and rap in particular, very often have a profound relationship to ‘the wretched of the earth’ who they sometimes give a voice to while vividly
reflecting popular culture.
Since there have been complaints about the difficulties attached to publishing poetry, the
scale of its circulation and its often limited readership, these oral and performance aspects are
highly relevant if one wishes to access and liberate a large audience in 1999, at the height of
the electronic age of television and new information technology.
50
Senior has been published in ‘Turn of the Story: Canadian Short
Fiction at the Millennium’ edited by John Thomas and Heidi Harms,
House of Anansi Press, Toronto, 1999. It will also appear in a new
collection of stories by Olive Senior, which is not yet published. The
Prince Claus Fund paid Olive Senior’s fare to Rotterdam in order for
her to participate in the Poetry International Festival in Rotterdam,
the Netherlands, June 1999.
Olive Senior
courtesy of Foundation
Poetry International
Mad Fish
This really happened, I swear. I was right there when Radio came rushing up the hill from the
fishing beach all out of breath. Radio is our messenger and he likes to be first with the news.
But everyone called him Radio not for that reason but because of his serious speech defect
which made it difficult to understand him at the best of times, almost impossible when he
was excited, which was when he had fresh news to tell. This caused him endless frustration
for by the time he’d calmed down enough to make sense to Jeremy who was one of the few
persons who could understand him, someone with a more agile tongue would have arrived
to reel off a version of the story and cheat him out of the novelty of telling. Not this time
though. Jeremy and I were about to have our first cup of coffee when Radio burst into the
dining room, so excited he couldn’t even get out words that sounded like language, just
strange inhuman water-filled noises which were wheezing out of him like a drowning
accordion. The only word we could make out sounded like ‘Fish’. He said that word over and
over, and he wanted us to come, pointing to the beach. Why should a fish on a fishing beach
cause excitement? But Radio was so urgent and insistent that we left our coffee untouched
and followed him down the hill and across the road.
As we approached, everything on the beach looked so normal, I started to mentally curse
Radio for pulling one of his jokes on us, as he liked to do from time to time, for Radio is sort
of simple, or so I used to think, though Jeremy never agreed and now I’m not so sure. We
could see the fishermen and the higglers standing about in little groups. There were the usual
idlers and mangy dogs lurking and the old men sitting under the Sea Almond where they
played dominoes all day. But as we got closer we realised something was not right. The
whole scene was like a stage set with knots of people standing around in tableaux, waiting for
the curtain to go up. Nobody was making a sound and those who moved did so in slowmotion as if in a dream. It was as if each one had just received news that a beloved person had
died and was still too shocked to take it in. Jeremy and I walked up to the largest group which
was by the boats and nobody paid us the slightest attention, amazingly, since Jeremy is sort
of the village squire and people are always quick to greet him. Now they were behaving as if
we weren’t there, but not in a rude way; it was as if they were too preoccupied with more
important business. But something made us bite our tongues and say nothing too, as if we
had also fallen under a spell that had gripped the entire beach for even the sky which hadn’t
shown a cloud in nearly a year of drought was suddenly turning black and shadows were
beginning to fall on the white sand. I actually shivered. Without exchanging a word between
us or with anyone else, Jeremy and I turned and went home without a clue as to what had
happened. Once inside our house, everything seemed so normal we went back to having our
breakfast, each of us confident that others would arrive with the tale before long.
But amazingly, no one came forward to speak of what happened, that day or any other. And
51
when fragments of the story did surface to corroborate what Radio eventually told us, it was
not at all like the stories these people liked to tell, augmented and ornamented and
embellished, built of up of versions over time. This was utterly downplayed, individual
elements singled out and spoken about only in terms of ‘signs’, ‘tokens’ and ‘miracles’ as if
people were not so much interested in the story as narrative as in teasing out all the possible
permutations of meaning.
Still, those who were there might eventually have come around to talking and laughing
about the episode, as these people tend to do with everything else, except for one or two
elements. From our fishing beach that day, four men in a car with a fantastic fish had
disappeared not only around the bend in the road but totally off the face of the earth. From
the minute they drove off, nothing was ever seen or heard of them again. We know this for a
fact, for Jeremy’s police friends had also heard the story and could verify that a lot of people
had come looking for the men, including their relatives. The police would have been happy
to find them too, for other reasons, and set out to do so. But all investigations had proven
fruitless. As soon as they drove off, the men, the car, and the fish, had simply vanished.
There were other repercussions. Big Jake, our most popular fisherman, never went to sea
again and spent his days playing dominoes and drinking himself into idiocy. Some said he
had lost his nerve, afraid of what he might catch. Others that from the day he raised his hand
against his brothers, they had taken over the boat and banished him from it. It is also a fact
that it was the day of the so-called Mad Fish that the year-long drought broke, though the day
had dawned with a cloudless sky and, so people said for I wasn’t keeping count I was so sick
of it after a while, rain fell for forty days and forty nights.
But the most miraculous thing of all, is that after we returned home that day, ate our
breakfast, fed Radio and calmed him down to that point where his speech though rough
would begin to make sense, to our astonishment and without any warning, he began to
speak beautifully and clearly, as if he had swallowed mercury, and he has continued to speak
so ever since. You won’t believe what a change these things have wrought around here,
everyone suddenly so sober and serious. People have put all these happenings together and
taken them for signs and wonders – ‘tokens’ they call them – of the end of the world and such
Millenarian rubbish. Radio is giving himself airs, refusing to answer to ‘Radio’ and insisting
on being called by his rightful name of Joshua. He’s been given a message, he says, a big
announcement to make, but he’s being coy; he won’t tell us what it is until the time is ripe.
A lot of people are taking him seriously too. Now instead of running our errands and helping
around the yard, he spends his time riding his bicycle up and down and ringing his bell,
making himself all Biblical and apocalyptic, condescending to pop in from time to time to
regale us with the latest news interspersed with wild talk about Leviathans and fishing for
souls. I keep telling Jeremy it’s time to get rid of him, he’s got perfectly useless, but of course
Jeremy won’t hear of it. He and Radio have been together since they were boys and Jeremy I
suspect has always found him kind of amusing, as if he provides the yeast for Jeremy’s rather
dull soul. Plus, Jeremy is ever faithful and loyal. That’s the trouble with this country, people
ignore the big things and make such a fuss over the little. I don’t want to think this, but I
believe even Jeremy in his heart of hearts is beginning to believe that something worldshattering happened that day. I keep my mouth shut, for whenever I say anything, he rubs it
in that I’m not from here so I can’t understand the culture. What culture? I keep asking
myself. After fifteen years I should have seen signs of it by now. I certainly don’t see any of it
in Jeremy’s other planter friends and policeman drinking buddies or the fishermen and
higglers down on the beach. Well, you can judge, for here’s the story as told by our little
silver-tongued Radio, a.k.a. Joshua, all acted out, with many dramatic flourishes, if you
please (though for your sake I have taken some care to render it into a closer approximation
of the English language than Radio so far uses. I’ve also taken some liberties to explain certain
things in a more sophisticated way than he did. But I’ve tried to retain some of the colour and
flavour of how he told it, for that you’ll find amusing ).
52
‘Picture this’, says he. ‘The fishing boat is pulling up on the beach. Big Jake and his brothers
and all the little hangers-on hauling on the net, fish spilling out like quicksilver, leaping and
spinning, one last jerk and they lying unconscious and silent, as fish suppose to be. But
what’s this commotion over here? Something jumping and moving as if a big animal just
leap off the boat. The first person to get a good look scream and the next one too, and after
that, everybody dashing around like mad-ants shrieking and pointing. First the boys helping
to pull in the net, then the higglers waiting for the catch. What a commotion! Big Jake and
the crew haul in this huge fish that is like nothing nobody ever seen before. Gold on top,
silver on the bottom and all the colours of the rainbow in-between.
Big Jake and the other fishermen stop what they doing to get a good look at the fish which
by this time launch itself out of the net and dancing around on the ground. Everybody
waiting to hear the fishermen pronounce the name of this fish, for they suppose to know
every creature in the sea. But when Big Jake and the rest stand there for a long time just
scratching their heads and looking like they lost, and people figure out that even they don’t
know, the wailing and the shrieking break out fresh again. You have to understand, is not
just the looks of the fish for is not a bad-looking fish at that. The problem is that the fish is
not behaving like how fish out of water should behave. This fish not just moving, it dancing.
A-wiggling and a-moving its tail and spinning and turning and wining, its big body
glistening and flashing in the sun. After a while, everybody quieten down, we just standing
there watching this fish. Is like everybody suddenly feeling fraid in the presence of this
mysterious creature that land up on our beach. For who can tell if is call somebody call it up,
for it have people in these parts can do them kind of thing. Then a man in the crowd call out:
‘Wait! Is a Dance Hall Queen this’. Everybody laugh, like we get relief, for that’s just how
the fish stay, like a dance hall girl in her fancy dress and her tight fish-tail sequins like scales,
moving her body to the latest wine. So little by little people stop feeling frighten and start
making joke. ‘Well,’ one man proclaim, ‘the only fish I ever see live this long out of water is
Mud Fish’.
‘Is not Mud Fish this’, another one shout, ‘Is Mad Fish!’. And is true, the fish acting like it
crazy; not like a lunatic but happy and dont-care mad, like it drunk. And somebody actually
say the word ‘drunk’, ‘the fish look like it drunk’, and is like the word set off something
running through people mind, for suddenly, everything change, is like a cloud passing over
the sun, for somebody, I don’t know who, whisper the word, ‘cocaine’. And the word pass
from mouth to ear until everybody taking it up like a chorus.
‘The fish drunk with the coke’. Everybody know what that mean. ‘Coke!’ Quick as a flash,
the word like a sword slashing at all of us. That word making people jumpy for the whole
coast awash with story bout small plane a drop parcel into sea so boat can pick it up. That is
okay, people don’t business with that. Is just that sometime the parcel fall into the wrong
place, and end up in the wrong hand, and this is what everybody getting excited bout. For it
come like a lottery now. Everybody dreaming bout finding parcel and getting rich overnight.
Everybody know is dead them dead if certain people find out. Up and down the coast they
hanging out all kind of rumour on their clothes line. Which fisherman can suddenly buy new
boat. Which boat disappear after the crew pick up something. Which old lady find parcel
wash up on a beach and hide it in her three-foot iron pot, till her house suddenly burn down
with her and her three grand-children lock up inside and no sign of the iron pot in the ashes.
Suddenly, fishing taking on a whole new meaning; fisherman dreaming of a different catch.
Well, Big Jake is one of them alright for though up to now he in the middle of the crowd
laughing and joking bout the fish (that still dancing like crazy), the minute he hear the word
‘coke’, is like he turn a different man. Quick as a snake, Big Jake reach into the boat and haul
out him machete and start to lash out with it, as if he suddenly gone crazier than the fish.
‘Stan back, all a unno from mi fish. Stan back’, he start shout. But people already backing
away for his two eye looking wild and he leaping about and swinging his machete left and
right. Everybody looking at him in shock for never mind his size, Big Jake is normally the
most peaceful man around. By now, is like Big Jake and the fish together in a ring,
surrounded by the crowd, with all eyes on Big Jake. But is like I can’t take my eyes off the fish,
53
for I seeing it quietly moving round in the circle till it come right to where I standing and it
stop, just like that, and it lift up its head and it look straight at me. I swear. I can see that it not
looking too well just now, tired like, as if the life draining out of it, the colours fading away.
And is like the fish calling to me, calling me without voice as if is the two of us alone in the
whole wide world. Like it pulling me down towards it. And I can’t help myself, I feeling
sorrowful for the fish that just sitting there on the sand for I feeling the life going out of it as if
is a part of myself leaving me. I bend down and reach out my hand to touch the scales and as I
bending down, a drop of my sweat fall right on top of the fish and I swear, is like electricity,
the fish jump as if it suddenly get life all over again and it look at me, directly at me, and is like
it sucking me in, I swear I black-out for a minute there for I don’t remember nothing more.
When I come back to myself I see the fish reach clear to the other side of the circle, leaping
and jumping and dancing, its colors bright and dazzling like it just come out of the water.
All this happen so fast that nobody notice; everybody still watching Big Jake. But I feel my
finger tingling and when I look I see a little drop of blood, as if I prick myself on the fish, and I
don’t even think, I put the finger in my mouth. I don’t have time to worry about doing
something like that after I touch the mad fish, for Big Jake brethren Ernie and Ray take up
their machete too and the three of them circling one another with their weapon now,
arguing over is who own the fish. You see my trial? The three of them fishing together from
the same boat from them born, it belong to their father before he die, and never an argument
about who own what fish till somebody mention coke. This is where it reach: the three of
them circling one other, getting more and more rile up, and people just watching and
nobody doing or saying nothing. The whole thing looking so serious to me, that is when I
decide to come and get you, Mass Jeremy, to see if you can talk sense into these people,
otherwise is wholesale murder going to happen right here in Whitesands Bay.
So I start push my way out of the circle of people to reach the road and by now, the crowd
so big those at the back don’t even know what causing the commotion up front, though
plenty rumour flying. You know how people like to go on? One lot of people saying: ‘Three
54
Laura Hamilton, (Jamaica/UK)
Beach Drawing,
installation: wood, clay, sand
and sea
made during the ‘Big River
1999’ workshop supported
by the Prince Claus Fund
courtesy of the artist
fisherman drown’. A woman swearing: ‘Is whale them catch’. Another one say that fishing
boat come back with one missing at sea. A set of little children jumping up and down saying
is a Mermaid. One boy telling his friend them that they catch a big fish that vomit up dead
body that starting to come back to life and another saying no, what they bring back is a fish
that join together like is Siamese twin. But all the way too, like is a snake sliding underneath
the joking and the laughing, you could hear the buzz, ‘Them catch the fish that swallow the
coke’. And just as I manage to reach the road, laughing to myself at all the foolishness people
talking, this big black car flash by with all the windows dark and roll up so you can’t see who
inside. Then, as the driver see the crowd, him draw brake and stop, and back back right down
to where I standing. Ehh-he now, I say to myself. Every window roll down same time. Four
of them in the car. Black dark glasses. Nobody smiling. The people standing by the road who
see the play pretend they don’t see nothing but same time you see them start to move, away
from the road and back to the sea, and you can tell the word travelling. The driver come out
of the car and he slam the door so he can lean against it and fold him two arm across him
chest. ‘What a gwan?’ he ask and you can see him scanning everything with him eyes. But
everybody suddenly turn dumb. Not a soul saying nothing till the silence getting dangerous.
‘Is something them catch, sar’, one little boy finally squeeze out, and you can hear the
shaking in him voice. Him mother cuff him same time she drag him in to hold him close to
her body. One of the men in the back seat of the car lean out the window and take him finger
call to a young girl who standing with a set of young girls who can’t stop look at the car.
‘Nice Queen, what a go on?’ he ask her in this sweet-sweet voice. Well, this little pikni so
thrill to have a Don calling to her she just forget herself and make her mouth run weh. ‘Dem
find a fish that swallow coke. It don’t stop dance yet. Dem seh is Dance Hall Queen’.
Poppyshow! Is how this pikni stay clear back here and know all that? By this time she dying
with laugh and trying to step boldy to the car while her friend them holding on to her skirt to
drag her back. Well! You’d think these fellows drill like soldier every day. For is like with one
movement, the three in the car come out and slam the doors with one slam: ‘Blam’. The
55
driver fall in beside them. Four of them dress in black from head to toe. Then like they
practise every move, the four of them straighten them black suit and them gold chain and
them shades, then line up two by two and step off down the beach. The crowd part in front
of them like the Red Sea part before Moses. People didn’t even turn to look, they just sense a
deadly force rolling towards them and they move out of the way. I couldn’t let this pass, so I
fall in behind the men to see the moves.
They look neither to the right nor to the left; they just march forward through the parting
crowd till they reach the circle round the fishermen who still quarreling and making pass
with their machete. The four men just stand there, arm fold across them chest, just taking in
the scene, not saying a word. It take a little while for the brothers to realise something
happening, and as each one of them turn and see the men in black, his face change as if he
seeing duppy and everything just drain out of him. Big Jake and his brothers just drop their
machete and freeze. Nobody move. People look as if they not even breathing as they watch
the four men turn to study the fish. They stand there looking at it for a good long while, then
they turn to look at the one that is the big Don and he give a little nod and the four of them
bend down one time to take hold of the fish.
Well, me not lying, is like the fish that never stop moving from it come off the boat been
waiting for something like this, for the four men don’t have to struggle with it too hard, is
like the fish allowing them to pick it up, for they manage to hold on to it and lift it without
any trouble; the fish keeping suddenly quiet except for a little trembling that running
through its body now and then. Still without saying one word, the four men carrying the fish
march back the way they come, straight to their car, the silent crowd parting to let them
through, everybody pretending like they not seeeing nothing. I still following right behind
them, so I see when one of them drop his side of the fish long enough to open the trunk, and
then the four of them struggle to lift up the fish and throw it in. Then they slam the trunk
shut, dust off their hands, straighten their clothes, get into the car and drive away.’
This is the end of Radio’s narrative and that is the last anyone ever saw of the car, the men, or
the fish, though people swear that even before they moved off, the car had started rocking
from some mighty power like thunder rolling around inside the trunk. Well, there you have
it. Make of it what you will. Maybe you can even find some Culture in it. All I know is, from
the day the Mad Fish came, Radio got voice and attitude and it rained for a long, long time.
Ce texte représente la contribution de Hassan Musa, artiste-peintre
et écrivain d’origine soudanaise, au symposium ‘Culture et
développement social au Soudan’ organisé par le Centre d’Etudes
Soudanaises, au Caire en Egypte, du 3 au 6 Août 1999.
Ce symposium était soutenu par la Fondation Prince Claus.
Hassan Musa
Le second regard
Le corps comme espace des mutations culturelles
Quel corps?
L’objectif de cette étude est d’examiner la pratique de la beauté corporelle dans une communauté soudanaise en état permanent de mutation socioculturelle. Il s’agit de la communauté urbaine qui peuple les villes de la vallée moyenne du Nil. Cette communauté a su gérer,
et continue de gérer, les difficultés du passage de la vie traditionnelle à la vie moderne avec
beaucoup d’ingéniosité. Les pratiques corporelles dont il est question dans cette étude concernent les inscriptions tégumentaires destinées à valoriser le corps selon les codes de la
communauté. Dans ce contexte, nous tenterons d’approcher la pratique corporelle comme
un fait de langage plastique. Or, envisager le corps humain comme un fait plastique est une
tâche complexe qui implique à la fois une certaine idée du corps et une certaine idée de
l’expression plastique.
A cette difficulté s’ajoute un autre problème, celui de la mutation du cadre référentiel d’une
esthétique corporelle partagée entre la culture traditionnelle d’avant le capitalisme et une
culture moderne rattachée au marché capitaliste. Cette mutation brouille la lecture des codes
collectifs et produit les malentendus les plus étonnants au sein d’une communauté qui, si
elle utilise les mêmes mots, en arrive pourtant à parler deux langues différentes.
A qui appartient la modernité?
Dans la perspective du développement social, les réflexions sur le corps ont une grande
importance, si l’on considère l’omniprésence de cette question dans tous les aspects de la vie
des individus et de la société. Ainsi, les projets de développement social qui ne tiennent pas
compte de la question du corps dans la communauté concernée risquent de retirer à l’acte
d’émancipation sociale tout son contenu humain. Diverses expériences faites au Soudan
montrent que les conséquences corporelles du développement social (soins, nutrition, habitat, vêtement, hygiène...) ont souvent été vécues comme une entrave aux pratiques et aux
concepts traditionnels du corps.
Aujourd’hui personne n’aurait l’audace de manifester contre une mesure gouvernementale incriminant ceux qui pratiquent l’excision des petites filles, cependant nombreux
sont les citadins qui pensent que l’excision des petites filles fait partie de la tradition
religieuse et que ‘ce n’est pas si grave que ça’! Mais peu à peu les choses changent et une
nouvelle conscience corporelle se développe parmi les Soudanais à partir d’éléments divers
dont celui qui nous intéresse dans cette étude: la dimension esthétique de la pratique corporelle. Dans cet espace étroit, à la fois intime et public, les Soudanais se trouvent confrontés à l’immense problématique de la modernité: que choisir et quel sens donner à sa vie, à son
corps? Si la conscience traditionnelle du corps se révèle incompatible avec le développement
moderne, doit-on perdre la paix du corps pour profiter du bien-être de la modernité?
L’effort des Africains pour assimiler art et culture européens est plutôt une bonne chose si
l’on considère la situation historique de dépendance presque totale des sociétés africaines
envers les structures économiques et culturelles d’Europe.
Les artistes africains qui connaissent bien la culture européenne savent que se serait suicidaire
56
57
Motifs du henné proposés
1.
par ‘le catalogue’ édité par
Voir: Hassan, Youssouf Fadl;
‘Hinnat Attaj’, Khartoum,
‘Ach-chouloukh aslaha wa
Sudan
wazifatha fi soudan wadi annil al-awsat’ (Les scarifications, leurs origines et leurs
fonctions dans le Soudan de
la vallée moyenne du Nil),
K.U.P., Khartoum, 1976.
d’ignorer ou de rejeter cette culture, d’autant plus que la culture européenne n’est pas à
rejeter complètement. L’assimilation de la mémoire culturelle de la société capitaliste
européenne ne doit pas nous faire oublier que nous sommes porteurs d’une autre mémoire,
celle de la société africaine d’avant le capitalisme. Cette mémoire n’est peut-être pas totalement caduque. Je pense que ce va-et-vient entre la mémoire de la tradition et celle de la
modernité nous permet de saisir la complexité de notre position entre deux forces: celle d’un
passé que, dans notre esprit, nous avons dépassé mais dont les conséquences dans la vie
quotidienne nous encombrent et celle d’un présent que, dans notre esprit, nous avons
conquis mais qui ne cesse de se dérober à nos efforts chaque fois que nous tentons de le
concrétiser! Nous ne sommes pas en effet dans la position de celui qui peut choisir entre
tradition et modernité. La tragédie de la modernité coloniale nous a fait perdre le bonheur
d’être dans la tradition africaine et celle de la modernité néo-coloniale nous interdit le bienêtre de la modernité européenne. Nous n’existons que dans la partie sombre, infernale et
honteuse de la modernité, là où le développement produit du sous-développement. Nous
sommes modernes, mais la modernité ne nous intègre à ses structures qu’en tant exclus.
Nous savons tous que la mission civilisatrice de l’Occident en Orient a tellement bien réussi
que l’Orient n’existe plus. Nous savons aussi que l’Occident, en tant que conscience
culturelle, n’existe qu’à travers le miroir de son ‘autre’ oriental et que cela nous met, nous les
‘Orientaux’, (comme d’ailleurs nos alliés occidentaux) dans une configuration culturelle
nouvelle où l’héritage de ce qui était autrefois l’Occident et l’Orient ressemble à l’éclat –
encore utile – d’une étoile éteinte depuis des siècles. Ceci nous amène à dire que nous faisons
partie de la modernité et que nous apportons à la réalité moderne un sang nouveau capable de
donner un nouvel élan à l’utopie.
Comment lire le corps écrit?
Dans cette étude, l’esthétique du corps est perçue du point de vue d’un langage plastique à la
fois textuel et gestuel. Ainsi, l’inscription sur la peau et la motricité du corps s’inscrivent dans
un ensemble complexe de moyens qui expriment la vitalité première de l’être. Dans le
58
développement intellectuel et l’élaboration de la conception du monde de chaque individu,
cette vitalité joue un rôle important. Le corps humain, point de rencontre des éléments
biologiques et culturels, mais aussi lieu privilégié de l’histoire individuelle et collective, est
pris de manière spécifique comme un double fait plastique. Il est à la fois le support et la
finalité de cet acte plastique. Dans le Soudan d’aujourd’hui le phénomène du corps plastique
incarne la complexité de la rupture et de la continuité au sein d’une société en pleine
mutation. Dans cette société, c’est la pratique esthétique qui, par le biais du corps, s’avère être
la plus populaire de toutes. De plus, dans la mesure où le corps représente le premier support
auquel chaque être est confronté, les pratiques esthétiques du corps, qu’elles soient gestuelles ou textuelles, n’exigent pas beaucoup d’outillage technique ni de frais; elles sont donc,
en principe, à la portée de tous.
Dans ce qui suit je tente d’approcher le phénomène de cette mutation des références esthétiques du corps à travers deux formes d’inscriptions tégumentaires à savoir: la scarification
faciale et la teinture au henné. J’ai choisi ces deux catégories d’inscriptions tégumentaires car
elles sont pratiquées avec l’intention de valoriser le corps féminin dans ce contexte particulier des échanges érotiques entre hommes et femmes dans la communauté urbaine arabomusulmane. Dans la mutation sociale et culturelle que cette communauté a connue depuis le
début du xxe siècle, l’abandon de la scarification (vers les années trente) représente une
certaine rupture avec la tradition alors que l’évolution spectaculaire de la pratique du henné
semble refléter au contraire la continuité de la tradition.
Néanmoins, la continuité incarnée par la pratique du henné cache une rupture morale, plus
grave, au niveau de la relation traditionnelle entre l’homme et la femme, surtout quand cette
pratique devient un champ de lutte pour l’émancipation du corps féminin. La femme
revendique le droit à un regard différent, moderne et ‘jouisseur’ qui n'est autre que ce ‘second
regard’ condamné par la religion selon ce ‘hadith’ (propos du Prophète de l’Islam): ‘Le
premier regard qu’un homme pose sur une femme (qui n’est pas son épouse) est licite mais le
second est adultère’.
La scarification féminine: une brèche abandonnée!
La pratique de la scarification corporelle est très ancienne au Soudan. Les archéologues ont
constaté la présence de scarifications en Nubie dès l’époque des premières dynasties égyptiennes. Les Soudanais de la vallée moyenne du Nil ont pratiqué les scarifications faciales
pour des raisons qui allaient de l’identification ethnique ou religieuse aux gestes médicinaux,
esthétiques, magiques, etc. Le type de scarification qui nous intéresse ici est celui que les
Soudanais appellent ‘chouloukh’. Il s’agit d’inscriptions esthétiques pratiquées sur le visage
de la femme. On incise la peau à l’aide d’une lame de rasoir afin d’obtenir une trace creuse
1
dans la chair des joues. Ces traces sont des signaux qui s’inscrivent dans la logique de la
séduction féminine. Ils expriment, sans mots, le langage émis par le corps féminin voilé et
privé de parole. Dans la société arabo-musulmane, ce corps source de ‘fitna’ (désordre) est
tellement lié à l’idée de ‘ar’ (honte) que les gardiens de la tradition se croient obligés de voiler
sa présence par tous les moyens: la législation, la littérature, l’architecture, la tenue
vestimentaire, la mutilation physique et même le meurtre dit ‘d’honneur’! La tradition
définit le corps de la femme comme faisant partie des biens de l’homme, qu’il soit son père,
son époux ou même parfois son frère. C’est une propriété embarrassante car elle est
considérée comme une ‘awra’, mot arabe qui signifie à la fois défaut, sexe et point vulnérable.
À cet égard, les arabes d’avant l’Islam avaient coutume de tuer les petites filles à la naissance
pour régler le ‘problème’. Le Coran désavouera cette coutume: ‘Si l’on annonce à l’un d’entre
eux la naissance d’une fille, son front se rembrunit et il s’afflige profondément. Il se cache aux
siens, à cause de la désastreuse nouvelle. Doit-il contenir sa disgrâce ou l’ensevelir dans la
terre? Que leurs jugements sont déraisonnables!’ (Sourate xvi, L’abeille, 60-61).
La situation des femmes dans la société soudanaise d’aujourd’hui reste marquée par la
répression et la domination masculine parce que cette société n’a pas encore connu ces
changements profonds qui pourraient modifier les rapports moyenâgeux entre les hommes et
59
les femmes. L’homme, soutenu en cela par toute la doctrine de l’Islam, dispose pleinement
du corps de ‘ses’ femmes: ‘Vos femmes sont un champ de labour pour vous, venez à votre
champ de labour comme vous voulez.’ (Sourate ii, La génisse, 223). Il contrôle également leur
état d’esprit: ‘Les hommes sont supérieurs à leurs femmes.’ (Sourate ii, 228). C’est lui qui
détermine comment ses femmes doivent ‘être femme’ pour lui, car elles n’existent que pour
servir leur époux. Elles doivent assurer sa jouissance physique et mentale et lui obéir en tout.
Dans ce contexte, c’est l’homme qui définit son attente en matière d’érotisme, science masculine que la femme doit maîtriser comme une stratégie nécessaire pour préserver son foyer.
2.
Motifs du henné proposés
Voir: Martens, Jean Thierry;
par ‘le catalogue’ édité par
‘Ritologiques 1, Le dessin sur
‘Hinnat Attaj’, Khartoum,
la peau’, Aubier Montaigne,
Sudan
Paris, 1978.
3.
Voir: Al-Thalabi; ‘Qisas AlAnbiya’ (Les histoires des
prophètes), Beyrouth,
Bien entendu, ces femmes qui ont appris à survivre sous la loi de l’homme ont fini par sans date
4.
maîtriser le savoir-faire de la séduction et à s’en servir pour posséder le pouvoir au foyer et
pour certaines, dans la cité. Ce redoutable pouvoir féminin s’appelle le ‘kaïd’ (fourberie, Hassan, Youssouf Fadl, voir
piège) et le jeune et beau prophète Joseph le connaissait bien: ‘Seigneur! Si tu ne me protèges la note numéro 1
pas contre leurs pièges, je pourrais y donner un penchant de jeune homme et agir comme un
insensé’, (Sourate xii, Joseph, 33). Dans cette impitoyable guerre des sexes, les femmes
tentent par le bisais du ‘kaïd’, de détourner la science érotique des hommes pour en faire une
arme féminine. Dans le cas des scarifications, les femmes ont réussi à maintenir pendant des
générations cette pratique pourtant interdite par la religion car elle modifie la création de
Dieu: ‘Nous avons créé l’homme dans la plus admirable proportion’ (Sourate xcv, Le figuier, 4).
Mais les femmes sont soupçonnées d’être les complices du diable: ‘Il – Satan – a dit, ‘je les
égarerai, je leur ordonnerai d’altérer la création de Dieu’ (Sourate IV, Les femmes, 118).
Quand le corps de la femme devient lieu de signes, la femme quitte son corps et le manipule
comme un langage. Pour améliorer l’efficacité de son discours corporel, elle s’engage dans
une recherche technique et philosophique d’une haute complexité. Le ‘hijab’ (voile) que
l’homme a jeté sur son bien féminin se présente comme une frontière entre deux espaces: le
dehors et le dedans, le public et le privé. Le public est offert et on le partage avec les étrangers,
le privé est propre et on le protège contre les autres: c’est un ‘ard’ (un bien intime). Le
privilège de l’époux consiste à avoir le monopole d’accès à l’espace privé du dedans.
Initialement, le ‘hijab’ était considéré comme un signe qui permettait de distinguer les
épouses libres, appelées ‘femmes propres’, des concubines et des esclaves, autrement dit des
‘femmes publiques’. (‘O Prophète! Prescris à tes épouses, à tes filles et aux femmes des
croyants, d’abaisser un voile sur leurs visages, il sera la marque de leur vertu et un frein contre
les propos des hommes. Dieu est indulgent et miséricordieux’ (Sourate xxxiii, Les Confédérés 57). On rapporte qu’Omer, beau-père du Prophète et deuxième Calife, battait les
femmes esclaves qui se voilaient pour ressembler aux femmes libres. Placer les femmes
‘propres’ derrière un voile était une manière de restaurer la frontière naturelle de la peau,
sorte de voile séparant le dehors du dedans dans un corps féminin qui, avant l’Islam, était
presque sans frontière. L’Islam a donc réorganisé l’institution du mariage. Il a redéfinit le
corps public – du dehors – et le corps propre – du dedans –, en se positionnant contre les
mariages d’avant l’Islam qui étaient considérés comme anarchiques et incompatibles avec la
nouvelle gestion islamique de la succession.
Le voile représente donc une peau supplémentaire qui renforce la protection de ce
mystérieux trésor ‘privé’ déposé dans cette forteresse corporelle et que l’on appelle le
‘moutaa’, c’est-à-dire la jouissance érotique offerte par Dieu en récompense aux croyants. Le
‘hadith’ (propos du Prophète) rapporté par Al Boukhari, confirme la nature masculine de la
demande érotique: ‘Lorsque un mari appelle sa femme dans son lit, et qu’elle refuse, les anges
la maudissent jusqu’au matin’. Le ‘moutaa’ est ainsi une démarche masculine qui s’accomplit
par l’acte de traverser les voiles pour accéder à l’intérieur du corps féminin. L’idée d’un ‘éros
2
caché sous la peau’ est répandue dans diverses cultures et explique peut-être la tendance à
signaler les orifices du corps par diverses techniques d'inscriptions tégumentaires. Quant à
Joseph, le jeune prophète dont la beauté a tant bouleversé les femmes d’Égypte, son éros était
exposé à tous les regards à cause de la transparence de sa peau. La légende raconte que, quand
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3
il mangeait, on pouvait voir les fruits passer dans sa gorge et descendre dans sa poitrine. En
dehors du mariage, le corps de la femme est interdit au regard, à l’exception des mains, des
pieds et du visage. Ces parties ‘publiques’ offertes au regard deviennent donc des zones
privilégiées pour le langage du corps. L’opération de la scarification consiste à ouvrir une
brèche dans la barrière naturelle de la peau afin de permettre au regard masculin de pénétrer à
l’intérieur de la forteresse du corps. C’est la promesse publique d’un plaisir privé et intime
mais c’est surtout un acte de langage. Y.F. Hassan mentionne quelques célèbres ‘challakhat’
(femmes spécialisées dans la pratique de la scarification). Certaines d’entre elles ont
développé des techniques de scarification adaptées à l’esthétique du visage. Elles prenaient la
liberté d’emprunter des scarifications appartenant à d’autres ethnies que celle de la femmes
scarifiée, tout simplement parce qu’elles trouvaient que certaines scarifications pouvaient
4
produire plus d’effets que d’autres.
Dans la littérature populaire du Soudan, on trouve, jusque dans les années quarante,
d’extraordinaires images valorisant les personnes scarifiées. La particularité de ces scarifications, en tant que discours exprimé à l’intérieur d’une communauté traditionnelle, c’est
qu’il s’agit d’un ‘propos irrévocable’. On ne peut plus l’effacer car c’est une écriture qui fige la
personne dans une position définitive à l’intérieur d’une communauté immuable.
Cependant, l’immuabilité de la communauté n’est plus garantie depuis que la société
traditionnelle a entamé sa grande mutation vers la modernité capitaliste. Cette mutation
rapide, violente et agressive met en doute la crédibilité de cette position définitive et l’utilité
d’une écriture indélébile. Aujourd’hui il est rare de rencontrer des citadines scarifiées de
moins de soixante ans. Les citadines, influencées par une certaine littérature modernisatrice,
ont définitivement abandonné la pratique de la scarification faciale. Le corps féminin
moderne promet peut-être d’autres entrées qu’une simple brèche opérée sur ce qui était sa
partie visible, ou peut-être que le mâle musulman perturbé par le désordre de nombreux
signaux émis par un corps mutant, n’arrive plus à voir la brèche qu’il a fait opérer sur le corps
de sa femme.
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La teinture au Henné: une écriture à la fois provisoire et permanente
Si la scarification semble être une tradition africaine adoptée à l’époque par la communauté
arabo-musulmane, au cours de l’échange interculturel qui marque les cultures soudanaises,
la tradition du henné quant à elle reflèterait l’apport culturel arabo-musulman adopté par les
communautés africaines du Soudan septentrional. Le henné est une pâte faite de poudre de
feuilles d’un arbuste tropical (lythariacées). Cette pâte colorante, une fois posée sur la peau,
laisse une trace rouge ou noire, selon le temps de pause. Au Soudan, la fonction cosmétique
du henné est liée à la teinture des mains et des pieds. Une séance de henné consiste à se faire
décorer les mains et les pieds par quelqu’un d’autre, éventuellement une professionnelle de
la décoration au henné (une Hannana). Contrairement à la scarification, au tatouage ou au
perçage, la tradition du henné ne semble pas avoir été entravée par la modernisation du mode
de vie au Soudan. Au contraire, la pratique du henné y est mieux implantée aujourd’hui
qu’autrefois. Chez les citadins du Soudan septentrional, elle est même en plein essor. Soutenue
par une nouvelle attitude culturelle qui s’inscrit dans le nationalisme culturel de la classe
moyenne arabo-musulmane et stimulée par la nouvelle situation économique qui s’est
développée à la fin des années soixante, la tradition du henné semble en effet renaître dans les
communautés urbaines septentrionales. Ce que l’on pourrait appeler le marché du henné est
constitué d’une dizaine de petites fabriques installées à Khartoum. Elles fournissent une
production relativement importante destinée au marché local mais aussi aux pays du ProcheOrient. Ce marché se caractérise également par une augmentation du nombre de personnes
spécialisées dans la décoration au henné. En marge de ce phénomène, il faut mentionner
l’apparition de nombreux documents illustrés, appelés ‘catalogues du henné’ qui contiennent des motifs graphiques. Ces petites brochures sont éditées par quelques parfumeries de
Khartoum et mises à la disposition des amateurs de henné. Tout comme les scarifications, la
pratique du henné se présente comme un discours de séduction qui s’adresse aux hommes
dans le cadre des conventions érotiques de la culture arabo-musulmane du Soudan.
Traditionnellement, la décoration au henné se limite aux parties visibles du corps voilé c’està-dire aux mains et aux pieds qui représentent la part publique du corps féminin.
L’inscription au henné a pour finalité de séduire le regard masculin. Contrairement à la
scarification qui conduit le regard vers le dedans féminin, le henné cherche avant tout à
capter et à maintenir le regard de manière continue sur la surface du corps. Cet objectif
réclame une surface plus importante que les mains et les pieds mais aussi une écriture
plastique plus complexe. Les artisans de la décoration au henné en sont venus – avec la
complicité d’une clientèle féminine – à élargir progressivement leur zone d’écriture pour que
leur création puisse produire plus d’effet. Les nouveaux ornements vont au-delà des zones
définies par la religion. Ils envahissent les bras jusqu’aux coudes et, pour ce qui est des pieds,
grimpent jusqu’aux mollets et aux genoux comme autant de balises et de signaux guidant le
parcours de l’œil sur les reliefs du corps féminin. Ce parcours n’a pas d’autre finalité que le
plaisir du regard qui s’approprie le mystérieux labyrinthe du corps féminin.
Si l’aspect définitif et indélébile explique l’incompatibilité des scarifications avec le contexte
d’une communauté en pleine mutation socioculturelle, le côté provisoire du henné semble
au contraire favoriser cette pratique en offrant l’occasion d’une répétitivité qui renforce sa
présence au quotidien et la rend plus populaire. Une femme trouve très facilement des
occasions pour renouveler son henné, par exemple le mariage d’un proche, une naissance,
une guérison, un retour de pèlerinage, une fête religieuse ou rien, simplement le désir de se
faire belle. La religion ne dit-elle pas que le ‘rôle naturel de la femme’ est de se faire belle pour
son époux, l’ayant droit, celui qui détient le monopole du regard sur le corps de sa femme?
atteindre l’ensemble des hommes qui pourraient ‘labourer’ ce ‘champ’ visuel de leur regard
admiratif. L’inscription au henné peut également concerner les femmes intéressées par le
savoir-faire qui se cache derrière cette production plastique. La citadine impliquée dans la
démarche esthétique du henné offre plus d’une fois son corps à des personnes autres que son
époux légal. Elle l’offre aussi pendant des heures, en tant que support, aux mains expertes de
la ‘Hannana’, une professionnelle des cosmétiques qui peut vendre très cher ses services si
elle est renommée. Une fois dans le domaine public, la citadine ferait tout ou presque tout
pour exposer l’œuvre tracée sur sa peau. Le corps inséré dans le domaine public équivaut à un
corps dérobé au monopole du ‘propre’. Cette nouvelle pratique du henné bouleverse la
tradition aussi bien dans sa forme esthétique que dans sa finalité morale. Elle semble se
développer dans un tout nouveau terrain, situé entre l’art graphique et la performance
théâtrale: un ‘happening’ en quelque sorte, camouflé dans la banalité du quotidien loin des
lieux d’expositions habituels. Cet happening s’est développé au milieu d’une nouvelle
sensibilité favorable à la liberté d’expression du corps féminin, même si cette liberté conduit
le ‘regardeur’ à l’adultère du regard. Le geste esthétique du henné ne peut en effet avoir de
sens que dans ce ‘deuxième regard’ interdit par la loi religieuse.
Bien qu’ignorée par les critiques et les chercheurs impliqués dans l’art moderne au Soudan, la
pratique du henné me semble être une forme d’expression plastique très originale et très
contemporaine, au Soudan et ailleurs. Mais peut-être que le manque d’intérêt des intellectuels soudanais à l’égard de cette pratique corporelle des femmes, révèle la qualité du regard
idéologique que ces Soudanais portent sur certaines options de l’art soudanais. Cela nous
incite à conclure notre réflexion en posant une question bien simple: le développement
social au Soudan ne serait-il pas aussi une question de regard?
Mais dans la communauté arabo-musulmane d’aujourd’hui, les femmes citadines ne sont
plus exclusivement auprès de leurs époux. Pour diverses raisons, elles se déplacent dans le
domaine public et s’exposent aux regards des autres. Elles savent bien ce qu’elles font et s’y
préparent à travers une maîtrise de leur image aux yeux des autres.
Si cette nouvelle attitude par rapport à l’image du corps confirme l’inscription au henné en
tant que discours érotique, ce discours désormais dépasse l’intimité du couple légal pour
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a
+
p
Activities supported by the
Prince Claus Fund
Activités soutenues par la
Fondation Prince Claus
Actividades patrocinadas por la
Fundación Príncipe Claus
Recent publications
Publications récentes
Publicaciones recientes
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65
Activities supported by the
Prince Claus Fund
Activités soutenues par la
Actividades patrocinadas por la
a
Big River 1999: International Artists Workshop
Trinidad, 18 April to 3 May 1999
Caribbean Contemporary Arts (cca) is an international arts organisation working with contemporary visual artists, curators, writers, historians
and art educators from the Caribbean and the
Caribbean Diaspora for the purpose of exhibiting,
publishing and documenting their practices and
ideas. In collaboration with the Triangle Arts Trust,
cca organised ‘Big River 1999’, an international
artists workshop sponsored by the Prince Claus
Fund. The workshop united artists from thirteen
countries to work together at Grande Riviere,
Trinidad. Among the participants were Dean Arlen,
Susie Dayal, Mario Lewis and Che Lovalace, all from
Trinidad, Antonio Eligio ‘Tonel’ and Rene Francisco
from Cuba, Vivian Sundaram from India, Glenda
Heyliger from Aruba, Turunesh Pomell-Raymond
from Etiopia/Trinidad and Remy Jungerman from
Surinam. Some comments by the artists on the
workshop: ‘My experience at this workshop is not
to take anything for granted. I worked in a very spiritual way by asking the sea and the forest permission’ (Glenda Heyliger).
‘The Big River Workshop was a timely blessing for me.
Something I had been preparing for a long time.
A chance to come out of self-imposed exile where
I had been relating to the ancestors and listening out
for the 1st person universal. This was an opportunity to compare notes with fellow-travellers.’ (John
Stollmeyer).
66
‘When I first heard that the Big River experience
was proposed as a workshop, I suggested a creative,
open and flexible environment. An area where the
processes and experiments would be much more
appreciated and would make more sense than the
results. Or better yet, this time the results could be
the processes themselves. This approach was liberating. The idea of the workshop in itself is neither
The described
events have taken new nor does it guarantee anything. Workshops of
this nature are conducted almost like biennials,
place or will take
competitions, expositions or meetings. Generally,
place with the
the purpose is not to diminish the inherent elesupport of the
Prince Claus Fund. ment of competition which, with its clearly visible
halo, is immediately echoed in the competition
between two or sometimes more artists. On the
contrary, in these types of meetings, competition,
even better if it is a little ferocious, is welcomed. I
do not think I am idealising if I state that that type of
competitive obsession was virtually invisible at the
Big River event. Undoubtedly a factor that contributed to this was the emphasis placed by the organisers on everything that involved exchange, experimentation, personal experience and, consequently,
the naturalness with which the definite work, the
goal of the concluded subject matter, advanced to a
second level.’ (Antonio Eligio ‘Tonel’).
In the spring of 2000 with the support of the Prince
Claus Fund the Triangle Arts Trust will be organising an international artist workshop in Pakistan.
The workshops organised by Triangle Arts Trust,
have created, through personal contact in a working situation, an international network of practising artists who support each other in many ways,
Mario Lewis (Trinidad) for example through studio exchanges, teaching,
De Construction, 1999 exhibiting or the exchange of information.
wood, wire mesh, galva- This network is often the most significant connecnise, nylon, emulsion,
tion for artists working in locations that are cut off
nails, 19,05 cm (h)
from the mainstream, with the international art
world, as in Pakistan.
means that independent documentaries are made
illegally and therefore cannot be sold or distributed
domestically. The only potential market for such
films is overseas. Having to work underground and
with limited access to the film world outside China
means that the film-makers work in isolation from
each other and from the rest of the world.
The aims of this eight day workshop were to facilitate dialogue between Chinese and Western filmmakers, with a view to future collaboration, as well
as promoting dialogue amongst the film-makers
themselves; to assist the Chinese film-makers in
making films accessible to Western audiences and
to help the film-makers to market and distribute
films outside China.
The workshop was a huge success, as all the participants came away inspired. It was a great opportunity for the Chinese to see a wide range of
documentary films; thus broadening their understanding of the international documentary landscape, and they were able to ask detailed questions
about how films are financed and distributed in the
West. For the commissioning editors and other
Westerners, the workshop provided an opportunity to become acquainted with the film-makers
and to discuss their ideas for future projects.
The Prince Claus Fund supported this workshop by
paying part of the costs for travel and accommodation, workshop facilities, salaries and insurance.
Further information from: Decameron Films,
29 Tradescant Road, London sw8 1xd, uk,
fax: +44-171-58 25 601
Para más información: Fordsburg Artists’ Studios,
p.o. Box 794, Newtown 2113, South Africa,
fax: +27-11-83 49 181,
Fordsburg Artists’ Studios: The Bag Factory
Sudáfrica, julio hasta septiembre 1999
José Vincench (1973,
Cuba) Cuidado!, 1999
carbón sobre papel
Further information from: Triangle Arts Trust,
The Oval, 155 Vauxhall Street, London sei 1 5rh, uk,
fax: +44-171-58 20 159, e-mail: [email protected]/
Caribbean Contemporary Arts, 1c, St Andrews Court,
Eagle Cresent, Fairways, Maraval, Trinidad and Tobago,
fax: 868 622 75 89; e-mail: [email protected];
www.caribbean-arts.com
Interesting Times Workshop
PR China, summer of 1999
In the summer of 1999 Decameron Films, PR China/
England, organised the ‘Interesting Times Workshop’
in Beijing. The idea behind this workshop was to
bring independent Chinese documentary filmmakers out of isolation. Strict censorship in China
mes de julio hasta septiembre de este año. Entre las
exposiciones recientes de Vincench se incluyen:
‘Trabajando Pa’l Inglé’, en el Barbican Centre de
Londres y ‘Mientras Cuba Espera: Arte en los años
noventa’, en la Track 16 Gallery de Los Angeles.
El Programa de Residencias fue inaugurado oficialmente a finales de 1996, y el primer artista beneficiado viajó desde Ghana en 1997. Los artistas residentes van a trabajar por un período de tres meses y
se sostienen ellos mismos o están recibiendo una
beca. Las becas se conceden a artistas de países en
vía de desarrollo. Los artistas invitados a los estudios tienen habilidades específicas o su trabajo enfoca temas que son considerados como relevantes
al mundo del arte sudafricano.
Los objetivos del Programa de Residencias son: la
iniciación de diálogos por medio del intercambio
cultural, especialmente con países africanos; estimular la interacción al traer a Sudáfrica, habilidades
y experiencias que serán de beneficio para los
artistas de la Bag Factory y la comunidad en general,
a través de varios talleres de habilidades; compartir
las habilidades de los residentes por medio del
programa de talleres y crear nexos con los diversos
grupos interesados en el arte en Sudáfrica.
Los artistas residentes deben completar durante su
estadía un material de trabajo que será luego expuesto en la galería-estudio o en un lugar comercial
de su predilección. Los Fordsburg Artists’ Studios
están conectados a una vibrante red de talleres e
intercambios locales e internacionales bajo los auspicios del Triangle Arts Trust de Nueva York.
Con el patrocinio de la Fundación Príncipe Claus, el
artista José Vincench Barreras, creador de instalaciones, viajó a Sudáfrica para participar en el Programa de Residencias para artistas con sede en la
Bag Factory, Fordsburg Artists’ Studios, desde el
The Vehicle: Picturing Moments of Transition in
a Modernising Society
Lebanon, September 1999
The Vehicle is the title of an exhibition and book of
photographs from the collection of the Arab Image
Foundation, edited and curated by Akram Zaatari.
mtg Editions and the Arab Image Foundation
published the book. The Prince Claus Fund supports the Arab Image Foundation financially.
The exhibition will also travel to Aman, Damascus
and Cairo. The exhibition and the book feature
photographs from the Middle East during the period
1885 to 1970. They focus on people’s fascination with
modern means of transportation such as ships, cars,
trains and airplanes. The pictures reflect people’s
desire to get photographed in moments of transition, crossing bridges, on the train, at the airport, or
67
Diaspora, as well as the rest of the world. The Arts
Alive programme has since its inception developed
a Festival programme of events which strikes a fine
balance between presenting world-class professional artists, as well as a cultural development programme involving workshops and collaborative
productions between overseas and local artists.
with a car in a picnic. Many photographs portray
people sitting or standing by a car, their own or
someone else’s. The book explores travel as a
material as well as a social, political and economic
phenomenon. In this period, travel meant crossing
borders, by-passing social norms, offering independence and above all the choice of one’s own destiny. The photographs reveal a society’s imagination
at a time of transformation.
Further information from: Arts Alive Festival,
p.o.Box 2824, Johannesburg 2000, South Africa,
fax: +27-11-83 35 639, e-mail: [email protected]
The Vehicle: Picturing
Moments of Transition
in a Modernising
Society
photo: Kamal Tarsousli
courtesy of Arab
Image Foundation
Further information from: Arab Image Foundation,
8 Chukri Assaly Street, Achrafieh. Beirut, Lebanon.
p.o. Box 13-6676, fax: 961-1-33 68 20,
Arts Alive International Festival
South Africa, September 1999
The Prince Claus Fund supported the eighth Arts
Alive International Festival, which is an annual
three week Festival held during the month of
September 1999. It started in 1993 and focuses on
the performing arts including music, dance, theater
and performance poetry.
The Festival has a range of free and paid events and
is run on a non-profit basis. Arts Alive is hosted and
supported by local government and the Greater
Johannesburg Metropolitan Council.
Arts Alive is different to other festivals as it is located within the largest metropole in South Africa,
catering for a wide range of people within a thriving
city. Johannesburg, the biggest and most cosmopolitan city in South Africa, has a hub of cultural
activity throughout the year and Arts Alive, in order
to be viable, has to present events which are very
different and complementary to the existing cultural activity in Greater Johannesburg.
The target audiences are in part defined by the
‘Africaniss’ of Johannesburg and the vastness of a
mega-city. Arts Alive has carved out a tradition of
highlighting what is new and happening among
African artists working on the continent and in the
68
Concerts et CD ‘Zvinoshamisa’
Pays-Bas, du 16 septembre au 15 octobre 1999
De septembre à novembre 1999, trois musiciens
sud-africains d’exception ont donné quelques concerts aux Pays-Bas en collaboration avec le Paul van
Kemenade Quintet qui les avait invités.
La Fondation Prince Claus a pris à sa charge les frais
de voyage d’un des musiciens sud-africains, le trompettiste Feya Faku. La tournée était le résultat d’une
coopération fructueuse établie en octobre 1998
entre le quintette, Feya Faku et les deux autres
musiciens sud-africains, le guitariste Louis Mhlanga
et le saxophoniste-ténor Sydney Mnisi.
Le répertoire de cet ensemble formé pour l’occasion comprenait des œuvres tant des musiciens
sud-africains que des musiciens néerlandais et
empruntait des éléments à diverses disciplines
musicales, notamment à l’improvisation de musique moderne, au jazz américain et à la musique
africaine, enrichies d’accents tout à fait nouveaux.
Une grande partie du répertoire a été enregistrée
sur cd en août 1999, avant la tournée. Ce cd du Paul
van Kemenade Quintet et de ses hôtes sudafricains est intitulé ‘Zvinoshamisa’. Récemment,
le Prix ‘vpro/Boy Edgar’ pour 1998-1999 a été
décerné a Paul van Kemenade. Ce prix est la récompe0nse la plus importante dans la domaine du jazz
et de l’ improvisation au Pays-Bas.
Subodh Gupta
Netherlands, 9 October to 11 November 1999
The work of the Indian artist Subodh Gupta was
exhibited in the Netherlands from 9 October to 11
November of this year at the Foundation for Indian
Artists, Amsterdam. The Prince Claus Fund paid
Subodh Gupta’s fare to enable him to attend the
exhibition. This was the first time his work had
been shown in the Netherlands. Subodh Gupta was
born in Bihar in north-eastern India, although he
currently lives in New Delhi. His work consists of
sculpture, painting and installation. He frequently
uses neon light to emphasise certain parts of his
work. Another material he often uses in his
paintings is cow dung, an example of which is the
work ‘How to spell Cow in Hindi’. Cow dung is used
in the construction of traditional Indian houses and
as fuel for cooking. The use of cow dung still has a
symbolic, spiritual value in India; the cow, as a
metaphor for the Mother, is sacred in the Hindu
religion. Dung is hence used in many religious rituals in India. While Gupta’s work reveals his background in rural India, he is a citizen of the globe
who uses traditional materials for contemporary
subjects. Gupta’s work was recently shown at an
exhibition of Asian art in Japan and New York.
Further information from: Foundation for Indian Artists,
Fokke Simonszstraat 10, 1017 tg Amsterdam,
the Netherlands, fax: +31-20-62 31 547,
e-mail: www.ccc.nl/artg/fia
Le Paul van Kemenade
Quintet et les trois
invités sud-africains:
Feya Faku (trompette),
Theatre Performance: Report on Giving Birth
PR China, November 1999
Netherlands, December 1999
Louis Mhlanga (guitare)
et Sidney Mnisi (saxoténor), 1999
Pour plus amples informations, s’adresser à:
Paul van Kemenade, Enschotsestraat 262,
5014 dl Tilburg, Pays-Bas
Pour commander le cd: via records,
p.o. Box 4026, 1200 la Hilversum, Pays-Bas,
e-mail: [email protected], www.viarecords.com
The world premiere of the multimedia dance theatre production, ‘Report on giving Birth’, an initiative of the Chinese choreographer and dancer Wen
Hui, took place in Beijing, PR China, in November
of this year. The Prince Claus Fund supported Wen
Hui and her ‘Living Dance Studio’, in the realisation
of this work.
‘Report on Giving Birth’ concerns the living conditions of Chinese women, the relationship between
women and men and the role of women in Chinese
society. Largely based on women’s real experiences
and set in various childbearing situations, the work
expresses its theme in a feminine way.
In China all women who lived through the 1950s to
the 1980s experienced a unique period. Since the
1950s women have been encouraged to get out of
the house and take part in social production and
Rehearsal of Report on labour. This trend reached its climax during the
Giving Birth, 1999
Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). It is only since the
photo: Li Youjuan
late eighties that sex awareness has returned.
However, after realising the sexual distinction, some
women began to make use of their bodies to please
men or to make money without a sense of selfrespect. In the nineties the scale of this problem
escalated. These social phenomena provide the
background for ‘Report on Giving Birth’.
The work adapts the form of modern dance theatre,
installation, direct sound material and film, combining movement with everyday materials such as
recorded speech, snapshots and household articles. The film images and the installations mix with
each other, making scenes of daily life a part of the
performance.
The production uses the participants true stories of
birth and early sex knowledge and experience,
Subodh Gupta
stories of the performers friends and families and
(1964, India)
How to Spell Cow in
taped records of interviews with a hundred women
Hindi (II), 1999
from all parts of China and all sections of the popoil, acrylic, cow dung
ulation on the experience of giving birth. The puron canvas, 183 x 168 cm pose of this, as Wen Hui states, is to emphasise the
idea of ‘relating to ourselves’ and ‘relating to our
present society’.
Having children, sexuality and relationships are all
matters which are difficult to discuss in China.
‘Report on Giving Birth’ tries to break this taboo. A
group of prominent contemporary Chinese artists,
writers and film-makers take part in the production. In 1994 Wen Hui set up the Living Dance
Studio in order to stimulate the making of modern
dance productions in China. Her productions, such
as ‘Toilet’, ‘Living Together’ and ‘Scene: Skirt, Video’
have been shown at many international festivals.
Installation artists Yin Xiuzhen and Song Dong
made the installation on the stage and the video art
for the performance. The writer Feng Dehua is
responsible for the scenario and plays the role of
the narrator. Feng Dehua is at present one of
China’s leading women writers. She is known from
the books ‘Tactless Women’ (1985) and ‘Farewell to
Childhood’ (1989). Wu Wenguang is a writer, actor
and above all one of China’s major independent
69
documentary-makers. In ‘Report on Giving Birth’
he is both actor and video artist.
The event ‘Report on Giving Birth’ will be performed
in the Netherlands at the Theatre of the Royal
Tropical Institute in Amsterdam on 8 and 9 December 1999, at the Korzo Theatre in the Hague on 19
December and in Antwerp, Belgium in the Zuiderpershuis on 17 December 1999.
For further information: Living Dance Studio,
No. 4-501 Keying Sushe, 79 Binjiaokou Hutong,
Xinwaidajie, 100088 Beijing, Peoples Republic of China,
fax: +86-10 62 01 43 41
1999 Prince Claus Awards Ceremonies
Netherlands, 8 December 1999
On Wednesday 8 December 1999, the principal
Prince Claus Awards were presented at the Royal
Palace in Amsterdam. hrh Prince Claus of the
Netherlands presented the Principal Award of usd
100,000. This year, both the Principal Award and
the ceremony stood in the theme of ‘Creating
Spaces of Freedom’, a reference to the inventive
manner in which artists and intellectuals in restrictive circumstances ‘make room’ for their freedom
of opinion.
Albie Sachs, a South African judge, author, antiapartheid activist and promoter of culture, held
this year’s lecture entitled, ‘A Conceited Look at
Creating Free Space for the Artist’. South African
artist William Kentridge presented a video performance.
The Prince Claus Awards are granted to individuals
and organisations making special contributions to
the growth of culture and development in Africa,
Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean. The Fund
does not only honour artists, intellectuals and cultural organisations for the high quality of their
work; it also looks at the positive changes they
bring to their society and culture.
In addition to the Principal Award, ten 1999 Prince
Claus Awards of usd 20,000 will be presented.
These awards were announced at the Royal Palace
on 8 December, and presented to the laureates at
the Dutch Embassies in the countries where the
recipients live.
Further information from: Prince Claus Fund,
Hoge Nieuwstraat 30, 2514 el The Hague,
the Netherlands, fax: +31-70-42 74 277,
Memórias Intimas Marcas: CD Sounds of Amnesia
Angola, 1999
Tongue Set Free: Women Writers’ Workshop
India, summer of 2000
The cd project ‘Sounds of Amnesia’ was conceived
by Angolan artist Fernando Alvim as a part of the
‘Memórias Intimas Marcas’ project; a multimedia
intervention of contemporary art, that is produced
by Espace Sussuta Boé. The Prince Claus Fund is
contributing to the cd project. Angolan musician
Victor Gama was invited by Fernando Alvim to be
part of the trip of the artists of the ‘Memórias Intimas
Marcas’ project to Cuito Cuanavale in Angola, to
compose the music for the art film ‘Zinganheca
Kutzinga’ (‘Blending Emotions’), which is part of
‘Memórias Intimas Marcas’.
Recordings were made with the people of Cuito
Cuanavale who talk about their own experiences of
being a population subjected to war. They send a
message about their isolation and problems. The
recordings were based on the place’s reality and
about the initial concept of the film, which is the
metaphorical relation between a mine, a prosthesis
and leg, as proposed by Fernando Alvim.
The Prince Claus Fund will be supporting a Women
Writers’ Workshop for sixty women writers. Four
languages will be used – Malayalam, Marathi,
Telugu and Urdu – and the four workshops, set in
idyllic locations will discuss the issue of women
and censorship. The workshop will be held in the
summer of 2000 and will consider the following
questions: Do women writers experience censorship in specifically gendered ways? How important
are family, community and culture in constraining
womens choice of language, form and subject
matter? How easy is it for them to be published and
to obtain serious critical or media attention? Old,
young, high-caste, Dalit, middle-class women,
professionals, housewives, activists, civil servants,
media women, teachers – all will come together as
writers to exchange views and experiences, to
discuss and read from their poetry, short stories and
novels. The aim is to break the isolation of women
writers, to foster solidarity and to form a network.
Much before state or community step in to exercise control and silence women, women censor
themselves. Because they are afraid. Or they have
to preserve family ‘honour’. Very often they destroy
their own writing. ‘Gradually, this self-censorship
kills their ability to speak the truth’. Marriage and
motherhood may compel a woman to write; or
they may stifle her.
Fernando Alvim
(Angola)
Minefield Map,
Angola, 1997
Further information from: nour/Arab Women’s
Research & Publishing House,
9 Mudiryet El-Tahrir Street, Garden City, Cairo, Egypt,
fax: +20-2-50 80 194
Further information from: Asmita Resource Centre,
10-3-96, Plot 283, 4th Floor, Street 6, Teacher’s Colony,
East Marredpalli, Secunderabad – 500026, A.P., India,
fax: +91-40-77 33 745
In view of the quality and quantity of the material
produced, Catherine and Fernando Alvim from
Sussuta Boé proposed the logical step to produce the
composed music in the form of a cd. The recording
and compilation have followed the same process as
that of the exhibition; a dialogue will be established
through the capturing of emotions, traces, memories and above all the messages of the people from
Angola, South Africa and Cuba, which have been in
one way or another tied to the war phenomenon in
Angola. The cd will be produced by Espace Sussuta
Boé and is expected to be released this year.
For further reading on ‘Memórias Intimas Marcas’,
art and war in Angola, see also the Spanish articles
by Adriano Mixinge and Rory Bester, p. 18 and p. 24.
Further information from: Espace Sussuta Boé,
39 Rue du Prince Royal, 1050 Brussels, Belgium,
fax: +32-2-51 37 945, e-mail: sussuta.boé@ping.be
70
and discursive thought, women’s specific body of
knowledge. Women writers and artists (from the
cinema, theatre and fine arts) will present their
testimonies and discuss the synergy between knowledge and creativity.
A special panel will launch the two encyclopedic
volumes of ‘Memory for the Future: Guide to Arab
Women’s Creative Writings in the the Twentieth
Century’. The keynote speech will be given by a
distinguished woman scholar.
Second Arab Women’s Book Fair: Women and
Knowledge
Egypt, November 2000
In November 2000, nour/Arab Women’s Research
and Publishing House will be organising the Second
Arab Women’s Book Fair.The aim is to draw attention to the book as an important venue for presenting and focusing attention on the contribution and
situation of women in the Arab world.
nour held the First Women’s Book Fair in Cairo in
1995. It attracted sixty-four publishers, university
presses and ngos from eight Arab countries.
Fifteen hundred titles in the fields of literature,
social sciences and children’s books were presented. One hundred publishers are expected to participate in the Second Arab Women’s Book Fair.
Eight panel sessions will be held, bringing together
thirty female and male panellists to discuss the
following topics: women and education, women
71
Recent publications
Publications récentes
Publicaciones recentes
p
platforms. These refuges are realised in different,
but mostly interlinked – places or spaces, all presenting their own ways of avoiding the limitations or
overcoming the repercussions. The three alternatives identified by the Fund can be characterised as:
exile, margins or defiance. In other words: leaving
ground, going underground or taking up the challenge above-ground. Artists can leave their limiting
environments and go to cities outside the reach of
their oppressors. They move to ‘external cultural
capitals’, such as Miami for Cubans or Paris for
The Journal also
The Prince Claus
Algerians. Alternatively, they can operate in culturFund Journal con- seeks to draw
tains brief outlines attention to recent al margins, where the arts speak a special language,
using elusive imagery that is cleverer than its
and commentaries publications relevant to the debate opponents. Finally, artists can occupy platforms of
on publications
major exposure (often at the international level),
supported or pub- on non-Western
where the oppression can be challenged openly
lished by the Fund. culture.
and where protection is offered by the large numbers of witnesses to the message. An example of
this third type of free space is the critical Arabic
satellite channel Al-Jazeera, based in Qatar and
broadcast worldwide (and thus throughout the
Arab world). ‘Creating Spaces of Freedom’ does not
seek to study banned art as such, but aims at
Publications supported or
surveying the creation of alternative spaces, where
published by the Prince Claus Fund
banned art seeks refuge in order to continue its
Publications soutenues ou publiées
message. The book focuses on ‘locations of freepar la Fondation Prince Claus
dom’ where, so to speak, the weed can grow beyond
Publicaciones patrocinadas o publicadas
extinction.
por la Fundación Príncipe Claus
Among the contributing authors are: Duong Thu
Huong (Vietnam), Malu Halasa (Jordan, uk), Al
Creating Spaces of Freedom (1999)
Creighton (Guyana), Li Xianting (pr China), Ernesto
The arts are platforms for debate, analysing and
Ortiz (Cuba), Wole Soyinka (Nigeria), Arif Azad
criticising the contexts in which they play their
(Pakistan, uk) and Ahmed Abdallah (Egypt).
part. Artists express their views on the political,
religious, social and cultural circumstances in
ISBN 90 76162 04 2 Price: USD 21.95
which they live and work. Their frank, sharp or bold
Further information from: Prince Claus Fund,
comments often meet resistance or result in social
Hoge Nieuwstraat 30, 2514 el The Hague,
exclusion, cultural limitations or state oppression.
fax: 31-70-42 74 277,
They therefore seek refuge: they create and inhabit
‘Spaces of Freedom’. The Prince Claus Fund has
The 1999 Prince Claus Awards (1999)
published the book ‘Creating Spaces of Freedom’,
that appeared on 8 December 1999, the day of the
The Prince Claus Fund has published the third
presentation of the Prince Claus Awards for this
annual book presenting the Prince Claus Award
year. Different kinds of such spaces for ‘cultural
laureates. It contains the text of the speech delivered
activism’, combining art and engagement, have
by hrh Prince Claus of the Netherlands on the prebeen identified. Each offers its own particular
sentation of the principal award and also laudations
freedom. The contributions concentrate on the
devoted to the other laureates.
regions of the Fund’s concern: Africa, Asia, Latin
The authors of the laudations include Oumou Sy
America and the Caribbean. The book starts by
(Senegal), 1998 Principal Prince Claus Award laureinvestigating the free spaces offered by culture and
ate;Ticio Escobar (Paraguay), one of the 1998 Prince
the arts as such: the arts function as critical corClausAward laureates; Wole Soyinka (Nigeria) and
rectors of their environments.
Derek Walcott (St. Lucia), recipients of the Nobel
In cases of severe threats to free expression by
Prize for Literature in 1986 and 1992 respectively.
artistic means, artists seek to establish alternative
Finally, the book contains the speech entitled
New
72
‘A Conceited Look at Creating Free Space for the
Artist’ by Albie Sachs, Justice of the South African
Constitutional Court, author, freedom fighter and a
promoter of the voice of culture in the public
debate. In this speech Albie Sachs highlights the
central theme of the 1999 Prince Claus Awards
ceremony, held at the Royal Palace in Amsterdam.
Sudanese Folktales and Myths (1999)
ISBN 90 76162 02 6
To order: transfer nlg 50 to the Prince Claus Fund,
account number 60.30.55.559 of the abn amro Bank,
The Hague, Netherlands, or send a cheque to the
Prince Claus Fund, Hoge Nieuwstraat 30,
2514 el The Hague, the Netherlands.
Please indicate your name and address clearly and
mention ‘1999 awards publication’. The costs cover
postage to all locations. You may also order the 1997 or
1998 Prince Claus Awards publications by the same
procedure.
Sudanese Folktales
and Myths, Sudanese
Culture Information
Center, Cairo, 1999
The publication can be ordered from:
Sudan Culture and Information Center,
61 Mustafa El Nahhas Str., Nasr City, Cairo, Egypt,
fax: +20-2-27 29 249
Het Verleden onder Ogen: Herdenking van de
Slavernij (1999) (Conviviendo con el Pasado:
Evocación de la Esclavitud)
Más de 250 años de esclavitud y comercio de escla0vos en las Antillas y en Surinam constituyen las
páginas negras de la historia de los Países Bajos y sus
antiguas colonias de Africa y el Caribe. Hasta hace
poco, estas páginas permanecieron bien ocul-tas en
los Países Bajos. Con la llegada de inmigran-tes de
esos territorios, la historia literalmente regresó a la
madre patria. La presencia de estas gentes es una
memoria viviente del pasado colonial y de la esclavitud. Finalmente ‘un monumento por la esclavitud’
forma parte de la agenda política de La Haya. Por fin.
Estados Unidos, Inglaterra y Francia ya lo han hecho.
El arduo reconocimiento de este pasado y de la participación en el tráfico de esclavos está en conflicto
con la auto-imagen de los Países Bajos de ser una
nación progresiva y tolerante. Este libro trata de hacer
una contribución a este debate en los Países Bajos, asi
como ampliarlo fuera del marco nacional. La mitad de
los ensayos tienen que ver con el recuerdo y la
conmemoración de la esclavitud en los Países Bajos y
en sus territorios del Caribe. El resto de los artículos
son de escritores de otras partes del mundo. Es
precisamente debido a su gran variedad, que dichos
ensayos estimulan este debate que aun está vigente.
El libro fue copublicado y editado por la Fundación
Príncipe Claus. Para más información sobre este libro,
ver la intervención de Adriaan van Dis, co-autor,
durante su lanzamiento el 30 de junio de 1999, p.9
ISBN 90 6974 376 0, Precio: NLG 35
Esta publicación puede ser adquirida en:
Uitgeverij Arena, p.o. Box 100, 1000 ac Amsterdam,
Países Bajos, fax: +31-20-42 16 868
This book was issued by the Sudan Culture and
Information Center (scic). The Prince Claus Fund
supported the scic’s Third Festival of Sudanese
Cultures by publishing, among other things, one
issue of the ‘Sudanese Cultures Magazine’ and the
book ‘Sudanese Folktales and Myths’.
The Sudan Culture and Information Center was founded in Cairo in June 1994 as a cultural and social
necessity, with the aim of engendering mutual
understanding between various Sudanese cultural
groups. The scic seeks to provide platforms for
intellectual debate on various cultures, in the form
of meetings, discussions, lectures and publications.
New from Phaidon Press
Cildo Meireles (1999)
Conviviendo con el
Pasado: Evocación de
la Esclavitud,
Amsterdam, 1999
Born in 1948, the 1999 Prince Claus Award winner
Cildo Meireles is one of Brazil’s most significant
living artists of the post-war period. A pioneer of
installation art since the 1960’s. Meireles is best
known for his dramatic and politically-charged walkin environments which often incorporate sound,
smell and touch alongside visual experience, requiring the viewer’s full perceptual involvement.
His installation ‘Através’ (Through, 1983-89), first
presented at the Kanaal Art Foundation, Kortrijk,
Belgium in 1989, confronts the viewer with a prohibitive labyrinth of grilles, meshes and barriers of all
descriptions, the floor covered in shimmering yet
dangerous shards of broken glass. In this and other
works, surprises and contradictions combine to
scramble our habitual definitions of our environment, resulting in a metaphor of the imperfect,
potentially hostile world in which we live.
Brazilian art critic Frederico Morais wrote in his
laudation for Meireles: ‘In the series ‘Insertions in
ideological circuits’ Meireles deploys what we
might call ‘counter-information’. In small newspaper advertisements he announced the sale of wild
and untouched areas of the Amazonian rainforest.
The question ‘Who killed Herzog?’ stamped on a
cruzeiro note challenges the dictatorship’s official
report on the journalist’s alleged suicide. The artist
also printed long runs of ‘Yankees go home’ on
Coca Cola bottles to draw attention to the role
played by the capital of an international monopoly.
Furthermore, by publicising the processes and
73
New from Kali for Women,
techniques used for this purpose, he was also
challenging the very notion of copyright. (from the
1999 Prince Claus Awards publication, see: New
from the Prince Claus Fund, The Hague, 1999).
A major retrospective of Meireles’ work opens in
1999 in and organised by the New Museum of
Contemporary Art, New York, in association with
the Museums of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro and
Sao Paulo.
New Delhi, India
Harvest (1997)
ISBN 0 7148 3858 6, Price: GBP 19,95
The publication can be ordered from: Phaidon Press,
Regent’s Wharf, All Saints Street, London n1 9pa,
England, fax: 44-171-84 31 010,
Nouveau de Fondation de
l’Image Arabe
Portraits du Caire (1999)
‘Portraits du Caire’ présente l’oeuvre de trois photographes considérés comme maîtres du portrait de
studio au Caire dans les années quarante et
cinquante. Exécutant des portraits de commande,
tous les trois travaillent dans le secteur commercial. Ils donnaient une importance particulière à
l’approche artisanale de leur métier tout en étant
très différents les uns des autres. Leurs portraits
témoignent de l’infiltration de la modernité dans la
société du Caire durant une période essentielle de
son histoire.
Ce livre est une publication de la Fondation Arabe
pour l’Image. Cette fondation s’emploie depuis
quelques années à rechercher les photographes
qui ont exercé dans le monde arabe et à réunir leurs
clichés.
La Fondation a pour but de mettre en valeur la
photographie arabe, de la moitié du XIXe siècle
jusqu’aux années soixante, révélant ainsi un regard
de l’intérieur et contribuant de fait à l’écriture de la
photographie mondiale.
La Fondation Prince Claus soutient la recherche de Portraits de Caire,
la Fondation Arabe pour l’Image.
Arles, 1999.
In 1997 ‘Harvest’ won the first prize in the first
Onassis International Cultural Competitions Prize
for Theatrical Plays. It is an intensely gripping
drama, in which the sale of organs between rich and
poor nations becomes a sly metaphor for other
types of transactions: between husband and wife,
son and mother, lover and loved.
The author, Manjula Padmanabhan (1935), has been
living in New Delhi since 1985, working as a writer,
illustrator and cartoonist. Her comic strip ‘Suki’
appeared daily in ‘The Pioneer’ from December 1991
to November 1997. She has illustrated twenty-one
children’s books and her collection of short stories,
‘Hot Death, Cold Soup’ was recently published in
India and in the UK. She has a fortnightly column
appearing in The Pioneer. Her first play ‘Lights Out’
has been performed on stage and on television.
‘Harvest’ is her fifth play.
The Prince Claus Fund paid the author’s travelling
expenses for her participation in the Crossing
Border Festival in The Hague.
ISBN 81 86706 05 4
The publication can be ordered from: Kali for Women,
B 1/8, Hauz Khas, New Delhi 110 016, India,
fax: +11-68 66 720, e-mail: [email protected]
The Anger of Aubergines: stories of women and
food (1997)
ISBN 2 7427 2252 1
photos: Alban, Le
The Anger of Aubergines contains stories about
women for whom food is an obsession, a passion, a
gift of love, a source of power and even a means of
revenge. Each of these tales is followed by a favourite recipe, to be read or, if you are particularly adventurous, to be tried out.
The author of this book, Bulbul Sharma, writer,
birdwatcher, maker of woodcuts, has written two
books of stories, ‘My Sainted Aunts’ and ‘The Perfect
Woman’, and books on birds and trees for children.
She teaches art to children with special needs and is
a regular columnist for the ‘The Asian Age’.
Pour commander: Editions Actes Sud,
Le Méjan, Place Nina Berberova, 13200 Arles, France,
fax: +33-4-90 96 95 25
Caire, 1945-1950
ISBN 81 85107 96 3
74
is one of the leading writers of Urdu fiction in India.
She was awarded the Bharatiya Jnanpith, India’s
highest literary award, in 1989.
Representing the Body: Gender Issues in Indian
Art (1997)
Has historical scholarship gendered the art of
India? If women and nature are conflated within
Indian art, what are the implications for women’s
status in society? Under what conditions is woman
a sign for auspiciousness and what limitations does
this sign impose on her? How does the gendered
gaze function in Indian art? What is the situation
with regard to representations of male sexuality?
The explorative and interpretative essays in this
volume confront these issues and many more
which were aired at the first-ever conference on
‘Gender Issues in Indian Art’, held in New York in
1994. The essays address both ancient and twentieth-century Indian art and bring gender issues
into contemporary times.
The book was edited by Vidya Dehejia, who was
previously Associate Professor in the Department
of History and Archaeology at Columbia University, New York. She is currently Curator of Southeast Asian Art at the Sackler and Freer Galleries in
Washington.
ISBN 81 86706 02
fax +11-68 66 720, e-mail: [email protected]
Borders & Boundaries: Women in India’s
Partition (1998)
Representing the Body:
Gender Issues in Indian
Art, New Delhi, 1999
ISBN 81 85107 32 7
fax +11-68 66 720, e-mail: [email protected]
Borders & Boundaries:
River of Fire (1998)
Women in India’s
It was the season of beerbahutis and rainclouds, Partition, New Delhi,
some time in the fourth century BC. In a cool grotto 1998
Gautam Nilambar, a final-year student at the Forest
University of Shravast, chances upon Hari Shankar,
a princeling yearning to be a Buddhist monk.
He falls in love with the beautiful, sharp-witted
Champak. And thus begins a magnificent tale that
flows through time, through Maghadhan Pataliputra, the Kingdom of Oudh, the British Raj and
into a time of Independence. This fiery River of
Time flows along the banks of their lives as they are
reborn and recreated, weaving through the twists
and turns, the flows and eddies, keeping them
together and keeping them apart. The story comes
full circle in post-partition India, when Hari Shankar
and his friend Gautam Nilambar Dutt meet in a
grotto in the forest of Shravasti and mourn the
passing of their lives into meaninglessness, their
friends who have left for Pakistan, and what
remains of their country, of which they were once
so passionately proud. What happens between
then and now is history, full of the clangour of
conflict, the deviousness of colonisers, the apathy
of maharajahs, and the irrelevance of religion in
defining Indianness. The author Qurratulain Hyder
In 1947 India was simultaneously freed and divided.
The departure of the British was accompanied by a
bloody partition in which one million people perished and over ten million were displaced in the
largest peace-time mass migration this century has
recorded.
‘Borders & Boundaries’ attempts to give a feminist
reading of Partition, providing, for the first time,
testimonies and memories of women caught in the
turmoil of the time. The authors make women not
only visible, but central, by looking at the general
experience of violence, dislocation and displacement from a gendered perspective. Interviews with
women, survivors, social workers, government
functionaries, form the core of the book, supplemented by a narrative based on documents, confidential reports, parliamentary debates, letters and
diaries. The women’s accounts are vivid, with
memories of loss and violence, the experience of
abduction and widowhood, of rehabilitation and
sometimes even liberation. The counterpointing of
their voices with others, official and non-official,
highlights the relationship between women, communities and the state; between women and their
families; between women and their men.
The authors explore what country, nation and religious identity mean for women, and address the
question of the nation state and the gendering of
citizenship. Their analysis lays bare the multiple
patriarchies of community, family and state as
experienced by women in their transition to freedom, and examines the deep complicities between
them. But the women themselves are far from
being victims: in telling their stories they question
not only the history we know but how we know it,
and thereby compel a different reading of it.
Author Ritu Menon is co-founder of Kali for Women.
She is co-editor of ‘Against All Odds: Essays on
Women, Religion and Development from India and
Pakistan’, and has written extensively on women
and violence, alternative media, and publishing in
the developing world. She is co-organiser of a
Women Writers’ Workshop ‘Tongue Set Free’, to
be held in India in 2000. The Prince Claus Fund will
75
be supporting this workshop. Author Kamila Bhasin
works with the United Nations and is a founder of
Jagori – Women’s Resource and Training Centre,
New Delhi. She has written several books and papers on women, media, education and development, and on gender training. She writes songs for
children, and also writes for various social movements, particularly the women’s movement.
ISBN 81 86706 00 3
A Season of Betrayals: A short story and two
novellas (1999)
Sita Mirchandani, a Hindu refugee from Sindh, now
living in India; Salma and Surayya, two Muslim girls
from U.P. who are forced to move to Pakistan;
Tanvir Fatima, in Karachi and not quite sure why
she is there: these are the characters who inhabit
these works of fiction. The stories explore the cataclysmic events that have unmoored the lives of
these women and examine how each, in her own
way, battles with a state of exile that is more
internal than external. Together they unfold a
series of betrayals, historical, political, personal,
and the means by wich the women struggle to
come to terms with them.
The author, Qurrqtulqin Hyder, is one of the
leading writers of Urdu fiction in India. She was
awarded the Bhartiya Jnanpith, India’s highest
literary award, in 1989. She is a Fellow of the Sahitya
Akademi, has travelled widely and has worked as a
journalist and broadcaster.
ISBN 81 86706 01 1
New from Viking Publishers
Tamarind and Saffron (1999)
When Claudia Roden first published ‘The Book of
Jewish Food’ two years ago, the critical response
was rapturous. Perhaps the most satisfying tribute
came from Simon Schama, the historian. He wrote:
‘Claudia Roden is no more a simple cookbook writer than Marcel Proust was a biscuit baker. She is,
rather, memorialist, historian, ethnographer, anthropologist, essayist, poet. Her book is the richest and
most sensuous encyclopaedia of Jewish life ever set
in print. Roden began to broaden her interest beyond food to the culture and history of the area 76
years of study resulted in 1968 in her scholarly work,
‘A Book of Middle Eastern Cookery’. After 16 years
of research travelling the world, she put together
‘The Book of Jewish Food’, followed recently by a
new collection of favourite recipes from the Middle
East called ‘Tamarind and Saffron’. The well respected Arab historian Sami Zubaida wrote in his essay
on her work: ‘She also traces the migrations of
recipes and ingredients – how much European cookery of the Middle Ages and early modern times owed
to the Persian and Arab traditions, and examples of
the survival of some of these themes right into the
present. Mint sauce (with vinegar and sugar), the
traditional accompaniment to roast lamb on
English tables is but a survival from ancient Persia
transmitted by the Arabs through the Crusades!
Claudia conveys her historical enthusiasm to her
readers: ‘those looking for that perfect recipe for a
dinner party are also treated to a lesson on its history and cultural resonance – and they love it.’
(from the 1999 Prince Claus Award publication, see
New from the Prince Claus Fund in this Journal)
Claudia Roden received the 1999 Prince Claus Award.
ISBN 0 670 80369 3 Price: GBP 18,99
The publication can be ordered from: Viking Publishers,
27 Wrights Lane, London w8 5tz, England,
fax: 441714163193
Publishers are invited to submit a review copy
of books relevant to the Prince Claus Fund.
Reviews of selected publications are included
in the Journal.
Les éditeurs sont priés de bien vouloir adresser à la
Fondation Prince Claus, pour compterendu , tout ouvrage susceptible d’intéresser
la Fondation. Le Journal publie des comptes-rendus
d’ouvrages sélectionnés.
Se invita a las casas editoriales a enviarnos copias de sus
nuevos libros sobre temas relevantes a la Fundación
Príncipe Claus. Esta revista incluirá críticas de las
publicaciones seleccionadas.
Prince Claus Fund
Hoge Nieuwstraat 30
2514 EL The Hague, the Netherlands
La Haye, Pays-Bas La Haya, Países Bajos
phone: +31-70-42 74 303
fax: +31-70-42 74 277
www.princeclausfund.nl
Rory Bester
(Sudáfrica, 1969) es académico y curador. En la
actualidad vive y trabaja en Johannesburgo, Sudáfrica. Obtuvo su Licenciatura en la University of
Cape Town (uct) y una Maestría en Arte en la
University of the Witwatersrand (Wits). Es profesor
de varios cursos en los programas de Licenciatura
de las Facultades de Arte de la uct y la Wits. Fue
uno de los curadores de ‘Imágenes de la Democracia: Fotografía y Artes Plásticas después del
Apartheid’ para el BildMuseet de Umea, Suecia
(septiembre, 1998). En la actualidad está curando la
exposición: ‘Kuere Kuere: Viajes hacia lo exótico’
para el Castillo de Buena Esperanza en Ciudad del
Cabo, Sudáfrica (marzo, 2000) y es curador asociado de ‘El pequeño Siglo: Movimientos de Independencia y Liberación en Africa, 1945-1994’, una exposición para el Museum Villa Stuck de Munich,
Alemania (febrero, 2001).
Charles Correa
(India, 1930) is a member of the 1999 Prince Claus
Awards Committee. As an architect and planner he
is based in Bombay and has emerged as a major
figure in contemporary architecture worldwide.
He studied architecture at the University of Michigan
and MIT, and has been in private practice in Bombay
since 1958. His work spans a wide range - from the
Mahatma Ghandi memorial at the Sabarmati Ashram
to the Jawahar Kala Kendra in Jaipur and the State
Assembly for Madhya Pradesh, as well as townships
and public housing projects in Delhi, Bombay,
Ahmedabad, Bangalore and other cities in India.
He won an Agha Kahn Award for architecture in 1998
for his project of the Vidahn Bahven government
and parliament buildings in Bhopal, in the state of
Madhya Pradesh (1980-1997). His work has been published in many architectural journals and books,
and he has taught at many universities in India and
abroad.
Al Creighton
(Jamaica, 1952) is a poet and dramatist. He carried
out extensive research in the field of Caribbean
literature and is a senior lecturer and Head of
Amerindian Research at the University of Guyana
and Associate Fellow at the University of Warwick,
uk. He has written on literature, drama and oral
traditions in several books and journals published
in the West Indies, the usa and Europe. Creighton
writes reviews for the Times Literary Supplement
and the Independent on Sunday and is Arts Editor
for the Stabroek News in Georgetown.
He is Secretary of the Guyana Prize for Literature.
c
Contributing
authors
Auteurs participants
à ce numéro
Contribuidores
Al Creighton also appears on television as a theatre
and literary critic. At the 1999 Poetry International
Festival he was a critic for Caribbean poetry at
several seminars organised during the festival.
Charles Jencks
(usa, 1939; based in uk) is an architect. He studied
English Literature at Harvard University, usa Architecture at gsd and Architectural History (PhD) at
London University, uk. He is known for his books
questioning Modern architecture and defining its
successors – Late, Neo- and Post-Modern architecture. Among his most recent publications are:
‘New Science – New Architecture?’, ‘Theories and
Manifestatos of Contemporary Architecture’ and
‘The Architecture of the Jumping Universe’ (all
1997), and ‘Ecstatic Architecture’ (1999). Jencks
divides his time between writing, lecturing and
building.
Ricardo Legorreta
(Mexico) is discussion partner of the Prince Claus
Fund who is consulted on matters relating to architecture and urbanisation. He studied architecture at
the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico,
and is lead designer and Principal of Legorreta
Archuitectos in Mexico City since 1963.
Since 1969 he has lectured at the main universities
of Mexico, Canada, Spain, Japan, Argentina, Chile,
Uruguay, Colombia, Guatemala, Costa Rica, England
and Austria, and at more than thirty universities
around the United States. He has a long list of achievements and awards; most recently, in June 1999, he
received the uia Gold Medal in Beijing, China.
From 1983 to 1993 he was a member of the Pritzker
Prize Award Jury.
Rahul Mehrotra
(India, 1959) was one of the architects who participated in the Tropical Architecture Encounter organised by 1992 Prince Claus Award Winner Bruno
Stagno in November 1998.
Rahul Mehrotra studied at the School of Architecture
in Ahmedabad and obtained a master’s degree with
distinction from Harvard University, his field of
study being Architecture and Urban Design. He
has been in private practice since 1990 and his
works cover a wide field from planning, urban
design and conservation to architecture and interiors. He is a founder member of the Bombay
Conservation Group, a non-profit organisation initiating conservation projects in the city.
He is also a member of the committee which advises the Municipality on the conservation of heriPrince Claus Fund Journal # 3
77
tage buildings and artefacts and he is Executive
Director of the Urban Design Research Institute.
He has lectured and written extensively on urban
conservation and design, both in India and abroad.
His writings include the co-authored book ‘Bombay –
The Cities Within (India Book House, 1999), which
covers Bombay’s urban history from the 1600s to
the present, and ‘Fort Walks – Walking Tours of
Bombay Historic City Center’ (Eminence Designs,
1999). In 1994, ‘Interiors Annual’ selected Mehrotra
Designer of the Year for his contribution to design
and urban conservation.
Adriano Mixinge
(Angola, 1968) Doctorado en 1997 en Historia del
Arte Contemporáneo en la Facultad de Geografía e
Historia de la Universidad Complutense de Madrid,
donde desarrolla su tesis subordinada en el tema
de las artes plásticas angoleñas entre 1990/1998:
‘Historia y Caracterización’. Licenciado en Historia
del Arte por la Facultad de Artes y Letras de la
Universidad de La Habana en 1993. Entre finales de
1993 y 1996, ejerció como Jefe del Departamento de
Investigaciones Científicas del Museo Nacional de
Antropología de Luanda, Angola. Entre 1994 y 1997
fue comisario de una serie de exposiciones entre las
que se destacan ‘Angola in Africus’ en la Iª Bienal de
Johannesburg (1995), Sudáfrica, así como ‘Pintura y
Escultura Angoleña entre 1930/1994’ en el Museo
de Antropología de Madrid (1994) y ‘La urgencia de
la etno-psiquiatría’ (1995) de Fernando Alvim, en el
Espaço Cultural Elinga de Luanda. Desde 1998, ha
sido editor del Suplemento Vida & Cultura del
periódico Jornal de Angola.
Olive Senior
(Jamaica) is the author of eight books. She has
written three collections of short stories: ‘Summer
Lightning’ (1986), which won the 1987 Commonwealth Writers Prize, ‘Arrival of the Snake-Woman’
(1989) and ‘Discerner of Hearts’ (1995), and two
collections of poetry: ‘Talking of Trees’ (1986) and
‘Gardening in the Tropics’ (1994). Her non-fiction
works on Caribbean culture include ‘A-Z of
Jamaican Heritage’ (1984) and ‘Working Miracles:
Women’s Lives in the English-Speaking Caribbean’
(1991). Her new and forthcoming work includes a
new collection of poetry (‘Over the Roofs of the
World’) and a collection of short fiction, ‘The
Devil’s Honeydram’. This will include the story
‘Mad Fish’, which is published in this issue. Olive
Senior was born in Jamaica and has spent most of
her life there. She now divides her time between
Jamaica and Canada. She conducts writing work78
shops internationally and is a faculty member of
The Humber School for Writers, Humber College,
Toronto.
Hassan Musa
(Soudan, 1951) est artiste-peintre et écrivain et
diplômé de l’École des beaux-arts de Khartoum, il
est l’auteur d'une thèse de Doctorat d’histoire de
l’art. Il expose ses œuvres depuis 1969 dans différents pays d’Europe, d’Afrique et d’Amérique.
Parallèlement à ses expositions, il réalise régulièrement des performances: ‘Cérémonies graphiques’.
La dernière exposition collective à laquelle il a participé s’appelait ‘Memories and Modernities: Recent
works of the islamic world’. Il l’a présentée dans le
cadre de la Biennale de Venise en 1997. Sa dernière
exposition individuelle a eu lieu à Paris en 1999. Sa
plus récente ‘Cérémonie graphique’ s’est tenue au
Johnson Museum d’Ithaca, aux États-Unis, en 1998.
Il est l’auteur et l’illustrateur d’un douzaine de livres
pour enfants publiés en France aux Editions
Grandir. Trois de ces ouvrages viennent d’être
traduits en italien. Lors de la Foire internationale du
livre pour enfants de Bologne de 1999, il a participé à
l’exposition ‘Amabhuku’ qui présentait une sélection d’illustrateurs africains. Il a également réalisé
des ‘livres d’artiste’ en tirage limité. Depuis 1980 il
réside dans le sud de la France.
Bruno Stagno
(Chile, 1943) recibió un premio Príncipe Claus en
1997. Estudió en la escuela de arquitectura de la
Universidad Católica de Chile. Con una beca del
gobierno francés y la Fundación Irarrázaval, se
estableció más tarde en París, donde estudió
planificación urbana y arquitectura en la Ecole des
beaux-arts, en el taller dirigido por Georges
Candilis. Regresó a Chile, pero emigró a Costa
Rica en 1973, donde trabaja como arquitecto
independiente. En 1994 fundó el Instituto de
Arquitectura Tropical, cuyos proyectos tienen
como objetivo preservar la arquitectura tropical y
la aplicación del sincretismo arquitectónico. Con
los usd 20.000 obtenidos al hacerse acreedor al
premio Príncipe Claus, organizó un Encuentro
sobre Arquitectura Tropical en Costa Rica en
noviembre de 1998. Participaron en este encuentro
arquitectos que trabajan en arquitectura tropical
en diferentes regiones de todo el mundo.
Los arquitectos Kenneth Yeang de Malaysia, Rahul
Mehrotra de la India cuya obra se incluye en el conglomerado arquitectónico de esta publicación, participaron en el encuentro, entre otros.
Duong Thu Huong
(Vietnam, 1947) est l’auteur de succès tels que ‘Les
paradis aveugles’ (version originale en vietnamien
publiée en 1988), ‘Au-delà des illusions’ (1985) et
‘Roman sans titre’ (1991). Elle a également écrit des
pièces de théâtre et produit un documentaire
intitulé ‘The Sanctuary of Despair’ (1986). Toute
son œuvre reflète un engagement politique et
social profond. Ses analyses critiques et ses plaidoyers en faveur de réformes et de la liberté lui ont
valu la censure et la prison mais aussi une reconnaissance et une estime internationales.
Adriaan van Dis
(Dutch East Indies, 1946) is a writer based in the
Netherlands and a member of the Board of the
Prince Claus Fund. His first work, published in 1983,
was the novella ‘Nathan Sid’. The writings of
Adriaan van Dis are characterised by a fascination
with the stranger and outsider. This can be seen in
the novel ‘Indische duinen’, published in 1994, and
the novella ‘Palmwijn’ (1995). He has also written two
travel novels about Africa: ‘In Africa’ (1991) and ‘Het
beloofde land’ (1992). His most recent novel appeared
this year (1999) and is entitled ‘Dubbelliefde’.
Kenneth Yeang
(Malaysia, 1948) is one of the 1999 Prince Claus Award
winners. Yeang’s PhD dissertation at Cambridge
University, on ecological design and planning,
formed the basis for his subsequent r&d and
design work, in particular in the field of intensive
urban buildings and tall buildings. In 1976, together
with his colleague Tengku Robert Hamzah, he
founded the firm of Hamzah & Yeang, which now
has offices in Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Australia
and China. Its particular area of expertise is in the
design of high-quality tall buildings that are
ecologically ‘sustainable’. This expertise has been
acknowledged by a number of awards, including
the 1995 Aga Kahn Award for Architecture and in
1999 the uia August Perret Prize for Applied
Technology in Architecture. Kenneth Yeang is the
author of several books and articles on skyscraper
design and on ecological design. His work has been
featured in many international journals, including
Architectural Record and Progressive Architecture.
79
The Prince Claus Fund stimulates and supports activities in the field of culture and development by granting awards, funding and
producing publications and by financing and
promoting networks and innovative cultural
activities. Support is given both to persons
and to organisations in African, Asian, Latin
American and Caribbean countries. Equality,
respect and trust are the essential parameters of such partnerships; quality and innovation are the preconditions for support.
The Prince Claus Fund for Culture and Development was established to mark the 70th
birthday of HRH Prince Claus of the Netherlands on 6 September 1996.
It represents an appreciation of his lifelong
efforts stressing the importance of culture in
international co-operation and of his achievements in this field.
The Fund adopts a broad and dynamic approach to culture, based on the concept of
constant change. Culture is those values and
processes which invest life with meaning
through professional artistic achievements
and academic work in the humanities. The
Fund’s chief interest is in the development of
ideas and ideals, the manner in which people
give form to these ideas and ideals and the
manner in which such ideas and ideals give
form to society.
The Fund stimulates exchanges between purveyors of culture, notably in non-Western
countries, exchanges designed to push back
both national and disciplinary frontiers. Such
exchanges encourage critical reflection on
one’s own culture and that of others, and at
the same time generate cultural self-confidence. The Fund also hopes to contribute to a
critical reflection on the cultural foundations
of international co-operation.
The Prince Claus Fund envisages a worldwide
platform for the intellectual debate on shared
values, in the form of meetings, discussions,
lectures and publications. All too often this
debate is dismissed as useless and unnecessary. Appreciation and stimulation will attract
greater recognition and esteem, facilitating
the propagation of important ideas.
80
The Prince Claus
Fund
La Fondation Prince
Claus
La Fondation Prince Claus encourage et soutient des
activités dans le domaine de la culture et du développement, en décernant des prix, en subventionnant et en publiant des ouvrages et en encourageant
la création de réseaux et des activités culturelles
novatrices. La Fondation accorde son soutien à des
personnes et à des organisations dans des pays
d’Afrique, d’Asie, d’Amérique latine et des Caraïbes.
Égalité, respect et confiance mutuels sont les principes fondamentaux d’un tel partenariat; qualité et
originalité sont les conditions préalables au soutien
accordé.
La Fondation Prince Claus pour la Culture et le Développement a été créé à l’occasion du 70e anniversaire de S. A. R. le Prince Claus des Pays-Bas, le 6 septembre 1996; il s’agissait d’honorer son œuvre et ses
efforts constants pour faire reconnaître le rôle fondamental de la culture dans le cadre de la coopération internationale.
La Fondation a opté pour une approche large et
dynamique du phénomène culturel. Elle part du principe que la culture est en constante mutation. La
culture désigne les valeurs et les processus qui donnent sens à la vie à travers des réalisations artistiques
et des travaux universitaires dans le domaine des
sciences humaines. La Fondation s’intéresse tout particulièrement au développement d’idées et d’idéaux,
à la manière dont une société leur donne forme et,
inversement, comment ils la modèlent.
La Fondation stimule les échanges entre tous ceux
qui créent la culture sous une forme ou une autre,
notamment dans les pays non-occidentaux.
Ces échanges permettent de dépasser les frontières,
géographiques ou académiques. Ces échanges favorisent une réflexion critique réciproque sur chacune
des cultures engagées dans ce partenariat et donne en
même temps naissance à une prise de conscience
culturelle. La Fondation espère ainsi contribuer à
une réflexion critique plus générale concernant les
fondements culturels de la coopération internationale. La Fondation Prince Claus se propose de créer
un espace mondial pour un débat d’idées sur les
valeurs partagées, et ceci sous la forme de rencontres, de discussions, de conférences et de publications d’ouvrages.
Ce débat est trop souvent considéré comme inutile
et superflu. Lui accorder une importance permet au
contraire de valoriser les différentes cultures et de
diffuser des idées fondamentales.

opmaak journal #3 p. 01-47

Transcripción

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