Caribbean Intransit | Volume 2 Issue 5

ISSN 2326 2091

CARIBBEAN INTRANSIT ARTS JOURNAL

VOL 2. | ISSUE 5 SPRING 2016

Caribbean InTransit is published twice per year in Spring and Fall.

To receive a free e-copy of this journal, subscribe to our newsletter by visiting our website www.caribbeanintransit.com.

Cover Image Alice Smeets, Ghetto Tarot, www.ghettotarot.com, alice.smeets@gmail.com Cover Curator: Annalee Davis, annalee@annaleedavis.com Journal Layout and Design by Keisha Oliver, keisha.oliver@gmail.com This journal and all of its works are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Caribbean InTransit is published by African and African American Studies, George Mason University.

The concept of Caribbean Intransit is to provide a creative ‘meeting place’ for Caribbean artists to share their thought provoking ideas and works within a community of cultural producers, students, scholars, activists and entrepreneurs. The word ‘InTransit’ signifes the historical and contemporary global movement of Caribbean peoples and the opportunities for becoming that this movement offers. Caribbean InTransit’s approach to the exploration of Caribbean arts and culture is not insular thus it incorporates artistic practices and beliefs external to the Caribbean. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license, Caribbean InTransit is an open access academic journal with a rigorous blind peer review process. Submissions of essays, artworks, poetry as well as other art forms in English, French and Spanish are welcomed. Caribbean InTransit is published by African and African American Studies, George Mason University.

On November 2011 in New York, Barbata collaborated with the Brooklyn Jumbies to present Intervention: Wall Street – a performance that took place on Wall Street in New York City’s Financial District. Intervention: Wall Street was conceived as a response to the dire economic crisis that became most evident in 2008 afflicting Americans and impacted 99% of the global population. Financial speculation and banking abuses by the largest and most powerful institutions on Wall Street have brought misery to individuals, institutions and to entire countries. In this public performance, which took place in November 2011, Laura Anderson Barbata and the Brooklyn Jumbies brought to the Financial District of New York a world-wide practice to remind viewers of the global impact of this crisis and the urgent need to elevate and change the values and practices of the New York Financial Industry. Moko Jumbies- men walking on stilts are a common feature of Trinidad and Tobago’s Carnival celebrations.

2 CARIBBEAN INTRANSIT

GUEST EDITORS

Dr. Sterlin Ulysse Barbara Prezeau

EDITORIAL TEAM

Dr. Marielle Barrow, Editor-In-Chief Dr. Kathalene Razzano, Managing Editor Dr. Marta Fernandez-Campa, Special Project Editor Dr. Katherine Miranda, Hispanophone Specialist Dr. Donna Hope, Anglophone Specialist Yolande Toumson, Francophone Specialist Annalee Davis, Cover Curator Dr. Njelle Hamilton, Fiction Specialist & Senior Copy Editor Keisha Oliver, Visual Communications Specialist

COPY EDITORS

Marsha Malcolm Dr. Stacey Cumberbatch Neila Ebanks

EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS

Dr. Patricia Mohammed Dr. Honor Ford-Smith Dr. Keith Nurse Dr. Jocelyne Guilbault Dr. Timothy Rommen Claire Tancons Dr. Elizabeth Walcott-Hackshaw Dr. Kathalene Razzano Dr. Marielle Barrow

Organizations wishing to partner or host launches email caribintransit@gmail.com Books for review contact: Marielle Barrow Cultural Studies Program MSN 5E4 4400 University Drive, Fairfax, VA 22030-4444 Tel: (703) 626 0204 mariellebarrow@gmail.com VOL 2 | ISSUE 5 | SPRING 2016

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08 Marielle Barrow

FOREWORD

Dehistories: Artistry at the Grand Rue, Haiti

essays, notes reflections 08 Barbara Prezeau

Introduction Du Musée Pluribus unum au collectif Atis Rézistans Genèse et contradictions

09 Sterlin Ulysse

Introduction Atis Rezistans: un défi théorique,

10 Leah Gordon

The Ghetto Biennale – an introduction

CARIBBEAN INTRANSIT ARTS JOURNAL

Haiti’s Book of Promises: Stories and de-histories of the Grand Rue 4 CARIBBEAN INTRANSIT

11 David Frohnapfel

“The 3rd Ghetto Biennale 2013: Decentering the Market and Other Tales of Progress”

12 Wébert Lahens

Ghetto Biennale: Ghetto biennale: Une nouvelle vision de l’art contemporain

13 Samantha Fein Tales of Progress

14 Marielle Barrow A Reflection

15 Kendy Verilus

A propos de l’art contemporain

16 John Woolsey

Picturing and Policing Post-quake Haiti

curated visual essays 17 Dialogic Platform 1.

2.

3.

4.

Bill Drummond 2009 Leah Gordon post 2009 Philip Tonda Heide 2009 Irina Novarese & Viola Thiele 2011 5. Candace Lin, Philip Mayles & Racine Polycarpe 2011

10.

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Ivy McClelland 2011 John Cussans 2011 Jurate Jarulyte 2011 Romez Gomez & Romel Jean-Pierre 2011 Emilie Boone 2011 Piroska E. Kiss 2011 Londel Innocent 2013 Reginald Centatus 2013 Mabelle Williams 2013 Marilena Crosato 2013 Sarah Delaney 2013 Vision Forum 2013 Remote Worlds & Claudel Casseus 2015 Clocktower Radio with Richard Flemming 2015 Edgar Endress and Pierre Adler HT 2015 John Cussans (GB)

00 Embodiment, Spirituality and Death

1. Lisa Cradduck 2009 2. Joyce IP, Jason Metcalf & Orbert Pyre 2011 3. Katy Beinart 2013 4. Joseph Constant 2013 5. Kantara souffrant 2013 6. Kendra Frorup 2013 7. Timoun Rezistans 2013 8. Claude Saintulus 2015 HT 9. Dasha Chapman (US), Yonel Charles (HT), Jean-Sebastien Duvilaire(US/HT) & Ann Mazzocca (US) 2015 10. Getho Jean Baptiste 2015

00 Paper, Plastic, Labor and Play 1. Charlotte Hammond 2011 2. Kwynne Johnson & Paul Klein 2011 3. Xklu+b 2013 4. Erwan Soumhi (MA/FR)

00 Mobility, Consumption and the Globalized Economy 1.

2.

3.

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7.

8.

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Tracey Moberly 2009 Allison Rowe 2011 Anderson Family 2011 Cat Barich 2011 Maacha Kasparin, Yuk Yee 2011 Militza Jean Felix 2011 Natalie Matta 2011 Schallum Pierre 2011 Robert Dimin 2013

10. Tom Bogaert 2013 11. Romel, Racine and Caludel 2013 12. Kwynn Johnson 2013 13. Lee Lee 2013 14. Fanel Duce 2013 15. Andre Eugene 16. Emilie Boone 2015 17. Laura Heyman (US) & Leah Gordon (GB)

00 Space, Practice, Building 1.

2.

3.

4.

Camille Chedda 2015 Gabriella Gilmore 2015 Annette Elliot 2013 Jean D’Amerique 2015 ( Haiti)

Rêves

00 Arcade Fire & Vincent

Morisset (CA) www.justareflektor.com Just A Relflektor

00 Atis Papa Da (HT) Vodou Bizango Market - Mache Vodou Bizango 00 Caribbean InTransit: Marielle Barrow (TT/US) Moira Williams (US) Floating Lab Collective: Jorge Luis Porrata (CU/US) Elsabe Dixon (ZA/US Edgar Endress (CL/US) www.floatinglabcollective.com www.caribbeanintransit.com IN SITU: The Book of Latent Promises

interviews, emails & transcripts: 2013 Haiti Ghetto Biennale

00 Chery Jerry Reginal aka

Twoket (HT) International Art Market – Mache D’art Internasyonal

22 2013 Haiti Ghetto Biennale Call for Projects

00 Diedrick Brackens (US) www.diedrickbrackens.com

Leaders of the Atis Rezistans Movement: Jean Herard Celeur Andre Eugene Frantz- Jacques Guyodo Evel Claude

00 Emilie Boone (US) Wooden, Whittled Might And Its Economies Of Value

24 Biennial Projects

00 Fanel Ducé (HT) Mache Zonbi – Zombi Market

00 Allison Rowe (CA)

www.allisonroweart.com (Untitled) RUBBLE

00 Allison Rowe (CA)

www.allisonroweart.com Aid For Usa And Canada

00 Alphonse Sony (HT)

The Market Of Clothing Art Mache Vetman D’art

00 Anna Bruinsma (US)

www.annabruinsma.zenfolio.com Laissez-Fair

contents

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00 Evel Romain (HT) Market Of Development - Mache Devlopman

00 Getho Jean Baptiste (HT) A Progressive Market - Yon Mache Pwogresis 00 Gina Cunningham (US) and

Emmy Eves (US) Mango Madness 00 Hiroki Yamamoto (JP) Reproducing Arte Povera In The Third World 00 Irina Contreras (US) www.machinegunsteady.tumblr.com www.scenesunseenproduction.com SMEDLEY BUTLER

00 Annette Elliot (US)

www.annettelliot.com VOL 2 | ISSUE 5 | SPRING 2016

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contents

00 Jason Metcalf (US) www.jasonmetcalf.com www.multiversalservices.com Multiversal Services 00 Jean Claude Saintilus (HT) Mache Tet Ansanm Pou Lavi – Work Together For Life 00 Jean Daniel (HT)+ Rally Market Art - Mache Rasanbleman D’art 00 Jean Robert Palenquet (HT) Environmental Market - Mache Anviwonman 00 Jefferson Kielwagen (BR/US)

and Ryan Groendyk (US)+ Monolith

00 Londel Innocent (HT) A Market To Benefit All Artists - Yon Mache Nan Avantaj Tout Atis 00 Mabelle Williams (HT)+ Look In Order To See - Gade Pou’w We 00 Malin Tivenius (SE) BOTANICAL LEXICON 00 Marilena Crosato (IT) H. I. Women And Power Haiti-Italy 00 Michael Massaro (US) www.mmassaro.com Connections 00 Michel Lafleur (HT) MYSTICAL WORKS – MACHE MISTE

00 Joseph Winter (UK) www.joseph-winter.com

00 Patrick Elie aka Konbatan (HT), Ronaldo Duborgne aka Sakala (HT) & Katelyn Alexis (HT) Recouperation Market – Mache Reiperasyon

00 Kantara Souffrant (US) Think.Love.Haiti

00 Reginald Centatus (HT) Philosophical Market – Mache Filozofi

00 Katy Beinart (UK) www.katybeinart.co.uk Goute Sel

00 Robert Dimin (US) www.robertdimin.com The Western Way Of Shipping

00 Kuratorisk Aktion (DK) http://www.kuratorisk-aktion.org/ Kuratorisk Aktion

00 Romel Jean Pierre (HT)

Racine Polycarpe (HT)

Claudel Casseus (HT) Replacement And Image Transformation

00 Joseph Constant (HT) Walking Coiffeur D’art’

00 Kwynn Johnson (TT) & Pascale

Faublas (HT) http://artsocietytt.org/johnsonK.html www.bellemoonproductions.com/ paskalfilm.html Another Commodity 00 Laura Heyman (US) http://www.lauraheyman.com Workshop

00 Samantha Fein Transcripts Mabelle Williams Zaka Jefferson Kielwagen Jean Daniel Ronaldo Duborne Leah Gordon

00 Laurent Guerly (HT) Help Me To Carry - Mache Ede’m Pote

00 Simeon Yvens Junior and

Guyvens Isidor (HT) The Informal Market – Mache Enfomel

00 Lee Lee (US) www.lee-lee.com Nourish

00 Ti Moun Rezistans (HT) Market Without Peers - Mache San Parey

00 Leonce Syndia aka Bebe et

Aristil Guerline (HT) Local Produce – Pwodui Lokal

00 Tom Bogaert (BE) www.tombogaert.org Prestige

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00

Vision Forum - Per Huttner (SE/ FR), Sara Giannini (IT/NL) Jean-Louis Huhta (SE) Sandrine Nicoletta (IT/UK) and Wooloo-Sixten Kai Nielsen(DK) William Rawlings and Martin Rosengaard (DK) http://www.visionforum.eu/ http://www.wooloo.net/ Is Misunderstanding Misunderstood

00 Wesner Bazile (HT) Poor Market – Mache Malere 00 Wilerme Tegenis (HT) One Market Hand In Hand – Yon Mache Men Nan Men 00

XKLUB - Roberto N Peyre (SE) Joyce Ip (SE) Nanna Dalunde (SE) and Jean-Louis Huhta (SE) Xklub Port-Au-Prince

00 Zaka (HT) Work To See - Mache Pou We + 00 Simon LaRoche simon@projet-Eva.org

Caribbean InTransit Arts Journal is a global initiative that seeks to foster a community of research and entrepreneurship related to cultural and artistic endeavors emerging from the Caribbean and its Diasporas. As a creative ‘meeting place’ for Caribbean academics, artists and audiences, the journal will offer a high level of critique and academic interrogation of global Caribbean arts practices. This project is also an avenue/ space for Caribbean artists to showcase their work and increase their regional and international recognition. At present Caribbean InTransit is the only open access academic journal to focus specifically on the Caribbean arts as its object of critique. We understand the arts to encompass literary, performing, visual and culinary arts as well as architecture.

intoduction

THE CARIBBEAN INTRANSIT MOVEMENT

As an academic project we aim to document and confront the historical material circumstances and ideological paradigms within which rich artistic expressions have emerged often through struggle. Many such expressions are threatened or stifled, thus, even as we recognize the potential of these artistic forms and practices, we attempt to unveil and transgress persistent dogged frameworks. In concerning ourselves with the potential of the arts to stimulate social change, we aim to propose theoretical and practical alternatives toward socio-cultural and politico-economic advancement through the arts. To this end Caribbean InTransit engages in inquiry into the economic and political context of the arts, technological dimensions of the culture industry, the design and implementation of sustainable cultural programming and the development of Caribbean Cultural policy and Cultural diplomacy. It is through an exploration of ourselves that we desire to discover and celebrate our worth and forge onward but without neglecting our contextual positioning in a globalized world. Our methodological approach enables this internalization and externalization, mirroring what esteemed Caribbean artiste and scholar Rex Nettleford described as “Inward Stretch, Outward Reach”. We thus incorporate, artistic practices and beliefs external to the Caribbean for consideration in order to provide a stage for comparisons and lend insight and breadth to our project. Our focus is the development of the Caribbean Arts and Culture industry via strategic partnerships in the Anglophone, Hispanophone, Francophone and Dutch Caribbean. We recognize Caribbean as global with a distinctive character of mobility and this informs our endeavor to establish links with universities and arts organizations worldwide. We invite and welcome such affiliations.

Caribbean InTransit is the second stage in a movement begun in 2005. The first forum, Caribbean Arts Village Ltd. (based in Trinidad and Tobago) was a social enterprise featuring a physical establishment, The Centre for the Arts, and a website which attracted over 90,000 hits in less than two years. The company aimed to facilitate, promote and network artists and artistes from around the Caribbean by becoming a community focal point, facilitating the showcase and development of Caribbean talent by offering youth training and programming. The Centre staged a Summer Visual Arts camp, a regular Visual Arts program, monthly Jazz events and Concert-Exhibitions of young artistes, Artist’s Lymes and Fashion and Dessert evenings. The Centre hosted a fringe festival for Carifesta 2006, two CD launches: Ray of hope by wellknown local vocalist Raymond Edwards, and the Ruiz Brothers Project by the Ruiz Brothers. The Centre was privileged to feature well known Trinidadian artists such as Isaac Blackman and The Love Circle, Sheldon Blackman, Ron Reid, Chantal Esdelle and Moyenne, The Alternative Quartet and Talk is Cheap, and young classical vocalists such as Renee Solomon, Janine Debique and Rahel Moore.

Marielle Barrow, Editor- in –Chief Caribbean InTransit VOL 2 | ISSUE 5 | SPRING 2016

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foreword

Marielle Barrow

Dehistories: Artistry at the Grand Rue, Haiti Take aim, shoot. We witness all smiles across the small courtyard and then back to drawing. This was how the little boys communicated with each other. They could find no common spoken tongue so games would have to suffice, drawing would do, dancing together would be their language of friendship. But difference was apparent as the dust clad Haitian children gathered around their foreign friend, all fixated on the colorful sounds of the game on his Ipad.

This interrupted their own work-play of carving images and forms with razor blades into the rubber of discarded tyres. But through the intervention of the Biennale, the experiences of all of these children were/are broadened, influences, exposure, vision, expanded. The valences of such interruption are left up for grabs.

The intermingling of modes of telling through this journal project reflects the complexity of the experience while imagining in its own way a kind of dehistory, an instance of removal from our own typical journal structure. Aspiring to restrict the format to academic texts or jargon or to section the issue based on style or mode of delivery seems remiss. Instead, we have chosen to present the experience in its comingled variety as a more accurate contextualization of events and encounters in all their cacophony, allowing the reader to create his own sense rather than directing a positivist agenda. We believe through this approach that the richness is not lost and we invite you to pull apart the story, re-organize it, put it back together recognizing its messiness- its conflicts and its harmony.

What are the stakes of foreign intervention and entrepreneurship in the land of another? What is lost or gained through local-foreign co-authorship of interventions, in stories and histories told and untold, revealed and obscured, appropriated and lost? What are the politics of race, class, gender and origin at play before, during and after the occasion? Where do mis-education, misunderstanding, misrepresentation and mistaken promises lie within this rubric? What is the politics of transformation, access and participation in this space as well as a politics of critique and expression? And how is common ground found in this context, effectively transferred in creating understanding, narratives and systemic interventions through the inclusion of more foreign others? What are the implications for the Biennale prototype, the threat of poverty tourism and contemporary art itself? The projects of local and foreign artists participating in the Haiti Ghetto Biennale explore and enact/perform these questions in various ways in response to the structure and intent of the Biennale organizers and the artists of the Grand Rue.

We create what we hope is a thirdspace of recognition, along the lines of Edward Soja, one that transcends both the real and imaginary (internal) spaces in articulating their inevitable convergence. In this regard, interviews in French often conducted by students of the University of Haiti, Humanities division (IERAH/ISERSS) are presented in raw transcript form as are Samantha Fein’s interviews with three Haitian artists and one visiting artist. At times, their rawness is almost untranslatable presenting experience as fractured, incoherent, distressing our process of reading, begging for an expansion in our spaces of comprehension. We pull the reader back, to some extent, by edited versions of some of these interviews presented in English thus interrupting the time-space of the unedited experience.

The journal as a thirdspace further breaks with chronological time and geographic space in compressing aspects of four editions of the Ghetto Biennale within a single text alongside white margins and interspersed with both consonant and dissonant excerpts of prescient academic essays, reflections, notes and interviews.

We invite you to consider this text and the Biennial itself as an Intra-clusion- an inclusion in order to push outward, a process of de-historicizing. We invite you to consider what Dehistories of dehistories or D-histories mean to you. How are they different? Are they an undoing of history, a re-making, a multiplicity of stories?

We have not completely strayed from the formal. The Atis Rezistans movement is positioned within a broader Haitian art historical context through questions posed by Ulysse and through questionexhortation by a Haitian arts practitioner, Kendy Verilus. A more formal text by a Western scholar forms a recognizable academic anchor, which locates Haiti within the all too apparent relief of Humanitarian intent and global visual discourses of need, frailty and empathy. These essays stand in tension with one another purporting the potency of a city that kills (Barbara Prezeau), kills death even as it kills life 1 , while touting the Haitian contemporary arts of Atis Rezistans as herald to a global shift in thinking through a contemporary visuality and a new mode registered within the history of Haitian artistry. Notably, there is no Haitian voice writing from inside the Biennale, save the verbosity of the works themselves that posit a new visual vocabulary.

An insider-outsider dialectic becomes visible where intimacy with the Grand Rue artists simulates and becomes an inside perspective as Haitian art scholars judiciously manouevre through their inside knowledge of Haitian context with a foreign trained eye.

This fifth special issue of Caribbean InTransit, “The Book of Promises: Stories and de-histories of the Grand Rue” documents the Haiti Ghetto Biennale with a case study on its 3rd edition that marked a shift in its execution, provocatively themed “Decentering the Market and Other tales of progress”. “The Book of Promises” begins with a history of engagement of Atis Rezistans from the perspective of Haitian artist, art historian and activist Barbara Prezeau. Her co-Guest Editor, Haitian art historian and activist, Sterlin Ulysse considers the material implications of these sculptural works, and the space they begin to occupy within personal realities, and the historicity of Haitian art.

Following local perspectives are the contextual propositions and critical self- analysis by the Biennale curators. Two brief reflections on the status of this sculptural interjection by Haitian art historians lead into a full length essay that anchors a critical global perspective of Haiti following the earthquake. Featuring almost fifty artists’ projects with accompanying interviews, images, stories and commentaries surrounding the 3rd edition of the Biennial paints a multiplicity of stories but further to this is a thematically curated look at the Biennial project as a whole across its four editions. Finally, there is a coda that engages with the biennial and its context in relation to similar Latin American experiences.

1 We might consider this death, both dirty and transcendent, as aisthisis (p. 6 Susan Buck-Morss “Aesthetics and Anaesthetics: Walter Benjamin’s Artwork Essay Reconsidered” October, Vol. 62. (Autumn, 1992), pp. 3-41.), a greek term for aesthetics whose etymological meaning references our sensory experience of knowledge, a corporeal cognition. It is meaningful to toggle back to the origins of the field of

8 CARIBBEAN INTRANSIT

The boundary between inside and outside becomes a tenuous, permeable scale over the eye and where it lies is papered over by the dust of the Grand Rue streets. With no escape from the multi-valenced proponent of foreign investment complicated by this dialectic, we find ourselves with the need to strike a balance of thought between the terms of intervention and intra-clusion. We think in terms of outside intervention but in the case of the Biennale, perhaps a notion of intra-clusion proposes a more dialogic platform where binaries are dissolved and dialectics mined, in favor of something more which we are yet to put our finger on. aesthetics that is set in reality rather than art, the sensible, empirical in lieu of cultural and illusory. At the Grand Rue, this early understanding of aisthisis as touch, smell, hearing, seeing and an association of aesthetics with war (p.10 Buck Morss) sits well with Grand Rue artistry, where an advanced understanding of the aesthetic as no longer referencing beauty may be at play.

Wébert Lahens

essays, notes reflections:

What is, perhaps, ugly, in our eyes, in the arrangement of materials, takes on symbolic value in the finished work.

Perceived in this way, doesn’t contemporary art render a service to art that is locked in a minimal discourse, namely: “This is beautiful “; beyond which nothing exists, for more than twenty centuries. Today, another approach opens the mind: “This is ugly.”

VOL 2 | ISSUE 5 | SPRING 2016

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Barbara Prezeau

essays, notes reflections:

Du Musée Pluribus unum au collectif Atis Rézistans Genèse et contradictions

10 CARIBBEAN INTRANSIT

Dès ma rencontre avec les sculpteurs André Eugène et Céleur Jean Hérard, en 2001, à l’inauguration du Centre Culturel AfricAméricA, dans le quartier de Pacot à Port-au-Prince, plusieurs problèmes se posaient déjà. Au fil des multiples collaborations qui ont suivi, (la dernière exposition collective à l’Hotel Marriott de Port-au-Prince, ayant eu lieu en mars 2015 dans le cadre de la 6ème édition du Forum Transculturel d’Art Contemporain, avec l’anglais Reynald Lally pour Commissaire invité) nous avons su, mes collègues artistes et moi concilier certaines de nos attentes réciproques. D’autres, néanmoins se sont révélées des divergences trop profondes, demeurant insurmontables, in fine. Après une si riche expérience, il serait temps de reconnaitre que nos priorités, nos urgences ne sont pas les mêmes. Il est illusoire, avec des moyens purement artistiques, d’apporter une réponse à l’immensité de la détresse d’un pays naufragé. Ici, bien plus qu’ailleurs, l’acte créateur ne nourrit pas. Il prolonge la naissance/agonie.

Au cours des 15 années (1999/ 2015) de militance obstinée, j’ai créé successivement la Fondation AfricAméricA (1999), le Forum Multiculturel d’Art Contemporain (2000) qui deviendra le Forum Transculturel d’Art Contemporain dès sa 3ème édition, le Centre Culturel du même nom (2001) et avec l’artiste multimédia Maksaens Denis et le sculpteur Eddy Jean Rémy, le Musée Communautaire Georges Liautaud au Village Artistique de Noailles, à Croix-des-Bouquets (2008). De plus, avec le support de l’Institut Français et de son Directeur de l’époque, Paul Elie Lévy, j’ai réalisé à titre de commissaire, les deux premières éditions de « la fête de la sculpture » en 2004 et 2005 qui donnaient suite au projet évolutif « sculptures urbaines » en Haïti et en dehors de ses frontières. Pendant toute cette période, j’ai gagné ma vie en travaillant comme employée dans le secteur privé, finançant cette aventure à même mon salaire, tandis que l’exercice fastidieux de la recherche de subventions, requerrait de plus en plus, une véritable expertise. Mon implication à la Fondation AfricAméricA est demeurée bénévole, jusqu’en 2013.

cadre de l’exposition du même titre qui se tenait à l’invitation de l’historienne d’art et critique, Allison Thompson, à la Barbade, dans le contexte du congrès annuel de l’Association Internationale des Critiques d’Art (AICA). Les sculpteurs, Eugène, Céleur et Killy avaient fait le voyage. C’était pour tous les trois, leur premier déplacement hors d’Haïti et également leur premier contact avec le milieu international de l’art. Mon texte insistait sur la relation cyclique entre Port-au-Prince, les artistes et les œuvres « …ils s’abreuvent de la cité en un fécond aller-retour, du lieu de création, à la rue, de la rue au marchés, du marché au cimetière… ». Rétrospectivement, ce texte m’apparait comme le marqueur d’une rupture dans le fil apparemment lisse et continu de l’histoire officielle de l’art haïtien. De fait, Il s’agit de sculpture, une discipline jusquelà méprisée en Haïti, mais surtout, la ville féroce, s’y désigne désormais en tant que « matrice », « théâtre », lieu de vie et de création. Une page tournait sur le mythe solaire de « l’art de la fête et du vodou » porté jusque-là par des générations de peintres paysans.

D’une manière ou d’une autre, André Eugène, Céleur Jean Hérard et Gyodo, tous sculpteurs de « La Grand Rue », ont été non seulement associés à toutes ces initiatives, mais cellesci ont contribué à les faire connaitre d’abord en Haïti, puis dans la Caraïbe et ensuite à une échelle internationale. Les expositions, les participations aux colloques, à des résidences (Barbade, La Réunion, Paris) et Festivals, en plus de bénéficier d’une mobilisation des médias haïtiens, ont été accompagnés de publications, systématiquement relayées sur la toile, par le portail de l’association « Gens de la Caraïbe » dans un premier temps et sur le site de la Fondation AfricAméricA à partir de 2004.

L’année suivante, à l’invitation de la critique dominicaine Marianne Tolentino, l’article « la ville chaos et se héros de la récupération » publié dans le numéro 14 de novembre 2004, dans la revue Cariforum, sera illustré en pleine page, des photographies de « aigle », sculpture en bois, pièces de métal, fils de plastique d’Eugène et « vierge », bois, métal et caoutchouc de Céleur. Toujours en 2004, seront publiés à Cuba, les articles « El arte haitiano contemporaneo : danza entre exodo y exostismo » dans « Anales del Caribe » (article publié en français, la même année dans Africulture) et « La ciudad caos y sus heroes de la recuperacion » dans le numéro 233 d’octobre/décembre de « Casa de las Americas ». Ces articles associent Eugène, Céleur et Gyodo (présenté pour la première fois au centre culturel AfricAméricA en octobre 2004 : La chambre/atelier dans laquelle gîte, ce faiseur d’utopie est une savante installation qui se décrypte à la flamme d’une bougie, en plein midi : masques, sculptures, peintures, appliques s’entassent jusqu’à effacement de la taule nue du toit. Plastiques, bidons, caoutchouc, fil de fer, ventilateurs, ampoules opalescentes, crudité vive d’un jour étroit crevant la cloison bleue ciel, le lit se devine à peine sous la moisson.

Comment exposer une pareille œuvre ?) à l’émergence d’un mouvement qui révolutionne l’art haïtien et s’inscrit dans la contestation et la résistance à l’ordre établi.

D’autres démarches de la Fondation AfricAméricA ont été déterminantes dans la reconnaissance des sculpteurs de la « Grand rue », c’est le cas du film « Pluribus unum » de Maksaens Denis qui sera présenté en 2001 à l’occasion de « AfricAméricA@SAT » dans le cadre élargi du Festival Vues d’Afrique à Montréal, puis à Berlin.

A titre d’exemple, l’article « Bakas, chimères et autres monstres » a été publié dans le Nouvelliste en Novembre 2001 et accompagnait la première exposition d’Eugène et Céleur, jamais réalisée dans un espace spécifiquement dédié à l’art contemporain. Deux ans plus tard, en septembre 2003, sous le titre « Sculptures urbaines », un catalogue au format de poche, édité à un millier d’exemplaires, était distribué dans le

Tandis qu’au moment du Forum 2006, avec « Sculptures pour la Paix : lundi 19 juin, sur l’esplanade du MUPANAH, au cœur de la capitale, les représentants du programme des Nations Unies pour le désarmement, DDR, remettaient aux sculpteurs, Kossi Assou du Togo, André Eugène, Céleur Jean Hérard, Gyodo, un lot d’armes préalablement démontées et rendues inutilisable par la MINUSTAH. Une cinquantaine

Avec le recul du temps, ce qui m’apparait essentiel, c’est l’inscription durable, de l’art contemporain y compris des sculpteurs de la Grand Rue, dans le paysage culturel haïtien. En effet il est quasi impossible de trouver une référence à l’ « art contemporain haïtien », avant la première édition du Forum de la Fondation AfricAméricA. Aussi, dès la création du Centre d’Art Haïtien (1943), l’art d’Haïti est perçu, vendu, commercialisé en tant que production « intemporelle » (titre de l’œuvre d’André Malraux qui visite Haïti, on le sait, en 1975). Œuvres uniquement marquées par la géographie, inspirée de la magie et des dieux. Œuvres, indifférentes à la condition humaine, à la souffrance, à l’histoire, au présent.

Si le concept d’art contemporain haïtien s’est imposé aujourd’hui, grâce à l’acharnement des uns et des autres, il est encore au cœur du débat. A savoir : « l’art qui se fait ici et maintenant » contre une dérive sémantique qui enfermerait l’ensemble des expressions évoquées, dans un carcan « langagier », un « style » voire une « technique » où la « récupération » serait l’effet d’une mode et non plus une nécessité imposée par un contexte à la fois urbain et économique. C’est d’ailleurs cette version mensongère d’artefact et de pratique artisanale qui est actuellement exploitée par les marchands d’art.

Toujours avec la distance conférée par le nombres des années, l’ensemble de ces expériences, commissariats d’expositions, rédaction d’articles, visites guidées des ateliers, médiation institutionnelles, ont permis d’expliquer, d’organiser et de faciliter la rencontre des publics avec les vérités premières des œuvres.

On ne peut pas y lire, mes interrogations personnelles, mes doutes, sur la cohorte de pièges encombrant forcément toute relation entre le reste du monde et un pays tel qu’Haïti : exotisme, voyeurisme, fantasmes, magie, sexe, mercantilisme et charité.

Y sont tues également, mes réserves sur les dangers de la fabrication de masse, la « factorisation », l’appauvrissement par la répétition, la confusion entre auteurs et apprentis, encouragée d’ailleurs par les maîtres eux-mêmes ; les risques de plagiats autres sources de querelles et de dissidences. Dangers aussi du sujet sensible, du travail des enfants…

C’est avec la même distance que je questionne la récupération délicate du terme « ghetto ». S’il s’agit d’interroger la tension entre « centres » et « périphéries », je répondrais par la référence au jeux de poupées russes : la Grand rue est un ghetto de Port-au-Prince qui est un ghetto de la Caraïbe qui…Et aussi, l’art contemporain est un ghetto dans l’histoire mondiale de l’art… L’art contemporain haïtien, le ghetto du ghetto du ghetto.

Et d’ailleurs, l’exclusion n’est pas que le fait des autres. Quel artiste en Haïti se sent concerné par le réchauffement climatique ? La jungle de Calais ?

Sujet plus immédiat : il faudrait un jour consacrer tout un colloque sur ces luttes qui nous mobilisent trop souvent en Haïti, mes collègues artistes et moi, lorsque les œuvres sont vandalisées, brûlées en public, les créateurs emprisonnés, agressés, assassinés…

Parce que, Port-au-Prince la ville chaos, tue.

essays, notes, reflections

de journalistes, ainsi que des écoliers et des passants ont assisté à l’activité, rencontré les artistes et discutés sur la question du désarmement en Haïti. Sculpture en direct pour la paix, se déroule tous les jours devant le MUPANAH et sera clôturé le jeudi 26 juin, à 10 heures du matin ». Cette manifestation en plein air, a été médiatisée localement et internationalement par les services de communication de l’ONU. C’est cette visibilité décuplée qui a immédiatement amené l’ONG anglaise Christian Aid, à me contacter afin de réaliser avec les mêmes artistes, une sculpture et un atelier avec un groupe d’enfant de carrefour feuille, dans le cadre de la commémoration de l’abolition de l’esclavage par l’Angleterre. Cette invitation survenait alors que je retournais aux études à l’Université Paris Dauphine. Avant mon départ j’ai organisé une rencontre entre Gyodo et les responsables de l’ONG. La suite est largement relatée par les divers témoignages de cette publication : Mario Benjamin les accompagnera à Liverpool, c’est la rencontre avec la photographe et anthropologue Leah Gordon, le début d’une nouvelle page d’histoire. Création des groupes Atis Rézistans, Ti moun Rézistans, Télé Ghetho (avec Romel qui sera l’élève de Maksaens Denis en création numérique) et surtout Ghetto Biennale, évènement auquel je n’ai pas été associée, à cette date.

Barbara Prézeau Stephenson Perpignan, 18 février 2016

Bibliographiques:

Prézeau Stephenson Barbara – Mutations et permanences dans l’art contemporain haïtien – Recherches en esthétique # 20- Janvier 2015 Prézeau Stephenson Barbara - Haiti now, the arts of mutants – Curating in the caribbean – The green box- Berlin- 2012 Prézeau Stephenson Barbara- L’art contemporain haïtien : une danse entre l’exode et l’exotisme- Africultures 58- Janvier 2004.

Prézeau Stephenson Barbara - La ville chaos et ses héros de la récupération-Cariforum # 14- Novembre 2004.

Prézeau Stephenson Barbara – El arte haitiano contemporaneo : danza entre exodo y exotismo – Anales del Caribe- 2004 Prézeau Stephenson Barbara- La ciudad caos y sus heroes de la recuperacion – Casa de las Americas # 233 – Octobre/décembre 2003 Sculptures urbaines- Thompson Allison et Prézeau Stephenson Barbara – Catalogue d’exposition – Edition AfricAméricA- Septembre 2003 15 ans d’art contemporain en Haïti- Edition AfricAméricA- Décembre 2014

Liste des URL’ s

http://www.africamerica.org/Du-15-au-19-juin-Les-activites-duForum-au-jour-le-jour_a95.html file:///C:/Users/Barbara%20Stephenson/Downloads/Journal%20 Le%20Matin,%2021%20juin%202006.pdf http://www.africamerica.org/Du-26-au-30-juin-Les-activites-duForum-au-jour-le-jour_a98.html http://www.africamerica.org/Le-Centre-culturel-AfricAmericApresente-GUYODO_a27.html http://www.africamerica.org/Andre-Eugene-et-Barbara-Prezeau-enresidence-a-La-Reunion_a43.html http://www.africamerica.org/Romel-Jean-Pierre_a295.html

VOL 2 | ISSUE 5 | SPRING 2016

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essays, notes, reflections

Barbara Prezeau

Du Musée Pluribus unum au collectif Atis Rézistans Genèse et contradictions [Translated from _________by ____________ ] As soon as I met sculptors Andre Eugene and Jean Herard Céleur in 2001 at the inauguration of AfricAméricA Cultural Center in the Pacot neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, several problems became apparent. Over the many collaborations that followed (the last group exhibition at the Marriott Hotel in Port-au-Prince, which took place in March 2015 as part of the 6th edition of the Transcultural Forum of Contemporary Art, with the English Reynald Lally as guest curator) my fellow artists and I reconciled some of our mutual expectations. Other differences, however, have proved too deep, remaining insurmountable. After such a rich experience, it is time to recognize that our priorities, our needs are not the same. It is illusory to attempt to respond to the immense distress of a wrecked country through purely artistic means. Here, more than elsewhere, the creative act is not bread. The creative deed prolongs the throes of birth and death.

Over the last 15 years (1999-2015) with stubborn militancy, I successively created AfricAméricA Foundation (1999), the Multicultural Forum of Contemporary Art (2000), which became the Transcultural Forum of Contemporary Art since its 3rd edition, a Cultural Center of the same name (2001) and with multimedia artist Maksaens Denis and sculptor Eddy Jean Rémy, the Community Museum Georges Liautaud inside of the Artistic Village of Noailles in Croix-des-Bouquets (2008). Moreover, with the support of the French Institute and its director at the time, Paul Elie Levy, I mounted, the first two editions of “the feast of sculpture” in 2004 and 2005 that responded to the evolving project “urban sculpture” in Haiti and outside its borders. Throughout this period, I earned my living by working as an employee in the private sector, often financing this adventure through my salary, while recognizing that the tedious exercise of research grants, would require more and more real expertise. My involvement with the Foundation AfricAméricA remained voluntary until 2013.

In one way or another, André Eugène, Jean Herard Céleur and Gyodo all sculptors of “The Grand Rue” have not only been associated with all these initiatives, but these events have helped to make the artists known first in Haiti, within the Caribbean and then on an international scale. Exhibitions, participation in symposia, residencies (Barbados, Reunion, Paris) and Festivals, in addition to mobilizations of Haitian media were accompanied by publications, systematically relayed on the web portal the association, ”www.gensdelacaraibes.org “ at first and on the website of the AfricAméricA Foundation from 2004.

For example, the article “Bakas, chimeras, and other monsters” was published in the Nouvelliste in November 2001 and accompanied the debut exhibition of Eugene and Céleur, which was for the first time staged in a space dedicated to contemporary art. Two years later, in September 2003, under the title “Urban Sculptures”, a pocket-size catalog, published in a thousand copies, was distributed as part of the exhibition of the same title which was held at the invitation of the art historian and critic, Allison Thompson, Barbados, in the context of the annual conference of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA). Sculptors Eugene Céleur and Killy had traveled. It was for all three, their first trip outside of Haiti and also their first contact with the international

12 CARIBBEAN INTRANSIT

world of art. My text emphasized the cyclical relationship between Port-au-Prince, artists and their works “... they drink of the city, giving in fruitful return, from the space of creation to the street, from the street to the markets, from the market to the cemetery ... “. In retrospect, this text appears to me as the marker of a break in the seemingly smooth, continuous thread of the official history of Haitian art. In fact, this is about sculpture, a discipline hitherto despised in Haiti, but more specifically about this fierce City-State (in reference to the Antiquity) that is now referred to as a “matrix”, “theater”, a place of life and creation. A page turned within the solar myth of the “art of celebration and voodoo” worn previously by generations of peasant painters.

The following year, at the invitation of the Dominican critic Marianne Tolentino, the article “City Chaos and Heroes of Recycling “ published in issue 14 of November 2004 in the journal Cariforum presented full page photographs of “eagles”, wood sculpture, metal parts, the plastic dolls of Eugene and “virgin” wood, metal and rubber of Céleur. Also in 2004, published in Cuba, the articles “El arte Haitian contemporaneo: danza between exodo y exostismo “ are in “Anales del Caribe” (Article published in French, the same year in Africulture) and “La ciudad caos y sus heroes of the Recuperacion “in issue 233 October / December” Casa de las Americas “. These texts associated Eugene, Céleur and Gyodo (Gyodo exhibited for the first time at the AfricAméricA cultural center in October 2004: The room / studio in which house, this utopia-maker lives, is an installation artist that decrypts the flame of a candle, at noon: masks, sculptures, paintings, appliques pile up, erasing the bare jail roof. Plastics, cans, rubber, wire, fans, opalescent light bulbs, bright rawness of a narrow day, bursting sky blue wall, the bed barely visible under the harvest… how do we exhibit such a work?) to the emergence of a movement that revolutionized Haitian art and is part of the protest of and resistance to the established order.

Other projects of the AfricAméricA Foundation have been instrumental in the recognition of the sculptors of the “Grand Rue”, including the film “Pluribus unum” of Maksaens Denis presented in 2001 on the occasion of “AfricAméricA @ SAT “in the broader framework of the Festival Vues d’Afrique in Montreal and Berlin.

On the occasion of the 2006 Forum, with “Sculptures for Peace: Monday, June 19, on the esplanade of MUPANAH the heart of the capital, the United Nations program, representatives for disarmament, DDR, gave sculptors, Kossi Assou of Togo, André Eugène, Jean Herard Céleur, Gyodo, an assortment of dismantled weapons deemed unusable by MINUSTAH. Fifty journalists and schoolchildren as well as passersby have been attending the activity meeting the artists and discussing the issue of disarmament in Haiti. This Live sculpture for Peace, will take place daily before the MUPANAH and will close Thursday, June 26, at 10 in the morning. “ This outdoor event was publicized locally and internationally by the UN communications services. It is this tenfold visibility which immediately led the British NGO Christian Aid, to contact me in order to attain the services of the same artists to create a sculpture and deliver a workshop to a group of children from Carrefour Feuille, as part of the commemoration of the abolition of slavery

by England. This invitation occurred when I returned to school at

In hindsight, what appears to me essential is the durable inscription of contemporary art including sculptors of the Grand Rue in the Haitian cultural landscape. Indeed, it is almost impossible to find a reference to “Haitian contemporary art” before the first edition of the Forum of AfricAméricA Foundation.

Also, since the creation of the Center for Haitian Art (1943), the art of Haiti was perceived, sold, and marketed as “timeless” (title of the work of André Malraux who visited Haiti in 1975). These works were marked only by geography, inspired by the magic and gods.

They were works indifferent to the human condition, suffering, history, the present.

If the concept of Haitian contemporary art exists today, thanks to the tenacity of many, we are still in the heart of the debate. Namely: “art is done here and now” against a semantic drift that would lock all the expressions mentioned in a straitjacket “language”, “style” or even a “technical” where the “ recycling “ would be the effect of a fashion rather than a necessity imposed by a context that is both urban and economic. It is thus this false story of the artifact and artisanal practice that is currently used by art dealers.

Still with the distance afforded by the passing of years, all of these experiences, mounting of exhibitions, writing of articles, guided tours of the workshops, institutional mediation, have allowed the explanation, organization and facilitation of publics who encounter the primary truths of the works.

One cannot necessarily read my personal questions, my doubts concerning the cohort of bulky traps as contaminating any relationship between the world and a country such as Haiti: exocitism, voyeurism, fantasy, magic, sex, commercialism and charity.

Here also fallen silent, are my reservations about the dangers of mass manufacturing, the “fabrication”, impoverishment through repetition, confusion between authors and apprentices, encouraged also by the teachers themselves; the risk of plagiarism other sources of quarrels and dissensions. Dangerous also is the sensitive issue of child labor ...

It is with this same distance that I question the delicate recovery of the term “ghetto”. If we mean to interrogate the tension between “centers” and “peripheries”, I would answer via reference to games of Russian dolls: the Grand Rue is a ghetto of Port-au-Prince which is a Caribbean ghetto that ... And also, contemporary art is a ghetto in the world history of art ... Haitian contemporary art, the ghetto,

of the ghetto, from the ghetto.

And besides, exclusion is not only the doing of others. What artist in Haiti cares about global warming? The Calais jungle?

There are more immediate concerns: an entire day devoted to a symposium on these struggles that my fellow artists and I often mobilize in Haiti would be required, to discuss the works that are vandalized, burned in public, creators imprisoned, assaulted, murdered ...

Because, the chaos of Port-au-Prince city kills.

essays, notes, reflections

the University Paris Dauphine. Before I left I organized a meeting between Gyodo and leaders of NGOs. The following is widely reported by various sources: Mario Benjamin accompanied the artists to Liverpool, where they encountered photographer and anthropologist Leah Gordon, in turning a new page of history.

Creation of the groups Atis Rezistans, Ti moun Rezistans, Télé Ghetho (with Romel a studentof Maksaens Denis studying digital creation) and especially Ghetto Biennale, an event with which I have not been associated to date.

Barbara Prézeau Stephenson

Bibliographiques:

Prézeau Stephenson Barbara – Mutations et permanences dans l’art contemporain haïtien – Recherches en esthétique # 20- Janvier 2015 Prézeau Stephenson Barbara - Haiti now, the arts of mutants – Curating in the caribbean – The green box- Berlin- 2012 Prézeau Stephenson Barbara- L’art contemporain haïtien : une danse entre l’exode et l’exotisme- Africultures 58- Janvier 2004.

Prézeau Stephenson Barbara - La ville chaos et ses héros de la récupération-Cariforum # 14- Novembre 2004.

Prézeau Stephenson Barbara – El arte haitiano contemporaneo : danza entre exodo y exotismo – Anales del Caribe- 2004 Prézeau Stephenson Barbara- La ciudad caos y sus heroes de la recuperacion – Casa de las Americas # 233 – Octobre/décembre 2003 Sculptures urbaines- Thompson Allison et Prézeau Stephenson Barbara – Catalogue d’exposition – Edition AfricAméricA- Septembre 2003 15 ans d’art contemporain en Haïti- Edition AfricAméricA- Décembre 2014

Liste des URL’ s

http://www.africamerica.org/Du-15-au-19-juin-Les-activites-duForum-au-jour-le-jour_a95.html file:///C:/Users/Barbara%20Stephenson/Downloads/Journal%20 Le%20Matin,%2021%20juin%202006.pdf http://www.africamerica.org/Du-26-au-30-juin-Les-activites-duForum-au-jour-le-jour_a98.html http://www.africamerica.org/Le-Centre-culturel-AfricAmericApresente-GUYODO_a27.html http://www.africamerica.org/Andre-Eugene-et-Barbara-Prezeau-enresidence-a-La-Reunion_a43.html http://www.africamerica.org/Romel-Jean-Pierre_a295.html

VOL 2 | ISSUE 5 | SPRING 2016

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essays, notes, reflections

Sterlin Ulysse

L’art de la Grand-Rue: un défi théorique Si pour nombreux critiques et historiens de l’art, l’Afrique joue un rôle important dans la mise en place d’une esthétique typiquement haïtienne, la sculpture qui est pourtant une expression fondamentale dans l’art africain, n’a pas autant que la peinture suscité de grands intérêts. Ce qui fait que les noms des sculpteurs n’ont pas toujours eu la même résonnance que ceux des peintres. D’ailleurs Michel Philippe Lerebours, dans son souci de différencier l’art dit primitif haïtien de l’art traditionnel africain, observe que l’art volumique n’est pas une pratique artistique tout à fait haïtienne : « La sculpture n’est point, à bien parler, un art haïtien. Si le vaudou s’est servi des vêvê pour symboliser les loas, s’il a choisi les chromolithographies catholiques pour les représenter, il n’a jamais pensé à faire tailler leurs images dans la pierre ou le bois. Le vaudou est loin d’être une religion fétichiste au sens propre du terme.

Les décorations des tambours – toujours en bas-relief – sont les seules manifestations de sculpture populaire que nous connaissons. Même au niveau des arts « sophistiqués », la sculpture a eu peu de chance en Haïti.

Les sculpteurs comme Jaymé Guilliod, Laforesterie et Normil Charles, n’ont pas éténombreux avant 1944, et la « renaissance » de la peinture ne s’est pas accompagnée d’une renaissance de la sculpture malgréles efforts de Dimanche, de Lafontant ou de Jasmin Joseph. Peuton vraiment classer parmi les sculptures les plaques de métal taillé de Geaorges Liautaud, de Serge Jolimeau, de Murat Brière et de son frère Edgard, de Damien Paul.

Puisque les formes taillées dans les plaques de métal ne tendent ni à créer le volume, ni même à le suggérer. Etant considérées comme les plus grandes réussites de la « sculpture haïtienne » et les plus originales, ne prouventelles pas que l’esthétique haïtienne serait passablement étrangère au volume et sur ce point capital au moins, s’opposerait à l’esthétique africaine[1]. » La question de théorisation de la sculpture haïtienne se pose pleinement avec les œuvres des artistes de la Grand rue[2]. Ces œuvres nous interpellent à tous les niveaux : dans la forme comme dans le fond. Si des œuvres faites avec des matériaux récupérés ne constituent pas un fait nouveau dans le monde de l’art, mais dans l’univers plastique haïtien, ces oeuvres choquent tant par la matière que par le sujet. Les matériaux se trouvent dans les décharges à ordures, dans les garages de fortune, dans la rue, au hasard ; mais encore au cimetière, puisque le crâne est un élément d’une grande importance. Tout est bon pour faire de l’art ou l’artisanat, car dans l’art de la récupération, la frontière entre art et artisanat ou art et non-art est tout à fait insaisissable.

En ce qui concerne la thématique, nous sommes tout à fait déroutés.

Si certaines œuvres se livrent dès le premier coup d’œil, d’autres nous résistent et laisse nous contenter de vague suppositions.

Comment interpréter les bouches tordues de Céleur Jean Hérard, les clous qui encerclent les yeux dans ses masques ou encore son portrait au milieu de tous ces fatras, des objets qui ont été déjà surutilisés. Qu’est-ce qu’il veut nous dire ?

14 CARIBBEAN INTRANSIT

Qu’est-ce que les artistes de la Grand rue veulent nous dire avec tant de phallus, alors que nous connaissons la pruderie de la société haïtienne ? A bien observer les œuvres, il ne s’agit pas nécessairement d’œuvres érotiques, car parfois le visage des sculptures exprime autre chose que du plaisir. Que nous suggèrent ces poupées entourées de clous ? Quels messages nous renvoient les assemblages de Jacques Frantz alias Guyodo ? Chaque objet nous pose une question qui nous renvoie à notre connaissance de nous-même, de notre société, du monde, de nos croyances.

Connaissons-nous assez de nous-même pour être capable de juger autrui ? Connaissons-nous assez de l’objet esthétique pour être capable de déterminer sans aucun risque ce qui est de l’art et ce qui ne l’est pas? C’est toute notre histoire qui se trouve interroger.

Sommes-nous effectivement ce que nous avons toujours prétendus être ? Telle est la leçon d’humanité, de simplicité, d’humilité que nous donnent les œuvres des artistes de la Grand rue.

Les artistes de la Grand rue et l’histoire de l’art haïtien Une question cruciale nous reste encore à poser. Quelle place donnée aux œuvres des artsites de la Grand rue dans l’histoire de l’art haïtienne. Peut-on les mettre avec les Bosmetal et les intégrer ces deux catégories dans une version sculpturale de l’art naïf.

Cette démarche peut s’avérer fausse dans la mesure où certains des artistes de la Grand rue, tels Céleur Jean Hérard et André Eugène, étaient d’abord des sculpteurs accomplis et que c’est à un moment bien déterminé ils ont choisi cette voie. Ils avaient autres choses à dire ; d’autres besoins à faire sentir ; d’autres stéréotypes à casser. Comme les peintres de l’esthétique de cruauté, les artistes de la Grand rue jettent un regard critique sur la société et la politique. Ils refusent toute esthétique qui prône la perfection de la forme, ou l’exactitude de l’anatomie pour permettre aux corps de refléter dans leur dénuement, leur déformations, leur apparence zombilique toute la misère infligée à l’homme tant physiquement et moralement. Si les faits qui leur inspirent leur art sont négatifs, leur langage et leur message sont pourtant positifs.

Même si souvent nous avons l’impression que nous faisons partie d’une danse macabre, tant nous sommes entourés de crânes et de phallus. Cependant, les crânes ne réfèrent aucunement à la violence, même pas à notre mort prochaine, mais plutôt à la connaissance. La connaissance de nous-même, de l’autre et du monde. Ils revendiquent une société meilleure pour leurs enfants ; ils pensent même que l’art peut parvenir à changer la vie. Oui, ils veulent choquer. Ils choquent pour dénoncer l’état actuel des choses, cette situation de délabrement totale. Enfin, il choquent parce qu’ils prouvent que même dans la plus grande la précarité l’homme reste un créateur puissant.

If for many critics and art historians, Africa has played an important role in the coming into being of a typically Haitian aesthetic, sculpture which is a fundamental expression of African art, has not raised as much interest as painting. The names of sculptors have not always had the same weight as those of the painters. Until now, we have not had a complete written history of Haitian sculpture.

Thus, theoretially, Haitian sculpture still has a long way to go.

“Sculpture is not strictly speaking a Haitian art form. If Vodou makes use of the Veve symbolize the loa, if Vodou has chosen to be represented through Catholic chromolithographies, it has never before carved its images in stone or wood”. Voodoo is far from a fetishist religion in the true sense. The decorations drums - still base relief sculpture - are the only manifestations of popular sculpture that we know. Even at the “sophisticated” level, sculpture has had scant luck in Haiti. Sculptors like Jayme Guilliod, Laforesterie and Charles Normil, were not numerous before 1944, and the “rebirth” of painting was not accompanied by a revival of sculpture despite the efforts of Dimanche, Lafontant or Jasmin Joseph. Can we really rank as sculpture, the metal plates carved by Georges Liautaud, Serge Jolimeau, Murat Briere and his brother Edgar, or of Damien Paul? The shapes cut into the metal plates tend neither toward the creation of volume, nor even to its suggestion. Being considered as the most successful of “Haitian sculptors” and the most creative does not prove that the Haitian aesthetic would be quite foreign to volume and on this important point at least, would oppose the African aesthetic. “ The question of théorisation of Haitian sculpture is fully posed through the works of Atis Rezistans at the Grande Rue. These works interpellate us at all levels: in form as well as foundation/history. If works made with recuperated materials do not constitute a new mode in the world of art, but within Haitian plastic arts, thèse works shock as much with their material as their subject. The materials are found within the garbage dumps, in the garages of fortune, randomly in the streets as well as in the cemetery, as the skull is an element of great importance. Everything is useful in making art or craft, as in the art of recovering the boundary between art and craft or art and non-art is quite élusive.

indeed what we have always claimed to be? This is the lesson of humanity, simplicity, humility offered to us through the works of Atis Rezistans.

A crucial question is yet to be explored however. What place do the works of Atis Rezistans occupy in the history of Haitian art ? Can their works be aligned with Bosmetal and can these two catégories be integrated in a sculptural version of naive art ? This proposition can prove false insofar as some Atis Rezistans sculptors began the movement as accomplished sculptors and in a marked and precise decision they knowingly chose this path. They chose to separate themselves from naive Haitian art. They had other things to say, other needs to be made known and felt, and sterotypes to break.

Like the painters of the aesthetics of cruelty, Atis Rezistans casts a critical eye on society and politics. They refuse any aesthetic that promotes the perfection of form, or the accuracy of the anatomy to allow the form of the body to reflect through destitution: their deformations, their zombilique appearance, all the misery inflicted on man both physically and morally. If the facts that inspire them, their art, are negative, their language and their message are nevertheless positive. Although we often feel that we are part of a macabre dance, as we are surrounded by skulls and phallus, the skulls do not refer to any violence, or impending death, but rather knowledge. Knowledge of ourselves, each other and the world.

They demand a better society for their children, and they dare to think that art can per-chance shift their fortune. Yes, they want to shock. They shock to denounce the current state of things, this total disrepair. Finally, they shock because they show that even mired in instability insecure man remains a powerful creator.

essays, notes, reflections

Moreover, Michel Philippe Lerebours, in his desire to differentiate so called Haitian primitive art from traditional African art, observed that volume or mass is not exactly characteristic of Haitian artistic practice:

Regarding the theme, we are left disconcerted. While some the thematization of some works are engaged from the first glance, others resist and leave us to our vague assumptions. How should we interpret the twisted mouth of Céleur, nails encircling the eyes in his masks or his portrait in the middle of a mêlée of debris, objects that have already been overused. What is he trying to tell us?

What is Atis Rezistans trying to communicate by using the phallus with such boldness and frequency, especially when we know the prudity and squeamishness of Haitian society? What do these dolls surrounded by nails suggest ? Each object poses a question which brings us to into a deeper knowledge of ourselves, our society, the world, our beliefs. Do we know enough of ourselves to be able to judge others? Do we know enough of the aesthetic object to be able to determine without any risk what is art and what is not ? It is our complete history that is brought into question here. Are we

[1] Michel Philippe Lerebours, Haïti et ses peintres. Souffrances et espoirs d’un peuple, TI, Port-au-Prince, Imprimeur II, 1989, p. 278.

[2] Pendant longtemps ils ont été connus sous l’appellation Atis Rezistans avec comme chefs de fil André Eugène, Céleur Jean Hérard et Jacques Frantz dit Guyodo, mais depuis quelques temps Guyodo et Céleur ne se reconnaissent plus dans l’esthétique véhiculée par le groupe. Guyodo fonde l’Atelier Timoun Klere où il encadre des enfants, tandis que Céleur continue à travailleur seul tout encourageant des jeunes comme Zaka.

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Editor’s Note: Curatorial Statement

Prosopopoeia, Presence, Absence and Translations This project is the beginning of a series of experiments of curation.

In thinking through the intensity, complexity of exchanges, virtual and real landscapes, translations of these realities and stories into blogs, videos, twitter posts, newspapers and so on, we present a loosely curated synopsis of the four editions of the Haiti Ghetto Biennial. Time, place, space and sound as they coalesce within vignettes of works are both reduced and amplified as they are traced through thematic suggestions arising out of the aesthetic and contextual content of works. Reading these as a chronicle constituted of fragments, instances and episodes makes real the impossibility of a linear narrative of Haiti. Our format is only, yet another critical instance of communication and translation of our connection to the time-space of the Biennale and the Grand Rue artistic complex. An attempt to re-enter, continue and engage the artists’ process of prosopopoeia, where their absent voices become present on a world stage, where their imaginaries become luminary and their deceased are re-invested with humor and purpose.

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The creative deed prolongs the throes of birth and death.

Barbara Prézeau

What is, perhaps, ugly, in our eyes, in the arrangement of materials, takes on symbolic value in the finished work. Perceived in this way, doesn’t contemporary art render a service to art that is locked in a minimal discourse, namely: “This is beautiful “; beyond which nothing exists, for more than twenty centuries. Today, another approach opens the mind: “This is ugly.”

Wébert Lahens

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I am still wondering: What are the politics of my ‘turning away’? Is it more politically correct or more ethical to eschew a slum neighborhood rather than to sit down and talk to its residents?

David Frohnapfel

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Performance is inherent to the medium of photography; any individual posing for a portrait arranges and edits not just their appearance, but their persona. I have a deep curiosity about the performances taking place on both sides of the camera, the ways power can shift between the photographer and the photographed and whether the image resulting from this exchange is more a depiction of one or the other. In order to make a portrait, everyone involved has to negotiate a politics of representation. Performance is inherent to the medium of photography; any individual posing for a portrait arranges and edits not just their appearance, but their persona. I have a deep curiosity about the performances taking place on both sides of the camera, the ways power can shift between the photographer and the photographed and whether the image resulting from this exchange is more a depiction of one or the other. In order to make a portrait, everyone involved has to negotiate a politics of representation.

Laura Heyman

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It is a process of navigating self and the other. I can’t really talk about wanting to change the community with my art because that is seen as an imperialist, dominating tendency. Rather, I focus on reflecting an aspect of the community through my projections on a larger scale so that it becomes, in some way, a mirror of what I see. I am very much a foreigner, so art becomes a way of communicating, opening a dialogue about the place. In all my art I am kind of the outsider so my art becomes a way to communicate with persons that are very different from myself and the projections also reflect this communication in a poetic gesture back to the community. Projections have a lot to do with buildings, architectures, stories that buildings hold in an effort to make these histories more tangible.

They are meant to reflect the spirit, soul of the city.

The projections tell a story of the past and present.

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You see this as social practice? What do you want the end result to be?

Annette Elliot

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Leah Gordon

The Ghetto Biennale – an introduction In December 2009 Atis Rezistans hosted the 1st Ghetto Biennale.

They invited fine artists, film-makers, academics, photographers, musicians, architects and writers to come to the Grand Rue area of Port-Au-Prince, Haiti, to make or witness work that was made or happened, in their neighbourhood. In the words of the writer John Kieffer, it was hoping to be a “‘third space’...an event or moment created through a collaboration between artists from radically different backgrounds”.

critiques on-board immediately, and therefore I wish to take this chance to thank the two Haitian artists, the Independent Curators International for inviting me to participate in one of their curatorial intensives, and also the Department of Art and Design at the University of Bedfordshire for funding my participation, which gave me the critical environment within which to contemplate these complexities.

The Ghetto Biennale was firstly conceived as a kind of reverse mechanism of the mobility that most international artists enjoy and a way for the Haitian artists to plug themselves into art networks, to experiment with collaborative practice and to publicise their artwork. In some ways the Ghetto Biennale was created as more of a Trojan Horse, with a primary agenda to publicise and find different distribution routes for Atis Rezistans and other Haitian popular art production. As Barbara Prézeau Stephenson, Haitian artist and critic wrote, “The continuing success of the movement…

Atis Rezistans (Resistance Artists) will no doubt contribute to shelve the myth of the naïve peasant artist…Bypassing the tight network of Haitian galleries and art dealers…The dissemination of art is following different paths today…The centres of creation are still the shanty towns…but the artists are in contact with the rest of the world – despite poverty and a general lack of resources.’

While the Ghetto Biennale was conceived to expose social, racial, class and geographical immobility, it seemed to have upheld these race and class inertias within its structural core. The 3rd Ghetto Biennale was looking for balance amongst the multifarious and often contradictory agendas underpinning the event. We needed to question at what level could this be institutional critique whilst all of the Haitian artists want to plug themselves directly to the institutions that have for many years denied them entry, and secondly what does this term mean coming from a region where the institutions are not yet as developed as they are in Europe and Northern America. Also the Ghetto Biennale had to be reviewed within the growing academic discourse surrounding poverty tourism. There is a growing controversy considering ‘tourism and poverty alleviation, voyeurism, ethics and exploitation’. We were always aware of the possible exoticising nature of visiting artists interest in working in Haiti and wanted to choose more future projects that could critically engage with this position. The effect of the earthquake in January 2010 and the ensuing NGO culture has also had a dramatic effect on cross-cultural relations in Haiti and the Ghetto Biennale, which needed to be addressed by the 3rd Ghetto Biennale. The straplines for the previous two Ghetto Biennales were ‘What happens when first world art rubs up against third world art ? Does it bleed ?’ It was not imperative for us to assess whether the Ghetto Biennale bled or not, but to pinpoint exactly where. These ruptures, discharges and hemorrhages could hopefully lead us to a greater understanding of how we can explore the boundaries and limits of the contemporary globalized art market, and have meaningful discussion about sameness and diversity in an allegedly de-centered art world.

The 2nd Ghetto Biennale took place in December 2011 and in contradiction to its aims, revealed its own contextual, internal and institutional vulnerabilities to the inequalities that run across race, class and gender. These inequalities were embodied within the organizational structure of the Ghetto Biennale, the hierarchical nature of the local host community and the increasingly masculine gendering of the site, provoking further questioning of the way these dynamics play out in a so-called increasingly globalized art world. This took the form of the unwelcome at the time, through the reflections of public critiques by a number of the Haitian artists including Alex Louis, Romel Jean Pierre and Mabelle Williams, revealing a cadre of un-self-reflective and overly pedagogic projects and another failed cut and paste Westernstyle conference. In no doubt due to my personal paralysing and unconsidered neo-colonial position I was unable to take these

We decided to respond to the challenges posed by the previous incarnations of this event by giving the 3rd Ghetto Biennale a theme. We sought artistic projects made on site, which investigate or respond to, ‘The Market: from the local to the Global’. For the first time we were asking the Haitian artists to respond to the same theme as the visiting artists…a simple step but something that exposed the previous blindness of the neo-colonialism implicit in the earlier Ghetto Biennales and also marked the transformation from a marketing mechanism to a Biennale. The Haitian artists responded to the theme with vigor, which also proved how the Ghetto Biennale had organically developed from a partial Trojan Horse into a more egalitarian, though complex and still problematic, platform for creativity. We also decided to make it a lens free Biennale for the visiting artists, to resist the ethnographic gaze and the commodity fetishism that the

The Ghetto Biennale has been a dynamic, but sometimes unstable, entity ever since its inception. Conceptually formulated as the positioning of two clashing words, after a long evening’s discourse between myself and the architect, Vivian Chan, it mirrors encounters of disparate worlds. Putting these two incongruous, historically and culturally charged, and almost mutually exclusive words together seemed to be possibly incendiary, but also a performative and experimental answer to the over two-year long discussions with Andre Eugene about Atis Rezistans’ lack of mobility and exclusion from the global art world. The Ghetto Biennale seemed a possible mechanism through which Atis Rezistans could have more control over the distribution of their works and ideas within the art world.

John Kieffer, Don’t Mention the War – Let’s Talk About Me, (ArtQuest 2008) http://www.artquest.org.uk/uploads/recovered_files/Dont%20mention%20the%20 war%20lets%20talk%20about%20me.pdf

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Barbara Prézeau Stephenson, Haiti Now – The Art of Mutants in David A. Bailey, Alissabdra Cummins, Axel Lapp and Allison Thompson (ed.s) Curating in the Caribbean, (The Green Box 2012)

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lens can engender, reversing the power dynamic implicit in the gaze itself and also questioning the contemporary hunger for images and documentation in the art world.

The 3rd Ghetto Biennale in Port-au-Prince tried to create a space for artistic production that attempted to offer, whilst understanding all its limitations, artists from wide socioeconomic classes, a complex creative platform. We wanted the Ghetto Biennale to start a dialogue about a third space in the art world, neither bending to commercial or institutional interests. Harald Szeeman has spoken about his Museum of Obsessions of wanting ‘to abolish the barrier between high art and outsider art’ We would like the Ghetto Biennale to become a platform, which can bring a new level of visability to non-Western self taught art. The Ghetto Biennale wants to be a small point on a historical trajectory that includes ‘Magiciens de la Terre’, ‘The Third Havana Biennale’ and the pivotal ‘Documenta 11’ but to extend the discussion to include issues of class. Finally, in the future, we also want the works made and performed to embody, and perhaps transcend, these debates so that the Ghetto Biennale can be critiqued by the works produced rather than the economic, political and social discourse surrounding it.

Bibliography:

John Kieffer, Don’t Mention the War – Let’s Talk About Me, (ArtQuest 2008) http://www.artquest.org.uk/uploads/recovered_files/Dont%20 mention%20the%20war%20lets%20talk%20about%20me.pdf 2 Barbara Prézeau Stephenson, Haiti Now – The Art of Mutants in David A. Bailey, Alissabdra Cummins, Axel Lapp and Allison Thompson (ed.s) Curating in the Caribbean, (The Green Box 2012) 3 Eveline Dürr and Rivke Jaffe, Theorizing Slum Tourism: Performing, Negotiating and Transforming Inequality, (European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies 93, Oct 2012) 4Harald Szeeman quoted in Hans Ulrich Obrist, A Brief History of Curating (Zurich/Dijon: JPR/`Ringier/Les Presses du Reel, 2011) p. 93

[3] Eveline Dürr and Rivke Jaffe, Theorizing Slum Tourism: Performing, Negotiating and Transforming Inequality, (European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies 93, Oct 2012)

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David Frohnapfel

The 3rd Ghetto Biennale 2013: Decentering the Market and Other Tales of Progress When I first arrived in the neighborhood between the Rue du Magasin de l’État and the Gran Rue in the epicenter of Port-auPrince in 2011, which is often described as a bidonvil or more unfortunately as a “ghetto”, I was shocked by the extreme poverty.

I never felt so privileged, so white and so out of place in my entire life. I had studied at the Universidad de la Habana in Cuba and worked on several projects in the Global South but I never experienced poverty and inequality in such a crass and heartbreaking confrontation. I wanted to leave right away. But before I could follow my instincts, I was approached by André Eugène who gave me into the hands of artist Getho Jean Baptiste. Getho, who grew up and lives in this area, showed me around his neighborhood and gave me a generous and hospitable welcome. I did not feel less white and less privileged at the end of his tour through the huts of corrugated metal and impressive artist’s ateliers but he helped me to overcome the first impulse to turn my back to this area and to accept the poverty of its people as a reality that cannot be ignored.

Two years later I co-curated with Leah Gordon, André Eugène and Jean Hérald Celeur the 3rd edition of this conflicting biennalespectacle in this particular poor neighborhood and therefore helped to invite more than forty artists from around the world to share my own experience. I am still wondering: What are the politics of my ‘turning away’? Is it more politically correct or more ethical to eschew a slum neighborhood rather than to sit down and talk to its residents? The Ghetto Biennale creates a space where visiting and local artists find themselves literally embodying structural positions of marginality and centrality, as they become personally involved in re-configuring difference, sameness and inequality in their own interaction with one another. But in doing so, the Ghetto Biennale runs risk to turn into yet another form of contemporary poverty tourism, similar to the one, which can be experienced in India, South Africa or Brazil. In this sense, it would rely on converting difference, poverty and insecurity into pleasure and consumable adventure for artists who want to escape the boredom of a toothless and institutionalized art world of the centers for a week. But from my point of view, the Ghetto Biennale is first and foremost a chance to be able to diminish clichéd images of the urban poor and provides an opening for more nuanced and self-determined representations for artists of a local neighborhood in Port-au-Prince. It is a case of “globalization from below” that creates a Talmudic space for debate and conflict for artists from extremely different socio-economic strata. Hopefully this edition of Caribbean InTransit will give us a wonderful insight into the conflicting opinions surrounding this provocative project by André Eugène and Leah Gordon and enrich the discussions about sameness and diversity in an allegedly de-centered art world.

Quand je suis arrivé dans le quartier entre la rue du Magasin de l’État et de la rue Gran de l’épicentre de Port-au-Prince en 2011, ce qui est souvent décrit comme un bidonville ou plus , malheureusement, comme un «ghetto» , j’étais choqué par l’extrême pauvreté . Je n’ai jamais senti si privilégié, si blanche et si hors de toute ma vie. J’avais étudié à l’Université de La Havane à Cuba et a travaillé sur plusieurs projets dans les pays du Sud, mais je n’ai jamais connu la pauvreté

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et les inégalités dans une telle confrontation crasse et crève-cœur.

Je voulais partir tout de suite. Mais avant que je puisse suivre mes instincts, j’ai été approché par André Eugène qui m’a donné dans les mains d’artistes Getho Jean Baptiste. Getho, qui a grandi et vit dans ce domaine, m’a fait visiter son quartier et m’a donné un accueil généreux et hospitalier. Je ne me sentais pas moins blanc et moins privilégiés à la fin de sa tournée à travers les cabanes de tôle ondulée et les ateliers de impressionnant artiste mais il m’a aidé à surmonter la première impulsion à tourner le dos à cette région et à accepter la pauvreté de ses habitants comme une réalité qui ne peut être ignoré.

Deux ans plus tard, j’ai été co-commissaire avec Leah Gordon , André Eugène et Jean Hérald Céleur la 3e édition de cette biennale - spectacle en conflit dans ce quartier pauvre particulier et donc aidé à inviter plus d’ une quarantaine d’artistes du monde entier de partager ma propre expérience . Je me demande encore : Quelles sont les politiques de mon « détourner » ? Est-il plus politiquement correct ou plus éthique pour éviter un quartier de taudis plutôt que de s’asseoir et de parler à ses résidents ? La Biennale Ghetto crée un espace où la visite et les artistes locaux se trouver incarnant littéralement positions structurelles de la marginalité et de la centralité , qu’ils deviennent personnellement impliqué dans la différence de re - configuration , l’uniformité et l’inégalité dans leur interaction avec l’autre. Mais, ce faisant , la Biennale Ghetto court le risque de se transformer en une autre forme de tourisme de bidonville contemporain , semblable à celle qui peut être expérimenté dans l’Inde, l’Afrique du Sud ou le Brésil . En ce sens , il serait compter sur la conversion de la différence , la pauvreté et l’insécurité dans le plaisir et l’aventure consommable pour les artistes qui veulent échapper à l’ennui d’un monde de l’art édentée et institutionnalisée des centres pour une semaine . Mais de mon point de vue, la Biennale de ghetto est d’abord et avant tout capable de diminuer images stéréotypées des citadins pauvres et fournit une ouverture pour des représentations plus nuancées et auto-déterminés pour les artistes d’un quartier locale à Port -auPrince. Il s’agit d’un cas de « mondialisation par le bas » qui crée un espace de débat talmudique et de conflit pour les artistes de très différentes couches socio-économique. Espérons que cette édition de Caraïbes Intransit nous donnera un magnifique aperçu des opinions contradictoires sur ce projet de provocation par André Eugène et Leah Gordon et enrichir les discussions sur la similitude et de la diversité dans un monde de l’art aurait dé-centrée

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“I saw a bird bathing and every summer they come to England and every Winter they go to Africa. Birds, they have no frontiers. Occidental countries have no frontiers like this. They took petrole. africa and these coutnries are rich but africa is the continent that is in so much difficulty, epidemics and aids etc they have been pillaged by these big powers. so the bird signifies both freedom and also it kills but one has to use the liberty in the right sense. You should not use the sprit of the bird, the spirit of freedom in the wrong way. inspiring to ravage is negative. Déjà vu Jean Hérard Celeur

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Wébert Lahens

Ghetto Biennale: Ghetto biennale: Une nouvelle vision de l’art contemporain The Haiti Ghetto Biennial 2013 (December 7-14) was a pretext to lay the groundwork for a renewal of contemporary art. Touches, expression, ways of speaking have reached a new art form in the discourse of recovery: not as the subjects, not as the raw material, but also the quality of exchanges between artists. Visitors - (Asians, Americans, Latin Americans, Caribbeans and other foreigners) are involved as actors in the Biennale. They occupied the premises betraying a spirit of sharing. This interest means that a new page turns for contemporary art in Haiti. Artists, national and foreign visitors come to seek a second wind, a cure, a spell of renewal to uphold them in the race of life.

What is it that constitutes the soul of the resistance of these recuperation artists is that they are involved, on one hand, in the cultural heritage of Haiti, and on the other, they invest in the surrounding ghettos to suckle, here, a cultural trait, a habit, there, a reference, a value specific to the surrounding culture to create a work that will serve the entire Haitian society and, above all, shape a vision of the world. Is it not that in hoisting these artists to the rooftops of the world, Asians, Dutch, Latin Americans, Americans, Europeans (French, English, Germans, Italians , etc.) that they find themselves in the discourse of the “ Atis Rezistans “? This community of thought illuminates the practices of the creatives of other cultures to renew contemporary art so that it will no longer suffer from deprivation.

I draw on my research on the evolution of the art of recuperation in Haiti in this reflection, including through public lectures, articles and lecture notes.

According to the artist André Eugène, the Atis Rezistans movement started in 1996. During this period, local youth of the district Daniel Leander, Grand Rue, Fort Saint Claire and the street, Magasin de l’Etat, came together at Pele Park at Bicentaire opposite l’EDH (Electricity company of Haiti) to amuse themselves: play football with their respective teams. One day, under the administration of the magistrate of the capital, Manno Charlemagne, garbage was dumped on the playground. Rather than admit defeat, these young people, in the words of Eugene , had a brilliant idea: recover these disparate materials: caoutchous , scrap metal of all kinds, dolls, skulls of human beings , ECCE shoes (waste) scrap cars , disparate objects and make art . This is one of the ways they used to escape the confines of their situation. This form of recovery has broadened the scope of all the first artists most of whom were woodcarvers.

This act of imagination joined the work of some other great designers of the world, such as Ben Tufnell, James Putnam, Rina Banerjee, Nathan Coley, Jochem Hendricks, etc.. They thus give a different view of Haitian art that was confined to the naive or primitive art to attain a level of contemporary art, the modern or post- modern.

1 - ùHabitus : The habitus is a set of internalized patterns , according to Pierre Bourdieu “The practical sense .” ( Paris , Editions du Minuiit , 1980) 2 - Aesthetics of Decay , a concept coined by art critic Wébert Lahens during a public lecture at ENARTS ( Ecole Nationale des Arts) . This article uses the concept can be found in the Haitian newspaper Le Nouvelliste on the site google “ aesthetic of sagging .”

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Today, ‘’poor art begins to impose its wealth. The conference on contemporary art at the Haitian- American Institute (5) allowed us to trace the history of the movements in Haiti. According to our survey, four groups were involved in disseminating the art in the country: the Grand Rue (Atis Rezistans) with Andre Eugene and Jean Herard Céleur; at the bottom of the Rue Pavee, with sculptors who received orders to produce pieces during the decade of the 2000s, to be used as decoration for carnival. These artisans have taken the trash in their environment: rubber, springs, crankshafts to produce these works; the high plateau of Bel- Air received another type of commission in 2000: to make monsters. They went at it and built monsters using canvas, skulls, boots of soldiers to keep the monsters standing, dolls with buttons, pieces of tin, forks to serve as the character’s hands, pieces of mirrors along the body of the characters, old television screens to decorate the monsters.

Finally, in Carrefour -Feuilles, the artist Lyonel St Eloi created his work objects recovered from nature or on the streets. However, he deals with detritus in a different manner to the other recuperation artists. How should we consider, apprehend, consume this new art of recuperation?

Redefining taste or beauty This assemblage of heterogeneous, disparate materials, incites my disgust. These new buildings under construction, aren’t they fed by, built upon this debris and these scraps, this growing decrepitude? Can disgust inspire new art? DuChamp is brought to mind in his “readymades “ and Picasso, for his transformation of negro art. Intellectual laziness controls our perception of beauty.

Beyond, for example, “The Mona Lisa “, does beauty no longer exist, does beauty not demand more of us? We limit ourselves to a categorization of Fine Arts that distorts our appreciation.

Contemporary art deconstructs the aesthetics of beauty and introduces a single element, but relevant: ugliness. This is what goes into the construction of the new building. What is, perhaps, ugly, in our eyes, in the arrangement of materials, takes on symbolic value in the finished work. Perceived in this way, doesn’t contemporary art render a service to art that is locked in a minimal discourse, namely: “This is beautiful “; beyond which nothing exists, for more than twenty centuries. Today, another approach opens the mind: “This is ugly.” This new perception enriches the artwork.

The aesthetics of ugliness or aesthetics of decay (2) reinforces the aesthetics of beauty, because inside beauty, there is also a teeming ugliness In his book “Distinction” (3) Pierre Bourdieu has laid the groundwork for thinking that enriches our working hypothesis. He starts off with the ideas of Immanuel Kant in “ The judgment of taste “ where “tastes are also dislikes”, that is to say, “the disgust of the taste

3 - Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction , Social Critique of the Judgement of Paris Midnight Ed 1979 or visit Herold Toussaint “ Symbolic Violence and social habitus “ Read critical sociology of Pierre Bourdieu in Haiti , PP 94-95 , 295p , . Ed Henri Descamps, 2012.

4 - lakous : 1 - Lakou Eugene, at the sculptor André Eugène , the main venue of the event : Ghetto Biennale 2013 2 - lakou Dilco , adjoining lakou Eugene where artists had started the movement 3 - lakou Claude , the State Street store where some artists are out in the “ atis resistanz “ , especially children and youth continue to be trained.

young people to learn the art of recovery in these communities thus ensuring succession. This empathy for the spaces of Haiti, for interaction with Haiti, for Haitian art, does it announce a revival for contemporary art?

However we choose to respond on a personal level to these artistic works, the passion inspired by this art form has certainly received support from abroad, but the Haitians believe too much in themselves to remain totally dependent on the other. Indeed, the work of our artists defied the biggest references of poverty in this area. Hence, the Ghetto Biennale has become a crossroad of access in the lives of the Grand Rue artists.

http://parolenarchipel.com/2013/10/15/haiti-90-lesthetique-dudelabrement/

A moment at the Ghetto Biennale at the Grand Rue. The influx of foreign artists animated the Biennale as they brought their taste for art that enriched the space. The work was no longer about what they were doing or producing in their respective communities, but evolved through their discoveries of Haitian artistic production. This was their salient effort during their trips to Haiti. In this regard, Haiti can be described as a benchmark that renews the discourse on contemporary art - a must for artistry.

The 3rd edition of the Biennale appeared successful on three counts: it linked Haitian artists with foreign artists; It offered a new design for a biennial; and it enriched the work of foreign artists or inspired some in their own research, thesis or organization of major cultural activities. In addition, there were two aspects that caught my attention. Firstly, the’ La kous » validation of a space of dilapidation, secondly, the documentation of the artist Maksaens Denis. The entire Biennial certainly happens at the Grand Rue where the organizers have valued different lakous. For example, lakou Eugene (4) served as the main contact point where the conference was held in addition to some Biennale artist projects: Lee Lee Nourish or Horoki Yama Moto on ‘’ poor ‘’ art. Lakou Dilco, adjoining that of Eugene, saw the screening of Maksaens Denis on ‘’unity in diversity’’. The filmmaker on this occasion (in 2001), received an award in Germany. However, Denis is best known as a visionary artist, he produces installations that aim to shift world views. This prioritization of the video projection of the artist Denis Maksaens enforces the value of two of the leading artists of the Atis Rezistans, Andre Eugene and Jean Herard Céleur. The film made in 2001, gave a vision of the state of affairs before the earthquake ofJanuary 12, 2010. Similarly, Lakou Claude, on the street, « Magasin de l’Etat » was used for the Vision Forum/ Woolo Music Performance. This practice creates a symbiosis between lakous, with an immediate consequence: encouraging more children and

Bibliography:

http://www.alterpresse.org/spip.php?article15628#.UsRagGRDujI

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of others”. For example, choose a car brand “ Hummer “ or “ Ford Everest “ different from others is not only to assert our preference, but our disgust of possible choices of others. We reformulate the idea of Bourdieu in our own thesis here: there – is there no beauty in ugliness, in what we perceive or reject as ugly? The ugly, is it not another expression of beauty? In addition, there – isn’t there a social categorization in our choices?

http://lenouvelliste.com/lenouvelliste/article/123530/Lart-derendre-utiles-nos-fatras.html http://culturehaiti.ht/actualite/nouvelle-session-en-critique-dart/ 1. ùHabitus : L’habitus est un ensemble de schèmes intériorisés, selon Pierre Bourdieu dans « Le sens pratique ». (Paris, Ed. du Minuiit, 1980) 2. Esthétique du délabrement, concept inventé par le critique d’art Wébert Lahens à l’occasion d’une conférence publique à l’ENARTS (Ecole Nationale des Arts). L’article qui reprend le concept peut-être consulté dans le journal haitien, Le Nouvelliste, sur le site de google « esthetique du delabrement ».

3. Pierre Bourdieu, la Distinction, critique sociale du jugement, Paris Ed. de Minuit, 1979 ou consulter Hérold Toussaint « Violence symbolique et habitus social », Lire la sociologie critique de Pierre Bourdieu en Haiti, PP 94-95, 295p., Ed. Henri Descamps, 2012.

4. Les lakous :1- Lakou Eugène, chez l’artiste sculpteur André Eugène, le principal lieu d’exposition de la manifestation :Ghetto Biennal 2013; 2- lakou Dilco, attenante à lakou Eugène où les artistes avaient demarré le mouvement ; 3- lakou Claude, à la rue Magasin de l’Etat où certains artistes sont sortis au sein des « atis resistanz », surtout les enfants et les jeunes qui continuent à etre formés.

5. L’art contemporain en Haiti, conférence prononcée à l’Institut Haitiano-Américain le mercredi 27 novembre 2013 dans le cadre d’une exposition sous le thème « La beauté de l’expression : les nouveaux travaux d’art de Bel-Air. »

5 - Contemporary art in Haiti , lecture at the Haitian- American Institute Wednesday, November 27, 2013 in an exhibition under the theme “ The beauty of expression : the new art work of Bel- air. “

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Samantha Fein

Tales of Progress: Haiti’s Third Ghetto Biennale Along the Grand Rue, a major thoroughfare in downtown Portau-Prince, ambulatory vendors balance their wares on their heads while weaving between vehicles. There are no traffic lights, so navigating this swirling mob of public buses, SUVs, and motorcycles requires both timing and fortitude.

While Haiti may seem an unlikely setting to hold an international art exposition, behind the Grand Rue’s concrete walls is the site of the Ghetto Biennale. Hosted by Haitian sculpture collective AtisRezistans (Resistance Artists), this year’s Ghetto Biennale brought together some fifty artists and art collectives from around the world. Now in its third iteration, artists were asked to respond to the theme: “Decentering the Market and Other Tales of Progress.”

André Eugène and Celeur Jean Herard are founding members of both Atis-Rezistans and participating artists in the Ghetto Biennale.

Despite having achieved respectable artistic careers, Eugène and Herard are starkly aware of the disparities confronting artists in the developing world. On more than one occasion, Eugène has been denied a U.S. travel visa to attend viewings of his work in cultural institutions. For these artists, proclamations by elitist art circuits of the so-called “globalized” art world sound bitterly hollow.

In 2009, Eugène piloted the Ghetto Biennale in partnership with British photographer Leah Gordon. In one sense, the biennale acts as an introductory agent between Haitian artists— the majority of who cannot afford foreign travel— and the global arts community.

International artists who come to participate are expected to create their projects on site in the Grand Rue neighborhood, relying on the Haitians’ knowledge of local materials and techniques. In exchange, the Haitian artists are taught strategies to network and negotiate the international art market. This year, for example, New York-based gallery director Robert Dimin led a workshop demonstrating the “Chelsea standard” of packing and shipping pieces.

The Ghetto Biennale is a defiant response to Western media’s construct of Haiti as a nation entrenched in victimhood. The project is ever evolving, cycling through periods of critical reflection and subsequent modification. In 2013, a ban on lens-based media was implemented upon foreigner visitors. The ban sought to reverse the ethnographic gaze (or “othering”) that occurs when the lived experience is mediated through a lens. In a project seeking to reclaim this gaze, Haitian trio Romel Jean Pierre, Racine Polycarpe, and Claudel Casseus took portraits of the international visitors and collaged the images with recycled materials from the Grand Rue area.

The Ghetto Biennale is a living and breathing social experiment, a microcosmic shift within the global power structure. Although the biennale does succeed in fostering collaboration between artists from radically different backgrounds, by no means is this process simple or without contention. Class and cultural barriers are not easily hurdled, and participating artists grapple with multiple, oftentimes contradictory, agendas. Such asymmetry is evident in the types of pieces realized during the Ghetto Biennale. While international artists gravitated towards the ephemeral —projects

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that were site-specific, performative, or relationally rooted— the Haitian artists were clearly producing objects to market and sell.

This contrast reflects an unsettling reality: while Western artists have the option to create without monetary ambitions, the Haitian artists are restricted to producing commodities to ensure their survival. Internal contradictions also surfaced, as visiting artists grappled with feelings of guilt and ambivalence regarding their participation.

The division between artists from the first and third world was central in iGhetto, a brilliantly conceived project by the Danish collective Wooloo. For this piece, the international artists were asked to display all Apple products they had brought to Haiti in a studio along the Grand Rue. In theory, the piece sought to express the material realities of being a working artist in the global economy. However, on the day of the exposition, only a handful of artists elected to participate. This dismal outcome speaks to the visiting artists’ discomfort in having their electronics exposed in an area with a high concentration of poverty.

To their credit, the curators of the Ghetto Biennale do not shy away from the tensions generated during the exhibitions, but instead welcome critical discussion and debate. The final day featured an open forum where participants broke into small groups to reflect and offer suggestions for future biennales. Ultimately, the Ghetto Biennale cannot offer quick solutions, but it can expose the problems. For artists like Brazil’s Jefferson Kielwagen, these conflicts are ripe material for future creative endeavors. Expressing a desire to return for the 2015 edition of the Ghetto Biennale, Kielwagen explained: “Now that I’ve been here, I have so many different ideas.

Now that I have experienced the culture and the city a little bit, I realize how much more could be done in terms of art.”

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Because, the chaos of Port-au-Prince city kills Barbara PrzĂŠzeau

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Marielle Barrow A Reflection

Though it is the other world that wounds Haiti, Haiti brings healing.

How can we write Haiti, write home when Haiti can barely be written amidst its propaganda. Writing a people whose richesse and power extends so far beyond the written is almost a tragedy. For to feel yourself again when the consumption of this world has dulled your senses, find Haiti. The dusts of the streets in the extreme that is Haiti, may cover your wounds. Perhaps because their wounds are deeper, so deep, that the force of blood gushing outward is life giving. Maybe it is because the voodoo religion, Catholocism and Christianity, and a visual culture based in the imagery of voodoo live in conflict, syncretic and accepted, that a deep and overwhelming coming to terms with history and humanity becomes a daily experience. Never quotidian because hunger and need should never be quotidian but it’s daily reality seems to make the creative impulse almost inevitable, inescapable, uncontrollable. And so in the ritual of feeling their surroundings, feeling the pulse of their past ebbing and flowing in their presence, they create sculptures in wood, plastic, metal, in an art of recuperation. Recuperation of lost selves, friends and others, recuperation of the humanity that was discarded in these objects, the stories that were forbidden to be told. Recuperation of their positionality in global discourses of identity, centers and peripheries and the who and what of contemporary art.

It is an art of ‘renouvellement’ that resists stereotypes, boundaries and your sense of comfort, perhaps nullifying the ambivalence with which their lives are too often met. Narratives of fracture, reconfiguration and defiance emerge with dismembered dolls often lying on a cross or floating on a cylindrical disc. Marbles bulge as eyes, rope and metal wrap bodies in beautifully confining body suits. Bottle caps crown distortions and nails render eyes visionless and mouths speechless in a poetic of crucifixion. The prevalence of dismembered dolls, skulls and the phallus have seemingly come to signify both a commodification of shock and a comfort with death.

Such is the decadence, honesty and brilliance of sculptures and plaques that often tower overhead in the muted tones of rust and dust at the Grand Rue in Haiti, where the community of artists Atis Rezistans has taken shape.

In the more considered pieces, while a visual language of tyres, contorted visages and nails is recognizable across the community of sculptors, themes of social justice, migration and modern day imperialism emerge with distinct visual vocabularies. Author of the movement, Jean Herard Celeur whose politics is embedded in the history of the global publicisation of the movement writes ‘home’, writes his politics of ‘home’ in myriad ways. Engaging discourses of blindness in a politics of identity, industrialization and first world-third world relations, he has created a series of birds, masques that carefully wrench their poignancy in your insides at first glimpse. Through what I am sure involved some level of misunderstanding through attempts at understanding each other in a mixture of French, English and creole, I gleaned of his works: “I saw a bird bathing and every summer they come to England and every Winter they go to Africa. Birds, they have no frontiers.

Occidental countries have no frontiers like this. They took petrole.

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africa and these coutnries are rich but africa is the continent that is in so much difficulty, epidemics and aids etc they have been pillaged by these big powers. so the bird signifies both freedom and also it kills but one has to use the liberty in the right sense.

You should not use the sprit of the bird, the spirit of freedom in the wrong way. inspiring to ravage is negative Masques I did a mask with 8 eyes. When I did the mask- it is 8 that direct the world. Why is it 8 that rule the world, why not all the countries come together and make a way, come to a common idea. One eye is needed for all I put a chain in the forehead because Haitians do not have chains on their feet and hands but they think that they are still mentally enchained. - women and men have this mentality you have to sort les chaines des les cerveaux (remove the shackles from your mind).

Les cloux, the nails are survival. The nails are always around the eyes- it is just a feeling, I don’t know.

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Dangerous also is the sensitive issue of child labor …

Barbara Przézeau

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essays, notes, reflections

essays, notes, reflections

Through the reportorial register of a victim and rescuer frame, imagery of Haitians as isolated victims awaiting external assistance invited viewers to affectively identify with neocolonial rationalities of power, support established modes of charitable response, intervention and trusteeship, and avoid alternative ethical and political forms of engagement.

John Woolsey

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Kendy Vérilus

Haitian Contemporary Art in the Prism of Supply and Demand A propos de l’art contemporain, il existe une question qui tracasse les critiques depuis des lustres, à laquelle on n’arrive pas encore à trouver des éléments de réponse convaincantes. Est-ce le marché de l’art contemporain qui crée l’offre ou l’art contemporain qui produit sa propre demande ? Dans ce jeu de l’offre et de la demande, il est difficile de trouver le point d’équilibre.

Les artistes contemporains de la grand’ rue communément appelés Atis Rezistans (André Eugène, Jean Hérard Celeur, Jacques Frantz dit Gyodo etc.) peinent à trouver des débouchés sur le plan national qu’international. C’est le même cas de figure pour les artistes avant –gardistes de la communauté de Bel- Air regroupés dans l’atelier Kongo Lawouze dont deux noms se détachent du lot : David Boyer et Bubreus Lhérisson.

L’avènement de l’art naïf en Haïti n’a pas été chose facile avant l’existence d’un créneau de distribution en Haïti et sur la seine internationale de l’art. Tout ceci nous porte à croire que l’existence d’un marché est une condition indispensable à la production artistique. La production d’art naïf avait son circuit de distribution et ses organes de propagande. Selden Rodman, (who is reported to be an) agent de l’ OSS qui de viendra plus tard la Centrale d’intelligence agence (CIA), directeur de « Haitian Art Center de New York avait le monopole du marché de l’art naïf haïtien, sur la cote EST Etats-Unis d’ Amérique. L’avenir de l’art haïtien ne dépendait pas totalement des haïtiens, mais des collectionneurs d’art naïf dispersés à travers le monde. Durant cette même période, le département d’Etat Américain contribuait autant que, le gouvernement haïtien pour le fonctionnement du centre d’art.

Les œuvres qui émanent des « Atis Rezistans » Illustrent bien l’expression de réalisme de cruauté. Cet art est viscéralement attaché à son créateur et au milieu qui l’a vu naitre. Le besoin de dire prédomine. Ses artistes dénoncent, les conditions infrahumaines dans lesquelles ils vivent. Loin d’être un art populiste, l’esthétique de cruauté qui se dégage des œuvres des artistes de la grand ‘ rue nous invite à visiter le quotidien des gens des ghetto de Port au Prince.

Grace à l’art, ses artistes du bas-fond auraient pu s’en sortir dignement de leur condition économique précaire. Mais hélas, ses œuvres deviennent avec le temps de colis encombrant pour leur créateur qui arrive difficilement à les conserver dans des salles inadéquates de leur maison de fortune. En tenant compte de leur situation, l’art contemporain issue de leur vécu de délabrement ne crée pas automatiquement la demande.

Paradoxalement, le marché de l’art contemporain gagne son premier milliard. Jean -Michel Basquiat, né à Brooklyn d’un père haïtien, Gérard Basquiat, occupe le premier rang dans le top 10 des artistes contemporains vendus aux Etats-Unis pour l’année 2013.

Soit 101 687 320 Euros. Jean - Michel Basquiat occupe aussi la première place dans le top 10 des artistes contemporains vendus en Europe avec la somme de 60 842 711 euros.

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Certains artistes contemporains d’origine haïtienne tels que Hervé Télémaque, Edouard Duval Carrie et tant d’autres ont la cote en hausse sur le marché de l’art contemporain.

Cependant, les « Atis Rezistans » de la Grand’ rue et ceux du BelAir, se livrent dans un combat journalier pour créer et produire des œuvres profondément enracinées dans l’esthétique de délabrement et du réalisme de cruauté tout en espérant qu’un jour le marché de l’art contemporain leur rendra justice.

Se souvenir qu’avant tout, l’art est une affaire de création et d’inventivité. Intimement liée à la commercialisation de l’art.

Vive le marché de l’art contemporain, vive la création artistique contemporaine.

With regard to contemporary art, one question has long confounded critics: Does the art market determine the supply, or does the art itself produce its own demand? It is difficult to locate the point of equilibrium.

Examples from Haiti and the Haitian Diaspora help us to consider this question. The artists’ collective of Grand Rue in downtown Portau-Prince—known widely as Atis Rezistans (Artists of Resistance) and founded by sculptors André Eugène, Céleur Jean Hérard, and Frantz Jacques “Guyodo”—have struggled to find opportunities to sell their work in the domestic and international markets, despite having success exhibiting in museums and galleries around the world. Collage artists of the nearby Bel-Air atelier Kongo Lawouze, including David Boyer and Dubréus Lhérisson, find themselves in a similar situation: their works have been warmly welcomed at the Grand Palais in Paris and at venues across the United States, but consumers do not buy. Success has been through media exposure; it is not economic.

Establishing economic viability is not a new challenge for artists in Haiti. There were few possibilities prior to the mid-twentieth century for talented painters and sculptors in the country to gain recognition for their work. The art naïf movement in Haiti during the late 1940s and ’50s took off globally precisely because of a carefully constructed distribution network that channeled Haitian art into the international art scene. American author Selden Rodman, who wrote extensively about Caribbean art and who organized exhibits of Haitian art in New York, was heavily implicated in the cultivation of this network. Working together with fellow American DeWitt Peters (founder of the Centre d’Art in Port-au-Prince, the institutional home for many naïf painters), Rodman maintained a veritable monopoly over sales of Haitian art naïf on the US East Coast through his tireless promotion of the movement’s artists. In fact, Rodman’s promotion of art naïf went as far as propagandizing and exoticizing the Caribbean nation, in that he explicitly ignored certain established artists—namely, Les Indigenistes such as Pétion Savain—in favor of other artists who represented what he formulated as a Renaissance in Haiti: Popular Painters in the Black Republic (the title of his 1948 book). While this American interference chagrined a number of Haitian art critics and intellectuals at the time, and could be posed as an infiltration into the nation’s cultural and political milieu—Rodman was, after all, an agent of the US Office of Strategic Services (which predated the Central Intelligence Agency)—it was a rather profitable affair.

Thus the future of Haitian art did not depend on Haitian buyers: collectors of art naïf were scattered throughout the world, and drawn in through Peters’ and Rodman’s efforts, as well as through other promotional activities conducted by organizations such as UNESCO. Rodman played an outsized role in creating the market: collectors largely became interested in art naïf because of Rodman’s publicity, and artists found an opening in the international art scene. This suggests that the existence of a market is a prerequisite for economically sustainable artistic production.

The works being produced by the Atis Rezistans collective and the atelier Kongo Lawouze today illustrate the cruelty of reality: there is no art market to exploit for the vast majority of artists in Haiti. Both the Atis Rezistans and the artists of Kongo Lawouze are inspired by living conditions in the capital’s crowded slums. Both groups are engaged in a dynamic reclamation of their environments, using the trash dumped in their popular class neighborhoods as the materials for creation. This art is therefore viscerally tied to its creators and the environment in which it was created. On a large scale, these artists are committed to a major revaluation project, in which they denounce the subhuman circumstances in which they live while transforming discarded waste into an aesthetic statement on their cruel exclusion from the middle class, as marginalized citizens. But while there exists an intellectual fascination with these great artists’ creations, which invite viewers a glimpse into the daily life of the majority in Port-au-Prince, the artistic results cannot be considered populist art: few want to display the products in their homes—this is the stuff of nightmares, they say. And so the situation represents an upward striving, for dignity and relief from their precarious economic situations, but there aren’t sufficient buyers to make an economic difference.

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[Translated from French by Rebecca Dirksen]

Paradoxically, contemporary art worldwide has brought in more than a billion US dollars; Haitian artists have seen very little of this fortune. Notable exceptions include Brooklyn-born JeanMichel Basquiat, whose Haitian roots run through his father Gerard Basquiat. Basquiat’s close association with Andy Warhol and others in that social circle during his short life likely played an important role in leading to the Haitian-American painter’s ranking as the number-one selling contemporary artist in the United States during 2013, generating 101,687,320 Euros. Basquiat was also ranked number one in Europe during the same time frame, to a sum of 60,842,711 Euros. Several currently active artists of the Haitian diaspora, including Hervé Télémaque and Edouard Duval Carrié, are rapidly rising stars who tap into into the global market of contemporary art.

Meanwhile, the Atis Rezistans from Grand Rue and the artists of atelier Kongo Lawouze in Bel-Air struggle daily to produce work deeply rooted in the aesthetics of decay and cruel realism that surround them, while hoping that their efforts will one day be repaid.

This reminds us that above all, while art is a matter of creation and invention, and often a very individual expression, it is inherently dependant on commercial forces and the distribution networks that support it.

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John Woolsey

Picturing and Policing Post-quake Haiti At 4:53pm on January 12, 2010 a magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck the island nation of Haiti. Lasting 35 seconds, the quake destroyed much of the country’s infrastructure, killed nearly a quarter of a million people, and displaced another 1.3 million citizens— nearly one third of the Haitian population. The quake leveled most of the nation’s capital, Port-au-Prince, destroying the city’s universities, police stations, government buildings and privately owned commercial and residential properties. Within hours of the quake, foreign governments, inter-governmental agencies and transnational non-state organizations mobilized their forces and publicized their intentions to deliver aid and provide life saving relief. As the American military, UN peacekeeping troops and transnational forces of NGOs descended upon Haiti over the next several days, media networks provided round-the-clock coverage of relief efforts and facilitated the calls of several charity campaigns.

For nearly a month, the aftermath of the quake and relief efforts were prominently visible in American television and print news media. Hourly updates on numerous 24-hour news channels provided by on-the-scene personalities and daily pictorial and narrative spreads in newspapers and weekly magazines created the impression that coverage was immediate, transparent and exhaustive.

Despite the illusion of transparency and omnipresence created by the onslaught of visual and discursive artifacts created to convey the aftermath of the quake, media portrayals tended to be characterized by a standard set of disaster motifs and racial stereotypes that tended to evoke feelings of pity and superiority rather than benign compassion (Balaji 2011). Coverage also tended to recirculate old caricatures of Haiti as a site of rampant criminality, despair and misery. In mainstream media coverage, American and UN military forces and international NGOs were presented as saviors rescuing helpless Haitian victims, usually depicted as suffering women and children. American celebrities and on-the-scene news correspondents appeared as “experts” and were pictured as selfless agents providing both aid and transparent access to Haitian suffering. Presented as stereotypical villains, Haitian officials were narrated as ineffective and corrupt, while young Haitian males were criminalized as “looters.” Finally, displaced Haitians seeking assistance were construed as a violent, surging, and riotous crowd in need of constant policing. While often well-intentioned attempts to foster compassion, the implication of many media narratives, op-ed pieces, and charity campaigns was that Haiti’s putatively intrinsic complications could only be ameliorated through the benevolent actions of external actors. Post-quake coverage thus reiterated a historical discourse in which “Haiti” figures prominently in the Western imagination as an exception to the otherwise linear unfolding of history and progress.

Undeniably, media coverage of the quakes’ aftermath contributed to a genuine sense of concern for the wellbeing of Haitians and mobilized various individuals and constituencies to participate in forms of mass charity, volunteerism and other laudable forms of humane conduct. Nevertheless, as Murali Balaji has argued, well-intentioned mobilizations of charity depended on “reified notions of American superiority and Haitian inferiority” and “did not cultivate global empathy but only re-affirmed a racialized pity

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towards black victims of calamity” (Balaji 2011, 66). If this process, as Balaji suggests, cultivated racialized forms of pity, it also carried on a long practice of projecting Haiti as an ongoing site of emergency to be managed and controlled by aggressive interventions and tutelage. Presenting the history of Haiti as one set of military coups and natural disasters after another, mainstream media depictions neglected almost entirely the history of foreign control and intervention that determined and contributed to Haiti’s history and present status as a so-called “failed state” and most “impoverished nation in the Western hemisphere”—the two most prevalent journalistic descriptors of the nation. Rather than using the quake as an opportunity to take responsibility for past interventions and ethically and politically reflect on the complicity of external actors for the “failure” of the Haitian state and impoverished status of its citizenry, mass media joined the UN, the United States and transnational NGOs in insisting on the continuation and intensification of programs of external management that ultimately operate to disenfranchise Haitians.

This essay briefly examines the conventions by which postquake Haiti was construed in popular American media, especially photojournalistic coverage. Rather than offering an exhaustive account of post-quake media reportage, I identify and explore three discursive and visual registers that operated to make Haiti visible as a site of perpetual calamity in need of aggressive external interventions. In the rescuer and victim register, Haiti’s status as a terrain in need of intervention was established through pictorial and narrative representations of the nation as a child in need of parental care and assistance from more “developed” and affluent nations. The black criminality and muscular savior register presented the Haitian population as a threat to themselves, as well as a threat to the “security” of the global order itself. Finally, in the emergency register, post-quake Haiti was not only targeted as a site demanding immediate intervention, but a historical, geographic and symbolic place of perpetual emergency. Before presenting a description of the registers, I provide a short history of Haiti as a site of external interventions and offer some context regarding the international community’s response to the quake.

Haiti’s History as Site of Intervention From its beginning as a an independent and sovereign state in 1804, Haiti—as the first Black Republic in the Western hemisphere—was treated as an economic and political threat to “civilization” itself.

It has, in one way or another for over 200 years, served as the constitutive outside of the putative “world order”—“old,”“new” and now “global.” As such a real and imaginary site, Haiti appears as a terrain in need of constant containment and management—that is, as a site in need of aggressive and totalizing external interventions and tutelary practices. In the early twentieth century, for example, Haiti was subject to imperial occupation (1915-1934) by the United States. Beyond securing a political and economic regime that served its interests, U.S. occupation resulted in the formation of a Haitian state that used its military apparatus to systematically suppress basic democratic processes. The militarization of the Haitian state under the tutelage of the U.S. also weakened the biopolitical functions of the state, including service-oriented practices of government dedicated to education and health care.

In return for military and economic assistance from the United States in the 1970s and 1980s, Haitian President Francois Duvalier (“Baby Doc”) opened up the economy to U.S. capital. In effect, Duvalier ceded the administration of economic policy to the U.S. and international financial institutions (IFIs). The United States, Canada and France worked with the IFIs to pursue a dual strategy of liberalization aimed at both establishing Haiti as the source of the “cheapest labor in the Western Hemisphere for the exportassembly industries established by foreign and domestic investors” and, at the same time, one of the “largest importers of U.S. food in the Caribbean Basin” (Dupuy 2010, 15). On the one hand, externally imposed market-focused development in Haiti is contingent upon the repression of the labor force—refusing its collective rights to bargain and denying it the higher wages and services it needs to care for its own wellbeing—and, on the other hand, it contributes to the environmental degradation that prevents the nation from pursuing sustainable and subsistence focused agricultural practices (Dupuy 2010). In addition, neoliberal policies of trade liberalization dedicated to exploiting Haitian labor as a source for an export-focused garment industry located in the nation’s capital are responsible for encouraging the “mass rural-urban migration that resulted in so many people being concentrated in the capital of Port-au-Prince on the day of the earthquake” (Mullings et al. 288).

In the months immediately following the quake the international community, including the IMF and the World Bank, pledged to forgive Haiti’s bilateral and multilateral foreign debt. However, rather than using the nearly $10 billion pledged by donors to invest directly in the Haitian government, the World Bank was put in charge of administering the entirety of donated funds. The World Bank’s subsequent distribution of funds to NGOs and other outside contractors was justified by “experts” citing the government’s history of failure and corruption or its “cultural backwardness” (Harrison 2010). Sometimes referred to as the “Republic of NGOs” Haiti is thought to have the highest concentration of NGOs per capita of any country except for India. The number of NGOs in Haiti during the 1980s was close to 300, a number that increased to 800 in the 1990s, and was over 10,000 by the time of the quake (Pierre-Louis 2011, 190). Characterized by a lack of coordination and transparency, many of these well-intentioned organizations systemically exclude input from local actors and only employ foreign labor. The increased influence and funding of NGOs has led to a situation in which they, not the Haitian state, provide much of the social and educational services for the population. In effect, these agents of humanitarian government drain power from the state, often in the name of improving and strengthening local civil societies and promoting democracy. Ashley Smith has gone so far to argue that in Haiti “the real state power isn’t the [Haitian] government , but the U.S.-backed United Nations occupation” and army of transnational NGOs (Smith 2010: online). At the very least, the massive presence of UN troops, NGOs and other external actors

in Haiti serve as the bases of an unaccountable, anti-democratic, and morally questionable form of tutelage.

Picturing and Policing Post-quake Haiti Despite the disastrous history of external interventions in Haiti, dominant geopolitical, humanitarian and development discourses continue to locate the source of what Time magazine calls “Haiti’s History of Misery” as originating from its “people, their [ostensible] inability to embrace modern liberal democratic ideals, and their [putative] propensity towards criminality and violence” (Mullings et al. 288). Whether in the discourse of international elites or the media, the situation remains to be narrated as one in which, as a title from the Huffington Post declared, “Haiti Must Be Rescued From Itself” (Margolis 2010). The remainder of this essay presents an analysis of this dominate media projection of “Haiti” as a site in need of paternal care and policing from external agents.

My analysis focuses on photojournalistic reportage that took place in the first month following the quake (January 12 to February 15, 2010). Thus my period of evaluation covers the most intense time of reporting, as by mid- to late-February news of the earthquake no longer appeared on a daily basis. The New York Times and the Washington Post were chosen as the papers of record because of their known commitment to international news. Similarly, Time and Newsweek magazines were chosen for their commitment to covering international news, as well as their national circulation and commitment to documentary photojournalism. Finally, I used the Associated Press image database to identify the variety of pictures and captions available to publications and as an independent source indicating larger pictorial and narrative trends. In my analysis, I identify keywords, phrases, tropes and images that repeated across articles and publications and operated to make Haitian suffering and the external responses to it meaningful in regards to larger ideological and cultural frameworks. These frameworks, I argue, are not only representative of racial stereotypes (Balaji 2011) and nationalist biases (Potter 2006), but are indications of the degree to which picturing distant suffering and mobilizing responses to it have become naturalized and are informed by global managerial logics.

essays, notes, reflections

Combined with the conditions imposed by the IMF and World Bank in the late twentieth century—specifically the imposition of trade liberalization and the privatization of social services—a long history of external interventions has contributed to undermining and disenfranchising the ability of Haitians to manage their own economic and political affairs.

It should be stressed that the articles and images I examined in my research do not depart from past practices of picturing Haiti as site of poverty, disease, corruption and criminality (Potter 2006). Even before the quake of 2010, American print media depicted Haiti as a “failed state” resulting from “dictators and disasters” while rarely acknowledging the larger historical and geopolitical contexts in which the actions of various international institutions and actors determined the country’s current status as the “poorest country in the Western hemisphere.” Such representations have informed impressions that Haitians are unable to govern themselves and that aggressive, external interventions from various actors— powerful states, intergovernmental agencies, humanitarian NGOs, international financial institutions—are the proper and only humane response.

As I suggested above, my analysis identifies three interlocking and overlapping pictorial and narrative frames that targeted Haiti as a site of intervention: a victim and rescuer frame, a black criminality

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Picturing and Policing Post-quake Haiti and muscular savior frame, and an emergency frame. Combined these frames pictured Haiti as a “failed” state, absent structures of care and power for protecting and securing the health and wellbeing of the Haitian population. Within and across each of these frames, pictorial and narrative conventions work in tandem to fashion “Haiti” as a symbolic site similar to Afghanistan or Iraq that not only demands external interventions to police and discipline the population but also to “develop” it economically and politically.

It is worth stressing that rather than being independent schemas or exhaustive of all reportage, these frames inform a regime of truth that makes Haiti visible as a particular type of emergency in need of extended and intensive external management. Such a view of Haiti was challenged and remains to be questioned on multiple fronts; however, the counter discourses and claims of constituencies that resisted these dominant frames fall outside the scope of this essay.

Victims and Rescuers Consider a photo provided by the U.S. Coast Guard to the Associated Press on January 19, 2010. The photo depicts a young Haitian girl covered in bandages clinging to a uniformed female soldier, who holds the child tightly to her chest as she runs across a backdrop of sand and rubble. The AP tag describes the action: “Petty Officer 2nd Class Jose Estrada, an Information Technician aboard the Coast Guard Cutter Tahoma, rushes an injured Haitian girl to an awaiting Coast Guard HH-60 Jayhawk helicopter” (AP Images). The photo and its caption are illustrative of what I have called the victim and rescuer frame: a paternal narrative in which “Haiti” appears as a victimized child in need of rescue. Indeed, many images in the popular press conveyed the narrative of successful rescue by showing white aid workers coddling, nurturing and otherwise caring for Haitian children. In the publications I analyzed, hundreds of images and narratives presented suffering and rescued children as condensed signifiers representing the whole of post-quake rescue efforts. The combined effect of such reportage was to “infantilize” the country and nation as a whole, picturing it as a child in need of external rescue, parenting and discipline (Hoffman 2012).

As a narrative of victims and rescuers, post-quake Haiti was pictured in the “individuated aggregate”: the photographic depiction of individuals as typical cases metonymically standing in for the larger whole (Lucaites and Hariman 2001). Through the visual register of this frame, photojournalist reportage focused on Haitians as suffering, passive, dead or rescued bodies. The pictures produced in this register were often stereotypical images of universal human suffering that could easily be the illustrations of any disaster, catastrophe or conflict. Such narratives focused on the “body in pain” were central to the engendering and formation of modern humanitarian sentiments in the seventeenth and eighteenth century (Laqueuer 1984) and decontextualized and iconic imagery continue to be central to the cultural processes by which contemporary humanitarian organizations mobilize such sentiments and link them to humane forms of action and advocacy (Wilson and Brown 2011). Nevertheless representations of Haitians, or any constituency, as helpless and or passive victims in desperate need of external rescue contrast starkly with the reality in which individuals are agentive subjects, navigating and traversing difficult circumstances by organizing communal forms of support, managing and allocating scarce resources, and engaging in political and economic processes in attempts to provide for

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their own and others’ well-being. While they are essential to the cultivation of compassion, empathy and sympathy, pictorial and narrative constructions of individuals as victims awaiting rescue simultaneously articulate and foster a neocolonial sense of paternalism.

While Haitians were pictured as objects of pity and compassion, external aid workers, rescue units, humanitarian agencies, military forces and journalists themselves were presented as agents of modernization and care, as “experts” on Haitian suffering and heroes to be affectively identified with as offering models of humane conduct. The ideological function of this reportorial register was to recount and convey a standardized success story that confirmed the paternal authority of external agents and legitimated interventions as ethical acts in a parent-child relation (Suski 2009). As I have suggested, in addition to resonating with a racialized form of sentiment, narratives of victims and rescuers reveal an affinity with dominant developmentalist logics, like those neoliberal policies imposed on Haiti in order to “save itself from itself.” Social, political, economic and individual “development” in such logics is measured in relation to an abstract, decontextualized norm that ultimately serves as the justification for interventionary measures. Eschewing the material conditions and negative impacts of invasive economic policies on the so-called “developing world” the technocratic discourse of development cultivates an imaginary paternal relation between the populations of the global South— “children” who have deviated from the proper path of human development—and the normative global North. When children of the so-called “developing world” depart from modern, normative ideals of childhood held in the “developed World”—e.g. by being belligerents involved in armed conflict, laboring, or suffering from malnourishment—dominant developmentalist logics view these as “deviations” and problems that need to be “fixed” through the imposition of external social engineering (Suski 2009, 205).

Through the reportorial register of a victim and rescuer frame, imagery of Haitians as isolated victims awaiting external assistance invited viewers to affectively identify with neocolonial rationalities of power, support established modes of charitable response, intervention and trusteeship, and avoid alternative ethical and political forms of engagement. Popular assumptions about the victimized status of Haitian children circulating in the popular press ultimately overlapped with dominant development discourses that see Northern states, international financial institutions and transnational humanitarian organizations as superior agents with a moral responsibility for administering the lives of “developing” (i.e. “inferior” or “childlike”) populations, who are ostensibly incapable of self-government. Post-quake “Haiti” as a story of victims and rescuers operated to legitimate and justify the continuation of interventionary practices that further contribute to the economic and political disenfranchisement of the Haitian population by placing it under the parental tutelage of the so-called “international community.”

Black Criminality and the Muscular Savior Frame In an image run by the Washington Post (January 18, 2010), a small boy stands precariously perched on a pile of shattered concrete blocks and twisted metal girders. With one hand he reaches out to steady himself as he apparently descends the hill of rubble. On his back is what looks like a bundle of clothes. The caption reads,

The photographic presentation of “looting” was almost entirely dependent upon textual anchorage in a preexisting narrative of Haitian criminality that assigned a definitive meaning to oftenambiguous images. Well before the quake, the international humanitarian, development and security narratives associated with Haiti were informed by “racialized forms of fear that not only construct poor black bodies as a threat to Eurocentric notions of civilization and progress, but also to the social, economic and political order of global neoliberalism” (Mullings et al., 283).

In her extensive analysis of American newspaper coverage of Haiti in 2004, Amy Potter found that the “media described Haiti as a politically unstable place, full of violence, turmoil, chaos, corruption, and a multitude of other problems” (Potter 2009, 216).

The notion of Haiti as a site of perpetual misery related to disease, drug abuse, and gender violence are dependent upon a trope of “black criminality” that render the nation a site putatively “outside modernity and progress” and thus a site demanding developmental interventions and policing not only as a forms of parental care, but as self-interested actions of securitization and (inter)national defense (Mullings et al., 283). Within the narrative and pictorial register of black criminality, Haitians were construed as threats to international peace and security and targeted as objects to be disciplined by a masculine and militarized humanitarian apparatus.

The discourse of black criminality construes Haitians, both as a population and individuals, as a threat to a reified and unexplained notion of “security”—an abstract and unquestioned sense of normalcy constituted by its outside: “Haiti” as emergency. Within this racialized register, Haiti is an unstable terrain beset by “looters,” “thieves,” “desperate scavengers,” “sporadic” and “popular violence,” “fights over stolen goods,” “surging mobs,” “popular anger” and “marauding gangs of youth.” Titles taken from the front page of the January 15, 2010 New York Times are illustrative of how the print media narrated post-quake Haiti as threat to a reified notion of security in need of a militarized response: “Hopes Fade in QuakeRavaged Haiti, as Anger Rises,” “Looting Flares Where Order Breaks Down,” and “Officials Strain to Distribute Aid to Haiti as Violence Rises.” On January 18, 2010 the Washington Post reported that “Anxiety Mounts in Lawless Haiti; survivors plead for aid and security as vital resources quickly run out.” The narrative thrust of these stories was that the majority of Haitians were “desperate,” “frantic,” “afraid,” and “fearful.” These “victims” were not only in need of relief, but also of protection form the bands of “looters” and gangs of male youth. Operating as foil, these descriptors served as the grounds for characterizing U.S. military and U.N. forces as

muscular saviors providing altruistic humanitarian assistance: technical, moral and legal experts capable of containing the threat of black Haitian bodies.

Importantly, pictures and stories of “looters” appeared alongside narratives and imagery of U.S. soldiers and UN peacekeeping forces rescuing children, distributing food and water, and policing the long lines of Haitians seeking assistance. Many of the pictures provided by the Associated Press captured the actions of U.S. and UN forces aggressively policing crowds: pointing and shaking fists at women and children, yelling at injured Haitians seeking assistance, and blockading lines with the use of guns mounted on tanks. Yet these images were quantitatively underrepresented in published print media. When “policing” did appear visually in mainstream publications it lacked any substantive narrative other than one that overlaps with the rescuer frame. That is to say, the militarized aspect of policing populations is visible in images, but it largely disappears when it comes to the discursive and explanatory efforts of reportage. In one sense it is as if the black criminality trope—the racialized scene of “Haiti” as site of rampant violence— is self-evident proof of the need and value of policing as a form of humanitarian assistance.

essays, notes, reflections

“Haitians take goods from stores in the marketplace in Port-auPrince as police try to control the city.” Images such a this one tended to replace those that depicted Haitians participating in rescue efforts produced in the first two days after the quake. If one juxtaposes the early images of Haitians struggling to remove rubble in efforts to save friends, family and neighbors with the images labeled “looting,” one is largely at a loss to explain how the same physical activity is either an act of heroism and survival or proof of criminal activity. Indeed, in several of the images captioned by the Associated Press as representing Haitians “taking,” “looting,” or “scavenging” “goods taken from stores” it is difficult for one to discern what might be considered “goods” or “stores.” As Rebecca Solnit suggests, it may have been more appropriate to caption such images: “Resourceful survivors salvage the means of sustaining life from the ruins of their world” (2012, 23).

Prevalent forms of naturalizing a militarized response involved reiterating the claims of “officials” or quoting Haitians as desiring and welcoming such intervention. More than one source simply quoted Director of Operations for Joint Task Force Haiti, Colonel Gregory Kane, as proof of the altruistic intentions of American involvement: ‘’There have been some reports and news stories out there that the U.S. is invading Haiti…. That’s ludicrous. This is humanitarian relief’’ (qtd. in Lacey 2010). Quoting Kane in an article entitled “Patrolling Haiti, U.S. Troops Are Welcomed Into a Void,” the NYT claimed: “Most Haitians seemed to see it that way, despite deep historic concerns about American troops in particular” (Lacey 2010). When the article was posted online, it was initially illustrated by a slideshow depicting U.S. Military Helicopters landing on the lawn of the “wrecked National Palace.” As with much of the postquake coverage, the NYT and other sources pretended to offer immediate and transparent access to Haitian voices while partaking in a ventriloquism that naturalized policing and a militarized response. In reporting the cheers and gracious appreciation shown

by Haitians for U.S. Navy Helicopters delivering much needed food and water, the press tended to confuse survivors’ gratitude for relief assistance with an approval of full-scale invasion, occupation, policing and tutelage.

The Emergency Frame Above the headline “Haiti Lies in Ruins as Grim Search Continues for Untold Dead” (January 14, A14), the NYT exhibited an imagecluster combining satellite imagery and maps in order to identify the epicenter of the quake, chart the territorial zones most heavily impacted, and illustrate the numbers of people killed and displaced. Provided by GeoEye—a company whose “geospatial experts” provide its customers with “clear, deep, and timely insight into our changing world” (GeoEye: Online)—the satellite images were overlaid with gridlines indicating scale and labels identifying significant landmarks of damage, including U.N. Headquarters, the National Palace and the National Cathedral. Directly above a map showing the quake’s epicenter and charting the “number of people affected in each damage zone,” a set of “before and

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Picturing and Policing Post-quake Haiti after” aerial images show the collapsed roof and crumbling walls of the National Palace. In a series of sweeping and precise prose the streets are described as lined with “bodies” and the country’s various “fragile institutions” are classified as “collapsed” or “in ruins.”

Appearing as a transparent and neutral presentation of the facts, this cartographic vision and others like it articulate and foster the knowledge-power of contemporary global managerialism.

Throughout all of the publications I examined, a combination of maps, satellite imagery and quasi-historical narratives rendered Haiti an “emergency”—a logistical problem to be mapped, known and managed. What I call the “emergency frame” simultaneously mobilized the emotional politics of anxiety and insecurity associated with natural disasters and mass calamity and sought to manage and contain such feelings by cultivating an identification with a perspectival holism that presented the emergency as an understandable and controllable object of expert knowledge and technical action. Discursively and visually this frame presented post-quake Haiti through techniques of totalization, massification and quantification, rather than personalization. At a narrative level, the reportorial register of emergency testified to numbers dead, injured, missing and displaced. When it spoke of actions taken it relayed the numbers of rescuers and military forces deployed, enumerated the volunteers mobilized and recounted the monies, goods and resources collected and dispersed. Its visual register was one of terrains and populations; pictorially the “emergency” was made visible in sweeping panoramic views and as a transparent object grasped in all of its immediacy from a god-like orbital vantage point in maps, charts and satellite images.

In its special issue dedicated to coverage of the quake, Newsweek (January 25, 2010) exhibited a two-page spread of an AP aerial photograph depicting one of Port-au-Prince’s destroyed shantytowns. The unframed aerial photo portrays a jumble of toppled tin roofs, scattered furniture, warped foundations and mounds of wrecked bricks that appear to nearly spill off the pages of the magazine. The photograph accompanies the magazine’s publication of a short article by President Barack Obama and is exemplary of the emergency frame’s deployment of highly aestheticized images of derelict and often hauntingly unoccupied cityscapes and dwelling spaces. Such photographs captured the frailty of human survivors by picturing them from afar, as minuscule figures dwarfed by the looming ruins of the capital. In other pictures, human limbs were pictured jutting from heaps of rubble. A series of photos made available by the Associated Press conveyed the gargantuan nature of the damage by presenting the dead as a quantified mass, or “mound.” In both word and image the “bodies of victims” or simply “bodies” were presented as “filling,” “covering” and “flooding” the streets. As a whole, this imagery echoed past photographic depictions of disaster and war, resonating with Holocaust imagery, as well as post-blitz images of London and more recent depictions of “ground zero.” At the same time, given the unique place Haiti has in the American imaginary, these post-quake images inevitably recalled the iconography of Hollywood’s never-ending onslaught of post-apocalyptic zombie movies and natural disaster flicks.

Perhaps the most reiterated images in the emergency frame were those of the collapsed National Palace, which was often accompanied by articles or captions referring to Haiti’s corruption, it’s lack of government-provided education and social services, or

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simply its status as the “most impoverished country in the Western Hemisphere.” Across various publications and on different websites and television news shows, images of the National Palace were circulated and re-circulated as a condensed signifier referring to Haiti’s “emergency” as one defined by the absence of state power. Often taken from American Navy helicopters, images of the collapsed palace not only reinforced the popular perception of Haiti as a collapsed state—a state in which there is little or no governmental structures to care for or control of the population— but also inevitably operated to naturalize and justify the militarized response that rested on concerns for regional and global security, rather than Haitian well-being.

Conclusion Views of Haiti as childlike and a site of perpetual emergency appear in relation to an assumed norm of civil, political and educational development. In other words, the construal of “Haiti” as a deficient, underdeveloped and corrupt nation contributes to the constitution of the United States and other affluent countries as representing a truly civilized and advanced state of life to which others should aspire. At the same time, such myopic localizations of Haiti’s “misery” further contribute to the legitimation of external interventions by non-state, inter-state and state actors under a general rubric of tutelage. While these interventions are justified as being necessary because of the unfulfilled needs of the majority of Haitians—lack of education, health care, basic medical and social service, etc.—the agents of intervention are not accountable to the constituencies they serve and further contribute to the disenfranchising of the Haitian people by undermining the mechanisms by which they might come to govern themselves.

Despite the catastrophic impact of past foreign intervention in the country and its contribution to exasperating the crises related to the quake, picturing post-quake Haiti as a site of emergency and compassionate outreach is inextricably tied to efforts that attempt, in effect, to double down on external management practices.

As some commentators have argued, the militarized neoliberal response to the Haitian earthquake not only resembled actions taken in Afghanistan and Iraq in the “war on terror,” but effectively functioned as a declaration of a state of exception in which Haiti’s sovereignty and the rights of citizens were ceded to the United States and other humanitarian occupiers (Mullings et al. 284).

Mariella Pandolfi (2002) has argued that such mobilizations are central to the way in which humanitarianism as a global apparatus of power acts as a form of “mobile sovereignty” invested not only with the power to name the exception in various terrains, but to maintain an extended state of emergency that allows for the imposition of an externally led administration that further disempowers and disenfranchises affected populations and leads to permanent states of tutelage.

This essay investigated how photojournalistic coverage of post-quake Haiti participated in legitimating such forms of mobile sovereignty by seeing “Haiti” as a symbolic site in need of perpetual parenting and policing. In the rescuer and victim frame, Haiti was pictured as a child in need of parental care and assistance from more “developed” and affluent nations. Cultivating a general sense of racialized pity for Haitians (Balaji 2011), pictures and narratives of suffering Haitian children echoed developmental discourses that extract suffering individuals from their social and economic

Working in tandem these frames operated to justify and legitimate the external managerial practices that have become predictable aspects of response to “Haitian Misery.” Through the conventions of such frames, “Haiti” is inscribed as one of a number of competing paradigmatic signs of global disorder, a place characterized by poverty, violence and uncontrollable refugee flows—problems, hazards and threats to be managed and contained. Rather than viewing “Haiti” as an object of compassionate outreach or logistical problem to be fixed by aggressive interventions, perhaps it is time to consider the view from Haiti and learn what it can tell us about the limitations and inadequacies of the global managerial gaze.

The artists and organizers of the Haiti Ghetto Biennale proffer just such a counter-gaze. They confront us with a challenging question: What does the view from Haiti see?

Bibliography:

Balaji, Murali. 2011. “Racializing Pity: The Haiti Earthquake and the Plight of ‘Others’.” Critical Studies in Media Communication 28 (1) (March): 50–67. doi:10.1080/15295036.2010.545703.

Harrison, Lawrence. 2010. “Haiti and the Voodoo Curse; The cultural roots of the country’s endless misery.” Wall Street Journal (Online), February 5, sec. Opinion.

Hoffman, Diane M. 2012. “Saving Children, Saving Haiti? Child Vulnerability and Narratives of the Nation.” Childhood 19 (2) (May): 155–168.

Kennedy, Liam. 2008. “Securing Vision: Photography and US Foreign Policy.” Media, Culture & Society 30 (3) (May 1): 279–294.

Lacey, Marc. 2010. “U.S. Troops Patrol Haiti, Filling a Void.” The New York Times, January 20, sec. International / Americas. http://www. nytimes.com/2010/01/20/world/americas/20haiti.html.

Laqueur, Thomas. 1989. “Bodies, Details, and the Humanitarian Narrative.” In The New Cultural History, ed. Lynn Hunt, 176–204.

University of California Press.

Lucaites, John Louis, and Robert Hariman. 2001. “Visual Rhetoric, Photojournalism, and Democratic Public Culture.” Rhetoric Review 20 (1/2) (April 1): 37–42.

Margolis, Eric. 2010. “Haiti Must Be Rescued From Itself.” The Huffington Post. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-margolis/ haiti-must-be-rescued-fro_b_428409.html.

Mullings, Beverley, Marion Werner, and Linda Peake. 2010. “Fear and Loathing in Haiti: Race and Politics of Humanitarian Dispossession.”

ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies 9 (3) (October): 282–300.

Pandolfi, Mariella. 2003. “Contract of Mutual (In)Difference: Governance and the Humanitarian Apparatus in Contemporary Albania and Kosovo.” Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies 10 (1): 369–381.

Pierre-Louis, Francois. 2011. “Earthquakes, Nongovernmental Organizations, and Governance in Haiti.” Journal of Black Studies 42 (2) (March): 186–202.

Potter, Amy E. 2009. “VOODOO, ZOMBIES, AND MERMAIDS: U.S. NEWSPAPER COVERAGE OF HAITI.” Geographical Review 99 (2) (April): 208–230.

Pupavac, Vanessa. 2001. “Misanthropy Without Borders: The International Children’s Rights Regime.” Disasters 25 (2): 95–112.

Bellegarde-Smith, Patrick. 2011. “A Man-Made Disaster: The Earthquake of January 12, 2010— A Haitian Perspective.” Journal of Black Studies 42 (2) (March): 264–275.

Romero, Simon. 2010. “Haiti Lies in Ruins; Grim Search for Untold Dead.” The New York Times, January 13, sec. World / Americas. http:// www.nytimes.com/2010/01/14/world/americas/14haiti.html.

Brooks, David. 2010. “The Underlying Tragedy.” The New York Times, January 15, sec. Opinion. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/15/ opinion/15brooks.html.

Smith, Ashley. 2010. “Haiti and the Aid Racket.” Counterpunch (February 24). http://www.counterpunch.org/2010/02/24/haiti-andthe-aid-racket/.

Calhoun, Craig. 2004. “A World of Emergencies: Fear, Intervention, and the Limits of Cosmopolitan Order.” Canadian Review of Sociology & Anthropology 41 (4): 373–95.

Solnit, Rebecca. 2012. “Words Can Kill: Haiti and the Vocabulary of Disaster.” In Picturing Atrocity: Photography in Crisis, edited by Geoffrey Batchen, Mick Gidley, Nancy K. Miller, and Jay Prosser, 17– 23. Reaktion Books.

Dupuy, Alex. 2011. “One Year After the Earthquake, Foreign Help Is Actually Hurting Haiti.” The Washington Post, January 8, sec. Opinions.

Dupuy, Alex. 2010. “Disaster Capitalism to the Rescue: The International Community and Haiti After the Earthquake. (Cover Story).” NACLA Report on the Americas 43 (4) (August): 14–19.

GeoEye. “GeoEye › Products › Geospatial Expertise › Defense & Intelligence Expertise.” http://www.geoeye.com/CorpSite/products/ geospatial-expertise/defense-and-intelligence-expertise/.

essays, notes, reflections

context and characterize them as signs of the moral success or failure of their society’s progress toward abstract norms (Pupavac 2001, 102-103). The black criminality and muscular savior frame presented the Haitian population as a threat to an abstract ideal called “security.” Relying on a racialized fear, this frame operated to justify the militarized response of the UN and U.S. as a necessary form of humane policing. Like the logistical, cartographic frames that “map” Iraq and Afghanistan as terrains of intervention, the emergency frame presented “Haiti” as a localized problem, when, in fact, its continued status as “failed state” is the result of a long history of global historical processes. Such cartographic perspectives are central to the processes that situate Northern citizens as godlike observers and cultivate a general sense of epistemological sovereignty and global managerialism. Thus rather than fostering traditional humanitarian sentiments for Haitians, the emergency frame presented “Haiti” as an object of geographic knowledge, a terrain in need of administrative control—a site that both should and could be managed through acts of technical intervention (Calhoun 2004).

Suski, Laura. 2009. “Children, Suffering, and the Humanitarian Appeal.”

In Humanitarianism and Suffering: The Mobilization of Empathy, ed.

Richard Ashby Wilson and Richard D. Brown, 202–222. Cambridge University Press.

Wilson, Richard Ashby, and Richard D. Brown, eds. 2011.

Humanitarianism and Suffering: The Mobilization of Empathy.

Cambridge University Press.

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2013 Haiti Ghetto Biennale

Wébert Lahens

interviews, emails & transcripts:

What is, perhaps, ugly, in our eyes, in the arrangement of materials, takes on symbolic value in the finished work.

Perceived in this way, doesn’t contemporary art render a service to art that is locked in a minimal discourse, namely: “This is beautiful “; beyond which nothing exists, for more than twenty centuries. Today, another approach opens the mind: “This is ugly.”

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The Call For Projects

2013 Haiti Ghetto Biennale

interviews, emails & transcripts:

The 3Rd Ghetto Biennale, 2013: Decentering The Market And Other Tales Of Progress

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What happens when First World art rubs up against Third World art? Does it bleed? In December 2009 Atis Rezistans, the Sculptors of Grand Rue, hosted their first Ghetto Biennale. They invited fine artists, film-makers, academics, photographers, musicians, architects and writers, to come to the Grand Rue area of Port-AuPrince, Haiti, to make or witness work that was made or happened, in their neighbourhood. In the words of the writer John Keiffer, it was hoping to be a “‘third space’...an event or moment created through a collaboration between artists from radically different backgrounds”. The 2nd Ghetto Biennale took place in December 2011 and seemed, in a contradiction to its aims, to reveal contextual, internal and institutional vulnerabilities to the inequalities that run across race, class and gender, provoking further questioning of the way these dynamics play out in an increasingly globalized art world.

While the Ghetto Biennale was conceived to expose social, racial, class and geographical immobility, it seemed to have upheld these class inertias within its structural core. The Ghetto Biennale is looking for balance amongst the multifarious and often contradictory agendas underpinning the event. Are we institutional critique or a season ticket to the institution? Are we poverty tourism or an exit strategy from the ghetto? What was the effect of the earthquake and the ensuing NGO culture on crosscultural relations in Haiti? The straplines for the previous Ghetto Biennales were ‘What happens when first world art rubs up against third world art? Does it bleed?’…Did the Ghetto Biennale bleed, and if so where?

We have decided to respond to the challenges posed by the previous incarnations of this event by giving the 3rd Ghetto Biennale a theme. We are seeking artistic projects, which investigate or respond to ‘The Market’ from the local to the Global.

We have also decided to make it a lens free Biennale to partially resist both the ethnographic gaze and the commodity fetishism that the lens can engender. * The 3rd Ghetto Biennale seeks artistic projects that respond to this topic, help us to expose the boundaries of a globalized art market, and have meaningful discussion about sameness and diversity in an allegedly de-centered art world. The 3rd Ghetto Biennale in Port-au-Prince is trying to create a space for artistic production that attempts to offer, whilst understanding all its limitations, artists from wide socioeconomic classes, a complex creative platform. The Ghetto Biennale hopes to contain the seeds of a possibility to transcend different models of ghettoization.

The 3rd Ghetto Biennale 2013 will take place from 26th November until the 16th December 2013. All works must be made and exhibited in Haiti. Artists will be invited to pass one to three weeks in Haiti before presenting their work in the neighbourhood to an audience of local people, Port au Prince neighbourhood communities, arts collectives and arts organisations. The 3rd Ghetto Biennale will be co-curated by Andre Eugene, David Frohnapfel, Leah Gordon and Celeur Jean Herard.

Aid For Usa And Canada

www.allisonroweart.com

I propose to continue working on Aid for USA and Canada participatory performance and archive of aid donations that citizens of Haiti have donated to people in Canada and the United States. I will perform the role of a contradictory foreign aid worker, collecting rather than distributing aid in Haiti. I will meet people by beginning conversations on the street and through word-ofmouth introductions. Donors will be asked to contribute physical objects or audio donations, for which they will receive a receipt, a thank you note and images of the donation.

What kind of projects or engagements have interested you in the past?

Haiti.

Like my first project, “Untitled (Rubble)” also responds to the idea of aid in Haiti. In this case I am collecting rubble, one of the most important steps in the reconstruction process, as it literally clears space for things to be rebuilt. Many aid organizations in Haiti are no longer engaged in rubble removal as it is not “sexy” enough for funders and boards who are interested in images of more concrete outcomes such as housing and sanitation. By personally collecting this rubble and re-contextualizing it as an art object, I commodify it, thus making its removal desirable. Additionally, by taking the rubble out of the country in my luggage, I accept personal responsibility, however small, for helping the country rebuild.

What interested/interests you about Haiti and the Ghetto Biennale?

The curators of the Biennial pose the biennial as a market place without money but nevertheless one that has buying power.

This inversion of systemic problematics of Foreign Aid is evident in the establishment of a dialogic relationship vis a vis the issue of aid and a re-visioning of power. How is this re-dissemination of this latent power effective/productive?

interviews, emails & transcripts

Allison Rowe (CA)

My work investigates the process of re-personalizing political discourses and the possibilities that exist in this transition space.

My past projects range in form and subject matter determined upon the issue I am addressing. Recent past works have included a mobile museum housed in my 1982 camper van, a series of abstract prints about climate chaos and an illegally built treehouse in a public park.

I came across the first Ghetto Biennale call in 2009 and have participated in each Biennale since then. I had a very positive experience at the first event and learned a tremendous amount about collaboration, practice, economics and art making from the Grand Rue community and Atis Rezistans. Following the 2010 earthquake, the international vocabulary around Haiti shifted dramatically. I was taken aback by the discrepancy between media reportage of post-quake living conditions and what I heard from friends living in the country. I made the decision to come back to Haiti for the 2nd and 3rd Biennales to respond to issues created by, about and with international aid. I am also very keen to continue building my relationships with the Grand Rue artist community, collaborating with them, learning from one another and engaging in meaningful discussions about art and life.

During this Biennale I am working on two projects. The first, “Aid for USA and Canada” is a continuation of a work I began in 2011.

The collection of aid from Haitian citizens for Canadians and Americans subverts the dominant discourse of Haiti as a country in need and rather asks the too often forgotten question of what other countries need to know, see, experience or hear about. The donations collected range dramatically from art objects to trash to stories, pleas for help, songs and history lessons. Through their diverse approach to the prompt, these items and audio recordings offer international audiences an unmediated perspective on life in

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Andre Eugene

Interview: Archaeology at IERAH / ISERSS (State University of Haiti) I Workshop: EPLURIBUS UNUM art museum I am André Eugène, one of the founders of Atis Rezistans along with Céleur. The artistic movement of Atis Rezistans started on a football field. Today, I think that there are about 45 artists in the area who practice recuperation art, but in different workshops. There are 8 workshops: Evèle, Claude, of Céleur, Warrior, Jerry alias twokèt, Basil Wesner, Basil Cherby, Junior alias Alfonso da daddy. Our major initiative of the Ghetto Biennale started in 2009. For the Ghetto Biennale, I am responsible for marketing and communications My work is about recovery or resistance, social injustice and class struggle. For me, recovery or recuperation is the form of resistance that we chose in order to fight against social injustice. I started practicing recuperation art in 1998, but I have been a sculptor since 1980. I am self-taught like other artists in the area.

My first exhibition was in Reunion Island. I got invitations especially through Barbara Prézeau and my first exhibition with Barbara was in Barbados and the second in Trinidad. In 2007 I was in England.

The work is both crude and refined at the same time because there is a specific method that I employ in constituting the work and sculpture forms the basis of this art. Wood, nails, iron, steel and rubber make up my art but wood is the foundation. I use nails to represent the hair. The nails link the iron and wood to give the sculpture more force. Wood is the most pervasive element of my sculptures because wood represents the masses while iron depicts the privileged class and the rubber tires are the middle class. So the rubber is a medium or center between the iron and wood. Rubber in Haiti is widely used as a means of protest. I use the rubber in my works also because the rubber is used to pollute the air and causes the death of some people, so I use the same rubber to produce works of art.

Haitians do not know the value of these works. What most struck me most in this regard is when the students from the Faculty of Anthropolgie burnt the works exhibited at the Champ de Mars Headquarters. Pastor Vladimir Gentille had demonized my works after the departure of Jean Bertrand Aristide and they were burning the works.

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There isn’t a specific duration of time that each work takes. I often complete my works with the help of the youth Timoun resistance.

Sometimes, I pay them to assist. My goal in these activities is to raise the standard of life in the ghetto by putting young people in a position to change their ideas and their way of life. All the children of the ghetto go to ‘school resistance’. And now there is even a young man who came up through this movement who is pursuing tertiary education in Canada. My fondest dream is to find ways to end the famine in the area, and at the same time to create a comprehensive community centre.

State institutions in Haiti do not invite us to exhibit our work with the exception of the former minister of culture, Magalie Como Denis who invited us to decorate two floats for carnival. And in December 2013, the Minister of Gender Affairs gave us a contract to build two Christmas trees using reuperation art.

Sometimes I use Facebook to promote my works. I do not organize exhibitions because I do not have the economic opportunity or capacity. I promote other artists though by exhibiting their work at my studio. I do not believe that I am in competition with anyone.

Selling art locally is more profitable because I am the direct supplier so I make more money. When I sell abroad, I get about 50% of the sale of the work.

I travel about ten times a year. On these trips, I do exhibitions and workshops where I facilitate training for about a ten to fifteen students. In fact, for the overseas workshops, I use local materials from that country so I do not carry any objects with me. In November 2014 I took part in an exhibition at the Grand Palais in France.

Laissez-Faire

www.annabruinsma.zenfolio.com

The piece Laissez-Faire is named after Adam Smith’s economic theory stating that the pursuit of self-interest aids the growth of the nation more than it would if the individual were deliberately trying to help. The physical segment of Laissez-Faire is a floating sculpture made up of recycled tarp and materials found in the marketplace in Port-Au-Prince. It will be based on the form of an atomic bomb (symbolizing chaotic growth) made up of rainbow balloons covered in materials from the local marketplace. The second part involves the creation of ‘pricing’ for the Biennale based on the decisions made by 30 sculptors on the Grand Rue and members of the Atis Rezistans. The act is meant to firmly displace the visitors’ notion that worth of the art is non-subjective as well as fixed in a Western market and superimposed onto the Haitian market.

What kind of projects or engagements have interested you in the past?

interviews, emails & transcripts

Allison Rowe (CA)

What interested/interests you about Haiti and the Ghetto Biennale?

Your project is both a concrete and symbolic gesture toward the spirit of creation within the Ghetto Biennale as it collides with the economic problematic of the valuation of the space.

It’s capacity to float while carrying a celebratory aesthetic also signals a floating valuation of art. Seemingly your project both negates the weight of imposed valuation while celebrating the possibility of a floating valuation. What methodology of pricing do you think you might use? Will this practice of pricing be systematically executed or will it also pose methodological contradictions therein? What do you think this decision making process lends to the impact of your project?

This is my second visit to Haiti. The first time I was here it became evident that there were dual economic frameworks that the visiting and resident artists moved between. The first world market (i.e., the concurrent Art Basel in Miami) and the on-site Haitian pricing system (works sold out of the studio) were vastly different, and dependent on who the buyer was as well as the location. My aim is to focus on the value of work within the ghetto system, though of course the local artists inflate prices for the Biennale and tourists. Each interviewed local artist will be asked for their estimation of the price of pieces from the visiting artists (as if they were pricing work from their own studio). Keeping in mind that there is normally a fair amount of haggling, I will ask for the high and low estimations. I am particularly interested in the choices for performance and new genre works, as assemblage sculpture is the main media used in the ghetto studios. My methodology is quite simple, involving a spreadsheet and questioning the artists one by one. The choice of whom to ask is fairly easily determined: if they have a studio in the ghetto (i.e., Santilus or a younger member of the Atis Rezistans) and have sold their own work. It would be interesting to ask a larger group of locals what they would estimate work to be worth for different reasons, but this focus is based on having some knowledge of what their market would support.

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Annette Elliot (US)

Rêves I propose a site-specific video projection to illuminate the devastated architecture along Grand Rue. The video, fragmented into four channels, will delineates the aerial geography of Port-auPrince’s marketplaces. The maps are sourced from Landsat satellite imagery. The minimal time-lapse reflects the topography of a cityscape that is gradually immersed in total darkness. The looping 12-minute projection will play from sunset until midnight.

What kind of projects or engagements have interested you in the past?

What interested/interests you about Haiti and the Ghetto Biennale?

Your project re-unites the global possibilities of mapping through satellite imagery with the landscape from which it originated. It bridges the gap but also documents at the same time the gap in reality that this produces through the echo of the time-lapse. Your imagery moves from aerial to a direct but fragmented view. The architecture of time-space fragments itself into channels. So there is a parallel to be drawn in the understanding of this site from afar off versus the verite of the landscape. How is this distinction understood by the inhabitants of the Grand Rue? How do you understand this gap?

I heard about the biennial on Facebook. It was placed as a link on a website that advertises various calls. It sounded interesting. Later I found out that someone who works at Chicago Institute knows Leah and has a wood workshop in Jacmel.

In Chicago, I did the Masters of Fine Arts at the Institute of Chicago focusing on architecture, light and space. My largest project was in the ghetto there in one of the most dangerous cities. I live very close to the prison and did a projection using white light and collected images from the neighborhood. I did a couple of these, largely in Chicago, researching the socio-political background and abstracting the images of those neighborhoods. Most of the galleries in Chicago are downtown and black persons don’t go there, so I wanted to bring art to these neighborhoods - things that they could see everyday. It is a very different ghetto here but I wanted to see how the Grand Rue compares with the ghetto in Chicago.

How are the ghettos different?

I live in the ghetto. There are ghettos on the West and South sides of Chicago. I have not been here long enough to really determine the differences. From what I get here, I have a guide and once you are with your guide you are fine. In Chicago, it does not matter who you are with, it is always dangerous. There is a much larger police presence in Chicago and the architecture is much different.

In Chicago there are sky rises and the poor people live in the remnants of public buildings, usually isolated by a huge island of empty grass. Here it is a narrow maze.

Have you worked in other ghettos, in other cities?

Poland is homogenous- all white, all Polish- it is not as much of a

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www.annettelliot.com

ghetto as in the US. And their poverty is concentrated in the villages but within the city, it is more spread out and more hidden. A huge family of 10 might be living in one apartment but you would not know.

How is your projection intended to work in the Haitian context?

My projections at the Grand Rue uses aerial images- geometry, geography- all sourced from proto-prints that create a new map so that whoever is watching can recognize aspects of the images but can create their own stories based on the projections. There is an element that allows for multiple interpretations so it is not so direct.

The starting point was landsat and google map. Google map has some high quality images and Haiti has some of the most photos taken especially right around the earthquake. Often times Google Map would go a year without updates but not for Haiti. The maps that I create are collaged, they are not an actual location. I use elements from different parts of the city composing them into a new map.

How do you understand the gaps and fragmentation created through these compositions?

My research involved how new urban forms developed and were rebuilt after the earthquake. Usually cities are planned by a city planner and grow outward but here it was organic. They might have an empty center and the city forms like an organism with no urban plan imposed. In a way this natural growth is more in tune with the human body and how we walk and experience space.

Often the urban planners work with geometric forms on a map that are sometimes very difficult to navigate. People don’t move on a grid, they want to cut across, work on diagonals or curves. So coming from the ground up, it follows the way the body moves through space and relates to the way people move through the city more naturally.

The idea of fragmentation in your work creates some dissonance with the idea of this organic growth. How do you perceive this dissonance?

Walking through the shanty town, the alleys curve through, but the houses themselves are like this cubist painting, melded together and spread apart and the framgentation is also the remnants of the earthquake that leaves a gaping hole that you have to patch. It is a painful rupture that is experienced in the architecture or whatever the buildings are themselves- an accumulation of history that has created a fragmented cityscape. Very rarely does the full building remain- all these other materials are used to re-configure it.

You see this as social practice? What do you want the end result to be?

It is a process of navigating self and the other. I can’t really talk about wanting to change the community with my art because that is seen as an imperialist, dominating tendency. Rather, I focus on reflecting an aspect of the community through my projections on a larger scale so that it becomes, in some way, a mirror of what I see. I am very much a foreigner, so art becomes a way of communicating,

interviews, emails & transcripts

opening a dialogue about the place. In all my art I am kind of the outsider so my art becomes a way to communicate with persons that are very different from myself and the projections also reflect this communication in a poetic gesture back to the community.

Projections have a lot to do with buildings, architectures, stories that buildings hold in an effort to make these histories more tangible. They are meant to reflect the spirit, soul of the city. The projections tell a story of the past and present.

What do you think is the memory that you are creating here?

In a way the imagery is the memory, imagery collaged before and after the earthquake, compressing time and creating a city map in a way that is a timeless city map that comes from 20 years ago, before the earthquake and now. It is also layered through its projection onto a building rather than a screen.

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Diedrick Brackens (US) Project Proposal Abstract I plan to arrive in Haiti with a seam ripper, a needle, and thread.

I am interested in the textile economy of Haiti, I would like to spend my time in the country attempting to understand what types of textile production and exchange are taking place and how a global economy has influenced its markets. I have spent some time researching “pepe” and I want to produce sculpture and fabricate new garments out of this existing resource. I would like to alter garments by amassing these marks of status onto the surface of sculptural forms, creating highly decorated and charged textiles that, perhaps, render singular logos and brands illegible.

I am interested in deconstructing the ideas of status, branding, and cloth as skins; while also investigating notions of fantasy and power implicit to the ritual of dress. It is my hope that I will be able to find participants to wear my constructions and places in the community to install my sculptures.

Interview Artforms also use a politics of dress or a textile language such as the works of some of the Ghetto Bienniale artists and textiles are also involved in Haitian carnival. What do you think is the relationship between these sites and the work that you are attempting to do?

Many of my past projects have been textile-focused. As a maker, I identify as a weaver, although I produce work in many other wayswood, installation, and some performance. Some component of the works I make is always thinking about or made through some textile technique. I am interested in impermanence, tending and repairing, and decoration all of which are very encoded into cloth and its production.

I was interested in coming to Haiti after meeting Andre Eugene and Leah Gordon in the States. I got a chance to work alongside them and to see some of the work that was being made by some of the Haitian artists and past projects of international artists.I was really inspired. The level of engagement and interest in social projects Leah displayed sold me on coming to the GB. As for Haiti in itself, I was quite excited for a chance to come to a place that, as a Black American, I have always seen as totally mythic in some ways, given the rich history and culture. For me Haiti had always been spoken about through anecdotes passed along by a friend of a friend, or experienced through historical text, news, literature. I knew I was being presented with a very skewed image and wanted to come experience it for myself.

I was sure I would work with `pepe´, the invasive nature of the material, and the way it had displaced a portion of the textile industry in the country seemed like something worth interrogating and relevant to my concerns as a textile practitioner. Originally, I thought about making these very performative textiles. Like coming down to the Grand Rue and making costumes that I’d get people to wear out into the streets.

I abandoned this idea because it was not very true to my practice and I didn’t want to come across as insincere. An important dimension of my practice is education. In the last few years I have led several workshops in net making and assisted in teaching

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www.diedrickbrackens.com

various other textile techniques, so I decided to find a way to do that.

I began by deconstructing as much `pepe´ as possible and taking it through various stages of processing. I am turning strips of t-shirts into “thread” which I am then making into balls and skeins of yarn, material that I am then using to make nets and woven goods. I am trying to use this project to think about how to start conversations about recycling the cloth back into the market or finding other uses for it. I have observed that nothing goes to waste and things that would be discarded elsewhere are made useful here. I think `pepe´ could be more than use clothing, it might also be raw material waiting for further manipulation.

My undergrad and the grad program I am working on right now is on textiles so I generally create weavings and nets that are paired with objects made out of wood or found objects. There tends to not be a performtive element but it seems to call that out in people, people want to interact with objects. So I am interested in making these things that act like bodies call for interaction. A lot of my earlier work surrounds thinking about my family and what it means to be African-American, responding to things that I was dealing with and making a symbology that represented the way that I feel. I live in the South so a particular vernacular started to seep into it. Since grad school I have been working more responsively- doing things and thinking about it. It’s about my own identity, being black, being queer, thinking about ways of reflecting things, splits. So when I came here, I really wanted to come here and explore the island, meet the people, see the sites.

Haiti has such an interesting history. I wanted to see what it means to be black in another location. So I started looking for what kind of textile histories here. And I found out that a lot of what is here is disappearing because of the invasive presence of clothing from abroad. So I started looking around and saw other projects that talked about `pepe´ and responded to it. I thought I would come and use it to make sculptures and performative garments. And I got here and I felt that it was not in keeping with my own work... it seemed insincere. It felt as though it would be easy for people to think that it was making it into the form of carnival. And that might be uncomfortable coming from an outsider. Another part of my practice is about textile education -demonstration of the technique. It always makes for good conversations about the loss of skills and so on. So I felt as though I could continue some of the things that I was already doing. In the Grand Rue, there is a lot of hybridizing of things- taking objects, parts and making something useful. `Pepe´ seems like an object that only has one life- you buy it and wear it. I wondered if it could pass into another life- using the t-shirts and turning them back into a new textile somehow. `Pepe´ is second hand clothes that come from the US. They are unwanted second hand clothes. Goodwill for instance gets these donations and does not want them. It seems that a lot of HaitianAmericans will go to the second hand stores, get these rejects and ship it to Haiti. In some ways it is a chance for Haitians to have something that indicate some kind of status or wealth. Sometimes the text on these clothes can barely be read or is conflicting with this landscape. Crazy cheap, weird t-shirts you would get at Walmart for example. So that was really striking in thinking about

interviews, emails & transcripts

national and ethnic identities- you could wear something and it is not you but it can create these fractures or slippages. Maybe the meaning changes. How can you wear a “Kiss me, I’m Irish” and still be Haitian?

There’s a Haitian artist that is using `pepe´ but sewing jeans onto it. I thought of doing something similar removing the logos and replace it but I felt that it was effacing something that does exist.

These imports are coming in. How can it be about hybridizing it rather than ignoring it? I don’t have a concrete answer and a week is not enough time. I’ve accepted the fact that I need to come back.

I want to set up a workshop so that people come and get to learn the technique- making weavings from yarn or making weavings from t-shirts. These skills may or may not be useful. Maybe they change the way we think about production What has the response been?

Ideas around gender have been interesting. A lot of people stop and help me make the nets. A lot of the international artists say oh if you do the workshop, the women will be interested in it. So there is this immediate gender association. There was something that happens in using clothing because actually weaving is something that traditionally a lot of men do. It is exciting to think about it as something women could do that is not perceived as threatening - maybe it would get more women into making art because for whatever reason a lot of women are not making art here. Jeff, a guy of say no older than twenty helped me a lot. Some men said, I would love to know how to do that and some were not too interested.

There have been a lot of discussions about the usefulness of the object. One guy asked, “Well what do you do with a sculpture?” But the process does have utility built into it. If it were made with other materials it could be used, so it is potentially exciting territory.

I think the project became less about dress and more about the skill- showing how things are made- production- and talking about utility and function as opposed to dress. There is something performative about the making of craft here. We spent a lot of time walking through their space. It is the same thing that happens with making textiles because you don’t see that on a regular basis. I had this notion that no one would stop and stare but people do look on.

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Emilie Boone (US)

Wooden, Whittled Might And Its Economies Of Value

Project Proposal Abstract On a quick walk from Andre Eugene’s atelier to what used to be Claudel Casseus’ family home in Port-au-Prince’s Grand Rue artist community, visitors always pass an area where vestiges of an ignored economy are still busy at work. What would it mean to pay attention to these invisible craftsmen in light of the celebrated status the sculptors of the Grand Rue have brought to the entire community? How can we critically think about where the practices of the craftsmen and Atis Reszistans intersect with and depart from each other? I hope to create an installation using the massproduced wooden vases created by this often forgotten Grand Rue artisan community. In deciding on the installation’s location and organization, I plan to spend time mapping the ways in which visitors and residents of the Grand Rue navigate the spaces in which these artisan and their crafts exist. Aside from observing, my project will very much depend on conversations with artisans about how they perceive their practice and role within the larger project of how the Grand Rue community positions and represents itself to outsiders.

Interview What kind of projects or engagements have interested you in the past?

What interested/interests you about Haiti and the Ghetto Biennale?

What role does memory play in the interaction or noninteraction between the artists and the artisans? Does this mapping of routes of visitors and residents become a performance in some way? What might this performance of mapping achieve? What is the politics of interaction between visitors, residents, artists and artisans that you have recognized through this mapping?

This is the third Biennale that I’ve come to. For the first one, I attended just the congress. I haven’t done any artistic projects like this but I have been working at museums in different capacities for the last 10 yrs. I was a research fellow at the Institute of Chicago, assisted with shows, museum of Contemporary Photography and was a fellow there recently. I have done a lot of my own research projects.

I was interested in participating partially because I’ve been doing research here in Haiti on the photography studios- traveling around the country doing interviews in different cities. I started that after one of my mentors, Maryland Houlberg- an author in “The Sacred Arts in Haitian Voodoo” and “In Extremis in Haitian Voodoo”- has this collection of photos that she started in the 1960s. I was interested in these as it parallels my own research. So I started doing research on contemporary photography studios and working on a painting by Philomen Obin and so I have different research projects. I am also working with a show with Eduard Duval Carrier on photography in Haiti. My mom is Haitian and I started learning creole two years ago.

I feel like the impact of wood is very much embedded in the community- that is at the core of their practice. Even though I

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recognized that they were using wood, I didn’t recognize how significant it is. Memory between the artisans and artists is longstanding and complex and it comes to light in ways that are not easily read and understood. When I have described Celeur or Eugene’s work, I have gravitated to the ways in which they were re-using or recuperating but now that I’ve talked to the artisans, I have a broader understanding of the relationship between the two. I was first introduced to the artist in 2009 and coming back for the last 3 or 4 years, my ideas about the group have changed so drastically.

I don’t feel as though it was a performance... with performance people sit and pay attention. I feel like what people do with the artisan area is passing through. I don’t think there is a visual engagement with the space in the way that people give to the Atis Rezistans. What does give a sense of performance was the labour involved that animates the space. I was there before 7 and one night before 8 and they were there working. Their work continued and they had to manage not having electricity during periods of the day. There was something reassuring about the consistency regardless of the tourists walking through. Their site is very different to Eugene’s atelier which is organized around the display of art and the tourists. The space is re-configured for visitors to make it comfortable. The artisan space is not like that- it has a certain function and there is something interesting about that.

From what I witnessed, there is no tension between the artists and artisans but the artisans described their practice- they said their work was classical and Atis Rezistans was about deformation. They are very interested in the details and craftsmanship and they are not interested in voodoo, which is at the heart of Eugene’s work for example.

The artisans said that when people come if there is any interaction, it is just about photographs but again it comes down to where do you feel welcome and where do you feel there is space for conversation. They are not making pieces for that market but they are interested in people buying their work. For both artists and artisans, their work is sold locally and abroad.

I used the left over wood shavings from one of the studios. I collected the studios with the artist so that was collaboration in and of itself. They are really thin slivers. I took about 7 or 8 of them and I had to figure out how long I wanted them to soak. I wove them. I used it much the same way that Atis REzistans does but with wood and the reason for the weaving was that that was the only way that the pieces of wood could stay together and I like to think of that as a way that the artists and the artisans could come together. I did about 20 of them and I made an outline of a vase created by these interlaced pieces of wood. It is like a vase but not the shapes that you would find at the artisans. This alternative shape represented my misreading of the Atis Rezistans’ work. To reflect that I also did a misrecognition- one form representing another.

In Situ

“The Book of Latent Promises is a collective project that explores forms of documentary and social dissent. The project is centered on sustainable printing where the content is created by transferring the surfaces from the rubble of the Haitian earthquake of 2010 onto handmade paper made from recycled paper found in the city.

The conceptual aspect of the project is to explore the idea of false promises within communities and the city, looking at the debris of the earthquake as a mimetic signifier of the structural debacle of the post-earthquake promises made to the country.

The project consists of inking the debris, objects, marking onto the locally manufactured paper, and transferring the fragmented structures and surfaces as witnesses of the event and creating a visual and transitory map. The project creates a book as traveling manifesto of a multi-dimensional map of some of the fragments left as a consequence of the earthquake, as loose forms, never reconstructed.”

Nine Days in Haiti by Elsabe Dixon A Recollection of the 2013 Ghetto Biennale and a Floating Lab/ Intransit Collaboration with the people of Port-au-Prince explored the principles and practicalities involved in operating a global project while pushing the boundaries of static systems – like tourism - which tend to snuff out creative engagement between different social and economic groups in Port-au-Prince. The social and economic dialogue this project created, both strengthened future possibilities of practicing socially engaging processes, while also operating in compliance with the need in Port-au-Prince for cultural interconnectedness and regeneration of Haitian global interconnectedness and entrepreneurship.

The project took the form of a media lab within which five different components were addressed while interacting with artists selected by the Ghetto Biennale curators, Creole artists working in the ghetto of Port-au-Prince and French speaking artists studying at the Art Academy ENARTS, as well as local red zone audiences:

Holy Trinity Cathedral after earthquake 1.Place and Time. The place and space of the project was the red zone and orange zone areas of post-earthquake Port-au-Prince.

And the time we used to construct the project was nine days in late November to early December before the opening of the Biennial. But there was a transference of time because the Floating Lab Collective and Intransit team gave the process over to Hatian artists who continued the process through the duration of the Ghetto Biennial and into public and academic spaces afterward.

On Jan. 12, 2010, Haiti was forever changed when a 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck Port-au-Prince. Three years later, the devastation is still more visible than the recovery and reconstruction in this area today. About 300,000 people lost their lives, while hundreds of thousands were injured and the property loss continues to be staggering. All of the major institutions in Port-au-Prince were destroyed or damaged, including the National Palace, historic art treasures and Holy Trinity Cathedral, constructed in 1929.

These spaces were the first chosen by the Floating Lab/Intransit Collaboration team, in which to work. The Cathedral was a primary gathering place, and therefore a symbol of Haitian community, and the space originally accommodated a primary and secondary school, a convent, a music school (which housed the country’s only philharmonic orchestra and one of the largest music organs in the Caribbean). The murals throughout the cathedral depicted African images from the bible created by some of Haiti’s most famous artists in the 1950s. Today only three survive. Walking and working in the shadow of the Cathedral and Palace ruins emphasized a ritual of remembrance and respect as well as a sense of what was but also what could be.

interviews, emails & transcripts

Caribbean Intransit Marielle Barrow (TT/US), Moira Williams (US) Floating Lab Collective Jorge Luis Porrata (CU/US), Elsabe Dixon (ZA/US), Edgar Endress (CL/US)

Briquettes donated by El Fuego del Sol. The team discussing the possibilities of solar ovens with Kevin Adair.

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Caribbean Intransit

Marielle Barrow (TT/US), Moira Williams (US)

Floating Lab Collective

Jorge Luis Porrata (CU/US), Elsabe Dixon (ZA/US), Edgar Endress (CL/US)

In Situ

3.The sites where the project was constructed were not artists studios but public and academic spaces, not only in the Ghetto Biennial’s Grand Rue area but also at academic institutions like ENARTS, historical sites like the Holy Trinity Cathedral and the Palace and local ghetto sites around different red zone areas in Port-au-Prince. Each site facilitated a different audience and a different dialogue as well as a different outcome.

Students at ENARTS and the Floating Lab/Intransit team collaborating with Haitian artist Jean Frederic from the ghetto, as well as Guerly Laurent from the Ghetto Biennale to pull paper, make ink and produce prints.

2. The material, from which the objects were made for eventual installing in the Grand Rue Ghetto Biennial area, became itself a forum within which to discuss post-earthquake Port-au-Prince social and economic histories. Using paper briquettes donated by the startup ecological solutions company called El Fuego del Sol, handmade paper was pulled at the Biennial site, during workshops at ENARTS and on street corners interacting with red zone audiences. The president of the El Fuego del Sol company, Kevin Adair, also donated shredded paper from the foreign embassies, the UN, as well as the Food Relief Organizations and other global businesses present in Haiti at the moment. Added to the paper pulp mix were newspapers with current headlines and carefully hand calligraphed pages from a French school journal. Prints were pulled from rubble found around prominent historical sites like the Cathedral and the Palace. And ink was made from local materials found in the Port-au-Prince ghetto including voodoo powder, car fluid and coal. All made up an interesting mixture of spiritual, cultural, industrial, historical and ecological meaning.

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craftman’s journey, the discipline of practice but also reveals the histories of the past and the circumstances and possibilities of the present.

interviews, emails & transcripts

4. The audience interaction component facilitated dialogue between the Floating Lab Collective artists, Caribbean InTransit artists and scholars, and the Haitian community (artists, scholars, and the public).

5. The practice and the product. The practice of creating paper and hand pulled prints from earthquake rubble, in public and private spaces, outline the form of an organic project enlisting social engagement evolving from conversations and interactions with the Port-au-Prince community. The product, produced after the nine day interaction, training multiple groups how to make paper and pull prints, is a postmodern chicken coop with wheelbarrow handles and wheels. While designed and commissioned by Floating Lab Collective, the coop was constructed by a local Haitian craftsman and installed at the Ghetto Biennial site holding instructions (translated in French and Creole) for making paper, recipes for ink and found-material replicas of printing tools made from the industrial tools we brought with us. Digital issues of Caribbean Intransit depicting audience interaction, workshops and product production of the paper prints will take multiple forms and will focus on the dialogue that takes place during process, the cultural context of their creation, and the object display during exhibition. The Book of Latent Promises outlines not just the

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interviews, emails & transcripts

Gétho Jean Baptiste (HT)

‘This Is Who We Are’: An Artist Interview with Gétho Jean Baptiste

By Kantara Souffrant A Progressive Market - Yon Mache Pwogresis ‘A Progressive Market’ is which is situated at the base of progress between artists and collectors. We rarely have art collectors visit us here in Haiti, which makes many of us often discouraged.

This situation often makes up obliged to find other methods of supporting ourselves which are easier. Because in Haiti artists have many responsibilities, including apying for rents, sending children to school, finding food to eat every day, and many other things that can unexpectedly happen. Thus if the artist cannot function properly , this will hamper hurt their artistic progress. As artists, if we get more visits from collectors, we will have the best inspiration. In this regard, I will present ‘A Progressive Market’ in the form of a sculpture, I will make this work in collaboration with a welder who lives in the neighbourhood.

Yon « Mache Pwogresis » se yon mache ki chita sou baz pwogre ant atis ak kolekte. Pa bo isit atis pa telman jwenn vizit kolekte, se sa ki fe anpil nan yo konn dekouraje. Sitiyasyon sa fe yo oblije chache yon lot bagay ki pi fasil pou yo fe. Paske nan Haiti Atis yo gen anpil responsablite, tankou : yo gen kay pou yo peye, timoun pou voye lekol, manje pou bay chak jou, e anpil lot bagay ki ka rive. Kidonk si Atis la pa kabap fonksyone, l’ap mal pou li pwogrese. Nou menm atis, si nou jwenn plis vizit, n’ap gen pi bon enspirasyon. Nan sans sa, mwen pral travay pou’m ka prezante « Mache Pwogresis » la sou fom eskilti ‘m, m’ap fe yon piyes avek fe an kolaborasyon ak yon boss soudi ki rete nan menm zona k mwen. Mwen vle prezante « Œuvre » sa nan jou venisaj 3zyem Ghetto Biannale 2013.

Gétho Jean Baptiste is one of the first artists that I had the pleasure of meeting at the Grand Rue. His quiet demeanor and slight stutter belie his role and title in “Nouvo Rezistans” (“New Resistance”), a group of artists reared in the recuperation tradition of the Grand Rue. Many of the New Resistance (members/artists) were trained by the formidable Grand Rue masters, Jean Hérard Celeur and André Eugène. Yet, as the Ghetto Biennale convened, it became clear that Gétho, like his fellow Nouvo’s, is making a name for himself. Gétho’s work doesn’t run away from the sexual or the macabre–a reminder that life in Haiti does not shy away from its beginnings and its endings–yet his present sculptures strike a balance between the aesthetic of reassemblage and the political.

The work is beautiful but the vision and meaning behind them, at times, is even grander. In Gétho’s work remains the commitment to creating art with meaning--a political tinge to his oeuvre that places Haiti’s present social, economic, and political conditions at the center of his practice. While Gétho may have been the first artist that I met, I returned to his studio throughout my time at the Grand Rue because he became my teacher, a reminder of why we create art: to document our realities and to usher forward alternative visions for the world around us. The following is an interview with Gétho conducted on December 14, 2013. In it he discusses several of his pieces, making art after catastrophe, and what he believes art can do for Haiti and Haitian people.

Kantara Souffrant (KS): The first time we met I asked you what led you to doing this work. Could you please explain it again to me?

Gétho Jean Baptiste (GJB): I came to this work because I was truly in need of it. [At the

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time] I had a girlfriend who I cared about a lot. Her husband had passed away while she was two months pregnant and I decided to help her. But the moment I decided to help her my life changed; which is to say I became worst off than I was before [because now I had two people in the household to feed]. Well, you know [Atiz Rezistans Grand Sculptor Jean Hérard] Celeur, he is a good friend of mine and I was always there when he was working and I would help him, but I never had the spirit [the desire] to make my own art piece. It wasn’t in my head at all. What was in my head was to go to school and become and engineer, an office manager, or a big accountant. But when I finished school–and I was working with Celeur’s child in school, and I was helping a lot of [other artists in the Grand Rue]–I reached a point where I saw that my life was changing and all I could think was that God had my back and was giving me strength to do what I was doing. And all I could think was, “I have to start doing something that will help me to support this [unborn] child.” If I take on this responsibility, I need to know that I can do this. And Celeur said to me, “Gétho, all the small children [at the Grand Rue] are working [making art]. You are an old man, you have responsibilities: rent to pay, clothes to buy, a woman who is pregnant who needs your help. You can’t just sit here and do nothing. What do you think you can and should do first?”

I told him, “I don’t see anything that I can do. My spirit is not in the thing [the making of art]. I don’t know anything, I don’t know what I am doing.” Celeur said, “Okay. Choose something and I will help you.”

I chose to start working on these [2D tableaus]. Now the first tableau I made wasn’t good, because the spirit [of this work] wasn’t in my head. When you can’t do something it always seems unfamiliar to you. Celeur [saw it] said to me, “This isn’t hard. What is hard is sitting in school and [formal education]. You’ve finished your formal learning. You’ve helped other people to advance and the people that you have helped are succeeding. That’s not easy, that is hard. Teaching someone to write is not easy.” And I told him I agreed with him. So I worked, I was there day after day and every piece I finished I showed to Celeur and he would tell me how to improve the work. Every piece I finished I left in Celeur’s home.

Then I reached a place where I finished a piece and Celeur had nothing to say [no criticism]. So I started gathering my materials and working on my own. When I finished a piece I would go find Celeur and ask him to come see them. He began saying, “You’re starting to get good! Keep at it!”

So like this, bit-by-bit, I became an artist. But there were many things I wanted to do before I became an artist. I always wanted people to see me helping other people, giving people counsel, but I saw that it was difficult for people to see me. But when I entered this [art making] I couldn’t hide. And overtime I began to feel more at ease, I began to feel like if I wasn’t an artist I would be missing something. Because an artist isn’t an ordinary person–an accountant, an office manager, those for me are ordinary people– but an artist who stays and imagines and creates things that moves people emotionally, that delivers messages with art pieces [made

KS: Can you tell me how you came to find your voice in your works?

Because the first time we spoke you told me that it was as though you could say things with you work that you couldn’t say any other way. You said to me that you found another way to [express yourself].

Could you talk about that a bit more?

GJB: I used to feel that if I talked to a person face-to-face and I said to the person, “You can’t do that!” I would feel as though the person couldn’t hear me. But when I create [a piece] it isn’t only one person who sees it, a lot of people see it and that means the message I want to express spreads to more people. For example, if I have a vision [of a future piece], create it, you take it and bring it somewhere other people will see it and any other person who takes one of my pieces will do the same work you are doing--that is to say that my voice will be carried far.

KS: What do you hope to say with your art?

GJB: Well, with my work, I would like it if more people could see my work. Because my work isn’t something like bric-a-brac. It isn’t as though I just sit here, make things, and leave them here. No. I have all my things here. I can stay here by myself sit with my legs crossed and just [Gétho looks up towards the sky]. That is to say, I have things [visions] that come. My strongest pieces are the ones that come at night before I go to sleep. Before sleep takes, me imagination is running wild. I might be listening to music--I like sentimental music a lot--it gives me a lot of power to work.

KS: How do you feel when you’re working?

GJB: When I’m working I feel like it isn’t me that is here. That’s why you see force in my work. Because sometimes I sit here and I’m imagining and I see something that isn’t here. A vision that comes from a far but it isn’t me that takes it [Gétho laughs]. Where that vision is, it isn’t me who goes out and gets it. I’ve been placed in the position of an extraordinary person which allows me to retrieve [this vision].

KS: Can you explain the piece, “Malere Pa Chen” (“Suffering Isn’t A Dog”)?

GJB: There are people who are so badly off that they would prefer to be in the place of dogs—but not any dog, the dog in “big man’s” house, a man of great importance whose dog [therefore] has great importance. These dogs get to go to the hospital every month, [their owners] don’t feed them scraps or feed them on the floor, they have a scheduled time to be fed, when they need to bathe there is someone who bathes them. You, you’re a person, you have to work so that you can eat. If you don’t work what can you do? You can’t do anything. That is to say, there are people who would prefer to be in the place of these [well-kept] dogs.

Now can see that I have used an old and broken tire at the bottom of the piece. The broken tire represents poor people, those who are suffering. [Generally] poor people are working for other people, helping them to make money to put in their pockets, helping them to do all that they need to do but for you [the poor person] it is as though they [your employer] are riding you on your back, you’re giving your very blood and selling yourself but you still can’t eat.

How is it possible that you can’t eat when you are being used to do so much [and to make so much money for another person]?

You’ve become an engine for your employer–because you know without an engine a car can’t work. You’ve become an engine for your boss but now he doesn’t want to acknowledge or take care of this engine. You can see now how an engine comes to breakdown [under these conditions]. And when a motor breaks what do you do? You send it somewhere else. That is to say if I am not in good health, I can’t work. If I’m malnourished, in the morning unable to drink even a cup of coffee–the first thing that you’re supposed to do in the morning when you wake up is eat something so that you can work. You can’t work if you’re hungry--you’ll be on your way to work and fatigued. To work and be starved, to do this day in and day out, you will one day lay down in bed [dead]. Because every time you work [without nourishing] your body it is your body that breaks down. And the very person [your employer] who has the means to help you the most, to make your health and body strong, refuses.

interviews, emails & transcripts

from] found objects gathered from the streets, that is not easy; you can’t say that person is an ordinary person. That is an extraordinary person.

All this to say, I can’t live like this anymore. When I die, what will happen? It will take time for my employer to find another person, another laborer. But other people won’t want to work with you the employer, because everyone will see that I spent all this time working for you but my living situation never improved–I never progressed. My children never went to school and I never ate well enough to truly work. And everyone saw this, they all witnessed how I worked but never progressed, that my children never went to school. They see that something was not right here.

So for you the employer, the day that I lay down dead, what are you going to do? You’re going to try to call another person to work for you but the other person will say, “Well, if Gétho worked with this man, but his child is here and can’t go to school--and everyone knows that Gétho loved his child and would do everything that he could possibly do for his child.” That is to say that people will know that it wasn’t me, Gétho, who didn’t take care of his child and obligations, it was my patron, my employer, who was in the wrong, who made it impossible for me to do so because he didn’t pay me and he thus led to my death. So now, the [employer’s] company won’t advance, any barriers that it could have met it won’t be able to because you won’t be able to advance without me the worker.

You need me. And I need you too. You have to be able to help me.

KS: Can you speak on “Ayiti” (“Haiti”) please?

GJB: Well, there are people–you know if you and I are both Haitian, there are some of us who give foreigners more valor than our fellow Haitians. For example, you can see I am here, I am eating and I don’t offer anyone around me. But a foreigner comes in and I offer them some. Furthermore, we don’t have a problem with citizens

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Gétho Jean Baptiste (HT)

‘This Is Who We Are’: An Artist Interview with Gétho Jean Baptiste

By Kantara Souffrant

of other countries, for example Chinese citizens, American citizens, French citizens. We don’t have a problem with these citizens but, it is the governments of these citizens that harm us. But that is because we don’t organize ourselves. Take the United States. When it has problems with another country what does it do? It doesn’t let that other country attack it because it likes and values its country. It doesn’t want any problems in its house. So what does [the U.S.] do?

It marches, it leaves and it fights because it doesn’t want any wars in its house so that its children won’t have to deal with any of it. We Haitians aren’t like that. We leave our doors open and anyone who wants to come in can come in.

In the piece you see one boot at the top. On the bottom it is painted white and the top of it is painted black. That is to say, the way we are today, they say that it is “blan” [“whites” or “foreigners”] who have done this to us, but it isn’t only whites who have done this to us. It is the cooperative work between us Haitians and foreigners.

And when I say, “blan” I don’t mean the citizens of a country. Look at the Ghetto Biennale, the visiting artists here are citizens [of some of the same countries that have harmed Haiti] but look at how we are together, we enjoy ourselves together, we drink beer together, you eat with me and I drink with you. If I say I’m leaving and walking with you to the Grand Rue, you aren’t scared of me.

Do you understand? And the citizens [of the other nations] they don’t have a problem with us Haitian citizens either. The problem is between government and government. But our government never thinks of the people, they forget that it is the people who give them power. That is to say, they say that they speak on our behalf, but they don’t speak for us, they speak for themselves. When they find what they were looking for, what do they do with it? They put it in their pockets, save their money in a foreign country, and they leave us what they want to leave us [...] So, that is why I called this piece “Ayiti,” this lone boot represents a white government-foreign government--and the black part represents the Haitian government. The two work together to bring Haiti down.

KS: [Speaking of Haiti, foreign governments, and power] Have you noticed a change in your work since January 12th [2010]?

GJB: Before January 12th I can say that I was a child. When I say, “child” I don’t mean in terms of age or comportment. I mean that I had just started [making art] and when you start learning anything you’re a child. And when I started working and making little things I was making the work of children [the tableaus]. But after January 12, all us artists, I don’t know about artists in other areas, but we artists of Rezistans, we had journalists who came to interview us, myself and Celeur. They asked us, “With what has happened, what work have you done [to commemorate] this?”

But, we [artists] responded in one voice, we said, “A catastrophe has just occurred. What kind of inspiration can an artist have after so many people have died? Friends, family, children, old people all types of people. White people died, black people died, rich people died, poor people died. What kind of inspiration can you have after something like this?” And the journalist understood this, that we couldn’t explain this, we couldn’t see this.

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Us [of the Atis Rezistans], it isn’t that we are better people than those who died, but if we aren’t in the same situation as those who died it is because God reserved other things for us, he saved us so that we could deliver a message: what we saw, what God can do.

That is to say we were lucky, and if you weren’t already close to God now was your chance to get closer. He gave us that chance to get closer to him. That isn’t to say that if you are close to God you won’t die, but in his teachings he says that if you die for him you will have a long life, an eternal life.

So after January 12th--two or three months after--we weren’t inspired to make anything. All we could do was reflect on another life, on how we were going to continue living now. We found inspiration, I would say, maybe six months after the earthquake, because we felt obligated to share what we saw.

KS: And what inspiration took you? How did you place all this in your work, what you saw?

GJB: In my work I began to lift myself. When I say, “lift myself,” I mean that I began to make pieces that were stronger. [I thought], “All these people have died, they were our blood.” You know they say that every life that passes another life is in danger. So I said, I have to start working so that even if I die I can leave something for those that come after me. That’s what I thought.

KS: Final question: What do you think Haitian artists can do for Haiti?

GJB: Well artists can do a lot for Haiti. But specifically, people who are wondering what they can do for Haiti, who are reflecting on the state of our country, they should invest in artists and then they will know what artists can do for them [and for Haiti]. Because each lonely artist in the country is an ambassador because they represent the nation; they help other nations see the valor of their country. You, you came here and you helped me to see what you have in your home. Just like this I help you to see what I have in my home. This is a sort of valorization. Which is to say, I give what you do valor and you give what I do valor. I think that if people who are reflecting on the country can say, “Well these artists, they are the image of the country too. They are the ones who reflect the country. The way they are, I believe the country can be that way also.” But this isn’t so, the way [artists] are is for their wives and their children [meaning that] artist do what they do not for themselves only; they do it to bring tourists to the country--and when there are tourists it makes a country stronger. Even if I make a piece and don’t sell it, a [tourist] has purchased a ticket to come to the country, they have paid for a hotel room, they’ve purchased food, they’ve purchased beverages, and in time maybe I will sell a piece.

But if they [tourists] decide to become benefactors of our work, we will make even more things. You can see [Gétho points to all of his art work] my house isn’t large enough to serve me and there are many more things I can make but I have nowhere to put them. If I had a larger place–well let me say, I have the feeling that everyday I can make at least two pieces. That is to say we need benefactors and supporters, if we have supporters we can work internationally and with what we produce I think the country can become better.

interviews, emails & transcripts

KS: Thank you. Is there anything else you wanted to say?

GJB: Well, I want to say that even if Haitians don’t want to put their heads together I would like for us to come together so that other countries can no longer speak ill of us. Because [other countries] are always saying, “Look what Haiti has done bad. Look what Haiti has done terribly. Look what Haiti has done that is awful.” But why is it that we do good things in our country and they never speak of them? That they always choose to reflect on the bad? We Haitians need to make an effort to help other nations see this is who we are. We aren’t only bad--there is good and there is bad, but they always show the bad to devalorize us. We Haitians don’t want to come together but I would like it if we did, to help us advance the country, and to help us bring more people [tourists] to this country.

KS: Do you think this is the work of Haitian artists and Haitian artists who live “over there” [in the Haitian diaspora]?

GJB: Yes. KS: Okay. Well then what do you think people in the diaspora can do for Haiti?

GJB: People in the diaspora can help do a lot of marketing. Because when they [the diaspora] come to Haiti they can do whatever they want. When you’re in a foreign country you can’t do anything you want. That’s to say, you who are on the outside, you know the principles [of the country] and when you come here you can apply those principles. That could help to bring about a change in Haiti. If I am here and living in Haiti, when I go to another country they will tell me, “Here’s what you need to do, here’s how you need to behave.” You do them because you don’t want them to take sanction against you, there are certain sanctions that can send you back to Haiti and for that reason you walk the straight and narrow.

But why isn’t that when you [the diaspora] come to visit you never say, “This is my home”? That, if something happens this is where you will return? That the principle of living that you learned elsewhere you will apply here as well? It will be difficult, but I think that the diaspora can help us a lot in this sense [to apply a new principle of living]. Also, the diaspora supports us. I have friends “over there” who whenever I have a problem I tell them I am not doing well here, and those friends send me maybe $20, $40, $50 [U.S.] dollars and they help me. And it isn’t just me, I think almost everyone in the country has someone “over there,” even if they aren’t family they are friends, and if there are ever any problems they can help them. If that wasn’t the case I think this country would be in worst shape.

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Gina Cunningham (US) and Emmy Eves (US) Mango Madness

My ghetto Biennale project would be an extension of the multimedia mango projects and performances I have been working on and exhibiting during the last two years entitled Holy Mango, Mango Mania and Mango Madness. Mangos are important to many cultures and sold in almost all tropical markets. Mangos are the national fruit of India, the Philippines and Bangladesh.

Haiti is unique in the fact that mango season is year round. In addition, the Haitian “Francique” mango is an exceptional piece of fruit prized for it’s intense tropical flavor. The Haitian trees are not sprayed or treated, they grow as nature intended. Mangos in the ubiquitous Haitian markets are a sensory pleasure for almost all Haitians. Haitians love and venerate mangos. My plan is to work with the young artists of the Grand Rue to create pictographic documentation of mangos. Mangos depicted in and out of the market by people who have grown up eating mangos and buying mangos in their local markets.

What does the medium of photography bring to the understanding of the significance and/ or experience of the mango? Why is this an important insight for the Ghetto Biennale?

Gina Cunningham (US) Mango Bomb, Haiti: is a collaborative project for the 2013 ghetto Biennale, a project that directly involved residents of the Grand Rue. Mangoes represent the divine. Cultures around the world including Haiti use their fruit and leaves for rituals, decorations and celebrations. Mangoes symbolize love, wealth, fertility and immortality. The stickers we used are simple, pictographic documentations of mangos. Stickers themselves are an exciting combination of pop art history, digital technology and street art, while mangoes are an integral part of Haitian culture. Furthermore, in a country where many people can’t read, mango stickers are accessible to all. Stickers also represent youth culture, a strong and vital presence in the Grand Rue during each ghetto Biennale.

Stickers integrate effortlessly into myriad environments and in particular into this dense urban sprawl where they were slapped onto large metal doors. Stickers are cost-effective badges of culture. Stickers are democratic because they can be easily massproduced and are relatively cheap. Some critics view stickers as lowbrow while others consider them to be tiny works of easily collectible art. The aim of my sticker project was to share with people of the Grand Rue the beauty of both mangos and stickers.

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Gyodo

Interview I have worked with artists worldwide. My work is contemporary art, art of the world and I have the Timoun Klere workshop. I was born an artist and I have been working for the last 10-12 years professionally on the international scene. However, I was a good footballer but my mother did not want that for me.

I started working with the Biennal but I am not involved anymore because the curators wrote thing in magazine that I did not like for instance, that Eugene is the best. When the foreigners entered, things changed. It disconnected the group. Celeur needed Eugene because Eugene is a speaker, he speaks on behalf of the group.

Before this, in the beginning, there were four of us and were in competition, but I am no longer friends with Eugene.

The first time that I did a sculpture following the earthquake, I chose metal, it was a sculpture that echoed the event. I wanted to do a sculpture that would surpass the others and the sculpture had good success. That aggravated the others. There is a war on especially when people do things that are more spectacular.

Eugene does not do things that have the impact of Celeur’s works.

He copies. If you are doing art war, you can’t do copies.

I have a program for children but no one helps me. I teach the alphabet of drawing. I use art to teach the alphabet. Children who have never gone to school have the opportunity to learn but unfortunately, I have no one to help me.

I have participated in the Venice Biennale, and I have done exhibtions in Paris, France, NY, Suisse, Belgique, Allemagne.

Artiste : GUYODO Atelier : TIMOUN KLERE Qui êtes-vous ?

Je suis un artiste autodidacte né en 1973, et je suis arrivé en classe de seconde. Père d’un enfant de sept mois. Malgré mon talent je suis pauvre. Quand je commençais avec la récupération, mon environnement me considérait comme un fou.

Est-ce que vous vivez de votre pratique?

Oui malgré la demande est faible.

A quel prix vous pouvez vendre une œuvre?

Je dois vous dire sincèrement que mes œuvres n’ont pas un prix.

Qui consomme vos produits?

Les demandes que j’ai viennent surtout de l’extérieur et parfois de la classe dite bourgeoise en Haïti.

situation je mets les enfants dans une position afin qu’ils habituent avec les œuvres avant même que je les enseigne.

Vous voyagez pour votre pratique artistique ?

Où et à quelle fréquence ?

Concernant les voyages, moi GUYODO je ne voyage pas trop.

Angleterre était ma destination lors de mon premier voyage grâce à Christian AID pour participer à un programme dénommé: Abolissement de l’esclavage. L’œuvre de ce programme est sauvegardé au Slave Museum. Dans d’autres voyages, je fais des Works shop et des expositions.

Les enfants de l’atelier TIMOUN KLERE ont actuellement une invitation en suisse. La formation que je donne les enfants c’est dans l’optique d’éviter la délinquance juvénile et le banditisme.

Les enfants sont au nombre 22 d’où 15 garçons et 7 filles entre7 à 17 ans. Je dispense les cours en week-end mais en vacance je travaille avec eux chaque jour.

Avez-vous l’habitude de travailler avec d’autre artiste?

En 2005 et 2006 pour réaliser le carnaval BOUT BOUM avec Murielle.

Vous participez à des expositions?

J’expose mes œuvres très souvent à l’Institut Français.

Qu’est-ce qui vous épanouit?

Après l’art c’est mon fils.

Qu’est-ce qui vous a marqué?

Ce qui je marque le plus ce sont les déclarations des gens dans le passé qui me traitaient de fou maintenant je vois que tous les jeunes du quartier sont fous aussi parce qu’ils pratiquent cet art.

Pratiquez-vous le vodou?

Je ne le pratique pas.

Quel genre d’art produisez-vous?

Je suis polyvalent, alors, je ne fais pas seulement la récupération.

Avez-vous suivi des formations ?

Je me rappelle qu’il y avait des étrangers venant me former mais arrivant dans mon atelier il me demande moi même de les former.

Quels sont les principaux thèmes de votre art ?

Je traite la politique, la sexualité donc en générale tous ceux qui traversent le ghetto.

Utilisez-vous les réseaux sociaux ?

Je n’utilise que le Face Book.

Vous avez d’autre profession?

Je fais que l’art donc je n’ai pas d’autre métier.

Avez-vous l’habitude de participer à des concours?

Je ne participe pas.

Vous partagez votre savoir?

Oui même si je le transmets seulement oralement. Cependant, comme les gens diabolisent mes œuvres, pour remédier à cette

Où trouvez-vous votre inspiration?

Je visite souvent l’internet pour cela.

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interviews, emails & transcripts

Quel est votre rêve?

Mon rêve actuel est de trouver un manager et l’argent m’intéresse beaucoup.

Avez-vous des contacts à l’étranger?

Je parle souvent avec des gens à l’étranger sur les questions artistiques et j’ai même des artistes qui mes amis mais je ne vais pas révéler leurs noms parce qu’ils des concurrents.

Trouvez-vous des financements pour?

Mes demandes de financements ne sont jamais exécutées même auprès du ministère de la culture.

Vous avez d’autre personne de votre famille qui pratique l’art?

Mon frère Molège est aussi un grand sculpteur mais il n’est pas trop populaire.

Qui êtes-vous?

Je suis, Jean Baptiste David Sébastien, âgé de 17 ans et je suis élève de GUYODO depuis en 2008.

Avec qui vous vivez?

Je vis avec mes parents.

Etes-vous encore à l’école?

Oui en troisième secondaire.

Etes-vous parmi les enfants qui vont en Suisse?

Oui et je me sens très heureux.

Vendez-vous vos œuvres?

Je les vends et cela m’aide à financer ma propre étude.

Quel est votre rêve ?

Mon plus grand rêve est d’étudier les arts et devenir comme Celeur et Guyodo.

Quelle était votre motivation ?

Ce qui m’avait motivé c’est surtout mon amour pour Guyodo.

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Gyodo

Interview [Translated from _________by ____________ ]

Artist: Guyodo Workshop: TIMOUN Klère Who are you?

I am a self-taught artist born in 1973 and I have a seven month old child. Despite my talent I am poor. When I started with recovery art, the people around me considered me crazy.

Do you live off of your practice?

Yes despite low demand.

At what price can you sell a work?

I have to honestly say that my work does not have a price.

Who uses your products?

My invitations to exhibit come mostly from outside and sometimes from the bourgeois class in Haiti.

Do you have another profession?

I make art so I do not have another job.

Do you share your knowledge?

Yes even if I only pass it on orally. People demonize my works so to remedy this situation I put the kids in a position so that they get used to the works even before I teach them.

Do you travel for your artistic practice? Where and how often?

England was my destination on my first trip with Christian AID to participate in a program called: abolishment of slavery. The work of this program is saved in the Slave Museum. On other trips, I do workshops and exhibitions.

Children Workshop TIMOUN Klère currently have an invitation to Switzerland. The training I give the kids is with a view to prevent juvenile delinquency and crime. There are 22 children in Timoun Klère 15 boys and 7 girls between 7 and 17 years of age. I provide courses over the weekends and during vacations but I work with them every day.

Did you work with other artists?

In 2005 and 2006 to make the carnival float.

Do you participate in exhibitions?

I exhibit my works often at the French Institute.

What makes you flourish?

After art is my son.

What I register most is what people said in the past- they called me crazy. Now I see that all the neighborhood kids are crazy too because they practice this art.

Do you practice voodoo?

I do not practice.

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What kind of art do you produce?

I’m versatile, so I do not only do recovery.

What are the main themes of your art?

I discuss politics, sexuality therefore generally those who pass through the ghetto.

Do you use social networks?

I only use the Facebook.

Where do you find your inspiration?

I often look on the Internet for it.

What is your dream?

My current dream is to find a manager and of course, I am very interested in money Do you have contacts abroad?

I often talk with people abroad on artistic matters and even artists who are my friends but I will not reveal their names because they are competitors.

Do you find funding for your work?

My requests for funding are never executed.

Are there other persons in your family who practice art?

My brother Molège is also a great sculptor but he is not too popular.

Who are you?

I, Jean Baptiste David Sebastian, 17 years old and I am a student of Gyodo since 2008.

With whom do you live?

I live with my parents.

Are you still in school?

Yes, in Secondary school.

Are you among the children who are going to Switzerland?

Yes and I feel very happy.

Do you sell your work?

I sell them and it helps me pay for my own study.

What is your dream?

My biggest dream is to study art and become like Céleur and Gyodo.

What was your motivation?

What motivated me is mainly my love for Guyodo.

Reproducing Arte Povera In The Third World

The project I will realise at the 3rd Ghetto Biennale, titled ‘Reproducing Arte Povera in the Third World’, is an attempt at making a radical encounter between First World art and Third World art. In this project, I propose to reproduce works of Arte Povera (e.g., Alighiero Boetti, Jannis Kounellis, Pino Pascali, Giuseppe Penone, and Michelangelo Pistoletto) with artists in Haiti by using local materials available. The movement of Arte Povera, was originally intended as a resistance to late capitalism and aimed to attack the existing values of established institutions, industry and culture. By reproducing works of Arte Povera, which means literally ‘poor art’, in the Third World with people living and working there is both the re-enactment of the nature of the movement and the ironical intervention from the Third World to the First World.

I would like to see ‘the marginality’ of the Third World as a site of resistance and present a subversive process that ‘the periphery’ encroaching ‘the centre’. An act of remaking works by Arte Povera artists will address issues surrounding capitalism, the globalized art market, exploitative and uneven globalization and the nature of First World hierarchy.

artworld is another thing that I can do. Its aim is chiefly to raise audiences’ awareness of the social issue. I am going to have an exhibition in London after I go back there.

interviews, emails & transcripts

Hiroki Yamamoto (JP)

Your project directly addresses the intent of the Biennale in asking the question “ What happens when third world art rubs up against third world art, does it bleed?” How might this marked symbolic statement have tangible effects? What kind of follow up might be necessary to effect its sustainability?

My project is collaborative. In London, I don’t make sculpture or painitngs because I have no educational background apart from my PhD so I don’t have any techniques so in a sense my project cannot be realized without the aid of local people. I was overwhelmed by the productivity of Haitain artists. They are full of inspiration. There are so many things that they want to make.

What kind of projects or engagements have interested you in the past?

I am interested in artistic projects that are poetic, conceptual, visually intensive, yet/and functional, thought-provoking. For example, Mexican artist Pedro Reyes’s “Palas por Pistolas” (2008) and Danish artist collective SUPERFLEX’s a series of Supergas projects have interested me very much.

What interested/interests you about Haiti and the Ghetto Biennale?

I am doing my PhD with TrAIN (Research Centre of Transnational Art, Identity, and Nation), University of the Arts London. TrAIN has hosted a lecture on the Ghetto Biennale once and, with that relationship, one of my supervisors let me know about it. The concept of the biennale is highly relevant to my research area and I guess this is the main reason.

Your project directly addresses the intent of the Biennale in asking the question “ What happens when third world art rubs up against third world art, does it bleed?” How might this marked symbolic statement have tangible effects? What kind of follow up might be necessary to effect its sustainability?

This question is the one that I always confront in the process of my project. Ideally, it would make my project more ‘effective’ if I could sell pieces that I create in this project (but it might be difficult because of both the concept of the biennale, de-marketing and the current situation of the art market). I think that making an installation from the result of this project in the ‘centre’ of the VOL 2 | ISSUE 5 | SPRING 2016

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Irina Contreras (US)

Smedley Butler

My project looks to the Ghetto Biennial’s theme of Decentering the Marketplace as a way in which to explore the complex and layered relationships places share by virtue of colonialism, shared oppression and exploitation. Rather than think about the ways in which places may share these historical or contemporary moments, I am interested at looking at one person’s involvement.

Smedley Butler was a major general in the US Marines for 34 years.

He is largely responsible for the history and continued occupation of the Philippines as well as the Banana Wars, an event that further connects places like Haiti and DR to Central America. When he left the Marines, he embarked upon more touring as a person outspoken against the military industrial complex. For the purpose of the Biennial, I would like to propose an ongoing performance and installation in any public space in the Grand Rue area where I could build a countermonument. The creation of a countermonument, which by virtue might imply a counternarrative is integral to a way of thinking about how and why Smedley’s presence should be memorialized.

Your project looks at the impact of one on many and continuing this pattern, as an individual you intend to construct a countermonument that will enter into the lives of many? Will this countermonument and counter narrative shift with time also go(ing) against the signification or notion of the monument itself? How might your monument act as a portal in thinking about other memorials at this site? How does the community become part of the meaning making and narrative formation? Does Smedley’s story resonate in the community through parallels?

In the past, my work both as an artist and writer has looked at the performativity of ritual including the way ritual has been affected and the loss or grieving that may be associated with that in public spaces. Much of that work took place between Los Angeles and Mexico, individually and in public spaces. Later on, I began working through performance ideas using or breaking up the idea of theatrical spaces and collaboratively. Typically, before this I had worked quite a bit collaboratively but usually for writing projects, zines, actions that were street based or grafitti and stenciling.

In the last year, my practice has taken a turn again and I have researched FBI informants and the proliferation of informants used in US counterculture movements. Alongside this, I have been very interested and invested in how this has affected decolonization as a movement and am making work that attempts to address these concerns etc. Coming to Haiti for the Biennial has been a bit of coming to full circle. The project I proposed “A Racket is a Racket” is more similar to the projects I did before, very much about ritual, how we ritualize but this time also about how we celebrate (and mostly forget) problematic figures like Smedley Butler. I am of course in contact with people, from the people I have been socializing and thus talking to about the project, Huegens, the translator and fellow artist etc. but it is also about this space that I am inhabiting that is private that is being displayed in some senses.

I was very interested in coming to the Ghetto Biennial for various reasons. I first met Eugene and Leah when they visited California.

I had many questions for them particularly around legacies of colonialism, especially ones mostly unrecognized/forgotten in the

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art market. I appreciated that they attempted to have these difficult conversations and were responding to things that had happened in each Biennial. With the 3rd addressing the global market(s), the loss of capital (if you ever had it) and lens free, I was too curious to pass it up!

I think that I am attempting to use A Racket. A Racket is a way of looking at the impact, yes, but also invisibilities or the ways things are not discussed. This is something that remains a constant in my work right now, forced discussions, interruptions and exposing bureaucracies. What I sense is different for me personally with this piece is that I have really felt before and during being in Haiti that I am here to listen, to observe and to talk. From that I feel that I can hold space with intentionality, which I do not necessarily do in the same way for performances in the states but I feel that my position here warrants a new approach, a new way of thinking or a return to things I was thinking before especially about holding collective experiences in my own body and sharing that. In that sense, Smedley Butler is already in the lives of many but I am also relaying my interpretation or mediation to others. It was intended to shift with time, I wanted to clear the space I am working on, similar to performing a limpia and then build, construct and then destroy and then repeat. When I got here, I pretty immediately knew that wasn’t going to happen. I wanted to collaborate with others in a way that felt honest. Hugeuens asked if I could be in his play, which has probably been in a way far more exciting than my own project or a different kind of excitement. Often doing work around ritual for me has been serious and transformative, which is a very different kind of “fun”. Hueguens piece feels like it is fun, critical and “edutaining” to quote the mighty KRS-1. I believe that it is edutaining for us, outsiders in Haiti.

I think that the shifting for the monument itself may also occur.

Last year, one thing I thought quite a bit about as someone that has done murals, which are also similar to monuments is looking at the temporary arcs that were installed during the decolonizations throughout parts of Africa. During the ceremony, the UN actually installed arcs comprised of flowers and vines which people would walk under. This really amazed me at the time and I have thought about that too; about the artifice of what I am actually offering even though I myself, am being sincere and honest. But, as is said often here, we are going to leave in a few days and connections are being made of course but I also want to be real, hear real dialogue about our presence here. Part of me thinks I will also meditate on that during the monument making too. Memorials are such a strange thing! They are obviously so important throughout many cultures, definitely mine and I sense of course, here. And there is this weird sanitizing process that I think happens in the US. You can look no further than Dia De Los Muertos in the US. In the relatively short amount of time that I have been alive, I have seen Dia de los Muertos go from being the day that no one talked or knew about to it essentially becoming a Hallmark greeting card holiday. In the bay area, many of us stayed locked in a house so that we wouldn’t have to see the gringos (and this is probably funny here, because I realize that coming to Haiti, I thought I would be a bit more “gringo” than I actually am? A story for another day! Hahahaha) dressed in calavera paint. I see multiple sides. Good friends have reminded me that whiteness in the US sense has cultural lack; this

www.machinegunsteady.tumblr.com www.scenesunseenproduction.com

is also symptomatic of how powerful colonialism has been to its own people. I am approaching Smedley Butler in a similar way, attempting to have compassion even though I am critical. How can you ever truly regret something that you destroyed?

My conversations with people regarding Smedley have been sort of what I have expected and then new ideas too. For example, the actions of Smedley have given birth to new Smedleys. This was something I thought a lot about. On the other hand, some people have said they didn’t know who he was and that was also something I expected as I did not know who he was either. When I learned about him, I felt astounded that sometimes what your commonality may be with people is a shared oppressor; talk about oppression Olympics! Lastly, people also said or pointed out that people who identify as American or live in the US (we have talked a lot about this here---I actually had felt for years that I had no choice but to identify as being American since I live there but it has come up a lot that I don’t seem American or that I am something else? I will have to think more about those things of course), seem to talk about the US government as ‘a them’ as though there are no names.

I think this is very true and have told people in these discussions that it’s definitely something to take back home to LA and Oakland.

Our language in that sense is beyond not shared. It seems an improbability that it could be shared and I want to acknowledge that. Lastly, I would just say that this is the project I pitched here though I have been working on a lot else and will continue to as well. I am very interested (as always) in the prevalence of deportee culture, particularly that of the translation community, not just here but globally. As someone who has paid attention to the forced removal of my peoples throughout the Americas, I am thinking a lot about the forced removal of peoples in Haiti that live in the camps post earthquake, way being made for the continued gentrification of Haiti. The making of goods in Haiti passed off as goods from the DR and the importing of US border politics to this land. There is never-ending room for dialogue and collaboration here.

interviews, emails & transcripts

The performance began with the collections of items I used. I collected rubble from around the Grand Rue as well as some plastic flowers from the market, a broom, cardboard negotiated from Hueguens and some other salts/incense etc. The day of, I gathered the cardboard box, the flowers and rubble and carried it to Papada’s. I began by marking a space to work in and clearing that particular space. To perform a limpia can be done on people or often on spaces to. I wanted it to be clear that I was only clearing away to put something there that would be taken, meaning I acknowledge that remnants of Smedley Butler everywhere but at the same time, I acknowledge his invisibility in this particular community. Once that space was cleared, I swept the space which is also a way of reinforcing “clearing” or, another clearing in a space already filled with things, energetically etc. I then put a sheet on top of the soil and proceeded to stack, build this monument of rubble.

The flowers came first to which I covered them with the rocks, cardboard, then pulling the flowers on top, there was some old rice nearby I incorporated and any other goods into a small stack. I then stepped back to look at it and kicked it down to destroy it, threw all my possessions in as well, using the cover as a sack to hold the monument and carry it away back to where it came from.

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Jean-Bastien Tinant (BE) and Daniel Bajoit (BE) Filles de Hirohito

Project Proposal Abstract Nous sommes un duo multidisciplinaire de Bruxelles travaillant autour de la correspondance des arts. Au départ, il s’agissait de mêler textes et musique. Nous avons progressivement, au gré des rencontres et des propositions,élargit notre travail vers l’écriture, la réalisation audio et visuelle ainsi que le travail d’illustration. Conscient du contexte difficile que représente le centre de la ville basse, nous proposons deux actions durant une période de trois semaines. Une action directe dans la réalisation d’une fresque, en noir et blanc, qui sera le résultat de la poursuite de notre enquête.

Travaillant sur un type de représentation hybride qui mêlera image fantasmatique et réaliste, mêlée à des textes en créole, cette fresque sera créée et donnée là-bas. L’idéal serait qu’elle puisse s’adresser autant au touriste amateur d’art et d’artisanat qu’une trace de notre présence. L’idéal serait qu’elle recueille dans la forme les limites et les frontières de représentations où ici et là-bas, selon où l’on se place, intègre le même plan. Une action diffuse sera dès lors menée à partir des différentes connaissances que nous avons pour tenter d’aboutir à une performance possible autour de cette fresque. La possibilité pour nous de continuer un travail scénique déjà entamé lors de notre précédent voyage nous permet d’aller trouver d’autres sources de financements qui nous permettrait de rétribuer les collaborateurs.

L’action directe proposée, la fresque, s’inscrit dans un travail formel de rencontre et de métissage des manières de représentations, tandis que l’action diffuse nous permettra de travailler le contexte dans lequel cette fresque s’inscrira, dans sa forme et dans son sens.

Interview Last year we came here to make a musical show in a festival in Haiti. It was our first time. We are a rock and roll band. Last year we worked with Leonard Jean Baptiste and Olrich Snider- two Haitians, Leonard is 15 and he translated into creole for us.

When we returned to Belgium, Daniel made some drawings, Bastien wrote a novel and together we made a short piece of sound creation with some Haitian guys. One of the drawings was made during a night spent with a Haitian guy where he spent the entire night talking about his life, Haiti, the neighborhood. Daniel made a special drawing, “face to face” during that night. When we became aware of the Ghetto Biennale we thought it was a good idea to give this drawing back to the space in which it was made. We do not think that creation is an expression of yourself it is an expression of the world that you are in- the context.

The song we wrote is related to the drawing that was composed by Bastien. The drawing is at

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the same time one face and two faces and the song is like the opposition of man and woman. The drawing has two names: “From ear to ear” and “Mathematic definitions of the sun, never contradict the beauty of night and the beauty of days”.

THE SONG:

nonm crasé fenm fenm crasé nonm nonm crasé nonm fenm crasé fenm ah ah yeah (men smash woman woman smash men men smash men women smash women) blan crasé noir noir crasé blan blan crasé blan noir crasé noir ah ah yeah (white smash black ...) lan mo crasé la vi la vi crasé lan mo lan mo crasé lan mo la vi crasé la vi ah ah yeah (death smash life ...) l’état crasé pep la pep la crasé l’état l’état crasé l’état pep la crasé pep la ah ah yeah (the state smash people ...) chien crasé chat chat crasé chien chien crasé chien chat crasé chat ah ah yeah (dog smash cat ...) di fe crasé d’lo d’lo crasé di fe di fe crasé di fe d’lo crasé d’lo ah ah yeah (fire smash water ...) lan mou crasé la haine la haine crasé lan mou lan mou crasé lan mou la haine crasé la haine ah ah yeah (love smash hate) .

It was the first time Daniel had painted.

Everything we do is for the first time. We are de-centering ourselves. We are here for more than a month. Next week we will be working with a Haitian actor on a text in French by Flaubert Bolivard. Last year we did a musical piece of theatre, we say the story and play music at the same time.

We are a bit anarchist. Our work is about learning- we like to learn. Everything we have done in 5 years, it is the first time we have done it. We never did art in school but we do have a practical penchantyou have to make something to learn. I can’t say what I can teach someone, if the relationship is right, then we are able to make something together.

What has been the most meaningful moment of this experience?

The work needs to define a good relationship with the people and produce happiness at the end. We always tried to make our projects produce relationships with the people and the place. It is about friendship. Last year we promised some people that we would come back so we did.

We think that Haiti is the center of the world. It is the center of the history of Europe, of modern Europe, the new world, the first world and second world. All things of capitalism begin here. It is more abstract.

What about the structure of the bienniale?

(What) has added to your project?

It creates a space where people are willing to help. It provides the conditions of meeting. We just found some money to come here from Belgium by plane, we stay at friends’ places. It is the welcoming spirit of persons, the kids that always stick with us. They pay us really great attention.

interviews, emails & transcripts

Jean Claude St. Ulysse

I have been a part of Atis Rezistans since 2004 . Before that, I worked on simple artworks but then I became a member. I liked the style so I chose to become a part of the movement. My space is one of the largest in the Ghetto. God gave it to me. I am 53 yrs old.

I have a daughter but she lives with my older sister. She is 23 years old. All my family is in New York. It is only me here. Before the earthquake they would come to visit me but afterward, no.

Sometimes they send me things, but they do not support me. I would like to go to the US but I have no visa but I do have a passport.

I have never visited the US. I did visit England. The gallery in London was the Grand Brigitte. I have shown in England. Canada and Los Angeles with Leah’s projects. There were exhibitions before the biennial at the Oloffson hotel. I have work at the Oloffson- every year.

I work alone, first in wood then rubber and plastic. I work with crowns alot.

Almost all of my works have crowns of plastic, old pots, car carpets, nails, tires, and bottle corks. They also all have robes like kings. I am a professor but not a king. I am a creative. I want to go very far with my works.

I work with a sponge as well. I am a voodouisant, my entire family practices. Voodoo inspires all my works, no matter what they are.

They are forms of spirits - Gede, Papa Loko. There are many works in rubber around the space, attached to pallets. It is the children’s work- 2 headed angels, faces of spirits, crosses, snakes and skulls with hats. I don’t like to show the penis. I have one but I don’t like to make that seen. Sometimes, I create a work with a penis but not a lot. People like that more than the other works but I still don’t do that much.

Another piece all in metal is my student’s piece. I gives classes Monday- Thursday to kids of all ages, free of charge. Only once has a student of mine participated in an exhibition so far.

Notes There is a lantern frame hanging on the tree, one of the only green things I’ve seen in this neighborhood. Inside the metal frame of the lantern is a skull. It is the skull of his friend John who perished in the earthquake. He did not live in this ghetto but lived not too far from here. He was 37. He considers this piece like a sculpture as well. John was a pianist. Claude plays the drums, all the drums in a band and in vodoo ceremonies - le pepe samuse.

I asked if he had other friends who died in the earthquake so he carried me to another section of his yard to show me the scultpure of Samuel- his skull was set in the middle of two bones, crossed and bed springs placed on the cover of an oil drum. He would sell these sculptures as well. John perished with his daughter but the daughter disappeared. He doesn’t know where she disappeared too.

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Kantara Souffrant (US) Think. Love. Haiti.

Kantara Souffrant is a Haitian-American artist-scholar. A PhD Candidate in Performance Studies at Northwestern University, her works examines feminist and queer art practices in the postquake Haitian Diaspora. As an installation artist and performer her approach to art creation is informed by her studies of African Diasporic faith and spiritual practices in which ritual, performance, art creation, and communal transformation are inseparable. She has shared her artistic and scholarly work at numerous venues including: The Ghetto Biennale (Haiti), The Caribbean Cultural Center and African Diasporic Institute, Judson Church, New York University, praxis place (Chicago), Northwestern University, Fisher Gallery (Oberlin, OH), The University of York, and the Whitney Biennale as part of the Dance Diaspora Collective.

I have had to fight for my feelings. Growing up, my Haitian mother (as well as other mentors) often told me to “lock my heart up,” that it was best to “love with my head and not my heart” because my heart would make me suffer. The lessons seemed clear, that love was not something that we Haitians did, love was for those who suffered, for the weak-willed, and for the romantics who lacked practicality. These sentiments remind me that “no one thinks of love when they think of Haiti,” that “resilient,” “tragic,” and “poor,” are easier characterizations of Haitian people than “loving” and “love-filled.” In the years following the earthquake, my artistic and scholarly practice has moved towards rethinking these early antilove sentiments. Might there be such a thing as “Haitain-Love” and if so, can it be described, felt, and performed? My Ghetto Biennale project, “Think.Love.Haiti.” traces “love” as a concept and action in Haiti through a series of embodied performances.

How can this embodied performance of love affect the memory of Haitian persons living abroad? How do you hope it will affect persons of the Grand Rue? How can staged performance affect everyday performance?

What brought me to Haiti was not the Biennial. I’ve been here for about 6 weeks. I was here for the Haitian studies conference.

I would have come here for field work, visit with artists and art organizers and because the Bienniale was happening at the same time, I stayed. It was the first time I would have the opportunity to be here for the first time by myself.

I have a background in Installation art making which means that most of my projects have been large scale transformations of space usually through a Yoruba and Kikongo aesthetic which means that I use an art framework that comes from these traditions and their descendants in the New World- people who practice and are aware of Santeria, Haitian vodoo, Lakumi, Candomle- sacred ritual arts- I use that as the language for my installation art practice. I am also trained as a dancer in West African and African Diasporic traditions.

Performance studies has led to a practice that incorporates these large scale performances. My art practice has always been about Haiti in some regard, either working through what it means to be a first generation Haitian-American, a queer person of Haitian ancestry, after the January 12th earthquake, what it means to be a woman. Haiti always figures into my artwork and performance and when it does not, it still feels that it is a ghost. Most recently, I’ve been using my art as a platform not just for my own personal

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development but engaging with multiple voices of other women and other men. I think it has been guided by “what is the scariest thing that I could be doing right now?” and that is for me talking about love and self care. Why? Because I’ve grown up with ‘Poto mitan’- literally is ‘pillar’, it is the center pole of the vodoo temple so the idea that Haitan women are the pillars of Haitian society- they uphold commerce, culture and society. Because I’ve grown up with this image, I’ve developed a fallacy of women being indestructible.

There is an absence of vulnerability, that sense of feeling, because they are working too hard to feel.

This sense is what led me about a year ago after hurricane Sandy, to do a 6 week performance of self-care. I felt selfish... I put out a call to people in my networks and strangers. I want to know what your self-care rituals are- the idea being that I was going to perform other people’s self-care rituals everyday for 42 days. I did that because it was at a time that I felt really hurt and I needed to turn inwards before I could deal with everything that was happening. I needed to heal but I don’t know that I realized that. I felt guilty because Haiti was still dealing with the after effects of the earthquake. In theory, I know that black feminist theory speaks about self-care because black women overwork ourselves for the community. So the performance became not just a theory but a practice to love yourself enough to take care of yourself.

So I was tapping into feelings and tapping to feeling myself more allowing a vulnerability that I had never expressed before. Because of that it seeped into my relationships and my life. Is love between Haitian men and Haitian women even possible if we are unable to be vulnerable with each other? Love feels very much tied to power and all these other forces, care. That led to a solo performanceIbobo- a Haitian love story-what love can do in the Haitian Diaspora following the Haitian earthquake. The last line of the performance piece was “No one thinks of love when they think of Haiti” and that was the line persons grabbed onto. That line inspired my Biennale project. I think I had a fear that this conversation could only take place out here...because Haitian people have so many hardships in their daily life... but Haitian people are overflowing with love. It is in everything. Love is sharing. I feel that, here, I have seen love not as an abstract thing, but a thing that lives in the body and a thing that lives in people’s relationships, it requires other bodies. Too many people have told me that love is everything.

Your self-care project is public and private at the same time? Can you speak about those fluid boundaries?

It goes back to the Yoruba and Kikongo- you can’t do anything without your community, you are reflection of your community.

Even if I am using it as an entry point, it is a massive I. My story is reflective of other stories, connected and I can’t do anything without these people. But it is one of the things that come back to sacred ritual practices. You don’t make art for art sake, you make it to transform and heal your community. Even my academic work takes this approach. When I heal myself, I heal fractions of my community and when my community gets healed and uplifted, I get healed and uplifted. It would almost be pointless not to bring it to my community.

interviews, emails & transcripts

So how does this concept connect to your Biennale project?

Dialogues can’t be priced. The market as a theme is very interesting... I felt like I wanted to create something that was not an object. I wanted to do something that got beyond my habit as an artist in the first world, the global north- my habit of going out and purchasing materials to make art. I wanted to work through the idea that all that you need to make art is a body and that conversations and deep listening and bearing witness to someone else’s story and sharing that story is art and you can’t commodify those things. They have no market value. Even if art can’t heal poverty, and even if we are approaching it romantically, I still think that art is dangerous because art and artists are charged with seeing the world differently and communicating their vision and communicating the mess of the world order and demanding something different and that change will be inspired by art in some way. Art is always on the cutting edge of what the world can be.

Especially art made by people who have been oppressed, we know what it means to put our hope into a vision of becoming something else. My fear with the Ghetto Biennale was that I was going to be hailed an as outsider (and that would be a problem) even though I Am Haitian-American and I wanted to get to know Haiti on my own terms and not through stories passed down from family members…, get to know it beyond books and talk to people who could give me interesting perspectives from all sides. So my project was shutting up and listening and I didn’t know how far that would get me.I feel as though that has opened doors for me.

They have a lot more knowledge than you think. If you come in assuming that the differences are a hindrance, they will be, you are stripping people on both sides of their agency. I came in with an awareness of difference. Acknowledging the difference allows real talk to happen. It is this approach that allow different classes to come together

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Katy Beinart (UK)

Goute Sel – A Taste Of Salt Salt as a material has both shaped trade and migration routes and become part of ritual, preservation, ceremony and the everyday in many cultures, which is manifested in the many poetic and metaphoric uses of salt in language. I’ve been working with salt for the past three years, initially during a residency in Cape Town in 2010. For the final stage of my PhD, I am working with several individual narratives collected in and around Brixton market which link salt and its use to places of origin. My work has already used the ‘Memory Preservation Salts’ we made as an imagined product based on “Jinx Removing Salts” purchased in a religious and spiritual aids shop in Brixton Market, which advertises itself as Haitian and has a production facility in Port-Au-Prince. Taking this as a starting point, I am interested in the uses of, and connections, to salt in Haiti, initially through magic and religion. In vodou salt has a powerful role; for example it is a way in which zombies can be ‘re-awoken’ from the dead. It is also used in other Haitian rituals in marking or cleansing spaces/thresholds, and Veves. In terms of the contribution to the themes of the 3rd Ghetto Biennale, my proposal explores the politics of the local to global – linking what is happening in Brixton, another site of cultural capital, with Grand Rue. The marketplace of Brixton is a literal market (which connects to Haiti); and it faces different but parallel issues of cultural capital, cultural tourism, and the meaning of ghetto and ghettoization in different scenarios.

How has salt resonated in your own life? How would you describe the cultural capital of the Grande Rue community?

How is it formed, how is it maintained? How can cultural capital be established between these two sites? What do you think are the necessary ingredients for effective cultural tourism generally and for the Grande Rue in particular? What is the meaning of the ghetto for you? What is the meaning generated by this particular ghetto? Is there an ‘un-ghettoization taking place, how?

What kind of projects or engagements have interested you in the past?

Wow - many different projects. I guess a lot of my work has to do with place and community, with exploring how changes take place in the physical and social fabric of place, how much this is up to the people that live there, how much the local vernacular of place (spoken, visual, cultural) is strong enough to withstand the homogenizing forces of global capital and the fashion trends of gentrification. So I think I would say I am interested in the poetics and politics of public space.

What interested/interests you about Haiti and the Ghetto Biennale?

My interest in Haiti started a long time ago when I read a book called Texaco, by Patrick Chamoiseau. It was such a haunting and lyrical book and it stayed with me. I think I was also dimly aware of the political situation, growing up. Then recently I have been working on a long term project (as part of my PhD) in Brixton Market in London and I’ve been researching different Diasporic links through products in the market, and there is a Haitian shop in the market selling spiritual products. I had heard of the Ghetto Biennale before and I was planning to make a trip to Haiti in any case but I thought it would be a great opportunity to be here during the Biennale and interact with other artists and have broader conversations. The Biennale is also really great in terms of challenging the issues of

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the nomadic artist who flies in and out of a place, because here you really have to engage with the place in a much deeper way.

How has salt resonated in your own life?

3 years ago I travelled to South Africa with my sister Rebecca and we discovered that our Lithuanian Jewish Great Grandfather Woolf Beinart (who emigrated there in 1903) had set a company called The Darling Salt Pans and Produce Company, and we tracked down the salt pans he had harvested from. This started my interest in salt, and I began to discover its meaning in different rituals, in Judaism and other cultures. I also began to read up on its history and became fascinated with the way a once valuable commodity has become almost inconsequential - it once defined battles, roads, enabled exploration, trade, and was a major mode of exchange. I also read of an area in Cape Town, District 6, which was demolished by the Apartheid government and was since described as ‘Salted Earth’ because the emotional attachment of its former community had led to it becoming a place of protest, so that the government could not build on the land. So I also began to see how salt resonated in a poetic sense, in relation to place, migration and belonging.

How would you describe the cultural capital of the Grande Rue community?

I would describe it as being a multi-layered cultural capital, much of which relies on interdependent relationships. People in the Grande Rue seem to be enmeshed in a complex web of different mutually supportive creative activities. There are a wide range of products being made, and sold, some of which are categorised as fine art, others as craft, others as everyday needs. What seems to underwrite all of them is an ingenuity and creativity of being able to work with very basic materials and facilities. But I think that they work in relation and that strengthens the inherent cultural capital of Haiti.

How is it formed, how is it maintained?

I would imagine part of the way it is formed is through the build up of a particular type of activity (ie. craft) in one area and maintained by an intergenerational community where the younger kids are hanging out and learning from the older artists. The way I see it is that it is spatial, everyone lives in a very small area and to get anywhere you literally go through other people’s workshops and studios so you are constantly interacting and seeing and learning from other people.

How can cultural capital be established between these two sites?

What do you think are the necessary ingredients for effective cultural tourism generally and for the Grande Rue in particular?

These are interesting questions. I am more interested in the poetics of relation and the way that Diasporic communities adapt in different situations than in cultural capital, necessarily. I am interested also in the model of solidarity movements and twinning where links are established in a way that is more about an equal exchange than about seeing one place as the site for tourism. I think that the community I work with Brixton could learn from the way the artists and others in the Grand Rue work, and it would be great for traders to meet and have dialogue. Although the realities and challenges in London are around overdevelopment and in Haiti are around underdevelopment. Cultural tourism relates to

interviews, emails & transcripts

www.katybeinart.co.uk

both sites as a force that can, unfortunately, create a market that is aimed at the tourist, and therefore homogenize places.

What is the meaning of the ghetto for you?

Coming from a (part) Jewish background I am aware of the historical origination of Ghetto to describe the Jewish community in Venice, Italy. In that case and subsequently in other Jewish Ghettos, the community has been deliberately separated off, marginalised and often has restricted movement. Through this means of control they were often persecuted and in some cases entire communities underwent a slow and painful death. I think today is has come to mean other things, like areas where a particular ethnic group or race live, or a poorer sector of the city. Or for example you can have a ‘rich’ ghetto, where the paranoid wealthy live behind barricades.

But that is out of choice.

What is the meaning generated by this particular ghetto?

I think that the choice to call this the Ghetto Biennale focuses attention on the whole issue of economic marginalization, segregation, how cities grow and where people can or can’t choose to live and work. Whilst the Grand Rue is not a ghetto in the sense of being walled in, people’s lives there are restricted by other means.

It’s more of an invisible wall, of lack of economic power, political power, access to services, access to education, access to travel.

Is there an ‘un- ghettoization taking place, how?

Perhaps this wall is beginning to be broken down by providing opportunities for people living in Grand Rue to engage with people from elsewhere, to sell their work, even to travel. But as long as the political and economic imbalance in Haiti continues, it is going to be hard to ‘un-ghettoize’. It is in the interests of some people to maintain the ghetto.

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Kuratorisk Aktion (DK)

Kuratorisk Aktion Kuratorisk Aktion (English: curatorial action) is an all-female curatorial collective engaged in decolonial-transnational feminist work. It was formed in 2005 by Danish independent curators Frederikke Hansen (b.1969) and Tone Olaf Nielsen (b. 1967) with the aim of taking curatorial action against the injustices and inequalities produced and sustained by the order of global capitalism. This has resulted in an ongoing curatorial investigation into the complex relations between capitalist globalization and historical colonialism, and the ways in which coloniality’s catastrophic race- and gender-thinking continues to structure the nationalized, racialized, classed, gendered, and sexed divides of globalized corporate capitalism. In 2009, Faroese art historian and researcher Mirjam Joensen (b. 1979) joined the collective, offering a crucial perspective from inside the postcolonial condition. The collective is currently doing research into issues of just sustainability and will come to Port-au-Prince for the last week of the biennale.

We of course want to see the entire biennale, and to be present at the various performances and events taking place while we are there. Also, we are looking very much forward to being part of the discussions about sameness and diversity in an allegedly decentered art by sharing some of our experiences doing decolonial work in the global North and Scandinavia in particular. Finally, we hope to set up studio visits with locally based artists engaged in just sustainability.

How will your curatorial and research project be enacted for the Ghetto Biennial? How will your research into sustainability become part of your curatorial project? What is ‘just sustainability”? How does the idea of cultural capital fit with your ideas of sustainability? What is the role of cultural capital in sustainability? What is the role of memory in sustainability and how do you think memory functions in aiding or detracting from sustainability?

What interests us about Haiti and the GB? For the past eight years we have worked with questions of why and how the histories of colonialism conducted by Scandinavian countries, both within the Nordic region and globally, have been repressed or toned down in the present. On this basis we were very interested in the concept of the Ghetto Biennale and how it negotiates the real pitfalls of so-called First World art and curating, which work with and within so-called Third World contexts, while steering clear of re-performing the colonial spectacle of allegedly saving the have-nots and elevating them to (a mimicry of ) Western standards.

We came to Port-au-Prince to listen, look, and learn from the Ghetto Biennale participants and organizers and their projects evolving.

That is to say that we didn’t answer to the open call as such, but came here as audiences. We believed we could contribute to the discussions occurring on site and to the closing conference evaluating the biennale’s methods and outcomes by sharing some of our experiences doing decolonial curatorial work in the global North and Scandinavia in particular. However, on our first day here, the Ti Moun (The Kids) fraction of the Atis Rezistans asked us to take part in their project commemorating the young Ti Moun Rezistans

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member and close friend, Wender Thelisma, who recently passed away. Ti Moun Rezistans have a fully developed concept for their work for the biennale, and our job now is to function as partners in conversation, computer-lenders, and as micro-funders. As part of the collaboration, Ti Moun Rezistans and Kuratorisk Aktion will do a joint sculpture and furthermore plan to do a one day excursion to the south of Haiti together.

Apart from the enormous privilege of seeing how Ti Moun Rezistans work, one of the great learning experiences has been to visit the many studios in and around the biennale site and to realize how the older generation (Grann Rezistans) has passed on their knowledge and techniques that become both social education and, importantly, political mobilization.

Yon Machandiz (Another Commodity) Twenty-thirteen (2013) was the second time I was selected to participate at the Ghetto Biennale. This arose out of my work in Haiti as an artist since 2010. As the Europeans who sought inspiration from Classical antiquity—most notably Rome and Greece—so have Caribbean artists drawn from the fount of Haitian history and culture such that St Lucia’s Dereck Walcott’s first play was based on the Haitian Revolution: Henri Christophe (1948), later Drums and Colours (1958), and The Haitian Earth (1984), making up his Haitian Trilogy. Trinidad’s CLR James’s The Black Jacobins (1938) is not only a seminal work on the Haitian Revolution but one which continues to inspire scholars in the present. Professor Michael J. Dash and Dr. Elizabeth Walcott-Hackshaw have published many notable works on Haitian history and culture. Professor Patricia Mohammed directed a short film documentary The Sign of the Loa (2006), and Reginald Dumas published an interesting account as a Special Advisor in 2004 to the UN in An Encounter with Haiti (2010). Jamaica’s Professor Matthew Smith of UWI Mona continues to lead the research on the post-US Occupation-Pre-Duvalier era in seminal works such as Red and Black in Haiti, and of course painters such as Cuba’s Wilfredo Lam drew immense inspiration from Haitian culture. And of course there is David Rudder whose 1989 Record album HAITI was his most successful album to date. His song “Haiti I’m Sorry” remains a timeless work that is based on contemporary Haitian life. It is within this broader timeline of dialogue with Haiti that I place my own work as a Visual Arts scholar.

Miller: Basquiat: Miller: Basquiat:

Miller:

No Haitian primitives on your wall?

At home?

At home.

Haitian primitives? What do you mean? People?

People nailed up on my walls?

No. I mean paintings. Paintings.

(Edwidge Danticat, Create Dangerously, 2010)

Today Coffee, after oil, remains the second largest commodity traded in the world. By the late 1700s Haiti was producing half of the world’s coffee supply, and by 1949 Haiti was the 3rd largest producer of coffee. In Haiti, another commodity is Haitian art and a large amount of work supplies the art market’s demand for specific themes: eroticism, naive/primitive, Voudou, recycled, fair-trade etc.

Another Commodity is a collaborative project between Kwynn Johnson (Trinidad) and Paskal (Pascale Faublas) (Haiti). Our project sought to express/realise the make-up of the market for ‘Haitian’art, by juxtaposing two commodities - coffee and art.

interviews, emails & transcripts

Kwynn Johnson (TT) & Pascale Faublas (HT)

The Ghetto Biennale, is somewhat similar to the Havana Biennale, in that it is site-specific in its curation and clear in its political ideology, as well as a movement away from a solely ‘white’ cube. Having observed its unsettling political ideology, I am prompted to ask: who does the Biennale make uncomfortable?

Asking in turn, what are the ways that the status quo has reacted and what are the politics of Caribbean art dealership, curation, participation and audiences? In this way, as Gilles Deleuze encourages, I “ask not what it means, but rather, how it works, what it does”. Working in the Grand Rue has demanded that my art-making process be in tandem with self-reflection. Its context has allowed for experimental, conceptual and contemplative works. My work in Haiti, which includes participation at the Ghetto biennale, continues to be a most riveting experience. Though I work in Trinidad, I continue to travel frequently to Haiti adding to my “Cahier d’un retour au pays natal” (Césaire). Yet in Trinidad I am often asked “Why don’t you try to find a residency in like Germany, you know, or try to go to Miami, New York, Toronto or London”.

Kwynn Johnson, PhD (2016) Miller: Basquiat:

Miller: Basquiat: Miller:

Basquiat:

You’re what? Haitian-Puerto Rican?

I was born here, but my mother’s fourth-generation Puerto Rican. My father comes from Haiti.

Do you feel that that’s in your art?

Genetically?

Yeah genetically or culturally? . . . Haiti is of course famous for its art...

That’s why I said genetically because I’ve never been there. And I grew up in, you know, principal American vacuum. Television mostly.

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Kwynn Johnson (TT) & Pascale Faublas (HT) Yon Machandiz (Another Commodity) Concerning the biennale’s theme: Decentering the Market, our project looked at how as Haitian coffee has supplied a world market, so too have ‘types’ of Haitian art become another commodity supplying an art market. This commodity and its producers are tasked with representing specific themes in order to supply the demands of the market led gallery sector and the tourist art market. Thus, it can be argued that to some extent, this demand has impinged on the creation of Haitian art.

The project began with the production of 30 papier-mâché coffee-bean sculptures made in Jacmel. Each ‘coffee bean’ had an inscription of a theme common to Haitian art, such as VOUDOU, SEX, NAIVE, FAIR-TRADE. Each bean was placed in an indigo-blue Jute bag (indigo being another agricultural commodity during the Colonial period/Plantation economy), along with a small market scene painting purchased on the streets of Port-au-Prince. These packages, with packs of Rebo coffee, were installed on our custommade vending stand, for sale: Coffee and art.

Another Commodity was conceptualised from an essay in Edwidge Danticat’s Create Dangerously; where she quotes the art historian Marc Miller in his 1980 interview with the late artist Jean-Michel Basquiat. In the interview he was asked if he had Haitian primitives on his walls. Our experimental installation I hope gave rise to awareness on the commodification of specific themes in Haitian art such as naive, Voudou and eroticism to supply an art market.

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What kinds of projects or engagements have interested you in the past?

My practice spans photography, video, performance and installation. Photography is central - not just the process of making photographs, but the various conceptual frameworks that have informed the historical and contemporary practice of the medium.

The form of a work or series can change pretty radically from project to project, but my desire to question the conceptual frameworks I am working under, remains constant. Recent photographic projects use the studio portrait to explore embedded hierarchies between photographers, subjects and viewers. Performance is inherent to the medium of photography; any individual posing for a portrait arranges and edits not just their appearance, but their persona. I have a deep curiosity about the performances taking place on both sides of the camera, the ways power can shift between the photographer and the photographed and whether the image resulting from this exchange is more a depiction of one or the other. In order to make a portrait, everyone involved has to negotiate a politics of representation.

Outside of my photographic work, for the past several years I have been watching social practice, expand its reach and definition in the art world, to the point where the majority of arts funding (at least in the U. S.) is allocated to that field. The drive of artists to make politically and/or socially engaged art is an art historical constant, but the way they are going about it has changed a great deal in the past twenty years. This is a subject I have been intensely engaged with, although it is not something I use in my own work. I have found it more interesting to create public conversations around the topic, panel discussions and public events like Pro/Deuce: Dualities and Dichotomies in Community-Based Arts Practices, which took place at the Clocktower Gallery in NYC just before the 2013 Biennale. For Pro/Deuce I brought together a group of artists and curators (Rick Lowe, Marion Wilson, Edgar Arceneaux, Dan Seiple, Nato Thompson) for a critical dialogue on the ability of social practice to address a variety of challenges facing urban centers. It is essential to explore the problematics of this type of work, and ask questions about politics, both within local communities and as related to development concerns (creative place-making), issues of race and class (where they come up and how they are negotiated) and questions of sustainability. The idea is to expand the dialogue around art and the social space, and explore the current place and purpose of public art and activism.

What interests you about Haiti and the Ghetto Biennale?

I viewed the Biennale itself as an art piece to a certain extent, something that was driven by similar questions to those I had been asking myself. At the time, the first Ghetto Biennale was being organized, I was researching a project on the Venice Biennale, examining its relation to our current boom in cultural tourism, asking questions about who is allowed to participate in these systems, and at what level. I had begun to document all of the individuals involved in developing, running and servicing the Venice Biennale in a given year when I wrote a proposal for participation in the first Ghetto Biennale. I was drawn to the very direct questions the curators were asking about race and class in the art world, but not optimistic about the possibility for a “real exchange” between foreign and Haitian artists, especially if one attempts to place that exchange within the utopian frame of social practice. The event and everyone involved is so heavily freighted

with sociopolitical baggage; the Ghetto Biennale, first world artists, third world artists - these designations seem bound to complicate any attempts at real discourse. I was not sure if the two groups could even truly see each other, never mind have a real exchange.

As for Haiti, many years ago I met the amazing Fuminori Sato, a photographer who has been working in the country for decades. I had wanted to visit for many years, and the Ghetto Biennale gave me the perfect opportunity.

How can professionalization as artistic project also become an object of art or public performance?

Workshop was created for Haitian artists unfamiliar with the landscape of the international art world, with the idea that this unfamiliarity essentially bars them from participating in the market. The knowledge gap was addressed through a series of discussions and presentations on professional practices in the arts, conducted on-site at the Grand Rue, with a translator, in English and Kreyol. Topics discussed included how to navigate and address a wide range of art institutions and their gate-keepers - galleries and directors, museums and their curators, funding agencies and grant officers, artist residencies and admittance panels. Other conversations looked at various formats for artist statements and curriculum vitae and how best to document artwork when one has limited access to high-end digital cameras.

interviews, emails & transcripts

Laura Heyman (US)

Embedded in Workshop was the same question of exchange between Haitian and foreign artists that drove my previous projects, although I thought of the work more as an artistic proposition than an artistic project. The presentations were pedagogical in format. I am undecided on the question of pedagogy as artistic practice in general. It tends heroicize the figure of the artist in ways I find very problematic. For this reason Workshop was not documented and did not create anything meant to exist outside of that particular and very specific context. It struck me that one of the few ways to honestly address questions of exploitation, value and hierarchy in the Ghetto Biennale was a refusal to package work made in that space for consumption outside of it. But of course a lecture or presentation of information can always be looked at as a performance. The same can be said for any discussion that might arise from these presentations, no matter when or where they take place.

What was the response to this workshop?

The art world is a mysterious, amorphous and opaque institution, and there was a real desire on the part of artists in the Grand Rue neighborhood to figure out how they might gain more and/or better access to it. Despite the fact that discussing the language and customs of this world could not erase very real barriers that exist to entry, artists had a lot of questions. Many were interested in how they could find someone to assist them with the administrative work of being an artist in the long term. Everyone was essentially looking for a manager or patron, because that is the way the neighborhood’s art stars have achieved success. This might sound strange in the age of self-promotion and social media, but the truth is that there aren’t a lot of artists who have become successful without those resources (in Haiti, or anywhere else).

Haitian artists who participated in Workshop were not afraid to ask difficult questions, questions all artists have but rarely articulate.

This resulted in numerous hidden systems and attitudes being made explicit, which generated a lot of very intense discussion.

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Lee Lee (US) Tchaka

Immacula Immacula Cadet grew up in Port-Au-Prince. When she was young, her family would go to the countryside of Cayes to dance with Papa Loko several times a year. They would celebrate the father of the Hougan priesthood by offering red liquor and cake. The most intricate and beautiful dances are performed for Papa Loko who is very strict about maintaining tradition. Immacula carries tradition forth in her role as Mambo.

Mambo Robed in pristine white dresses, the mambo move to the infectious rhythm of the drums. Their ample bodies weave through the close knit group, hips undulating so that their skirts take on the graceful flutter of butterfly wings. Papa Loko is known to move on the wind like a butterfly; nothing is unknown to him. He cannot tolerate injustice. Haitians have long been subjected to the impositions of outsider worldviews while suffering severe injustices by economic globalization. Awareness of this is channeled through the keepers of tradition. Rituals serve as a conduit, connecting participants to countless generations who have maintained fortitude in the face of external and dominating forces. They survive as the only nation born out of a successful slave revolt.

Grandmother Flying between her ancestral lands and the land which has shaped the history of her nation, Immacula moves between Port-au-Prince and Boston, where two of her five children have joined the diaspora.

She assumes the traditional role of grandmother by cooking for her family and taking care of her eight grandchildren. She loves to cook more than she loves to eat.

Hunger Food is expensive in Haiti. Traditional farming practices have steadily eroded as peasants are increasingly marginalized by exploitive industrial schemes. External structures of globalization have unraveled the social fabric of rural communities and caused an ecological disaster across the country. Heavily influenced by the World Bank, the ‘American Plan’ instigated monoculture production of exotic export crops, extending a model first implemented during the colonial era. Profits flow out of the country with the exports, benefitting multinational corporations and the oligarchy they support. Displaced peasants migrate to the cities where desperation forces them to work for rock bottom wages which is exploited by assembly industry largely owned by US companies. Further degrading the economic fabric in Haiti, an external framework for production offers little connection to local economies because raw materials are sourced from abroad and products are sold to foreign markets. The earthquake of 2010 levelled even this frail economy as foreign companies fled.

Abandoned by the schemers who decimated the foundation of local food production, people in Haiti can no longer feed themselves. Food is expensive because globalization has replaced localized economies. There is no food security, so Haitians rely on imported grain and food aid. The supply of food aid profits none other than the US agricultural sector which is deeply enmeshed with the corporations who debased food security in the first place.

In the twisted ghetto alleyways along the Grand Rue, residents are fortunate if they get a single meal in a day.

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Home They live in tiny houses pieced together out of corrugated metal and tarps, which have been propped up against cinderblock walls half tumbled by the earthquake. The dwellings consist of single rooms shared by a whole family. Much living takes place along the twisted dirt pathways and in the streets. At the suggestion that people there may be happier with a bit of private space, the response is that it would lessen the strength of community. At the suggestion that people may be satisfied with more material goods, the response is that it would reduce the value of the few items in their possession. Haitians maintain a strong sense of pride.

Kitchen In the mornings little kitchens appear, tucked into the corners of the footpath scaled alleyways, and the women begin preparing traditional Creole meals. Food prepared slowly, with love, offers comfort and empowerment to those who are nourished by it.

It is a cultural foundation which acts as a strong glue that holds community together in ways that maintain an important sense of identity. The little kitchens consist of a few five gallon buckets which act as tables or a sink, a large bowl that gets propped upon a bucket, a charcoal stove, a couple of large stockpots, a knife and spoon and a large wooden mortar and pestle. A piece of the pervasive rubble is often pulled up as a stool on which to sit during the long hours of preparation.

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Lee Lee (US) Tchaka

Tchaka Immacula has set up a little kitchen in Andre Eugene’s lakou, the courtyard which acts as a nexus for the creative community of the Atis Rezistans. As sacred Veves are drawn with cornmeal around the courtyard in preparation for a celebration, we prepare Tchaka.

This stew honors Azaka, the hardworking God of Agriculture.

Azaka Hardworking Azaka is well loved in Haiti. Great respect is given to this representation of a gentle peasant, as great respect is given to the hardworking farmer. Referred to as Kouzin, this ‘cousin’ offers a reminder of the importance of family, including deceased members who stay present with those who remain.

Haitian peasants would bury their deceased family on their plot of land, weaving together a bond of ancestry to the land. It is a representation of the significance of land ownership which had been won by their forefathers through the ousting of the colonists.

Even when displaced to urban areas, Haitians maintain a strong connection to the land.

Plastic Another neighborhood grandmother, Rose Marie, arrives to help prepare the Tchaka. She pulls out a bundle of discarded plastic cutlery with which she lights a charcoal fire. This type of fire starter is plentiful because the Haitian government doesn’t recognize profit in trash collection, so they only do it once a month. Trash piles up on corners, clogs drains and fills the footpaths that weave through these densely packed neighborhoods. Ghetto dwellers have quite literally been thrown out with the trash by an elite who is more concerned with maintaining a tight grip on their own wealth than building the infrastructure of their country.

Water Rose Marie pours water that had been treated with chlorine into a large stockpot and places it directly on the coals. After the earthquake, UN workers brought Cholera to a country who had never had to worry about the water borne illness. The problem of water borne illness is exasperated by the loss of natural filtration systems offered by trees and undergrowth as it is removed with deforestation. Ghetto residents share the leaks that have sprung out of industrious hacking into a civic plumbing infrastructure to which they are not given official access. They know to add chlorine so it will not make them sick.

Immacula washes a single green onion, peels the dried outer leaves and feeds these to the fire growing in the charcoal stove. She throws the whole onion in the stockpot which she covers to let the water warm. Haitians have an intricate understanding of their history and maintain a strong sense of identity that is deeply rooted in African traditions. In describing trans-Atlantic connections, Moyo Okediji describes the daily creative acts of women from his homeland; “Just as the cooking pot is central to the Yoruba concept of family, the pot is central to the way Yoruba women define themselves – it is a voice, a mind, a meeting point, and a vehicle of transition.”

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Corn Immacula finds a chair, and sits upon it as if on a throne. Slowly, she picks through 3 cups of cracked yellow corn, throwing the brown pieces to the hen and her three chicks who are scavenging about the urban yard. After washing the broken corn, she drains the water by splattering it across the cement, cooling it from the pounding tropical sun. She adds a small spoon of Baking Soda to the warmed water in the stockpot, then throws the corn in by the handful. Adding enough water to the fill the pot two thirds full, she covers it to boil for about an hour as the coals slowly die down.

Haitians remain sensitive to the neo colonial powers that displace them from traditional lands in order to exploit them in an abusive labor system. They are not blind to how they echo the colonial structures that brought their ancestors to this land as slaves. As much as they are able, they fight it. Peasant farmers have recognized the abuses of the Monsanto Corporation in the way that they tie farmers into a system that is dependent on purchasing yearly supplies of engineered seed instead of the traditional methods of saving and replanting seed. They know that from this system grows a disastrous debt that peasant farmers in other countries have suffered. They recognize the health as well as the environmental impacts of the chemicals necessary to grow the modified seeds.

So when the industrial giant offered a donation of genetically modified corn seed after the earthquake, there was a widespread call by the Peasant Movement of Papay to burn the huge piles of seed. Their call was heard, but officially heeded by the government for only a year.

While the corn is simmering, the grandmothers pick through three cups of red kidney beans by the handful, throwing out the brown and deformed ones. After washing and draining the beans, they add them to the stockpot. Rose Marie replenishes the charcoal, replaces the pot, and covers it to bring to a soft boil. The stew cooks gently for 45 minutes as people start to gather, drawn to the lakou by rich smells emanating from the pot. The grandmothers continue by peeling half of a medium pumpkin, removing the seeds and strings. Leaving it in large pieces, the orange flesh gets added to the pot.

Creole Pig She then adds a pound of thickly sliced viande conchon, which is like bacon on steroids. Azaka loves the fat in this dish, so Rose Marie splashes in a bit of extra oil as well. The pot continues to simmer for an hour.

During the night of August 14, 1791, the catalyst for the Haitian revolution grew out of the ritual slaughter of a black Creole pig by a wild haired Mambo who embodied the lwa Erzilie Danto at the Bois Caiman ceremony. The congregation was called into a pact of resistance by the Vodoun Priest, Boukman Dutty. The insurrection began eight days later, and within a week the northern plain was in the hands of the former slaves. Beyond these symbolic ties to a proud part of their history, the Creole pig was an essential component to rural life. They offered a strong foundation to the rural economy because they provided a large cash return on an initial investment. Furthermore, they provided a substantial value in the overall system of sustenance farming. Inexpensive to

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keep, the pig rid farms of waste which included weeds and pests like the May beetle larvae which was particularly destructive to crops. Their nitrogen rich excrement then provided free fertilizer for the crops. It contributed to the cycle of harvest by following its rooting nature and digging up the fields after the food was taken in, which prepared the earth for the next planting. Like Haitians themselves, they were survivors who had adapted to some of the most miserable living conditions in the world.

In the early 1980s, the United States led a massive eradication program of the Creole Pig. There had been an isolated outbreak of swine flu in the Artibonite Valley that had come down the river from the Dominican Republic. The US felt threatened that it would reach our shores, even as the Creole pigs proved to be resilient to the disease as they had acquired a strong natural immunity to most endemic disease. Not only did they exterminate the pigs throughout the Artibonite Valley, the US government extended the geographic area to annihilate pigs throughout the country. They would fly over the mountains, killing wild pigs from helicopters.

After failed efforts to replace the pig with American breeds, French and Chinese breeds have been introduced. However, it will take many generations for these pigs to develop the same sort of resistance to the harsh living conditions that made the Creole pig so hearty. Meanwhile, the rural population turned in desperation to charcoal production, speeding up the deforestation and desertification that plagues Haiti.

interviews, emails & transcripts

Into the large wooden mortar and pestle that had been lathed in this woodworking community, Rose Marie throws three cloves of peeled garlic and mashes them into a smooth paste. She then cracks a coconut by throwing it on the cement floor. Draining the water into a bowl, the drink is shared amongst friends. The meat is extracted, washed and grated on a repurposed coffee can punctured with nail holes. Immacula pours two cups of water over the shredded coconut meat and massages it to extract the milk. She pours some into the pestle to rinse the garlic, which she empties into the Tchaka pot along with the rest of the strained coconut milk. Repeating this processing, coconut milk is added to fill the pot. The chickens eagerly receive the coconut shreds.

Rose Marie rinses a handful of Grand Saline salt with a flourish and throws it in the Tchaka; as if the movement is an expression of the belief that salt is life, and will keep zombification at bay. A bouquet garni made with parsley and thyme brought ages ago by the French colonists adds that portion of their history to the pot, while three habanero chilies bring with them the flavor of the Caribbean region. By this time, the beans are bien cuit, tender. They take out the large pieces of cooked squash to pulverize them in a sturdy bowl. Thinning the mash with broth, the liquid is returned to the pot through the strainer, working the pulp through the mesh with the pestle to thoroughly extract the smooth flesh from the stringy strands. The stew warms to a boil as Rose Marie adds two tablespoons of butter and three Maggi chicken stock cubes.

Immacula throws in a handful of the cornmeal used to draw the sacred Veves. Just before serving, the Tchaka is finished with juice from one sour orange.

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interviews, emails & transcripts

Lee Lee (US) Tchaka

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land, traditional Haitian subsistence farmers rely on a diversity of crops grown using biodynamic, polyculture growing methods. For a population who has grown wary of the systematic subjugation to an elite supported by outsider structures, it is essential to base assistance on collaboration and participation through working with the traditional knowledge maintained by the elders of rural areas.

Charcoal As the pot is taken off the fire, the coals are quickly whisked away to feed another smoldering stove in the neighborhood. Charcoal production is by far the largest contributor to deforestation which leads to soil erosion and desertification. Monoculture production of exotic crops for export was established by the colonists in the most fertile areas, and continues to be supported by a global system of agriculture. A marginalized peasant population was pushed into marginal areas up in the mountains, where they have eked out subsistence farms to feed the country. As economic pressure mounts due to things like the decimation of the Creole Pig, so does desperation, and making charcoal eases the hunger that results from a system of exploitation. Forests bring rain, when they are cut down the rain is not pulled down and the land becomes parched.

During the monsoon seasons, too much rain washes away the precious top soil which is no longer held in place by tree roots. The cycle of desperation deepens. It is said in Haiti that “the mountains have grown old. You can see their bones poking through their skin” because in places, severe erosion has exposed the bedrock.

Food security is intricately linked to environmental sustainability.

After many outside organizations have attempted sustainability programs, it ends up that traditional farming techniques are the most effective in maintaining environmental balance. The organizations who respond to the requests of the farmers for native trees over exotic export crops yield the highest success rates. The farmers know that multipurpose trees have always been the foundation of a homestead, providing wood, fodder, medicine, shade and food for the farmers. Working in harmony with the

(i) Haiti Info, Haiti’s Agricultural Production, 1996 (ii) Karen McCarthy Brown, Mama Lola: A Vodou Priestess in Brooklyn (ii) Moyo Okediji, “Returnee Recollections – Transatlantic Transformations,” Catalog for the exhibition, Transatlantic Dialogue, Contemporary art in and out of Africa, Ackland Art Museum, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2000 (iv) Beverly Bell, Haitian Farmers Commit to Burning Monsanto Hybrid Seeds, The World Post, 5/17/10 (v) Beverly Bell, http://www.otherworldsarepossible.org (vi) H. Pauléus Sannon, Histoire de Toussaint L’Ouverture, 1920 122 CARIBBEAN INTRANSIT

Feast During the ritual for Azaca, the Tchaka is offered to the spirits for about 20 minutes before the rest of the gathering shares in the feast. During this time, any of the family may partake in sharing the pot. There is a set hierarchy of how people eat in the ghetto as well. The grandmothers sit above their pot and ceremoniously dish up the porridge, passing it first to the leaders of the community, before working their way around to serve those who have contributed most to maintaining the tight weave which has given this neighborhood strength. From these heaping servings, the community leaders eat their fill and pass off their plates to the next member of their families. The plates end up being passed off three or four times so that those with ties to the community fabric are nourished.

(vii) Stéphen Alexis, Black Liberator, 1949 (viii) Bernard Diederich, Swine Fever Ironies, 1985 (xi) JM Smith, When the Hands are Many: Community Organization and Social Change in Rural Haiti, Cornell University Press, 2001 (x) Nathan C McClintock, Agroforestry and sustainable resource conservation in Haiti: A case study, 2003

Local Produce – Pwodui Lokal What kind of projects or engagements have interested you in the past?

What interested/interests you about Haiti and the Ghetto Biennale?

I am planning with this project to show that the resistance has a lot of different types of crafts made from recycled materials which is our local production but if you could find them in the global market too we could sell them to tourists too. We have sandals, leather, chains, earrings made out of coconuts and many other things we like to see at the biennale.

What is the politics that surrounds your artwork and your position in the community?

How will you uniquely present your crafts? What format, performance or symbolic structure that reveals the modes of production could further interest tourists and the local market?

Mwen vinn ak pwoje sa-a poum montre ke nan rezistans gen lot bagay atizana rekiperasyon ke nou konn fe kise toujou pwodwi lokal men ke yo jwen nan mache global la tou pa latremiz de touris yo kap achte yo. Tankou sandal po kwi,chenn ak zanno ki fet ak po kokoye ak yon latriye lot bagay ke nou konn fe ke nap gen chans we nan byenal sa-a. mesi Interviewer: Acenel Laurent (AL) étudiant en 4e année patrimoine ettourisme, Agronome licencié, et journaliste culturel.

Interviewé: Love Leonce (LL) (AL) Tu peux te présenter ?

(LL) Je suis Love Leonce J’ai 19 ans. Je suis en philo (classe terminale) à Collège Technologique Moderne d’Haïti (CETEMOH). JE SUIS ORIGINAIRE DE PORTAIL LEOGANE.

(AL) Tu fais partir des jeunes qui vont en suisse ?

(LL) Oui. (AL) Tu as déjà participé dans expositions autre que ghetto biennal ?

(LL) Oui. J’ai participé à une exposition a la fondation petite création, quartier latin, institut français, Hôtel ollofson.

(AL) Quel est ton rêve entant qu’artiste ?

(LL) Mon rêve c’est de devenir célèbre comme CELLEUR, GUYODO et EUGEUNE

Interviewer: Acenel Laurent 4th year student, heritage

tourism, Agronomist licensee and cultural journalist.

Interviewee: Love Leonce (AL) Can you introduce yourself?

(LL) I Love LEONCE. I’m 19. I’m philo (final year) at College of Modern Technology Haiti (CETEMOH). I am originally from portal leogane.

(AL) Other activities?

(LL) I DJ. (AL) When did you join this group?

(LL) From the years 2007-2008.

(AL) So is resistant timoun?

(LL) Yes. I am the founder of this movement within the movement Atis Rezistans.

(AL) Autres activités ?

(LL) Je suis DJ.

(AL) What is your role?

(LL) I’m a recovery artist.

(AL) Depuis quand tu intègre ce groupe ?

(LL) Depuis les années 2007-2008.

(AL) What object types are recovering you?

(LL) Plastic, rubber, plywood, nails.

(AL) Donc, est un timoun résistant ?

(LL) Oui. Je suis le fondateur de ce mouvement à l’intérieur du mouvement artiste résistant.

(AL) Are you a participant in the Ghetto Biennale?

(LL) I have three entries. My tasks are to share my experiences with other young people making workshops.

(AL) Quel est ton rôle ?

(LL) Je fais de la récupération.

(AL) What does resilience mean to you?

(LL) Source of income allowing me to meet my needs.

I live with my parents. I plan to study law or medicine.

(AL) Quels types objet récupères-tu ?

(LL) Plastique, caoutchouc, plywood, clou.

(AL) Tu as combien de participation dans le ghetto biennal ?

(LL) J’ai trois participations. Mes taches consistent à partager mes expériences à d’autres jeunes en faisant des workshops.

(AL) Que signifie résistance pour toi ?

(LL) Source de revenu me permettant de répondre a mes besoins.

(AL) Tu vis avec qui ?

(LL) Je vis avec mes parents.

interviews, emails & transcripts

Leonce Syndia aka Bebe et Aristil Guerline (HT)

(AL) Are you among the young people going to Switzerland (LL) Yes. (AL) You have already participated in exhibitions other than the Ghetto Biennale?

(LL) Yes. I attended a small exhibition at the foundation creation, the Latin Quarter, French Institute ollofson Hotel.

(AL) What is your dream as an artist?

(LL) My dream is to become famous as CELLEUR, Guyodo and EUGEUNE

(AL) Tu comptes étudier quoi après tes études classiques ?

(LL) Je compte étudier le droit ou la médecine.

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Londel Innocent (HT)

A Market To Benefit All Artists - Yon Mache Nan Avantaj Tout Atis Why I chose a market that benefits all artists? It is because I find it important when all artist assemble and express and share ideas that they have to get great results. We have many artists coming from many different countries. The theme this year is the market, I decided to do some sculptures from dolls and tyres and expose them on Grand Rue where everyone can see them without problems, and I would like to poze several questions about what these works mean in different cultural worlds. The reason I chose this project is because I didn’t feel that I did anything serious for the 2nd Ghetto Biennale. And I thank everyone who participated in the past and the future. Thanks and welcome!

(LI) Depuis en 2009.

What has been your role in the Ghetto Biennale thus far?

What do you want to see happen as a member of this arts community?

(AL) La signification de la résistance pour toi ?

(LI) Resistance contre le mal, description de la réalité dans le ghetto.

What is the politics that surrounds your artwork and your position in the community?

(AL) Ton rêve entant que jeune artiste ?

(LI) C’est d’avoir un atelier de formation pour les jeunes. Et aussi de me voir comme nos pères tels que CELLEUR, EUGENE, GUYODO.

How might your sculptures from dolls and tyres be influenced by other materials brought by foreign artists? How might both sets of materials tied together signify both locally and in other cultural worlds?

Poukisa mwen chwazi yon mache nan avantaj tout atis? Se paske mwen twouve li enpotan le tout atis reyini yap esprime et pataje ide ke yo genyen pou jwenn de bon rezilta san pwoblem. Nou gen anpil atis ki toujou soti nan plizye peyi diferan, ki rantre isit ayiti.

Kom tem biennale la ane sa se mache a, mwen deside fe kelke skilti avek poupe kawotchou et ekspoze yo nan gran rue kote tout moun ap kapab we yo san pwoblem, e nap kapab pozem plizye kesyon sou eskilti sa yo nan lide pou nou ka konnen kisa travay sa yo reprezante nan monde kiltirel la. Rezon ki fe mwen chwazi pwoje sa, se paske apre 2eme ghetto biennale la mwen pat retrouve ke mwen te fe yon bagay serye, se rezon sa ki pousem ekri pwojet sa. E map pwofite remesye tout moun kap vinn patisipe avek nou.

Mesi et byenvini!

Interviewer: Acenel Laurent (AL) étudiant en 4e année patrimoine ettourisme, Agronome licencié, et journaliste culturel.

Interviewé : Londel Innocent (LI) (AL) Qui est Londel INNOCENT ?

(LI) C’est un jeune âgé de 27 ans, qui vit avec ses parents.

(AL) Tu fais quoi d’autres ?

(LI) Je suis un écolier. Je suis actuellement en retho. Cette année j’ai passé les examens du bac1.

(AL) Tu fais dans l’artiste résistant ?

(LI) Je fais de la récupération, et je fais surtout des tableaux.

(AL) Tu as déjà exposé des œuvres ?

(LI) Oui. J’ai exposé des œuvres à l’institut français, hôtel ollofson, Fokal, quartier latin.

(AL) Tu fais partir de timoun résistant ?

(LI) Oui. Je fais partir de la première génération.

(AL) Depuis quand tu fais partir de ce groupe ?

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(AL) Tu utilises tous les matériels dans tes œuvres ?

(LI) Oui. Mais mon préféré c’est le caoutchouc.

(AL) Pourquoi le caoutchouc ?

(LI) C’est pour donner une autre facette du caoutchouc. Car, on l’utilise en Haïti surtout lors des manifestations.

(AL) Tu as habitude de travailler à d’autres jeunes ?

(LI) Oui. Murielle Gérôme a réalisé un atelier chez Philipe DROUDARD avec les enfants de PHILLIPE.

Interviewer: Acenel LAURENT (AL) 4th year student, heritage

tourism, Agronomist licensee and cultural journalist.

Interviewee: Londel Innocent (LI) (AL) Who is Londel INNOCENT? (LI) I am 27 years old and I live with my parents.

I am a student. I’m currently Retho. This year I passed exams bac1.

(AL) You have already exhibited works?

(LI) Yes. I exhibited works at the French Institute, Hotel Ollofson, Fokal, Latin Quarter.

(AL) Are you a member of Timoun?

(LI) Yes. I’m from the first generation.

(AL) How long have you been a member?

(LI) Since 2009.

(AL) You use all the materials in your works?

(LI) Yes. But my favorite is the rubber.

(AL) Why rubber?

(LI) This is to give another side of the rubber. Because it is used in Haiti especially during demonstrations.

(AL) You used to work with other young people?

(LI) Yes. Murielle Gérôme held a workshop at Philipe DROUDARD PHILIPPE’s children.

(AL) What is the significance of the term resistance for you?

(LI) Resistance against evil, description of reality in the ghetto.

(AL) What is your dream as a young artist ?

(LI)It is to have a training workshop for youth. And also to see myself like our fathers such as CELLEUR, EUGENE, Guyodo.

H. I. Women and Power Haiti-Italy H.I. is an artistic work-in-progress taking place in Haiti. Marilena Crosato is an Italian artist who lives in Haiti. This project aims to address the following issues: • How can a woman respond to the dominant logic of power?

• How can a woman succeed?

• What are the dynamics that govern the interaction between women, trade and power?

H.I. is an interactive performance: it starts from a concept proposed by the artist and it develops in the form of a dialogue and crowdinteraction. The whole process is recorded and every evening fragments of the work will be shared on public wall surfaces within the neighbourhood, opening up the creation process to the others artists involved in the Ghetto Biennale, as well to the general public and passengers. This heterogenic audience will be asked to leave some “messages” for the artist, in the form of commentaries, tweets, text messages, songs, objects...

The inhabitants of downtown PaP will have the chance to engage in a dialogue and to mould the image of the artist/woman throughout her research process.

Le moment que j’ecrit le project j’etait seule mais avec le mise en place c’etait un equipe donc j’ai ajoute au projet. Je suis commedienne, je travail dens le domaine theatrale, j’ai commence a voyager et arriveee en Haiti il ya un an- en faisant soit les projets sociale dans les communautes ou les artisitques projets. A travers quatre chemin ona commence a travailler ensemble. Vladimiar a deja participer en la biennale. Son projet etait “Hands on Haiti” .

Je suis realistrice dans le theatre en france. Je vie ici et j’avais recontre Marilena ici avec le projet “Quatre Chemins” et j’ai amene le personne avec qui je travail a ce projet ci.

Cet endroit est un melage des ingredients interressants. Il faut demander comment etre base dans un endroit inaccessible? Cela est vraiment interessant pour moi- d’etre capable d’entrer, d’avoir la possibilite de parler avec les gens, observer et voir les manieres de travails qui existe dans ce contexte et dans cet espace. Cet endroit devient un mélange d’experiences tres different. C’est un projet tres conceptuelle et excitant avec la culture et les issues sociaux.

C’est le premiere occasion que Vladimir participe dans ce banlieu mais il y a tellement des gens qui fait des choses tres serieux, les gens qu’ils ont tant de passion. C’est pourquoi je n’ai pas hesiter a participer. Cette annee va etre completment different mais il faut saisir l’occasion.

On a decide de developper l’interaction avec les gens, faire un tour, parler avec les gens, noter les questions et leurs reponses. En ce qui concerne les fragments- la relation entre la performance et la video-le but est d’entrer l’art en quelque chose sociale. On a pose des questions sur les femmes- la vie des femmes dans le quartier donc les fragments sont les pieces des questions.

On est content que ce n’est que les femmes qui font le projet. On a poser des questions aux homes aussi. Les questions qu’on a pose etait ouvert. Ils ont bien touché les homes comme les femmes independent de notre. On a pris les parties des conversations qui etait les plus interresant, les plus jolies, les plus extremes pour mettre dans le contexte de votre performance. Puis on a fait un analyse pour mettre les reponses dans trois mouvements qui se base sur les themes qu’on a choisi. En integrant les reponses, en faisant un mélange des reponses, on a develop un travail artistique qui suit les regles artisitques.

interviews, emails & transcripts

Marilena Crosato (IT)

Donc finalement c’est tout un travail artisitique et social en meme temps. On a garde le video avec tous les reponses pour la documentation et le video et la performance serait mélange selon les criteres de mon choix.

What does the project give to you?

C’est un experience plein de surprises, surtout dans ce contexte.

Quelquefois c’est difficile. Des fois, Je me sens que je peux pas realiser ce que je veux parce que c’est toujours plus complique de faire chaque detail. Donc c’est suprenant que le projet a anime un grand debat. Tous les debats et discussions etaient formidable, enrichissant sur le niveau social et artistiques. C’est un experience qui nous changeons, change notre travail meme si on ne change pas le texte ou le structure. On a meme decouvri wue il ya vait des choses qui manqué dans mon travail- des perepectives et des themes qui sont valable et important au present.

Bibliographiques:

http://lenouvelliste.com/lenouvelliste/article/124873/HI-Femmeset-pouvoir.html texte, mise en scène et interprétation Marilena Crosato assistée de Hélène Lacroix vidéo Lea Domenach assistant vidéo et photographe Vladjimir Legagneur

Chaque edition change beaucoup. C’est vraiment interessant de voir la vitesse de changements de ces quartiers. Dans les editions passee, il y avait plus d’espace libre. L’usage d’espace a change et il ya maintenant plus d’espaces qui sont rempli.LEs jeunes prends les photos de ces petits trous et on ne sait a quels points ils l’ont fait, parce que en faites il te regarde avec des expressions vide.

What is the significance of sharing only fragments of the work with the audience? On what basis will fragments be chosen? The project moves from the personal to the public to the personal again. By what means and on what basis might these fragments re-appear in public space?

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Michael Massaro (US)

Connections I would like to create and install a collaborative sculpture with a local artist. It is my intent to form a connection, and create dialog by sharing process, philosophy, experience and perspective with a local artist to create a visual statement using our two voices. It is this connection between people and cultures that interests me. I see this as a wonderful opportunity to learn from and share with others, to exchange ideas, converse, and celebrate local culture with the community of viewers, and artists from Port-Au-Prince and the international community. Markets are places of great personal connection for a community. Everyone comes to this centrally located place and pour into it their culture, rituals, talents and relations. I would like to explore and understand this connection to a greater degree. The sculpture which I propose as a point of departure uses materials found in the market to create it. It is a 3 foot high form which is 20 to 40 foot long. It has a central area to be filled with a colorful material.

What kind of sculpture do you intend to create? What is the conceptual basis or central theme of this sculpture and how does its form resonate with the thinking behind it?

I tend to gravitate toward social and human rights based projects like “ Passion for Freedom”- a show in London that was trying to put some focus on human rights. I’ve been an artist my whole life, never really deviated from that.

I had a friend Kendra Frorup who was supposed to come but could not make it but did come to the 2nd Biennale and she said to me that I really needed to take a look at this because it is about people, connections. I usually work with mixed media. I have a tendency to lean towards, metal, stone, wood in many different forms- bronze, welded metal, found metal objects. The concepts are usually minimalist- I bring the subject into gestural form.

One of my projects was based on the story of the night commuters in Uganda- children who would work some place and walk long distances to get home. They would be kidnapped and turn into child soldiers- this walk was very dangerous for them. These children would wrap themselves in whatever they could findcardboard for example, to hide themselves. They would walk to school many miles and back. I wasn’t trying to capture the visual of this but trying to visualize my personal emotional response. So the wood are the children and the wrapping is the hiding of these children.

Why did you wrap’ the children in metal here?

It symbolized the use of the ‘anything’ that they would wrap themselves in- whatever it was, it was very uncomfortable. So I work on two levels, the artistic - the harmony and discord of materialsso the wood and the metal and the emotional message. C clamps are holding the metal sheets together. I wanted to make the form clean and visible but at the same time it conveys the coldness of the condition. When I do a piece of work, I live with it for months until I think that it is ready. I ignore it and allow it to live in my space and I in its space until I feel comfortable with it.

I had a preconceived notion when he started to make it this particular piece. It was going to be much more complicated. I built one and it was meant to be a 3 dimensional sketch to look at the form and figure out how I was going to build this other thing but this was it and I did not know it. I needed to get myself out of my

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head and respond rather than thinking it through- simplifying an idea worked better visually. So I followed this process thereafter.

I work on multiple pieces at one time. My process is at discord with the subject but this is the reason I do it because often things that happen in the world and we are not comfortable with it. As a sidebar, I do not usually tell people what the subject is. I allow people to feel it for themselves.

Connections is about myself as an artist and everything that happens in the process of making the art object. The structure is a by product of the artwork of connection. My work is generally like this- a by product of a process and the result is something that someone could look at or experience. With Connections I planned to build a structure. I did a little drawing which had an opening on the top. I landed here in Haiti and Racine, one of the Haitian artists was busy and I couldn’t catch up with him for 2 days so I walked the streets and was captivated by the sugarcane, which historically the country was persecuted for and the charcoal was a very interesting texture. So I made a trough made of sugarcane with white cardboard and charcoal spilling over the sides. People gathered as I made the sugarcane structure. You should never make sculpture out of a desert. Many started to help, they started to discuss and argue amongst themselves about aesthetics. One person did not like the knot that I used to tie the pieces of sugarcane together and they took over. At that point I realized, it wasn’t mine and Racine’s anymore. The community took it up and I realized that that was the project. So they said that they wanted to make changes. They added poles in the back and wanted to put up cardboard toward the back so that they could write on it.

Initially, I was told not to rely on writing in my art project but Racine said it was fine, the community would write in creole. Interestingly, they sent Racine and myself to get more materials to do the project.

I was really over the moon because it went so far above and beyond the concept that I had and it opened my eyes to the reality of this community- how much people wanted to work, how much creativity they had. I felt good about what I was doing.

I was terribly nervous about being here and asked myself so many questions- do I deserve to be here. I did not want to be arrogant. I realized that I was in someone’s home and I wanted to be respectful but now when I walk through, I gets hugs. They take as much pride in the project as I do. No one removed any of the coal on the first day but the second day was another thing.

Racine ‘sweet talks’ all the mamas. He did not ask for spaces for the project and we were able to reconcile by paying in coca cola so rent is cheap but not free. The project is really intangible. It is really the experience of community and family and the glue between the people that holds the whole thing up- I’m observing that and experiencing it. I was walking through the neighborhood at the end of the day and this hand grabbed mine, and it was this 3 yr old little girl and Racine says “come on, she will go with us, she goes where she wants.” She smiles and I melt and I’m in love so she walked all the way to the site with us and they crank the music and she runs off with her little friends to dance and breaks my heart.

At tender ages, they get involved. At three years old the little girl is holding the nails for her five year old cousin to pound nails into his art project.

Michael Massaro’s Personal Reflections: As I was whisked off to the Voodoo Ceremony I stopped for many 1/2 seconds to say “Bon Swa” (creole for hello) to all of the little children along the way. We twisted and turned through the narrow alley ways of the Shanty. I clumsily brushed against corrugated metal walls only to catch a moment to spread my shoulders in the darkened doorways that dotted the muddy path. Someone who was helping build the sculpture wanted to get me to Papa Da’s space in the shanty neighborhood for a Voodoo ceremony that was under way. What did I know about Papa Da at this point: He’s a Haitian artist. Everyone respects him and maybe fears him a little. He’s at the top of the neighborhood hierarchy. And usually what he says goes.

My guide and I turned right, then left, then right again, then right again, then right again. I almost thought we were going in circles if not for one left that might have been a mistake. We came upon a small cove in the path where three men were building furniture to be sold. The operation was very streamlined, basic, and went from the cutting of the tree into planks, drying the wood in molds to keep them straight all the way to the sanding and staining of a finished product.

Amazing.

www.mmassaro.com

interviews, emails & transcripts

Just beyond this operation was a dead end and a low, cramped doorway. Voodoo symbols, flags and fetishes surrounded the opening. Loud rhythmic drumming and chanting came from inside.

My unnamed companion scooped me inside to sensory overload.

Five Haitian women dressed in pure white where singing and dancing barefoot with twenty or so people pushed against the walls, watching. Some sitting, some standing but everyone was captivated by these Mambos (as the voodoo women are called). I was pushed through these Mambos. Uttering a quick almost silent “des ole” (sorry). I was brought into what is called the temple. This was a small room about the size of a walk-in closet. Maybe one hundred candles lit the room which was filled with images of Catholic Saints right side up and upside down. Many wooden statues of gods, nails protruding from them, stared back. Human skulls prominently displayed on the floor, on tables or hanging from the ceiling from makeshift nets were to all sides. They often had bottle caps for eyes. On the floor of this dim closet from hell was an eight pointed star with symbols at each tip.

The star was made from a yellow powder. (One of you in this email list suggested I breathe deeply if I were to have this powder blown in my face.) As I tried to take this site in, a beer was put into my hand. Then another. My radar went off and I realized someone was trying to get VOL 2 | ISSUE 5 | SPRING 2016

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interviews, emails & transcripts

Michael Massaro (US)

Connections

me drunk. The fellas had spotted the weak wild beast in the crowd and separated me from the herd. Unfortunately for them they cornered the wrong liver. Still another beer was given to me (although I said “Non.” obviously french for “yes, bartender, keep them coming.) I was turned back to the Mambos dancing just in time to see a huge man join them, also dressed in white. He was drinking out of a bottle with goat horns and spraying the dancers and crowd with the mist. We watched from the temple door way as he came our way. I was quickly shoved to the side and out of the line of fire as this spray went through the entrance to the little room with all of the candles. I was told it was to rid it of evil spirits. I realized at this moment my goal here was to not get spit on. Well it’s kind of a goal in life really, not just in Voodoo ceremonies.

And not really a goal but my life’s mantra. Things quickly turned dark from there. This big bull of a guy jumped, spun, screamed and then was taken over by a demon. They say women can be dramatic! The lead Mambo woman (a grandmother), now wearing a silk, purple head dress took the demon from him with a series of soft head butts, holy water and spins. It was then in her. She became very intense. She flopped in exhaustion into a seat and began to hop around the room on this miniature chair. Around and around... right to me. Always right to me (that’s the real voodoo here!) Before I knew it I was on my knees dancing. Looking her straight in the eyes. She guided me through holy water sprinkling in my head and a series of rhythmic moves (as you all know I’m a D- dancer so I can only imagine how surprised and impressed this Mambo was at this bald white guy dressed in white much like hers. I was then back on my feet and moved into the temple again (they really like having me in that temple for some reason.)

The attention and dance then went to the rest of the foreign artists.

The next person was in the same position as I was moments before when the big Bull jumped up with the bottle and sprayed alcohol in the face of the guest (Mantra achieved! people talk about near death experiences. I’m going to count this as one for me.) So, this next bit is not for the squeamish... or anyone with compassion or good sense. The bull spun and whirled and sprayed. He screamed and chanted to the drum beat. He grabbed a baby. Yes. He grabbed a baby (to all of our horror!) grabbed a baby from a father (a mother would have throttled this guy) Grabbed a baby by the leg and held her upside down, shaking her the whole time. Mom shot out of the crowd and the bull returned the baby to her arms. There were flames and lightning in this woman’s eyes. This jackass had crossed a line the world over. Don’t get between a mother and her child. Everyone was upset by this event. (Later the the majority of people who saw or heard of this were outraged. Only some of the Haitian men said it had any validity. Why fellas are in charge is beyond me.) Also, there was no time to react. It was over before it happened and the Mambos began to dance again. The Big Bull came off of the ceremony floor and with three other wild looking guys, strong armed me into the temple. Then they slammed the door. Two rickety metal chairs were carried into the room and placed on either side of the yellow powder voodoo star and I was told to sit. I sat and a light was turned on. It was attached to a bare bulb that dimly lit the room as it swung above us. I was told by one of the three that someone wanted to see me. The Bull was extremely agitated as he paced and mumbled (probably mumbled winning lotto numbers.) As we waited for the priest I leaned back crossed my legs and drank in the atmosphere of intimidation and beer. I did this in a very relaxed manner to get under the skin of the Bull. (Bullies are the same everywhere. They’re never real bright. Their brains are usually somewhere else and they usually take orders from someone else.) I smiled when he made eye contact and he yelled at his friends. They settled him down feeding out of the horned bottle. (You know. I’ve seen this movie. Guys drag someone to a back

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room, bare light swings above, candles, voodoo totems and skulls staring back at the poor guy in the chair. All that was missing was Michael Madsen as Mr. Blonde, to come in dancing to Stealers Wheel’s “Stuck in the Middle With You.”...... and cut my ear off[ Reservoir Dogs Reference.] Point is, it never ends well for the guy in the chair.) Voodoo was explained to me and how serious the religious this experience was.

“He doesn’t see everyone.”

“Oh, of course... Mr Pink.”

The door opened to the blinding light of outside. He had arrived! He sat in the chair across from me. His chair was much higher so I had to look up at him. (Gotta love the theatrics). We sat quietly for some long moments and he spoke from his thrown on the other side of the powder star.

“We are friends, brothers” and a lot more I didn’t understand even with a pseudo interpreter. They told me that he was going to do something to me.

“Oh?” I said, wanting all the time out of the room.

“Oh yes. He will!”

“Is that good? (doesn’t sound good)... bad?”

No answer. Only serious discussions all around. The Bull gets riled so he flexes his muscles and kicks him out. The Priest then turned to me and asked what I had around my neck. “It is very strong.”

My necklace? I thought. “It’s was a gift... From the Masai tribe. Do you know the Masai?”

“Oh yes.” They began to talk amongst themselves.

He said something to them and they turned to me. All of them starring.

With the light and the candles and the skulls. They said I must bring him $300 tomorrow. “ Say what? U.S. dollars?” (Insert high pitched voice of surprise.)

Oh yes. very serious this is.” (Suddenly I was talking with Yoda) “ Bullshit.” I said calmly. “I don’t have $300.” I looked right at him and said “I have bought sugar cane and coal for the people of the neighborhood...that’s where my money has gone.”

“Yes. He knows this. Likes it very much, he does.” Yoda responds. But Papa will do something. You need to bring $300.”

Enough of this. (You know that movie that doesn’t end well for the guy in the chair? There’s another ending.) I looked at him again and flatly stated If anyone gets $300 it’s them. This necklace you noticed, when the Maasai WOMEN (emphasis on women) gave it to me they told me I was family and that it was protection from any harm. They said they will know if something happens, so do what you gotta do.”

A long pause for translation.

He was furious and stormed out of the room. The light spilled in. Oh the precious light! Back to the land of the living! I scooted out I said “ De sole.(can’t win them all).” and headed for the Hotel.

The story doesn’t end here. Word travels fast. And many people came to say that he was wrong for this... blah blahblah.

I told everyone “No worries. It was fine.” and everyone was happy again. until tomorrow love mike

On Dec 9, 2013, at 10:19 PM Julianna Stoll <juliannastoll@yahoo.com> wrote: Hey you!! Wow what a crazy sounding adventure... and awesome sounding experience already! I’m sure it seems like you’ve been gone forever already but back here it feels like it’s just been a blink of an eye because things are so normal here. Isn’t that funny about traveling how a couple days in a new place can seem like a year!

Hope you are having many more adventures today and looking forward to your next email, they’re really fun to read!

Lola and cats say hello!

I don’t want to tell you how many times I’ve eaten Thai food since you’ve been gone. xoxo On Sunday, December 8, 2013 8:20 PM Michael Massaro<mmassaro56@gmail.com> wrote: It’s hard to start to capture the nine weeks that happen to you in a day down here. It’s incredible. I’ll aim for just shy of that. Saturday morning my training wheels were going to come off whether I wanted them off or not. Trial by fire, or in this case shanty. Haiti is home to a very proud people. With nothing... literally nothing they walk with chins up and and chest out. I found them to be very kind to me. I took a taxi (for $1) to the Ghetto Biennale site and was introduced to Eugene (for the old folks in this e-mail Eugene is like the old 7-up guy. He spoke English and got me square with money exchange and hooked me up with a guy to get a cell phone... no 7-up. Can’t win them all. The kid (say’s the almost 40 year old) was 21. His name was Token. He took me everywhere that day. He showed me everyone’s studio. The trek resembled the path you would lead a person on if you needed to get rid of a body.

Not streets, not alleys underworlds within underworlds (not bad, just existing). Families were sweet to me in these shanties. Smiles and handshakes from everyone. More girls hugged me than I can say and I may be married now. The Haitian Parliament is working it out and will let me know. The last of the galleries I was brought to is easy to sum up. Raiders of the Lost Arc. end of story. I zigzagged through cramped metal roofed sheds and shimmied between buildings, stepped over arc welder laying in water. To get to the “Well of souls”(reference from Indiana jones) as I entered. I will play the part of Marian. The scene in the movie when she is surrounded by all of the mummies and is screaming is pretty close to me pushed into this unlit room with theses Haitian voodoo statues! The work they make is mostly Totem Fetishessmall (1 ft) and large (8 ft). They are made of wood, rubber, rusty metal and more than often human skulls. After the earthquake, the artists, like everyone else helped with clean up... clean up is the best an area can do to move rubble. When they would find remains (after many months) those parts made it into their work. To say it’s overwhelming is an understatement! So you get the picture. I survived Indiana Jones (Totem) pushed a wall down (opened a door) and we crawled out to fight the Nazis (we went and got a beer). It’s all in how you look at it.

On the way home I took a ride in the back of a truck to the hotel... traffic jam! You know you’re going slow when a guy carrying a coffin on his head laps your car. You read that right. Coffin. Head. Car. All true. Too may things can be said and shouldn’t!. Hotel and sleep... not yet. As I started this email I sat on the bed to write. I had a spasm in my foot.

“Oh wow. Sooo much walking today.” type. type. type. spasm’s moving to my ankle. “ just getting old.” In my calf. It almost feels like something is crawling up my...” HHOLY SH…T!!!! up my pants leg. Stomp! Stomp!

Out pops my first roommate. A 6 inch long skink I’ve named William.

Now we’re friends.

www.mmassaro.com

Day 3 I finally catch up to Racine (in case you missed the 1st episode he’s the local artist I’m paired with). BUT, not before I meet my 2nd roommate. Diedrick is a very green traveler and is from San Fran. He was trying to look calm but... I gave him everything I didn’t get- phone #’s how to take a taxi, who to trust, changed his money, warned him of how overwhelming the 1st day will be and not to worry. On and on.

Then Racine showed up and we got to work. After talking for a bit we decided to make our pieces out of sugarcane. I saw scene stalks being sold and fell in love with it... more on that later. We made a small (4ft) model to work out engineering and then I headed to the hotel. I had not had a proper meal since I arrived and was set to eat. I had been on the go so much I obliterated the breakfast buffet and had a high calorie power bar during the day. Tonight I was eating. As I sat writing this, our translator, Richard showed up. He sat and I bought him a beer.

Now, you all know Richard. Can’t make him up. Part Haitian, Allllll NEW YORK. I liked him immediately. He did time in SingSing (prison in NY) for surviving. Short, Short is he’s kicked out to here. Gets hooked on crack and makes it out the other end. He now has a beautiful three year old daughter and wife that he takes care of... He also claims to be one of the many illegitimate children of Bautista, a Haitian president (dictator) and so he is. “Richard, where can we get some food?... Not here at the hotel.”

interviews, emails & transcripts

“Shit, mike. around the corner” “ Richard, somewhere I won’t die.” “ Mike, I have parasites in my ass. They say it’s from the lettuce. Don’t eat the lettuce. Every place in town is suspect including your hotel!” “ Sounds good let’s go.” (Fear not fans. I’m armed with Cipro!.)

We walk down the driveway and head into the “restaurant.”

So I stepped into a strip club (only in atmosphere) one red light for the room of tables and a blacklight creeping out of a side room (for dancing). What the hell is going on! I asked Richard about the place.

“Oh, you know. It’s a restaurant and a hotel. They rent rooms by the hour for discreet couples.”

At that moment. Literally. the two couples next to us wanted to let me know that one of their dates (They weren’t hookers, just on dates) thought I was cute. A rock star. I smiled and said I was just here for the chicken. We all laughed and talked until the kids went dancing. I really think dancing means dancing in this sentence. And the food... oddly enough, best meal I’ve had here.

Can’t make this up. mike

VOL 2 | ISSUE 5 | SPRING 2016

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Reginald Centatus (HT)

Philosophical Market – Mache Filozofi ‘PHILOSOPHICAL MARKET’ is a market where all people (Haitian and foreign) can ask questions. When a person asks questions they have the right to an explanation for the sense and signification of every work of art that I imagine. That is the reason that I want to present this project is because according to myself, drawing a picture, painting a piece, is a very easy thing. But when a person put their faith, their soul, their heart, their spirit and their mystical eye into the work then you can find better inspiration. ‘Philosophical Market’ is a market to put light into your heart with the questions we pose – this is the basis of philosophy. I will expose 30 works made from painted tyres in Andre Eugene’s yard and I will show 40 more in my own home. Each piece will have a philosophical significance which will allow the audience to pose many different questions. I gave thisw project the title ‘Philosophical Market’ because I consider that everyone’s lives has philosophy at the heart of it.

What has been your role in the Ghetto Biennale thus far?

What do you want to see happen as a member of this arts community?

What is the politics that surrounds your artwork and your position in the community?

What kind of philosophical questions do you seek to pose through your works? will these interactions be documented?

If yes, how? And what is the significance of your method of documentation? How should/ will these conversations be shared?

“Mache Filozofi” a se yon mache kote tout moun (Ayisyen ou Etranje) ap ka poze kesyon. Le yon moun poze kesyon, li ap gen dwa ak yon esplikasyon sou sans ak sinifikasyon chak grenn « Œuvre » ki sot nan panse’m. Sak fe mwen vle prezante pwoje sa, se paske selon mwen menm, trase yon tablo, penn yon piyes, se pa yon bagay ki fasil.

Men le yon moun mete lafwa’w, nanm ou, ke’w, panse’w, lespri’w ak zye espiritiyel ou nan sa w’ap fe ya, Sa ka lokaz ou jwenn pi bon enspirasyon. « Mache Filozofi » a se yon mache ki pou mete limye nan ke nou ak nan kesyon n’ap poze, sa se baz Filozofi a. Pou mwen ka reyalize pwoje sa, mwen pral ekspoze 30 ti tablo ki fet ak penti e kawotyou nan lakou kay Eugene, mwen pral ekspoze 40 tablo nan lakou lakay mwen tou. Chak tablo sa yo pral gen yon sinifikasyon Filozofik kote tout moun pral kapab poze kesyon pou yo ka konnen kisa yo vle di. Mwen vini ak tit « MACHE FILOZOFI » a, se paske mwen konsidere ke tout sa yon moun ap fe nan lavi sa, li gen Flozofi ladann.

La premiere et deuxieme ghetto biennale, ja’vais expose, je ne savias pas parle anglais, si tu vu veux connais les gens, il faut connaitre l’anglais donc j’ai appris l’anglais tout seule et pour cette biennale j’ai donne le titre de marche de philosophie.

J’aimerais que les gens reste positifs, tu n’aime pas la delinquance que soit bonne pour tout le monde. Meme les gens qui n’ont pas l’occasion de vendre ses ouevres, j’espere que ca va avoir une bonne partage.

Les projects positif, l’intellextuel, la paix, et la passion de monde. Je d’inventer un aspect artistique. on voir la question la sense de la possibilite, l;art de communique et les types de politique c’est de comprendre Il ya grand politique, pour ameliorer la connaisance de l’art intellectuelle et spirituelle quand un personne arrive devant ses ouevres donc les gens s’identifient avec les choses qui sont dans les oeuvres. qurestion politiques- quelle est le but, vcomment to as chercher l’inspiration de ses oeuvres?quand les gens pose des questions cela me donne l’inspiration a faire des choses nouveau, mediter plus.

Parfois les gens se sent mieux en regardant les oeuvres et quand

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je les expliques et parfois moi meme je me sent mieux quand je explique et quelque fois je vois mes ouevres et je me sent mieux. sometimes I look at a work and I don’t believe that I did that. he is 18 yrs old. he didn’t consider himself an artist. he has been doing art for 3 years. J’ai regarde des autres mais mes ouevres sont tellement different, il a cherche a trouver des nouvelles styles artisitques, des nouvelles chemins, meme anglais et espagnol, personne m’a enseigne. Avant ma mere etait un artisan. Elle ne fait plus. elle se marier et puis elle fait rien de plus. j’ai deux soeurs et quatre freres.

He is the second. Il va faire l’universite l’anne prochaine, pour faire la philosophie.. Je suis aggrandi avec ma tante. Quelques unes sont les enfant de mon beau-pere. t c’est ma vie, l’art c’est mon coeur aussi, J’aime la psychologie, la diplomatie.

----During the first and second biennial ghetto, I was exposed. I did not know English. But if you want to know the people that you met, youneed to understand English so I learned English while on my own for the Biennial. I hope that people are positive. Even people who do not have the opportunity to sell their works I hope that they have a good experience. There are positive projects, intellectual, projects that speak of peace and passion. I came up with an artistic project that articulates a sense of possibility. I love the art of communicating. There are many intense policies to improve the knowledge of the intellectual and spiritual art when a person arrives that drive the artist to create the work therefore people identify with the things that are in the works.

What is your goal, what gives you inspiration for your works?

When people ask questions, it gives me inspiration to do new things, and I meditate more. Sometimes people feel better by looking at the works and when I explain the works. Sometimes even I myself feel better when I explain. Sometimes I see my ouevres and I feel much better. Sometimes I look at a work and I do not believe that I did that.

I am eighteen. I did not consider myself an artist but I have been doing art for 3 years. I looked at the others but my works are so different. I want to find new artistic styles, new paths. I speak Spanish even and nobody taught me. Before, my mother was a craftsman.

She is no longer a craftsman. She married and then she did nothing more. I have two sisters and four brothers. I am the second. I will go to the university next year, to study philosophy. I grew up with my aunt. Some are the children of my stepfather. Art is my life, art is my heart too, I like psychology and diplomacy.

The Western Way Of Shipping The Western Way of Shipping is a conceptual work where I will be teaching the “Chelsea standard” of packing and shipping art to Haitian artists. The project is both an empowerment tool so Haitian artists can control the export of their own works and a means to openly discuss post-colonial ideas and the harsh truths represented in Haiti. Through open dialogue I want to explore ideas of power from both sides. My hope is for progressive forward momentum to begin from the discussions with local artists and others involved in this year’s biennale. The culmination of my project will involve the shipping “works” out of Haiti, first to be exhibited at the Fluxus Foundation in New York and later at the Mediations biennale, in hopes of continuing the discussion outside of the Caribbean.

I used to work for a non-profit called “Creative Time. I worked in the Global Initiatives department. One of the things that they do is that they send a resident around the world to do projects. They send artists around the world and they were working with an artist called Theaster Gates- and Theaster had come to Haiti and that’s how I started thinking about Haiti and started thinking about Haiti in the context of art. Fast forward about 7 months- it was in the winter of 2012. I was in contact with a woman who works for the advisory council to Barack Obama for the Arts and she spoke to me about the Biennale a little bit and told me that there was a call for artists.

She believed that my interest in social engagement could manifest really well. I think it is on the radar of the US State Department. Even the Venice Biennale, the State Department selects the curator who chooses the artist who will represent the artist. It is the whole notion of soft power. So she told me to reach out to Leah.

My personal work deals with economy and economic problems.

I grew up between NY and Northern NJ, went to prep school and fancy universities. In some sense, there is always a critical eye thrown when someone like me comes to social projects especially having gotten involved with economics, though it is something I feel that I understand.

How and why is the Chelsea method of shipping effective and suitable to the Haitian context? Have you imagined a conceptual adaptation of this method that might be more suitable to this context? What will be the basis for selection of works for shipping?

It is much more a theoretical discussion on shipping in general.

There are unspoken rules about how art needs to be transported from point A to B. You need to go by the specific protocol for galleries for your work to be taken seriously. I am a gallery director in Chelsea so I see this everyday- I look at the work- why is it not in a box for example- that is one of the standards. I am dealing with shipping in Haiti and using it from both ends- to criticize the art system in Europe and US that has these rigid rules but also to teach Haitians about these standards. From my brief research on Haiti, a lot of the issues seem to stem from shipping- the inability to export or the issues surrounding the shipping of rice that is so important to agriculture.

It is one of the things that is not explored and questioned as they just expect the item to be there, they don’t ask how it got there- so putting these questions forward is necessary. In constructing the boxes and working with some of the younger artists, I found that they were really engaged taking the drill out of my hands and making the boxes themselves. It is not just about art but in society itself, if you can construct a box well, the world opens to you because you can start sharing things- your identity as it is manifested in an object, to the world. It becomes a quick tutorial in how to be in an operations department in an organization. I briefly employed carpenters and purchased materials – it is nice to contribute to this micro level. It allowed me to simply encourage people to come and have other

www.robertdimin.com

experiences. People don’t want handouts here, they want to work, which is amazing.

I will ship the crates back and had planned to ship them back empty but I have stamped them using a rubber carving that is one of the signature materials of this community. I will have an exhibition in Chelsea of the project- as a way of discussing the economics, the cost of shipping the crate alone. People here live on an average of $2 a day so that sending a box is half a year’s wage. So that it is unfathomable. I will ship these crates to influential people in the artworld and ask them to send it back to me... as a way of expressing a need to understand the economics of what is happening in Haiti.

The image of a kid with his hand out looking for food is a misguided way to think about Haiti. Taking things into a conceptual space is a more productive way of addressing Haiti’s issues- it is not about sympathy- it is much larger than that. The issues are really systemic, not about individuals.

What is the rationale behind sending to influential people?

The Ghetto Biennale still is not seen or known by persons who need to see it, so this is the reason. It is one of the most important Biennales in the world because it is really about social practice, and for me it is really about critiquing the art world. In NY, we still look at art as a commodity rather than a function of cultural exchange and experimenting in intellect and trying to share and spread knowledge.

So this can bring something to other Biennials. The artists themselves are not critiquing the outside art world- their purpose is to have the dialogue, to have the discussion. International artists participating in this is, in a sense, a critique in thinking about the New York context of art. They are not making things for sale. They are coming here on their own dollar many of them. Working in an area that NGO’s are not even allowed into. So it is about honest discussions with local artists but international artists critiquing the institution of art. Some artists felt that I was not being sensitive through my project to the Haitian artists’ context. Until you experience it you can’t earnestly judge it. Everyone was super engaged in the performance and learning about the art system understanding that by making a simple box, they can share their work with the rest of the world. The work needs to get out there and needs to be part of the system. It is an extreme privilege to be able to critique the institution. You can only critique the institution if you are part of it. Some artists are, but the work is still exotic, still a provincial part of the system. But this is a system that is hundreds of years old. It tries to empower rather than take away but 100 years ago it was about exploitation.

interviews, emails & transcripts

Robert Dimin (US)

What do you want the follow up of this project to be?

Separate to the Biennale, I am interested in going to studios and trying to get their work out of Haiti. I was just at Evel’s studio- his work is as good as what other sculptors are doing in the US. His work is very region- specific but very important. Evel’s work has a multi-layered, multi-faceted thing occurring- aesthetic and beautiful but very personal- representative of him as an individual but representative of culture in a very strong way. This is my first trip of many and I will be carrying back work on my person. I want to have a real exchange where Haitian artists will have real wages from galleries. I will treat the artist no differently than other international artists. I will not buy at 10% and sell at real world art market prices.

I feel lucky to take part in this. One of the most amazing things is that the people in the community have embraced us all as family because we are the outsiders and they are not treating us as such... which is amazing. We come from a very different place but it doesn’t feel that way.

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Romel Jean Pierre (HT) Racine Polycarpe (HT) Claudel Casseus(HT) Replacement And Image Transformation After the earthquake Haiti has become overrun with photographers and journalists, then, Haitians began to distrust the media as they didn’t know how these images would be used by either newspapers or NGOs. Our project is inspired by these stories, we chose to change places and become the photographers and the visitors will be the subject. The difference is that we will not take these photographs with a humanitarian or fundraising agenda. Will will transform the photographs into a unique work of art collaging the image with recycled materials. The photos will be displayed and we will invite the subject to purchase the final works.

What is the politics that surrounds your artwork and your position in the community?

This conceptual inversion is also an economic inversion, a proposition that conflates the subject with consumer. Many of the visitors are artists, how does this change the dialogue?

Romel: Pour les premier on etait juste des publiques et la deuxieme ont etait plus actif- on aide les gens avec leurs projets. Et maintenant on est artistes-participants.

Racine: Je veux que le Biennale y compris plus de jeunes comme moi-meme et que cela les aide a changer leurs vies, prendre une bonne direction pour leurs vies- le changement. Je veuq qu’il amene du bien, quell que chose du positif. Ca peut nous aider a comprendre comment on peut vivre ensemble, communiquer avec des gens soit les Haitiens soit les etrangers.

Romel: I want the biennale to make people feel that they are interconnected and interdependent. Other people depend on us to help them feel that art can really be a method of change. rapporter qui peut se faire plaisir pour faire auto-suffisante, autosatisfait, pour apporter des choses econoiques, pour les gens se sens bien dans leur peau. Qu’ils sentent pas mepriser par le monde d’art internationale.

[Romel-For the first Biennale we were just a part of the public and for the second we were more like assets- we supported other people’s projects. And now we’re participating artists.

Racine: I want the Biennale to include more young people like myself as that helps them change their lives, take a right direction for their lives to change. I want the Biennale to bring positive things, whatever that positive thing is. That can help us understand how we can live together, communicate with people whether Haitians or foreigners.

Romel: I want the Biennial to make people feel that they are interconnected and interdependent. Other people depend on us to help them feel that art can really be a method of exchange, something that can be fun to do, that makes them self-sufficient, self-satisfied, to help them improve on an economic level. These things help people feel good about themselves. When they feel this way, then they do not despise the world of international art.]

Racine: My work is like my gun, it’s like a microphone to send me everywhere in the world and to kill violence. For this particular

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project- Remplacement- image transformation- sometimes people come and take pictures and sell them and make money so Leah outlawed photography. Sometimes they make something else with the pictures. We are showing that we can do that too and that’ s why we are only taking artists’ pictures.

Claude: We want to put the foreigners in their place- an inversion of what they are accustomed to doing. The politic of our work is about giving the city back to the people and back to the spirit.

Romel: Everyday you see a new NGO, a new car, a new name. If we have a school, it’s because of an NGO and they put their signs anyway. And his piece about the Gede is to give the city back to the Gede, back to the culture. This time, we don’t want to be the subject. We will try to sell the photographs. We will just try to experiment. Can we really sell our pictures even if it is an emotional picture, or stage a picture to be shocking or you transform it into a piece of art. We want to be the sellers, not the buyers.

Racine: I see my position in the community as a peace maker, art maker and social activist. After I finish with high school, I would like to go to university, continue to make art and find the possibility to show my work everywhere in the world. ( Age 22) Claude: At the beginning, I had not though of becoming an artist.

I thought I wanted to be a lawyer or architect but because of the economic situation I did not have the chance to break the barriers so I decided to create a means to become something, I wanted to be something. There are so many people who do things here, why not join them to try to create a different life than I had imagined.

Now I want to be a celebrated artist, that my name is known around the world, have a better life.

Romel: In 5 yrs I will be famous in filmmaking. In 10 yrs I will start my political career in Haiti but at the same time still doing art.

Apre tranbleman de tè Haiti te vinn ranpli ak fotograf epi journalist, te telman gen jounalist nan Haiti, ke ayisyen yo te vinn pè le yon lot moun fe foto yo, paske yo toujou panse foto yo pral nan jounal ak nan fundraising. Proje nou an inspire de istwa sa yo, nou chwazi chanje plas nou tounnen fotograph epi vizitè yo tounnen subject la, men a la sèl diferans n foto ke nap fè pou mounn yo se pa foto ki pral patisipe nan yon fundraising ni yon foto ki pral nan program humanitare, men se foto ke nou pral transfome an art unique ki ka tounnen yon pyès de koleksyon pou subject la. Kijan nou pral fe sa : Romel ap pran foto chak patisipan nan byenal la. Epi Claudel ak Racine ap travay foto yo pou transforme yo nan yon still mixedmedia. Avek materyo resiklaj.. foto yo pral ekspoze epi nou ap envite subject yo pou achte foto yo si yo vle.

Transcripts Jefferson Kielwagen JK: What do you want to know?

SF: Well, first of all, tell me a little bit about your piece.

JK: It’s called ‘Monolith.’ It’s a commentary on the history of this place. And on the political problems of this place. It has to do with the fact that I don’t know exactly the details of how things turn out to be the way they are. I did my homework a little bit. I studied Haitian history, but I didn’t go very deep. I don’t know the subtleties. But as far as I understand, the produce of this land is all exported for greater profit, and then the local population has to import the same produces from the Dominican Republic and from the U.S. So it’s more expensive. Even though it’s being grown here, produced here, the local population has no access to it, which is a very strange situation. And I think it’s partially responsible for the problems of Haiti. So the idea- this it not just my project; it’s a collaboration with Ryan Groendyk, which is an American artist…

SF: Is he here?

JK: He didn’t come and make it. So I came to make things happen. But what we wanted to do is try and do poetic justice I guess. We wanted to buy rice that was grown here- not the one that is imported- but the one that is actually grown here and mostly exported, and use that as a building material for a minimalist sculpture that has more or less the shape of a monolith, which is an ancient kind of [object of worship?]…

SF: So you’re talking about the shape of the monolith…

JK: Yeah. You know in the beginning of 2001, the Haitians [?] are worshipping a rectangular black stone… What we’re trying to say really is that local agriculture is important. It’s a pretty plain, straightforward simple, and we are blowing it up a little bit so we are using the rice to build something that has the shape on an ancient sacred object. So there’s a little twist to it… And then after the object is built, it’s supposed to serve as an invitation for local consumption, meaning I want people to take those bags away. Though I am not offering them, because there’s something uncomfortable.

Well, maybe I should just share my dilemmas.

SF: Yes. Let’s hear.

JK: I have a lot of mixed feelings about this whole event. Because it’s a place that

has so many problems, and the problems are historically rooted in a way. And it’s so severe now that I’m here. I see that the problems are severe, and they are very hard to fault. So in a place like this that needs everything- I mean, it barely has sanitationyou know, to come here as an artist with my American dollars, it makes me feel weird.

It makes me feel guilty. And then… And even the monolith piece. OK, I’m building a project, and I want people to take it away so that’s the charity aspect of the work. But if I really wanted to do charity, I would take the money that I got- I was funded from school to come here- I would just take the entire amount and donate it to an NGO who works here to use this money directly in things that are more needed than a sculpture. So I feel somewhat guilty about being here and doing this. But the truth is I’m not here to do charity, right? I’m here as an artist. I’m here to make good art basically… OK, socially engaged art is interesting. Ecologically engaged art, art about sustainability is all interesting, but maybe I’m slightly romantic, but I believe that the job of art is not to save the world. It’s not to save the trees or the whales or destroy capitalism or eradicate poverty or anything like that. There’s a part of art that has to be good art. There is this core that is about itself.

SF: So what is good art to you?

JK: I think it’s about poetics. And this is how I resolve this piece in my head at least. It’s coming to you in a situation that’s historical [?] justice and equality and how the resources are being used. And I’m not really solving the problem by doing what I did, but I’m only doing justice on the poetic level.

And I think art has to operate in this level. It’s all about poetics for me. It has to be poetic.

So I’m not sure to what extent I achieved that with the monolith. I worked hard; I did my best. I like what I accomplished. And then my experience here has been wonderful.

Yesterday to get a ride to wait on a journey to Saint- Marc.

SF: Who did you go with?

JK: Higgins. I forgot his last name. He was the guy who was here talking to us. He was helping… Yeah, he’s excellent. Yesterday we took the entire day. He got me on a bus and we drove for two hours on the bus.

SF: And where did you go exactly? Was it north or south?

JK: Saint-Marc. They call it St. Marc. But it’s Saint-Marc, and it’s one hour and a half north along the coast. So it’s a smaller town. It was

nice ‘cause I got the feeling of a different city. Port-au-Prince is very chaotic. It’s very crazy. Saint-Marc was a little bit smaller. It’s still chaotic though. Smaller and the markethere they sell all sorts of stuff and there it’s mostly produce because the farms are in the area. So the rice that I brought is locally grown. So I got that.

SF: So how have you felt the collaboration has been here between the Haitian artists and the international artists?

JK: It has been great. They are very willing to participate and to help and they give ideas.

I took some of their ideas. The collaboration is very real actually, but four of them are helping me out…I forgot what I was talking about.

interviews, emails & transcripts

Sam Fein (US)

SF: Collaboration.

JK: It worked very well, even though there was a language barrier. They were very willing to help. Higgens, for example, was also [?]. If it wasn’t for him taking me to Saint-Marc yesterday, this would not have happened. So I rely completely on my collaboration with locals. That’s the truth.

My relationship with Michael and [?] is of complete dependence. And in [here?] it’s the same thing. [?] Joell give me a hand, and Jerry give me a hand. When I was moving the rice from a large sack to small bags I was also working with Jerry and- I forgot her name. I have it right here. I just want to mention for the record… It’s Lafayette Roselord, the girl who helped me. So that speeded things up considerably.

SF: So what were some of your expectations going into this, and has your experience met those expectations or changed them?

JK: I expected to encounter poverty. I’m from Brazil, so it’s not like I’ve never seen poverty.

There’s a lot of abject poverty in Brazil. It’s different here. I find a lot of similarities here and a lot of differences.

SF: Like what?

JK: One thing that I was- I want to talk about the things that I was positively surprised about Haiti. ‘Cause even though I can see there’s poverty, there’s a lack of resources, there’s a lack of infrastructure probably because of the earthquake. So things crumbled, and now they don’t have the resources to rebuild it. I was kind of expecting that, and I found that. But I was expecting the people here to be way more passive in face of the disgrace that is

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Sam Fein (US) Transcripts

Jefferson Kielwagen continued happening. It’s a tragic country if you look at its history. It’s a history of tragedies. But no. Everyone is working super hard. You guys saw the amount of stalls in the street, right? That’s commerce. That’s intense commerce going on everywhere. So there’s a lot of activity, and everyone is doing something. Even around here. People are performing- everyone is working. It’s a nice counterpoint to this very widespread idea that people who are poor somehow deserve to be poor. I hear that, it’s kind of a Republican way of thinking. My American friends told me, ‘You know in Haiti? They are doing it to themselves.’ It’s blaming them for the situation in which they are at. I find it horrible. It’s the same logic when you blame a woman for being raped. ‘Oh, you let it happen. You were showing too much skin.’

Or whatever. It’s not really like that. People here work hard. Even the people who are working with us, helping us execute the projects- they’re very hard workers. I mean, there are ways to make money that I would never thought of. So when I was in the bus for example to go to Saint-Marc. First, you guys have seen the truck how they are, the taxis? They are like a truck with benches.

And then it’s very informal. I don’t really understand how it works. So I thought that was very interesting and very creative.

People are very creative in ways to make extra cash. In the bus- the bus takes a long time to leave, we have to sit there for like one hour before the bus leaves, so these people gather around the bus and they have boxes with drinks or refreshments. And they hold it up to the windows so people waiting in the bus can take that. And then once the bus leaves, there’s usually at least one person- I only did two trips- but there was always someone who stood up in the bus and started talking for a long time in Creole. I couldn’t understand a word, but he told me that they were advertising a product. And they work hard. It’s like old school advertisement: speaking for one hour about the traits and the qualities and the advantages of that product. And then they sell the product. It’s like mouth rinse, some magical elixir, some magical solution, vitamin supplements, all sorts of stuff. They sell it in the bus. So it’s advertisement, and in a way it’s entertainment because the person stands up. And they are really good speakers. They are very expressive. Even though I don’t understand what they say, they catch my attention. And they catch everyone’s attention. Those were all positive experiences, things that I like to see. People are not passive. People are not defeated. The

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culture here is strong, and the communities are strong. People are way nicer than I expected. One thing that I did not expect, something that is slightly disturbing for me, is that how different I look here and how different people treat me. So when I was in Saint-Marc trying to buy the rice, buying the bus tickets and everything, Higgens was negotiating everything with me. And we realized that if I was right by him, the prices would go up. He was negotiating one price.

When they noticed that I was with him, the price would go up. People immediately think- because I look different, because I look foreign- people assume that I am super rich and super powerful. That made me feel awkward and terribly guilty at the same time. ‘Cause it makes me think about Brazil a little bit. ‘Cause in Rio there’s also this idea that everyone who comes from the U.S. and Europe, they have massive amounts of cash.

There’s two kinds of prices in Brazil. There’s a normal Brazil price, and then there’s the real price adjusted for tourists. So it’s the same thing in Brazil, but here I felt the other side. And it felt quite uncomfortable. I’m not really in peace. I also noticed the gaze actually, the way people look at me. On the second day, it started to feel oppressive.

And then everything they write about in feminist studies about the gaze, I kind of had a real experience with that. And then the prohibition of lenses made even more sense. I understand why they don’t want any lenses, any camera. Because that’s the gaze.

It’s very oppressive.

LT: Do you think it’s better that it’s lens free?

JK: It’s better if it’s lens free. I’ve only heard stories about the 2011 biennale. And I’ve heard that some of the artists, they came, and they had the cameras in front of them all the time, you know? It’s complete lens fetishism. And there’s an ethical problem with doing this here. In Detroit they talk about ruin porn. You know about that?

growing and all. They have these epiphanies, and then they write poems. And then they go back to France or wherever they came from- with their photos, with their poemsand they capitalize on that. And that’s a problem. There’s a photographer in Brazil also, Sebastian Salgado. He’s very famous.

He travels the world taking photos, black and white photos, of really miserable skinny starving people with shrinkeled faces. And it’s in bad taste to do that. You are appropriating this image of someone else’s problem and then capitalizing on top of that. Of course, that’s connected to the guilt feelings I have about this event as well, because I’m here as an artist. I’m going to put on my resume ‘Ghetto Biennale.’ It’s a nice line in your resume; you’ve been in a biennale.

So I’m going to use my participation in this event to further my career as an artist. I’m going to use it to get me to other shows, to give me scholarships, to get into Ph.D program somewhere, to open doors for me professionally. The same is not true for the people whose image I’m appropriating here. So it’s very uneven. So that’s a serious problem I think. It justifies a lens free choice on part of the curators. I think they did the right choice. I curate projects also of urban intervention and street art and relational art. And I realize also working in Brazil, that it’s not OK. When an art project relies on interaction with people- not people who are in the art gallery or the museum- people in the street. People who are not trying to view art. When a project relies on this kind of interaction, it’s not OK to have a camera over their faces. First, for this reason that you are appropriating someone’s image that is not trying to be part of an art project. People are busy with their lives. People have… And also because it kind of kills the experience.

There’s something about it. When people see a camera, they don’t behave naturally. It completely kills sometimes the effects of a performance piece or a relational art piece.

They are very subtle. They rely on this very subtle, very fast moments of interaction. The presence of the camera, of the lens is very disturbing. It kind of ruins it. So I think this is another good reason for them not to have cameras here.

SF: I’ve heard about that.

LT: Talk about what?

JK: Ruin porn.

SF: Someone was talking about that in relation to my presentation.

SF: So do you feel like ultimately the Ghetto Biennale is able to create connections across international borders and issues of class and race, or do you think that it generates more problems, or do you think both?

JK: There’s a problem with that in Detroit.

They’re discussing this a lot. That these artists come from France to Detroit, and then they look at those abandoned mansions, abandoned train stations, crumbling vines

LT: Or do you think it does nothing?

JK: I don’t think it generates problems. It exposes the problems, that’s for sure. The way to solve a problem is not by pretending it doesn’t exist. The fact that the problem

SF: Do you feel like that was effective- the lens ban?

JK: I think so. Well, I don’t know what happened in the last edition, but I’ve heard…

SF: Right, but you don’t necessarily think that good is equally dispersed between the Haitians and the foreigners- like maybe it’s doing more good for us than it is for them.

JK: I don’t know. Financially, maybe… I don’t know if financially we have more advantage. We’re staying in the hotel here, we are hiring translators, we are eating here and drinking here. So in a way, if you think about it, art events they heat up the local economy through hotels and restaurants, translators, guides, people that [teach?] So there’s this financial help that we provide by coming here. I’m not sure if that answers… this is a very immediate kind of benefit…

You are thinking more long term?

SF: No, I’m just asking in general.

JK: I think it’s good. I think it’s good for the city. I think it’s good for all the artists that are involved- especially if they are thinking about a career outside of Haiti. Honestly I think [that?] would be the best help that they could get, as in they notice some interesting event. It’s not as if Haiti had an art market. It doesn’t have whole actors, maybe it has, I don’t know, but even if it does, I’m skeptical if they’re going to buy art from the locals. I don’t know how the elites are here. I assume the elites are nasty, because all elites are nasty. So the ones who are collecting art are probably buying French art. There’s an expression in Brazilian lore that goes, ‘A whole saint makes no miracles.’ We undervalue what’s local. It’s so particular here though. It seems like such a dead end, you know? There’s no mobility. It feels hopeless. It’s not like poverty in Brazil.

‘Cause in Brazil there’s like different classes.

There’s the favelas, the abject poverty.

And then there’s like the middle to lower class. And then there’s a [steadish?] middle class, and middle high, and then there’s the elite. But it’s possible to move- there’s a complex spectrum of classes through which people can move up or down or the side or

whatever.

LT: Which in ways is similar to the U.S. too.

JK: Yes, but here, I only see poor here. I haven’t gone up the hill yet. I haven’t seen the rich people. I feel like this gap is more dramatic here. So the situation feels so hopeless. Not just for artists, but for everyone. This is kind of heartbreaking.

LT: Yeah, I agree.

SF: So where do you think you’ll go from here?

JK: What do you mean, once I leave Haiti?

SF: Yeah, once you leave Haiti. You were talking about coming back, talking about ideas.

JK: I would love to actually. There’s two things, two situations here in which I could see myself working doing something.

One is the market, street markets. I’m not sure how I would insert myself in this [?] with an art project, but I would love to do that. Something about that’s informal, but extremely lively… market, street markets.

Another thing that caught my eye is the highly decorated trucks. Have you guys seen them?

SF: The tap taps?

JK: Well there are the trucks with the seats in the back. And some of them are mildly decorated, they just have some [?] stripe, but some of them are like ‘boom!’- an explosion of ornaments and colors and out of control.

And I’ve never seen that before. And it’s probably because there’s not a company like behind it. If you have money, you buy a car and then you have your own taxi business.

In a way it’s wonderful that people are so inventive. They have this independence to start a business. I’m not sure what’s the role of the state in this. I was inquiring around how expensive are the taxis here if I want to have a legal business. I was wondering if maybe the reason that there is so much informal street market is because the taxation is too heavy, so people would rather sell things informally in the streets and not have to pay taxes. But [Robert?] that there is no taxes here. So I’m not sure how I can make sense of that. But a highly decorated truck. So each person has their service, their transportation service. When a company has a fleet of buses or taxis, they want to make it standardized. They make it look all the same for visual identity. But here it’s different. They all have to look unique.

And they value this uniqueness a lot in their vehicles. And I noticed that. So I would like to do something with these busses. I’m not sure what… Should get someone else, drive it somewhere else, offer free rides. You know, buy one and offer free rides. It would be funny. I don’t know.

There’s a Brazilian artist called Paulo Nazareth. I guess you guys would call him Paul Nazareth. What he did is he bought a

Volkswagen van, and he filled it up with bananas-green bananas. And then he drove it from somewhere in Brazil, through Central America, to San Francisco. And then the time he took to drive- a few days, probablywas the time it took for the bananas to ripe.

So when he got to the gallery, he opens the van, and then there’s a little tent, and then he sells the bananas to the public…

There’s a trip. There’s a market element to it.

And there’s a truck element to it. So this is something that I think about. I’m going to have to let these ideas ferment for awhile. I have two years until the next biennale. But I may try to come back here in the future and do something else.

SF: Well, great. What’s the message that you hope people receive from your piece- your piece that’s up right now?

JK: What I wanted was for people to feel entitled to take what’s theirs. It’s grown here. It’s a product of this land. It’s theirs.

That’s the message really. That is why I build the monument here. I’m not sure if this is going to work or not. But that is what I was thinking.

interviews, emails & transcripts

is being exposed, the fact that we are talking about it, that’s creating awareness of the problem. So that in itself, I think it’s a good reason for it to happen. As far as it having repercussions, like really having connections, I like to believe it [will?] happen.

I personally feel very tempted to come back here 2015 if they let me, ‘cause now that I’ve been here I have so many different ideas, now that I have experienced the culture and the city a little bit, and I realize how much more could be done in terms of art. But I don’t know really how far this connections will go. ‘Cause I don’t live here. I can keep in touch through Facebook, and I collected the names of the four Haitian artists that helped me, and I will credit them. Whenever I talk about this project I’m going to mention it.

I’m not sure how this is going to reflect on a benefit for them. I don’t really know yet. I think it’s doing more good than harm. I don’t think it’s doing harm.

SF: And what’s the message you want to take back home?

JK: I’ll have to think about that. What do you mean- when I go back home, when I talk about it with my friends?

SF: Mm-hum.

JK: It’s probably going to be very similar to what I’m telling you. I’m going to share all my dilemmas. I’m going to share all my guilt feelings and mixed feelings about the whole event and about my piece. It’s a complicated show. It’s a complicated project. It’s full of issues, the whole charity thing. What’s the role of artist has been something I’ve been thinking about. What’s the role? What are we doing here? What are we really doing here? I don’t have the answer. So when I go back, I’m probably going to keep on sharing my dilemmas and my questions. Hopefully someone will hint [an answer?]. I’m not really sure. Maybe in a few days I’m going to have an answer.

SF: Maybe I’ll interview you in a few days when your piece has transformed a little bit.

JK: I think it will be gone by tomorrow. [laugh] Which is OK. LT: Are you advertising that if it goes your cool with it?

JK: Eugene is… Yeah, I’m advertising that I’m cool. My job is to build it. So my job is done. What happens to the monument now is whatever happens, happens.

SF: Thank you.

JK: No problem. I can go on. I’m very good at going on endless rants. [laughs] […]

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Sam Fein (US) Transcripts

Mabelle “Belle” Williams SF: I don’t want to disrupt her if she’s working.

MW: No, no. It’s [OK?]. It’s my way to work… people… It’s OK. SF: So what’s your name?

MW: Belle… My full name is Mabelle Williams. Everyone calls me Belle.

SF: Mabelle…. Do you want to write it? […]

So how are you participating in the Ghetto Biennale? …Johnny I asked her how she’s participating in the Ghetto Biennale.

MW: You want me to explain you?

SF: Yeah, what is your project?

MW: My project is not this, but my project it was- The title of the Biennale is about market local and market global. My project is to make [foods?] and try to make everything, big projection for everyone come and see and try to make….to compare…My whole noisy market and supermarket, to compare it… The point is to make the comparison with all of the people in the Biennale. They come from Canada. I get a supermarket, a lively market of Canada. They come from Belgium. That’s the way. […Comparison to everyone in the Ghetto Biennale] That’s my point.

SF: So where is the exposition?

MW: Not yet. I’m not finished yet. Maybe tomorrow night I get my exhibition. Right now I’m working to make [sunshine? And… ] Canada. I must talk about [?] to finish my work. …Flag, and I’ll finish it.

SF: Why did you decide to participate in the Ghetto Beinnale?

MW: In the biennale, I’m working like artist. I’m working like translator. Also, I’m working spending-how do I say it?

Spending… Like I’m planning for anyone…

I make [permission?] for them to make them spend cheaper. If they used to eat for 100 US dollars, I make them go down in the spending money, and I make them visit anywhere they want to go, and I try to translate for them also. Sometimes I get caught in someone’s project like Katy. Did you see my performance? [SF: Yeah] Just like this. Help them make their project get even better.

SF: So how do you feel about working with the foreigners?

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MW: For myself, I don’t see any foreigners, for myself. That’s my experience.

‘Cause sometimes they think that [I’m a philosopher?] But I don’t see any foreigners.

I see people with same how to be, same [improvements?], and also same acceptation.

For myself, I don’t see any foreigners. I feel better. And I feel injury[enjoyment?] ‘cause we sharing ideas, and sharing [?], and other thing. That’s good.

SF: So is your project- Have you done anything involving collaboration with foreigners and Haitians?

MW: Yeah, yeah. I’m collaborating with Mary Jane [?] She makes some [section?] for me.

Katy borrow me her laptop to work ‘cause I don’t have any laptop to work. That make me force to go up to Oloffson, find some friends to borrow some laptop to work. I think that many foreigners [help?] me like Jason, Katy, and Mary Jane. They help me to complete my project.

SF: Have you had any difficulties with your project?

MW: Some. The big difficulty I have is to find a laptop all day ‘cause right now I have to work, but I’m […?] easier with laptop, and I’m waiting for it. That’s why I’m working on it. Just to take the time to go over and go in after. Maybe at 5 or 7 I’ll go to the Oloffson.

SF: What do you need to do on the laptop?

MW: Go to the website, make some section[?] about like [?…market…]

SF: And so what’s your goal with your project?

MW: I don’t know. I want to go everywhere with my project ‘cause I’m talking about every supermarket [?] from Europe. Like German, like U.S., like Denmark, and many other countries. And Sweden. Also Thailand, Japan, China. Everywhere. First I want the government to be there and see how they make the life of the supermarket in those countries. I want them to make mine, not so good as that, but at least to be available to people maybe clean to keep all those healthcare [?] That’s what. I would like many people to see my work. ‘Cause it’s important for me. It’s important for everyone’s [… market..?] Sometimes you buy something, and you get diarrhea or cholera or whatever.

The market was [in here?]. I think that you wouldn’t be scarred to go to the [lively?] market or to buy something to eat or to do whatever you wanted.

SF: So how long have you been making art?

MW: Maybe 10 years. I’m coming here; I see Eugene make art, and I meet my partner here. When I’m coming here to live with my partner, I just see Eugene working, and I just begin to work.

LT: So is Eugene kind of your teacher?

MW: Yes, my teacher.

SF: And do you have any other influences or inspiration?

MW: I have so many inspiration ‘cause I’m a revolutionary –woman revolutionary. I don’t want woman waiting for men doing all that […?] That’s why I try to make everything I want to do like electricity, like [cosmetology?], like keeping care of my kids, going to mason- someone who work goods in construction.

SF: Mason?

MW: Mason. I am working like it and working- I get my barrier like [?] How do you say [?]?

J: Iron. Ironing things.

MW: Ironing things. I work like this ‘cause I don’t want to be helping by a man. I want to be myself complete. And that’s my feeling, every woman has to be available to take care of themselves without the men. The men could be there. That’s why you have to get a man or a partner. You have to be first.

The first point you have to be independent for anything you want to do. That’s my point.

SF: Do you think it’s harder to be a woman artist in Haiti than a man artist?

MW: There’s many woman artists, but it’s more different… It’s more different. Man artists… ‘cause you got a point to talk about woman artists. ‘Cause I don’t know why, but it is an [anxious?] time, because people talking about man artists, behind let’s talk about woman artists.

LT: How do you feel about the amount of female representation in the Ghetto Biennale? So you wish there was more, or are you OK with it?

MW: I’m OK. I’m OK, but I want them to see, not because I am a woman. It’s just I know that woman is intelligent. Sometimes they are more intelligent than… [SF, LT laugh] but I want one day they try to see what woman is [?] and it’s- So I don’t want people to [bury?] that’s [?]. They know how to be you. But you don’t know how to be them.

SF: What do you think of the international artists who came here?

MW: I never should have [?], but I’m thinking about it.

SF: Or their projects.

MW: Their projects is good, but their presence is better, ‘cause then they go home and make even better. Just like, if you see someone [with a ?] and try to buy something, it’s very [?]. More than before.

Like Junior at the snack bar. He had the snack bar before the biennale, but right now he just can stop buying because many people come, and as you know: ‘I want a beer. I want a sandwich. I want this. And this. I want that.’ And so it become- only one makes it financial become better [?] for international artists. And I think that is important also for Haitian artists because they’re sharing ideas, and they become- they have new ideas, because people of the sharing idea, they become better.

SF: What things do you think have been shared?

MW: Shared to mean… [To J] How do you say tolerate? …They should share ideas.

They share how to tolerate yourself, how to tolerate someone different as you. It’s enjoyable.

SF: You think this has happened?

MW: Yes, ‘cause that before you can hear people say, ‘Oh, I hate that white man.’ I ask myself how could I judge a white man or a black man? But now they’re going together.

They eat together. They do everything together that I think it changed. Even if you are so segregated, you change it.

SF: What’s your hope for the future of the Ghetto Biennale?

MW:I hope that one day it’s not going to be for international [fancy?]. I want the biennale to go on the ghettos of somewhere else. I don’t know who, like somewhere you could find like Brooklyn is ghetto. And ParisB[?]- it’s a ghetto of Paris. I think one day Haitian artists in this ghetto go somewhere and do like they used to do now ‘cause they come and accepted us like we are. You come here, you don’t have any problem. We see you sitting down; you see us sit down. But I want one day Haitian artists go and try to live like they used to live. ‘Cause you can be a ghetto. I can come from a ghetto. But I don’t

know how you live, but you don’t know how do I live. You come here and see the way I live, but I have to go to your ghetto. ‘Cause there’s every ghetto; there’s many ghettos in the world. Each ghetto has […?]. Each ghetto has its special ways, it’s problems.

And they are so different.

SF: So what is the message you hope to communicate?

MW: The message?

SF: With your work.

MW: With my work, I want people in the community to try to be better. Better in everything. Better if you want to love somebody. Better if you are an artist.

Better if you are a foreigner. Better if you are someone who’s working [cleaning?] here. Better if you are a cameraman or a journalist. ‘Cause this picture […?], and just see you like human and try to accept […?].

Inside we are not different, ‘cause I have 208 bones, you have the same as well. My blood is red, as your is. I want everyone to stop talking about differences. We are not.

We are not. We just live another way. We just talk another language. It means we are same. ‘Cause if I’m pissed, you will be hurt.

If I hurt you, you will cry, maybe. If I tell you something bad, you will get a rage ‘cause we are the same. We are all the same. That’s my world to say. I want it to be like this […?] and accept everybody.

LT: Like a message of unity.

MW: Yup. SF: Do you have any questions for us?

MW: Not questions for you, [?] intimate. Are you partners?

not—to make you happy, make you feel they way you have to feel ‘cause you are human. I think people have to know each other. And also are you working for TV…?

SF: Independent.

LT: Independent. We’d like to publish this when we get back home. Write it out, transcribe everything—all the interviews.

And that way, people can see a kind of have more information about the biennale, and about Haiti, and hopefully have a better understanding, maybe come.

MW: Also, how do you understand the biennale?

SF: The biennale?

MW: Yeah.

interviews, emails & transcripts

LT: I try. I do my best.

SF: I understand it, I think, as an opportunity for Haitian artists to show their work, and to get more international attention. And international artists come in as an opportunity to do a project in a space here, and most of their projects are commenting on Haiti and working with Haitian artists.

MW: That’s a good idea. I love your work.

LT: Thank you.

MW: It’s talking about everyone. Sometimes people need someone talking about them.

[Laugh] That’s why sometimes they make many, many mistake(?). Like actress, used to do things people doesn’t ask you to do just to make people talk about it. I think it’s a good thing, when you have someone talk about…

SF: Thank you.

SF: Yes. [laugh] MW: I’ve been thinking that maybe they are partners or they are twins, ‘cause you look like…

SF: We do? [laugh] [LT: Really?] I look like a man?

MW: No, not like a man, but you have same face… When he do something, you just do it together, without thinking about it, you just do that… My acting (?) friend is to have a nice… to other people. I want to know you. I don’t want you to know me, or I don’t need you to me, but I want to know you. And more, what do I have to do to make you angry. What do I have to do to make you

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Sam Fein (US) Transcripts

Jean Daniel and Ronaldo Duborne

(Translator: Johnny Jean-Pierre)

SF: So ask them what they’re doing, what their project is for the Ghetto Biennale.

RD: No,[Ronaldo talking] He said for the term, you know that everyone has to choose a term, it was like working. Like finance.

Something like a piece in the trashcan that you can change. You can do something with, [LT: Like recycling?] yeah recycling thing, it’s what he’s trying now to do. It’s what he did.

It’s like the main idea.

SF: So what are some examples of things he’s has taken from the trash and transformed?

JD: Like old doll…Like old thing… old sandal. With all those things, he try to make them… With all those things that he found in the trash, he put them, he transform them, and he give it to them like trying to give them a sense, like trying to transform or do something… Just right after that he took all those things and transform them to give them a meaning, like what is to represent, what is the idea that he transform.

SF: So what types of ideas does he want to represent?

JD: For example, he is talking about some things, like maybe the whole thing that he found on trash. He said that this piece was like representing some things that we call in Creole loo-gow it’s the meaning of devil. So he’s trying to represent this person that they said is a loo-gow who is the devil and trying to sometime kill children, eat children like they say in Creole.

LT: What about Jean Daniel? What’s your piece?

JD: He said some of the same thing that the first man was saying he will try to say now, but the only difference is that his project was finding things and transform them…

It’s like all the same materials. All the things that they found in the trash, they transform.

For example, if you need to, he can try to show you one piece.

LT: Yeah JD: [brings piece] This one’s like--. You can see, it was like a halter, like some yellow things, and then wood.

LT: Would he be OK if we took a picture?

JD: No problem.

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LT: And if we could, take a picture of Ronaldo with a piece he likes too… We can’t take the pictures. They have to take the pictures of each other… You can probably take it too.

We’re technically not allowed to. [laugh] It’s part of the rules of the Biennale. It’s old school. You got to look through the view finder… If you hold it down it will focus, and if you push it all the way down it will take a picture… Merci. …And Ronaldo is in the yellow shirt, and Jean Daniel is in the purple shirt.

SF: So why do they work with recycled materials?

JD: Well he said that before, in Haiti, the type of art they were making was the classical one… He said that like he said before, you know in Haiti he was in the traditional artSF: Like painting?

JD: Yeah, like classical one. But now they come with a new idea to do something very different. Because sometime when you’re trying to make something different, you’re going to try to express yourself. You’re going to try to put our your feelings. You’re going to do what you really want to do. That’s the reason they choose to do this.

LT: So is this kind of artwork a sort of national identity for Haiti now?

JD: What?

LT: Could you say that this kind of art is a sort of national identity for Haiti now? Like a new representation of Haiti?

JD: You can say that all this is like Haitian.

I already asked him what he [start?] with this movement. He said that it was maybe between 1987. But I already asked someone before, but he said it was 1997. So we can say between 1987 to 90, 97.

LT: So it was mainly through there that it was birthed?

JD: Umhum. So he just want to talk to you about the mask that he showed you before… He’s talking about this mask it’s like expression like sometimes when your kids will do something wrong, he trying to correct the kids with it… If your kids like a troublemaker… I’m gonna try to show you again… But he say that you can’t see that.

So this is the aunt who pull your ears. It’s an expression we use in Haiti when you’re going to try and correct someone, you can say ‘I’m going to pull your ears.’ It’s like an expression… You can see that the first eye is normal, but the other one got something

like a handicap… ‘cause sometime when they’re talking to you, and you don’t listen, and they said they’re gonna pull your ears, it’s what can happen. He saying that when they’re talking about you about something you’re supposed to do not, but when you get like a mystic, it’s what happens to you.

‘Cause when they talk to you, you got to listen. It’s what he’s trying to teach you.

LT: So in a sense he’s saying, ‘This is the reprimand. Listen to me or I’m going to do this to you.’

JD: Of course. It’s like correction.

SF: It’s a lesson.

LT: Does Ronaldo want to discuss his piece at all?

JD: Um, so he’s trying to explain that, he’s going to try and talk about his piece now.

You can imagine that it was made [whole?] thing.

SF: How recently was it made? When did he finish it?

JD: He started in September… September 5th… It was done like September 20… But he said that the reason it took him a long time to do it, ‘cause before he was finding some of the things that he needs, but he couldn’t find it. That’s the reason that it take him a long time to do it. But normally he can do it in only one day.

LT: OK. Does it just depend on- does he normally have a relatively specific idea of parts he wants, and then he goes out and finds them, or --?

JD: He said that yeah. He have a specific idea.

That’s the reason why it took him so long to do… He said that he is living in the Ghetto and sometime- I already told you about the devil story, the loo-gow one, it’s what he’s trying to show with his art, this piece.

SF: So how did he start making art, and why did he start making art?

LT: Should we ask him to describe his piece first and then get in to that?

JD: So it’s like the [?] lady, they call Mama Atoumb…She didn’t have any hair [SF: Shaved head?] ..It’s like the lady was like 85 years, but she’s living in the ghetto… This lady didn’t go out. She has a handicap. Like maybe she’s paraplegic, you know, spinal cord… ‘cause you know in Haiti we believe in Vodou. But he’s trying to explain that to you, this old lady, they thought that she

LT: So because she is an outcast, they put their own fears into her?

JD: Yeah, because she’s like a bad person, she’s like a devil, she got like devil power…

‘Cause, you know, sometimes when you’re using the Vodou you can do good things.

It’s part of the battle. Sometime when you are sick, you can say that your illness or your disease come from a supernatural thing.

LT: And so this is a representation of her?

JD: [Of course.] Is it compassion, or just a representation of her? Why did he choose to do it of her?

JD: It’s like a representation. ‘Cause you know that’s happening in the Ghetto, it’s the reason that he just want to show to the people what’s happening in the ghetto…

He said that the old lady was a loo-gow, was like a devil, so they came straight to her home, and opened her door, and trying to find something. And when they was inside, like the population living in the ghetto, they found like bones of the kids. Like the bone’s kids. And then here, it’s like the feet of one of the kids. She was like eating it. Then here, this is the happiness. People was trying to celebrate… By the end, they killed the old lady. So in the end, they celebrate the victory because this was like a loo-gow, we have killed her, so it’s OK. Here you can see like old blanket, because sometimes when you celebrate something good in Haiti, you can remove your clothes, you can be very naked.

LT: Is that common in Haiti? For a loo-gow to be killed like that?

JD: Yes. All the time. Like if they say you’re a loo-gow and they can prove exactly that you are loo-gow, maybe the population can kill you. Maybe. That’s something happening in Haiti.

SF: So is that a story he made up or is that something that happened?

JD: So he’s trying to represent a story of the ghetto.

SF: But how did he know the story? …I’m trying to figure out where the story comes from, if he invented it or…

JD: Growing up in the ghetto, they explain the story to him all the time, all the time.

SF: His family or his friends?

JD: The neighbors, friends, everyone explain that.

SF: So how did he become involved in art and why did he want to start making art?

JD: Since he was in school. But before he draw some pictures. He went often to the art gallery… but he said that his parents didn’t want him to go there. When he’s done with his high school, when he finishes high school, but he said that no, I just want to become an artist… But he say that he got it in his blood.

SF: What did his parents say?

JD: He said that he finished his high school, so that now they can say nothing. He is available to do whatever he wants.

SF: Can we ask him [Jean Daniel] as well- why and how he became an artist?

JD: He said that it is something that he got inside, that is in his blood… But his parents before wants for him to become a doctor, like to go to the medicine school, but he like to express himself, to become an artist…

Before he became an artist like that, he was in painting. That’s when he was a painter.

SF: What did he paint?

JD: So before that he was painting something he’s supposed to explain that to you... But he has to give the meanings of these paintings… That’s what he paint before… But right after that, his parents don’t want him to be like a painter- he got a problem with the painting thing, for the painting stuff... ‘Cause he got some problem with his eyes, but he say that the paintings are going to try to give him some diseases in his eyes… He choose to do this kind of art. And he got his whole brother, so before he make stuff like that, and he found it was easier then.

SF: Did anyone influence him in his art or teaching?

JD: He said that when he was a painter, it was all by himself. It was like self made… But for this he found someone who teach himthe name of the person is Alfred George…

But he also found he had a lot of talent. He can go straight to Eugene, and for that you

will become a good artist.

SF: How did he meet him?

JD: This person was living in the ghetto.

But he say that all the time this person was working, he was with him, he was watching… But one day he said to him ‘I can do this.’ And he said that if you are able to do it, I can give you some tools, and I will give you directions, and you can try to do it. And he was so happy because it took a long time just to become an artist like that. He made it in three months. He become in artist in three months. And right after that he was like friend of him, and he keep work together.

SF: Does Ronaldo have any influences?

RD:: [Ronaldo] He said that he had a professor, like he had a teacher before, that he called Gethro, but he’s living in the ghetto, he’s still living in the ghetto. If you are interested, we can go in his room to show you. His teacher is still living in this ghetto, so if you want to, we can go to visit him.

interviews, emails & transcripts

was like a loo-gow, like I said to you, a devil.

But every time some kids is sick, or another person… If youre kids is sick, everyone say that it is probably her, all these things.

LT: Yeah, sure. Can we do it in a little bit? Can we talk a little bit more? Are they pressed for time? OK. SF: So how did this teacher influence him?

Jean Daniel and Ronaldo Duborne continued JD: He say that he go straight to him.

Because he was the first interested to make art like that. He go straight to him and ask him like somehow… he be interested to do stuff like that.

SF: So are they artists full time? How do they support their art?

JD: He says everyday, from Monday to Saturday, he spends 3 hours each day just on his art. ‘Cause right after that he got to go to college.

SF: What does he study?

JD: Social communication.

SF: So does he want to be a social worker?

JD: He just want to be a social worker. He just trying to talk to people who live in the streets. His dream is to have an orphanage

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Sam Fein (US) Transcripts

or maybe work with the orphans.

LT: Awesome. Her [SF] mother- people of her family are social workers.

JD: Really? OK. SF: So what about Jean Daniel?

JD:It’s computer stuff. Computer sciences.

He studied before, but unfortunately he didn’t have any money to continue his studies.

LT: I know how that goes.

SF: So is the goal then for him to be a computer scientist who makes art?

JD: In his life he will love two things. First, computer then art. His priority, like things that he wants. First, computer sciences, and then so after that artist.

SF: So why did he decide to participate in the Ghetto Biennale?

JD: He said that he got a lot of artist who’s older than him, and they asked him, “Why did you not decide to participate in the Ghetto Biennale?” So he decide to participate then. But he just want to give you like some example. For example: Cele – it’s like a name- Eugene. And right after that he got some other artist that already seen his piece, his art, they already encourage him to do it.

SF: Why did he not participate before in the previous biennale?

JD: Because before studies was his first goal… Just right after that he decide to participate.

SF: Should we ask Ronaldo… why he’s participating?

JD: [Ronaldo] So by the way, the reason he decide to participate in the Ghetto Biennale is he’s first trying to improve his knowledge, and he’s trying to be with people who already know art… And ‘cause he want to be in the Haitian market of art, it’s the reason he’s participating now.

SF: So what is his goal then for the Ghetto Biennale?

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JD: He said that his goal for the Ghetto Biennale is to be something that’s talked about… He said that the Ghetto Biennale will be a success, and then so right after that it’s easier for them to be a known artist… To be fame with people who come from other countries, artists come from other counties.

SF: And Jean, what’s his goal?

JD: So he’d like for the Ghetto Biennale to be a success, ‘cause you know we have a lot of people who come from other countries. He’d like to learn from them and to show them some of these things… He would like to-the international community of artists to be part of the Ghetto Biennale. And he can see like all these things we got home we got in Haiti… They can come to see all these parts here, and then they can try to show them [?]

LT: How has he felt the interaction has been between the other artists so far?

JD: Very, very nice. Good good. He said there is an artist who got a project. He just want to share the idea together. So they can try to see all, they can try to collaborate together. He just want it to be good [?] …

SF: How does Ronaldo feel about working with all the international artists?

JD: [Ronaldo] It’s like a very good thing for him, ‘cause before he got something that he didn’t [?] to him. For example, so he got like all that he want to do with some other international artist she’s named Elizabeth Tuxan [?] and Marielle Barrow. She’s like the last one. She come from Trinidad and Tobago. So like the name was like Rock Shop, the art they’re trying to make together. But she learned to him that every piece of paper you have, you can put it in water, then so you can try to make a big one and then write on it. You can write it down. She came with instruments and tools, and she showed him how to make them. ‘Cause right now, when he get some whole piece of paper, he will never put it in the trash. He will try to transform it like a piece, like an art. But he going to try all the processes she showed to him just to make it an art. It’s one of the experience he got in his mind and he will never forget.

SF: When was that?

JD: Like 15 days ago. Two weeks ago. This

was like in state government college of art that he going to.

LT: What does he feel he’s been able to teach some of the visiting artists? ‘Cause there’s certainly a very distinctive style in Haiti.

JD:He say that first he learn a lot from them.

And he say that he felt like he made a lot of effort when he saw international artists. And he feel like now he’s stronger than before.

SF: Did he feel like he taught anything to the international artists? …Like he felt like the international artists made him a better artist. But did he feel…?

JD: He said that with the international artists he felt better than before.

SF: But did he think that he made them better?

JD: He say yes ‘cause they learn from him too. ‘Cause each one learn something from each other… It’s like sharing.

SF: So what did he teach them?

JD: He said that for example, other artists that work with, he didn’t use the recycling things like things from the trash like that…

For example, one of the things that he learned them is how to work with the old tire... You can draw, you can cut it, you can put it on a piece of wood, and you can give it like a saints [sayings?], like a meaning…

So he show an artist, the name of the artist was Kantara [?] She was like an American. He showed to her how she has to work with the old tire.

LT: Very cool.

SF: Let’s ask Jean now.

JD: At first, you don’t have to forget that the goal of the Ghetto Biennale it’s like sharing knowledge. For example, you can have an idea, that’s the reason that they say you have to write a project… International artists came with an idea. So he can ask to them, ‘What do you think about this idea?’ …And right after that, they’re going to work together. It’s the same for him, so he can have a project, he asks the international artists, ‘What do you think about it?’ and then they work together to do it, to make it.

JD: His [?] is sharing knowledge. Because sometimes I know something you don’t know, so together we’re going to work together, we’re going to share our knowledge, and so we’re gonna be better.

SF: Have there been any difficulties working with the foreign people?

JD: No, it’s not like that. They are very kind.

They are not difficult person… They’re trying to collaborate. They’re trying to be like friends. ‘Cause you know we are like human being.

LT: And everyone’s here for the same purpose.

JD: Yeah, of course.

LT: That’s good.

SF: And do you too [Ronaldo] feel that way?

Were there any difficulties?

JD: No, he say no.

SF:So as a final question: What is the message that they want people- the international artists who come here, what is the message you want to give for them to take back?

JD: He said that for him, the things that they learned here, when they go back in their country, they have to share it with other artists. When they’re going to be in the country they have to share knowledge of what they learned here… And then they have to encourage the artists who come from other counties to come here and to learn or to see things.

[LT: This is Ronaldo] His message, it’s like they learn here, they have to have a training with the other artists in their country, and then the next Ghetto Biennale they have to come with more international artists. For the sharing, that would be very good for the sharing. ‘Cause right now, so we can say that we are more then friends, that’s when we are family.

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LT: So collaboration is integral.

JD: He just want to know exactly what is your project for the Ghetto Biennale.

SF: To interview all the artists, the international and the Haitian artists.

JD: With these interviews, what can be a positive thing for the Ghetto Biennale?

What’s going to happen next for the Ghetto Biennale with these interview?

LT: Hopefully, like he was saying, more information is spread.

JD: With this interview, people going to have more informationSF: I do, I speak at universities and stuff…

And then people will ask me questions, and I can answer the questions.

JD: He wants to know exactly what you think about the Haitian artists, all the Haitian artists, what do you think about them?

LT: I think they’re extremely talented… It’s been very impressive.

JD: They say thank you.

LT: I’ve really been- this is my first time in Haiti. I’ve seen some Haitian art before, and it’s very striking how much detail and how intricate and how much energy is put into the projects.

SF: It’s also very purposeful, strong narrative.

LT: It’s very impressive… Is there anything else they want to add?

JD: They don’t have any questions. Do you still want to go to see the teachers?

SF: Sure. I don’t know if everyone is thirsty, but I think we should get some sodas or water.

LT: I’ll shut this off. Just for the record, Johnny translated.

LT: Is there anything in particular that they would want to make note for us?

SF: Or is there anything they want to ask us?

LT: Is there a question they wished—

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Zaka (Joseph Marc Antoine) (Translator: Johnny)

LT: I know we’ve talked a little bit before, and I’m going to go ahead and apologize if we ask the same questions.

J: He’s saying that his daughter, they share the same name.

SF: Yeah.

LT: Samantha. I remember.

SF: So how is he participating in the Ghetto Biennale?

J: (1:20) He said he is participating in the Ghetto Biennale because it’s like, you know, something with trying to (?)… He’s trying to sell the artists’ capacity, you know… So right after that you got some exchange from the friend, international friend, artist, and national artists…

SF: He got some what?

J: Some exchange, like sharing. He share together.

SF: (2:05) Can he tell a little more about the exchange?

J: For example, for the exchanges it’s like love.

For example… like knowledge exchange, work exchange, and then so they’re making like things together, and with that you’re going to have a lot of experiences. (2:43) SF: What sort of thing did he make together?

J: He said he didn’t have any chance to work with the international artists, but most of the Haitian artists work together with the foreign artists. (3:12) SF: Why didn’t he have a chance?

J: For example, his project was something he has to do by discovery… For example, his term or his (problem?) was like working for seeing… Tomorrow he going to try and do it. ‘Cause you know they got a lot of ghettos, like other artistic shantytowns… He got in the country a couple of friends, yeah but the international artists doesn’t know nothing about them. Maybe if they are interested, tomorrow we gonna try to go to visit this ghetto, this place with them. (4:34) SF: So do a lot of the ghettos in Haiti make art?

J: Yes. Every ghetto in Haiti got art. (4:44)

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SF: Why is that?

J: It’s like, when you’re living in a ghetto, it’s like something you can try to motivate you.

It’s like a motivation. OK? It’s the reason you can find it in the ghetto easily. (5:18) LT: Does he think in this particular one, where the Artist Resistance is, is it stronger than other ghettos, or is it comparable? Is it more artistic than others, or is it the same?

J: For example, each ghetto got the specific things. For example, he’s talking about Croix-de-Bouquets, it’s another city. For example, they’re making sculpture with the work, sometime with woods… For example, for Croix-de-Bouquets, it’s like iron things, metal ones. For example, in Greenery(?), where we are now, it’s like recycling things.

For example, in Marisol(?), like when you go to the south, it’s like paintings… But it’s not the reason that even that they still got the specific things. But you will find some other artists who try to practice other art. (6:58) SF: Those are the bottles? [J: Um-hum] So what are his goals for the Ghetto Biennale?

J: His goal is like trying to connect or to have relation, have relationship with other international artists, have connection.

Maybe in the future these experiences can help him to go to live in other countries or maybe go to see art in other countries and doing some experiences. (8:00) SF: So have there been any difficulties in his project at this Ghetto Biennale?

J: He say no, but the first time, he just want to try to make a very big monument.

Unfortunately, so he didn’t have enough resources like things for doing it, for making it. (8:48) SF: How has this Ghetto Biennale been different than previous ones?

J: Every Ghetto Biennale come with, come out with color(?). Each got their own things.

Before, so their didn’t have any subject for an artist to participate. But right now, they got a subject. (9:21) SF: So what does he think of the subject?

J: But he say that the subject, it’s like a way to identify each artist separately… For example his subject was to see… Maybe tomorrow people was going to try to do his project, and I have like a t-shirt with some painting on it. It’s gonna be free… For example, it’s like moving from one ghetto to another one, (they cover all?) by only a fee for 10 dollars.

10 U.S. dollars. (10:40) SF: So what does he think could be done to improve the Ghetto Biennale in the future?

[J: What?] Does he think any changes should be made to improve it in the future?

J: As he already said, each Ghetto Biennale got their own color… When he talk about color, it’s like change. [SF: Right] …OK, he hope that in the future, the biennale gonna be bigger like more people gonna try to participate with like, for example, for the international artists.

SF: To have more come?

J: More, yes.

SF: And what is the message that he hopes to give in his work?

J: It’s like united and several things. (12:15) SF: And so, how did he become involved in art?

J: He said that the first time he start, he saw the art in different eyes, in different way…

And after his experiences, he have like more transformations… He found that it’s like tools, you can try to identify… Each artist got their own identification. And then you can see that you look like an artist, even that you are international or national one… But he say that there was before in the newspaper about him, and he was compared with another artist they call Basquiat.

SF: Is that an influence of his?

J: Just after that, when they say that on the news, and they say that he look for who is really Basquiat—Michael Basquiat… But he say that the things that was influence him, it was like his environment, like where he lives.

(14:17) SF: How long has he been an artist?

J: It was probably like 13 years ago, like since 2000. (14:35) SF: And does he have any other job besides art?

J: It’s like he’s technician of accounting. He’s like technician too and data processing.

(15:10) SF: Does he still do that?

J: Yes. Sometime his family(?) is making up video.

LT: It seems like a lot of artists started kind of making their own art, coming into their

his first experience in like an artist was in 2002. (19:18)

SF: Around ’99, 2000…

LT: Does he think there’s a reason why?

SF: Like foreign—international foundations or Haitian foundations?

J: Like all type. But his experience, he get it with the national foundation. (19:37)

J: But he say that, you know, you were born an artist. You not like become artist. But he say that… before he was like a professional.

He was doing stuff, like other thing, doing stuff by your own thing. (16:40) LT: I understand that you’re born with your artistic ability, but it seems like a lot of people we’ve talked to really- [SF: blossomed] –that’s generally the date they say that they really…

J: Yeah, you know, so at this time in Haiti so we get some problems with the international community. (17:20) SF: What sort of problems?

J: Yeah, but you know, I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of President Aristide, when he got a push.

SF: When what?

J: When he got his push.

SF: Porche? Like the car?

J: No, no, no. When he got like out— SF: Oh, when he had a coup? (17:48) J: Yeah.

SF: Wasn’t that in ’94?

J: No, no. He wasn’t.

SF: It was in ’99? (17:54) J: He was in ’94. He was like ’90, ’90. 1990.

SF: But then wait. Was there something going on politically in 2000?

J: Yes, so we have some problem like ‘cause Aristide in prison twice. Like first in ’90, 1990, and then so 2011—Ah, actually 2001.

SF: He was released?

J: Yes. (18:21) SF: So does he think that maybe a lot of people started making art in reaction to that?

J: No… The country was like not open, not really open, no understand. So after in 1999, so most of the—you have like many foundations… foundations for art only. For

SF: OK. All right, great. Well, thank you.

LT: Thank you again.

LT: OK

SF: What’s it called?

J: Hold on. I can write it down for you. AfricaAmerica Foundation. OK, so he’s got some people he’s talking to outside…

SF: Does he have any other hopes for the future with his work?

J: But he said that the thing that he hope is trying to discovery or maybe doing other experiences in other world. (21:01)

interviews, emails & transcripts

own around the same time, around 1990.

[J: What?] It seemed like a lot of the artists we’ve talked to have started making art, or started coming into this— (15:43)

SF: Does he have anything else that he wants to add?

J: Maybe trying to have, to do some learning… I’m sorry, some training… Maybe trying to have space for artists to work…

This probably a great handicap they have in Haiti for, like to be an artist.

SF: Not enough space? (21:34) J: Not enough space… It would be a very good project if an artist can identify and find space to do it. (21:50) SF: Does he have any questions for us?

J: Just after this interview that we have, what are you going to do with this interview?

What is the goal, like are you gonna help people to… What result this interview going to have for the Ghetto Biennale? (27:27) SF: Well, I’m hoping to have it published, and to have… and then more people will read and learn…

J: Maybe, so he’s asking when you’re going to have your publishing, if he’s gonna know, or maybe he can see.

SF: I have his card, don’t I? With his email?

(22:59) J: Yeah, he already give it…

SF: Yeah, and does he have mine? My email?

J: Yes. SF: So, yeah, I can let him know… It’ll be in English, though.

J: It’s not gonna be a problem.

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Leah Gordon SF: The main thing that I wanted to follow up on was, well there are a couple of things. One is that you talked about how Vodou is formerly more symbolic, and now it’s being played out as Haitian artists getting more popular within the global world, the relationship is becoming… [pause] So it also seems that the relationship between Vodou and Haitian art, formerly more symbiotic, is complicating and fracturing. So can you talk a little more about that?

LG: I mean, I’m not an expert. This is really coming from the top of my head. I haven’t been studying this, or researching it in any particular way… I have to be careful about what I project upon Haitian art as well…

Of what I really want it to be rather than what it is. I mean, I guess if you could say that Haitian art really needs to be split as well because there’s loads of Haitian artists from the bourgeoisie that make work that has nothing to do with Vodou. You know, as in Britain we have artists who make work that has nothing to do with anarchism or something. I think there was a certain point in history when there was the American that went- Peters- set up some dance, and in a way, taught a lot of Vodou artists or artists who made work within a sort of ritual/spiritual setting- like on the walls of temples or the crosses in the cemeteries- I think in a way, he just sort of taught Haitian artists how to commodify these. So then they started in on canvases, the metal work was freestanding, but there was still this relationship and this subject matter was always Vodou. Maybe that’s similar to art in the Renissance period, when the church was the main patron, and therefore people representing these saints. So I guess when I’m talking about fracturing- and I’m only really talking about art from the lower classes- does seem to still have a continuing relationship with Vodou. And certainly with the Vodou flag artists, the relationship to Vodou is very obvious there. And I guess what I feel when I know of the Artists Resistance is there is this- Say Andre Eugene, Celeur. They’ve travelled a lot, they’ve done a lot of shows, and they’re getting very aware that the local and the cultural context of their work could hold them back. What is this ethnographic- why do I keep getting into ethnographic shows? And being aware that within the wider art market its better for them to be in contemporary art shows and not an ethnographic context. So they’re sort of aware of that, and I think the fracturingon one level, they’re aware that throwing off the local-- we all know this in the art world

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anyway—would be good for them. But then again, they know that Vodou is a part almost of their branding… For me, that’s a really complicated thing… I certainly know the influence of certain Haitian bourgeois artists- someone like Mario Benjerman who used to work very closely with them- he’s a very aggressive negative relationship to Vodou and art. Maybe because he’s an artist from bourgeoisie, and he gets very frustrated that people are searching for Vodou in his art… Can you be a Haitian artist without doing Vodou? So you’ve got that sort of thing going on, but then you have Papa Da in the same community, and he definitely makes artworks- there’s one artwork he made that was totally part of ritual practice. You know, he made it while he was possessed and he went through a set of rituals to make the piece. And there’s another guy, Jean-Claude Saintilus, and he very much creates a lot of his works are… sort of memorabilia of his family, and he sort of in a way is monumentalizing members of his family that have died with this sort of strange skull sculptures. So I guess what I’m saying is that there are different sort of levels now of these relationships, and the closer, the more the artist has of the contemporary art world as a whole, the more fractured that relationship becomes. The same thing is of the art world as a whole. At the end of the day suddently everybody wants to start making white, European male art… in order to get into the bigger biennales. I know people all over the world who do that. Does that make sense to you?

S: Yeah. So you don’t necessarily think that in general there’s a certain direction that artists are pushing towards in terms of more or less representations of Vodou, but that it’s all fractured and disparate across the board?

LG: I think it’s just more the awareness of…

Actually, it has more to do with Vodou and the market. They’re juggling this thing of ‘Do I do Vodou?’ or do I not do Vodou and of course still a lot of the collectors want the Vodou stuff. So it’s more to do with Vodou and the market rather than their actual beliefs. Their beliefs I think stay the same.

SF: Has the relationship in terms of how they view their work in relation to Vodou changed? Do artists now see their pieces more as Vodou-inspired art objects as opposed to something that would be used ritualistically?

LG: Yes, I mean definitely. Celeur, definitely.

I’ve heard him say- because… I’ve known them very well, and he’s listened to Mario Benjamin a lot, so now he’s very much aware to say these are not ritual objects. These are

art objects… That’s a market led statement.

Definitely. And there was something else I was thinking of…

SF: The question was if the market has shaped how the artists are viewing about the work they’re making and seeing them more as art objects…

LG: That’s right. I think it was quite interesting I was giving this lecture after the show we did in Britain last year- we did this big show Karfour. I sort of did this lecture, and in the end, I wanted to show that the (?) between Vodou and art in a way. I was pretty much rapping sets of photographs, and I think what was quite interesting is a Vodou priest called Akiki Baka (sp?), the guy’s an artist himself just the way he designed his temple.

And then KikiBaka (sp?) has this incredible altar. Then he bought work of Celeur and Eugene to put onto his altar. So he’s buying artworks from artists in the neighborhood who are very much trying to claim their work is not ritual objects. He’s buying this stuff back off them, and re-ritualizing contemporary artworks and put them onto the altar. And then there’s another Vodou priest… who’s a fine artist who hires another Vodou priest who’s the painting artist to paint inside his altar. So you can see how altars and altar building and objects are still sort of speculating through this Vodou economy as well as outside of that. So I think it’s really interesting that this stuff can –however much Celeur will say my stuff has nothing to do with Vodou, then suddenly it’s bought by a Vodou priest and stuck on an altar. So there’s a lot of slippage still going on. But I think it’s at a more liminal place then it was maybe 40 years ago… I could send you an article I did. I don’t know if you got the catalogue of ‘En Extremis’ SF: Possibly. What does it have on the cover?

LG: It has a woman with a skull on her head.

SF: I don’t know if I have that one. That’s not the one with the boat on it. That one I have…

It’s a canoe shaped object.

LG: That’s kafour… But I was on the curatorial team for a show called ‘En Extremis’ that was at the Fowler Museum, and it’s going to open soon in Quebec City. And there’s a huge amount of Artists Resistance work in it.

If you want I can certainly send you PDFs of the two chapters I wrote.

SF: That’d be wonderful.

LG: So this show… it’s by the same curator who curated the sacred arts of Vodou, and this time the show is only about Gede. It’s only about one Vodou spirit. 12:05

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Simeon Yvens Junior and Guyvens Isidor (HT) The Informal Market – Mache Enfomel We will buy second-hand jeans and trousers, which are called Pepe here in Haiti, so we can recycle to form shapes and designs that I will cut from them and then I will sew them onto t-shirts to show at the Ghetto Biennale What has been your role in the Ghetto Biennale thus far?

What do you want to see happen as a member of this arts community?

What is the politics that surrounds your artwork and your position in the community?

This form of recycling parallels what is known in music as sampling but at the same time produces a reverse economy to the US, branding the Biennale as a mechanism of reversal. Is your project meant to be economic? Will these t-shirts reach an international market?

Pwoje ke mwen genyen an se kisa: se achte vye jeans ak pantalon nan sa yo rele pepe – a poum resikle sou fom desen ke map taye epi desen say o map koud yo sou yon paket mayo kem pral ache pou mwen resikle epi eks. Poze yo nan byenal la. Mesi.

Interviewer: Acenel Laurent (AL) étudiant en 4e année patrimoine ettourisme, Agronome licencié, et journaliste culturel.

Interviewé: Yves Junior Simeon (YVS) Est-ce que tu peux te présenter pour nous?

Yves Junior SIMEON : je suis Yves Junior SIMEON. J’AI DEUX ENFANTS le premier a neuf ans et le second quatre ans.

Tu fais quoi comme artiste?

Yves Junior SIMEON : Je fais des desseins (design) sur maillot.

Depuis quand tu intègre le mouvement des artistes résistants?

Yves Junior SIMEON : Depuis 2009.

Quel est ton rôle dans le ghetto biennal?

Yves Junior SIMEON : J’étais en charge de confectionner des T-shirts pour tous les artistes résistants. Et j’exposais aussi mes œuvres ou les gens pouvaient venir acheter.

Tu exposes tes œuvres dans d’autres endroits du pays?

Yves Junior SIMEON : Oui. J’ai exposé à l’institut français, faculté ethnologie.

Tu fais quoi d’autres dans la vie?

Yves Junior SIMEON : Je suis professeur d’école, et je suis assistant directeur dans une école privée.

Tu peux nous dire trois mots qui décrivent le mieux tes œuvres?

Yves Junior SIMEON : Resistance, famille, compétence Pourquoi tu as pris autant de temps pour intégrer le groupe?

Yves Junior SIMEON : J’ai eu une mauvaise interprétation auparavant.

Ton rêve?

Yves Junior SIMEON : Mon rêve c’est de voir le groupe aura beaucoup plus d’écho et beaucoup plus d’appréciation ici et ailleurs.

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Interviewer: Acenel LAURENT (AL) 4th year student, heritage tourism, Agronomist licensee and cultural journalist Interviewed: Yves Junior Simeon (YVS) Can you introduce yourself to us?

Yves Junior SIMEON: I am Yves Junior SIMEON. I have two children. The first is nine years old and the second is four years old.

What do you do as an artist?

Yves Junior SIMEON: I do designs on t-shirts How long have you been a member of Atis Rezistans?

Yves Junior SIMEON: Since 2009.

What is your role in the Ghetto Biennale?

Yves Junior SIMEON: I was in charge of making t-shirts for all Atis REzistans members. And I was exhibiting my works so that people could come and buy.

You exhibit your works in other parts of the country?

Yves Junior SIMEON: Yes, I have exhibited at the French Institute and the Faculty of Anthropology.

DO you hae another profession?

Yves Junior SIMEON: I am a school teacher, and I’m Assistant Director at a private school.

Can you share three words that best describe your work?

Yves Junior SIMEON: Resistance, family, competence Why you took so long to join the group?

Yves Junior SIMEON: I had a misunderstanding before.

What is your dream?

Yves Junior SIMEON: My dream is to see the group will have much impact and much more appreciation here and elsewhere.

I am a new media artist and I teach at the University in Montreal Canada and I was hired by Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie Numerique to teach workshops for new media, digital media software I Haiti. I worked along with Ministry of Culture and the workshop took place at The Centre Culturelle Virtuel, Jean Mars.

I heard about he Biennale because my main contact here Maksaens Denis presented a video at the Biennale and a few of his students are involved with the Biennale.

www.projet-eva.org

Science has a specific discourse on nature and life and human experience and art is another type of discourse that uses different means. The idea of a Biennale is not the same as an art festival.

I was really happy to be part of this and included without ever being officially a part. It was really very inclusive and I’m happy that this initiative exists. IT is beneficial for the foreigners and the locals because in the end it feels as if it is about bringing people together.

First and foremost it was a great channel to interact on a more humane level with the local community rather than just being perceived as a tourist. I was able to discover Haiti from more of an inside perspective in this limited amount of time. As a new media artist, I did not relate as much to the craftsmanship but it was interesting to see the up and coming things that may have gone unnoticed- a lot of kids are starting to play with electronics. A lot of art practice here is derived from craftsmanship that has been passed on so this is where the sculptures come from. Things are gradually changing technologically and I can see this being reflected in what people are using as materials. There was a little guy who was making helicopters. I just taught a robotics workshop to kids this Fall in Montreal and I would love to do that here. The things that I was teaching here, felt a bit out of context. Something more along the lines of circuit bending is more appropriate here. What is being reflected in the sculptures is akin to circuit bending and its process.

Circuit bending is the hacking and re-purposing of electronics whether they be toys, tools or whatever other device.

interviews, emails & transcripts

Simon LaRoche

What kind of projects can you envision might be developed here?

One of the first reflections that I had..., I have been questioning myself for the last few weeks, about how to better the quality of life.

Jobs are lacking and there seems to be too many craftsman for the demand so they have to find ways if they want to grow economically and culturally.

Teaching specific performance tools might help some of themdeveloping graphic design skills and programming skills for example.

It is not because I feel that I want them to become more westernized but it adds to the creativity and they can repurpose this learning to other outlets and they can acquire technological knowledge that can get them better jobs, more work. This is what is happening with the woodwork. These technical craftsmen got fed up with the situation and started making art. So there can be different kinds of knowledge that do not depend on locality- you can do graphic design around the world. You don’t have to have local products but you can apply local knowledge and creativity. The country is limited in its capacity to provide natural resources and occupations for their inhabitants and people who succeed leave the country.

How can the Bienniale help in this?

I’ve been thinking about doing a project for the next Bienniale. I think having moved away from the art market scheme and going toward art festival- cultural exchange and exchange of knowledge would maybe benefit even more generally the people here and less specifically some people here. People from Haiti believe in solidaritythey live very close to one another. I cannot say with precision but the art world has selected few. It is like that in a lot of domains but, I don’t know the long term effects of a market driven project if in the end it will favor only a selected few and not a bigger community.

I do performance art, I don’t sell. I work to earn a living. I don’t make objects to be sold. Art to me is a place of exchange and discourse.

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Tom Bogaert (BE)

Prestige www.tombogaert.org When I first went to Africa in 1996, I had a Heart of Darkness image in my head. I expected to find straw huts, tribal masques, outrageous banana beer parties and naked voodoo dancing. Instead, I ended up working in Kinshasa, an enormous anarchic city of 8 million inhabitants. I soon realized that my initial expectations were hopelessly wrong. There was hardly any banana beer available.

However, even in the midst of the civil war, there was always plenty of ‘Primus Qualité Export’. Although the beer was never intended for export; it seems that the export quality label added to its enormous popularity.

‘Prestige’ is a brand of American-style beer produced by the Heineken-owned ‘Brasserie Nationale d’Haiti’ in Port-au-Prince. It is the best-selling beer in Haiti with a 98% market share and so far the only locally produced beer. Prestige beer is available in some parts of the United States and the Caribbean under a special ‘import’ label. In Haiti I will invite local people to think with me how we can alter the ‘Prestige’ beer label and link it to iconic Haitian objects or situations thus contributing to the ongoing discussion about import, export, local and global. We will indeed nobly attempt to combine art and non-art, the high and the low, and the ordinary with the extraordinary. This project takes up the issues of labels in relation to truth.How will these labels be used and displayed and what will be the symbolic intention of their means of display?

What kind of projects or engagements have interested you in the past?

Before dedicating my life to art, I documented genocide and human rights abuses in Africa, Europe and Asia. I worked as a lawyer for Amnesty International and the UN refugee agency. I don’t see my artwork as an extension of my refugee work, although it does directly confront the intersection of human rights, entertainment and propaganda. My work is inspired by geopolitical contexts.

I tend to investigate what some might think of as difficult themes and subjects. To keep a sense of openness, I always try to maintain a degree of lightness and humor in my work, so as not to weigh down the viewer.

I am currently working on ‘Impression, proche orient’ (IPO), an art project referencing issues relevant to the contemporary Near East society including the changes, politics, artistic identity and the new Arabs. Drawing on my experience as a European having lived and worked in the East, it is my intention to interpret understandings of the region – or lack thereof – from the inside out. As an outsider with the privilege of being given access to the inside, the aim is to use irony, gesture and narratives from the region by means of artistic production. political inclination: Gauche Caviar (Caviar Left): leftist without the appropriate lifestyle. The term was once prevalent in Parisian circles, employed deprecatingly to those who professed allegiance to the Socialist Party, but who maintained a lifestyle that was visibly nonproletariat. geopolitical inclination: Accidental Haitialist: I ended up in Haiti by accident - where I operated squarely within the tradition of ‘Haitialism.’ David Sagte used the term ‘Haitialism’ to describe a pervasive Western tradition, both academic and artistic, of prejudiced outsider interpretations of Haiti, shaped by the attitudes of European imperialism in the 18th and 19th centuries.

What inspired your shift of career?

Push and pull factors, it was definitely a gradual process that took some time to come to fruition. As far as I can remember I have always made art and after having participated in a couple of exhibitions while still working for Amnesty, the idea of giving up my day job and spending more time making art got stuck in my head. I

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wanted to start channeling my experience as a human rights activist into my practice as an artist and at the same time I felt I needed more distance from the seriousness of my activism and subject matter.

I stopped practicing law – and stopped being an activist for that matter - in 2004 when I was selected for participation in the ‘Elizabeth Foundation Studio Center in New York City.’ Since then I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to work full time as an artist.

I don’t see my artwork as an extension of my refugee work. And although my work directly confronts the intersection of human rights, entertainment and propaganda. I do try to steer away from one-dimensional didactic socio-politics that is often associated with the activist canon of visual culture.

Why Haiti and why the ghetto biennale?

I think the Ghetto Biennale struggles with the same issues artist/ curators working in the Middle East and elsewhere are confronted with. Below you’ll find what I wrote in this respect about being an ‘accidental orientalist’ in the Middle East. If you replace the term Orientalism with a regional equivalent and link it to the name of great thinkers and theory about Haiti and beyond, the result might be similar.

“I ended up in the Orient by accident and I do realize that the issue of Saidian Orientalism – prejudiced outsider interpretations of the East as surveyed by Edward W. Said – that pervades my work is problematic. Constant self-examination and criticism have indeed confirmed that there is very little moral high ground for me to be left standing on. At the same time, I seek to be more than a mere ‘Accidental Orientalist.’ Edward W. Said said, “there is, after all, a profound difference between the will to understand for purposes of co-existence and humanistic enlargement of horizons, and the will to dominate…”

This project takes up the issues of labels in relation to truth. How will these labels be used and displayed and what will the symbolic intention of their means of display? Background: On the occasion of the rebranding of Prestige in November 2014, the Heineken-owned ‘Brasserie Nationale d’Haiti’ (BRANA) issued a press release: “The new Prestige label adopts an image closer to our history, a blue and red image, combining tradition and modernity, glorious past and promising future [...] We change image, our country changes image.

A younger Prestige, more patriotic, more modern, in a Haiti open to change and strongly oriented towards modernity and progress. Our beer is more than a drink, it is a symbol of determination and Haitian know how [...] This is an ongoing effort to connect Haitians here and abroad, thanks to its presence in the U.S. and Canada since 2005. It is the pride to make discover each other’s culture, our identity.”

I invite Haitians and foreigners to comment on the ‘Prestige’ beer label and the narrative behind it. In a mini survey, I asked approximately one hundred people about identity and possible ways of linking the outcome to a new beer label. I use a simple graphic design program which allows me to instantly change the name ‘Prestige’ on the existing label into a new one. Based on the suggestions made by the interviewees, I made about one hundred new beer labels, which will be printed out and possibly glued on beer bottles. I also asked a local painter to paint some of the new labels on walls near the site of the Ghetto Biennale. Whilst acknowledging the importance of Foreign Direct Investments for the Haitian economy, this rerebranding exercise is an attempt to undermine the seriousness of a national identity narrative propagated by a foreign multinational company. This is a project that I hope will provoke serious reflection about import, export, local and global, art and non-art, the comical and not-so-comical, the high and the low, and indeed the prestigious and the obscure.

Is Misunderstanding Misunderstood Vision Forum, in collaboration with Wooloo, will set up a participatory space focusing on the creative potential of misunderstanding. It will be a place for exchange where people together can witness, account, investigate and collect misunderstandings recognized as a valid form for communication and a vehicle for knowledge transformation. The project will open a room for debating the issues raised by this edition of the Ghetto Biennial, reflect on the meeting between different worlds and also draw from the specific forms of knowledge in Haiti and in Haitian culture. The space will take the form of a TENT.

www.visionforum.eu www.wooloo.net

even in the same interview, people come out with different feelings.

I think this is where the misunderstanding comes in. It doesn’t matter what happens, it is about what you can draw from it and that is where the sharing comes in. We enjoy things differently but by sharing that experience, that’s what makes it worthwhile.

Do you think that the tent will signify in the context of the recent Haitian disaster? How is this format of the tent connected to the conceptual base of misunderstanding?

interviews, emails & transcripts

Vision Forum Per Huttner (SE/FR), Sara Giannini (IT/NL), Jean-Louis Huhta (SE), Sandrine Nicoletta (IT/UK) Wooloo Sixten Kai Nielsen (DK), William Rawlings and Martin Rosengaard (DK)

Does your project take on any comedic dimensions?

Per: I met Leah and Eugene in San Francisco while I was working with the social practice program at the CCA. I saw Leah making a presentation on the biennial. Personally, I thought that there was a lot of different knowledge in the ghetto and I had never heard anything like it before and it provoked my imagination. I started to talk to Sarah about it and developed the project.

Sarah- I was linked to an Italian artist which is part of a group that is part of a network to which Per belongs. Jean Louis and Per have been working alot and they felt that music would be a way to open the communication and they made a piece together in London in 2011 where they used police evidence- using voice material to create sound. In talking about interviews it made sense to invite Jean Louis.

The way that they work with Wooloo, they usually do their own thing.

They operate a lot in a social milieu and they rarely make physical pieces.

Per: We’ve had a very Haitian experience. It has been the most incredible expereince that I have had- incredibly intense, poetic meeting with people, a human dimension and energy and warmth that I have rarely felt with anyone else. Conceptually this was very important for the project because we really wanted the knowledge exchange to go both ways. We learned so much everyday. We could tell that people were learning from us. It was heavy brain gymnastics for everyone involved and then they were robbed and we experienced the other side of Haitian life.

We came here with a question. We asked questions of others but also of ourselves. So it was a moment of heavy reflection about language and communication. How communication works- language can be a small part of communication. The two persons who acted as translators became official members of our group. It became quite complex with probably lots of misunderstandings happening but that was also part of the beauty of the experience.

Language never felt like a barrier. Communication is not always linear, it is always a matter of interpretation and if you misunderstand it….

Continuous translation allows for something else to be created, so

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