Lennon Wall - Fall 2017 | Issue 1 |Black & White

Lennon Wall Fall 2017 | Issue I.

“Don’t define your world in black and white because there is so much hiding amongst the greys.”

Black & White Issue. Fall 2017.

Always free.

Contributors & the Team Editor-in-Chief Chau Nguyen Section Editors Klara Chmelarova Martin Ranninger Elizabeth Hwang Design & Web Martin Ranninger Contributors Ján Tompkins Klara Chmelarova Marketa Hrehorova Olivia Dom Rita Puhto Proofreader Ganna Zhadan Olivia Dom Social Media Leilani Mitchell

Lennon Wall is the student magazine of Anglo-American University in Prague.

Published since October 2000, we’ve been reporting on the University’s and world’s current developments that matter. Values of the magazine – which is free speech and democracy – are the same as of the famous Prague’s Lennon Wall.

The magazine is a nonpartisan platform for aspiring reporters and future writers. We are independent from the University governing body’s influence, thus provide balanced coverage of high journalism standards.

Cover and back cover photos

by Georgiana Shillington.

www.lennonwall.aauni.edu

In This Issue art

White Iraq

movies

Mad Max Black & Chrome version

art

Women and The Art of Vandalism

poetry music

Rainfall, Sunshine Vinyl is The New Black

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White Iraq

Markéta Hrehorová | Photo courtesy of DOX Centre for Contemporary Art

O

ver the years, the media has been reporting on Iraq through the dark images of war, violence, destruction, refugees, Islam and ISIS. Few know much else about this country, nor how daily life of Iraqis looks like.

The exhibition Over My Eyes: Stories of Iraq in DOX tries to portray the innocent, mundane white images of life, which usually stay concealed in the background of the black wartime pictures fed to us by mainstream media.

With the intention of extending their “caliphate,” ISIS seized most of northern and western Iraq, including other large cities such as Fallujah or Tikrit. These events mark the onset of a great humanitarian crisis, which has reached even our own comfortable lives. Over a tenth of the whole Iraqi population has been displaced, driving more than three million innocent people out of their homes. These people have no interest in ruining our lives or forcing their religion on the western world (as many people might believe); their deepest wish is simply to return home.

Stefano Carini, an Italian-American photographer and curator of Over My Eyes, came to Mosul, Iraq in May 2014 to work for the country’s first free photo agency Metrography. A month later, on June 10th, the city was captured by the extremist group ISIS (Islamic state of Iraq and Syria).

Despite (or perhaps because of) the great disorder, Stefano Carini stayed with the agency and continued to work with local photographers featured in Over My Eyes: Aram Karim, Bnar Sardar, Hawre Khalid, Seivan M. Salim, Rawsht Twana, Twana Abdullah, Sebastian Meyer, 4

Dario Bosio and Ali Arkady. His own encounter with Iraq in the midst of war is displayed in his complementary exhibition The Woman, the Moon, the Snake. Seventeen Months in Iraq.

Through the exhibition, we can see Iraq in all its mundane glory through the eyes of the local photographers. People pass time at home during frequent power blackouts. Children play or swim in the local waters. Soldiers rest after a battle with ISIS. Many photographers have depicted the life of smugglers on the border between Iraq and Iran, but none of them produced images comparable with the ones by Aram Karim. Aram grew up among the smugglers and has a close

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relationship with many of them, which enabled him to photograph them while they were dividing money or getting drunk at night.

These images are thus very unique, since the smugglers wouldn’t allow any stranger to join them in such intimate moments.

One and a half million Iraqis escaped to Kurdistan, an autonomous region of Iraq. Stories of such civilians are told online through the Map of Displacement, which is an additional project to the exhibition Over My Eyes. The accounts of the civilians were compiled “irrespective of their religion or ethnicity,” demonstrating the demographic diversity of Iraq.

Three quarters of the population are Mesopotamian Arabs and the other quarter is mostly composed of Kurds, who have

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been granted their own autonomous region.

Kurds include smaller groups, such as Feylis, Yazidis or Shabaks. Although a majority of Iraqis are Muslim, they divide themselves into two branches of Islam: Shia and Sunni. Other inhabitants practise Christianity, Mandaeism and Yazidism.

The city of Sinjar had a big community of Yazidis, whose monotheistic faith has elements of Zoroastrianism, Christianity and Islam, yet ISIS perceives them as “devil worshipers.” Hence, when ISIS captured the city, they killed over ten thousands of Yazidi men and kidnapped five thousand women to be sold as sex slaves.

The Iraqi female photographer Seivan M. Salim found some of the women who managed to escape. She wanted to take portraits of them,

but could not capture their faces for their own safety (so ISIS would not find them again and their community would not condemn them). She finally portrayed them veiled in their traditional purely white wedding dresses. The testimonies lurking in the black void behind the innocent women in the photographs are shocking.

Their husbands, brothers, sons were killed:

“Then we heard the shooting.

We thought they were killing animals not our men.”

Women, including the pregnant as well as children, were sexually abused and tortured.

“They told us that they would punish us, but never kill us, because they preferred to torture

us,” reads another account of 20-year-old Jihan held in captivity for ten months.

The powerful portraits and their stories were offered to major agencies such as New York Times, but everyone turned them down. The media wanted pictures from Mosul, which was in the hands of ISIS at that time. ISIS had very strict rules for photographers, forbidding taking any material they did not previously approve out of their territory, as Stefano Carini explained during a press conference. In the end the western media published videos and images produced by ISIS, meaning their propaganda was given to us instead of (or even masked as) “objective” news.

As their ancestors in ancient Mesopotamia were accustomed to the annual chaos when Euphrates and Tigris flooded their land each year, so have contemporary Iraqis learned to live in constant military conflict. After the Great War, the Ottoman Empire disintegrated and the British colonizers divided the Middle East without any regard to the ethnic and religious diversity of the land. Generations of Iraqis have thus lived through constant unrest, revolts and wars. Nonetheless, the exhibition Over My Eyes shows that the civilians have to go on living their lives in the midst of war – working, eating, playing and sleeping just like anyone else.

The exhibition Over My Eyes: Stories of Iraq will be on view until 8 January 2018 at the DOX Centre for Contemporary Art.

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Mad Max Black & Chrome version: I Live, I Die, I Live Again!

Livi Dom | Photo courtesy of Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.

M

ovies do not normally have the chance to be released again in theaters, to be “brought back to life.”

Director George Miller changed the game when he eagerly snatched the opportunity to release his internationally acclaimed phenomenon, Mad Max: Fury Road in theaters again a year after its original release in 2015. Only this time, in monochrome. Now, the official “Black and Chrome” edition is included along with the original cut on Blu-Ray, DVD, and iTunes.

The re-release of films in black and white is something new to the modern blockbuster theatre. Technically there have only been two “wide releases” of movies, Fury Road and 2017’s

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Logan. Both films were very well received, Fury Road, in particular, was praised for its use of explosive color in the dystopian desert.

Explosions of fire are works of art, as they blaze red and black across the sky. Teal skies, bright orange sand, the world of Fury Road is beautiful if not barren.

In an interview with Slashfilm, Miller explained the film’s bold and vibrant color mixing: “One thing I’ve noticed is that the default position for everyone is to de-saturate post-apocalyptic movies. There’s only two ways to go, make them

black and white — the best version of this movie is black and white — but people reserve that for art movies now. The other version is to really go all-out on the color. The usual teal and orange thing? That’s all the colors we had to work with.

The desert’s orange and the sky is teal, and we either could desaturate it, or crank it up, to differentiate the movie.”

Making a black and white film requires a different technique and set of skills compared to a color film. Shadows have a different visual meaning; shots need retiming. When you lose color in scenes, you miss the information from the color’s symbolism.

For example, the color green: in the color version, we only see the color green briefly as Immortan Joe runs through his palace and as the Keeper of the Seeds shows the wives her treasured plant, growing in an animal skull. This lack of green makes the desert all the more bleak and desolate. In black and white, the green beacon is lost, and instead, the performances of the actors enrapture the viewer: the passion for the aforementioned Green Place, the emotional reveal of the last plant growing in the middle of death.

clothes of the Warboys, and the fierce Vuvalini - The Many Mothers clan. Over the course of the story, the white clothing is lost, stained, and replaced, as the women gain the skills needed to survive in the Wasteland.

Lack of color changes the way the story is perceived. A filter of black and white represents the past. Fury Road now plays like an old war film.

Love it or hate it, the opinions on desaturating the world of Fury Road lie in shades of grey.

Both versions complement the other, and only by watching both versions does the viewer see more of the story. The choice of making the film black and white is a statement, one that Miller boldly makes, and all of us are only here to “witness!”

Miller prides himself and his crew on doing mostly practical stunts and special effects.

But the few scenes including CGI are barely noticeable as “movie magic” in monochrome.

When the color is gone, the lack of color makes everything cohesive, and even grittier as the effects blend into the world.

The details of Fury Road world stand out sharply. The skeleton-white Warboys fly across the screen, and the imprints of Immortan Joe’s skull wheel symbol are more prominent than ever in the set pieces and wardrobe. The whites of the eyes are always visible, keeping the audience connected with the humanity of the warriors. White is also used for the clothes of the “wives.” The color symbolizes purity, innocence, and is an ever vibrant contrast to the 9

Women and The Art of Vandalism Story & Photos by Rita Puhto

T

he graffiti scene has long had the stigma of being a field dominated by males and criticised as vandalism. But a local female graffiti writer, who goes by the pseudonym Sany, has changed the scene for females in the graffiti scene.

She made a documentary about women in the graffiti scene, appropriately titled Girl Power, featuring recognised female graffiti writers from Lady Pink, the first woman to be recognised as a graffiti writer, to Utah, who is wanted in many countries due to the scale of her graffiti writing.

de Janeiro, Brazil. She has used her graffiti to spread messages about the status of women, and specifically the violence and mistreatment against women in Brazil. In an interview with Sany in Girl Power, Anarkia says, “I use graffiti to make people think.”

Sany began graffiti writing when she was 15 and formed her own crew with other female graffiti writers. She explored her female identity through the graffiti domain. She received hatred from other graffiti writers, tagging over her writings ‘go back to the kitchen’. Despite the discouragement she received from these writers, she continued to make graffiti and ended up shooting Girl Power.

Similarly, there has been a movement of young people in the city of Raqqa, Syria, who go out at night and write messages like ‘Stop ISIS’ around public spaces. Graffiti in the form of a simple tag is not one that many would find aesthetically pleasing, but the emphasis is not on the appearance of the piece, rather the message itself. As Sany says:

“It’s about a lot of things. I talk to a lot of girls and they see their stories there because they are going through the same things. So it’s not only about graffiti but emancipation in general for a lot of girls.”

Featured in the documentary is Panmela Castro, also known by her graffiti name, Anarkia, who is a graffiti writer, turned social activist, from Rio

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“Sometimes graffiti can be very powerful, even when it is not beautiful...

It is on the street so everyone can see it, and this way it works like advertising.”

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Sany goes on to compare graffiti and advertising. “Right now when I look from my window, I see a big billboard and there is an almost naked guy with Calvin Klein pants. No one asked me if I want to see it everyday when I look from the window!” The justification is that these advertisements have been paid for by companies and allowed through financial agreements, but there is still a need for some to advertise what they believe to be important. Just as Mezza Coric, a graffiti artist, said in the documentary; “I think it’s important that public space 14

is not only shaped by paid advertisements, but also by people who live in the city.”

The graffiti subculture began in the late 60s in New York City, with teenagers from the South Bronx and Queens wanting to send messages to Manhattan about their lives. “They started to write messages on the metro trains, because they knew that the metros would go through the Bronx, to Manhattan and people would then see the message.”

Thus, graffiti becomes a form of communication and self expression.

“People have been doing graffiti for thousands of years, like Altamira [cave paintings].

People were painting their hands to say ‘we exist’” Sany says.

However, the reality behind graffiti is that it is still a crime.

Provision 182, from the Czech law, states that any act of damage or defacement to public property faces up to 6 years of imprisonment.

The social stigma surrounding graffiti affects the way writers approach their friends and family about the topic, often

leading them to live two lives. Sany, too, faces this issue; her parents are unaware of what she does. “I did not want to get my parents involved because I did not want to be the kid who doesn’t appreciate what they had done for me.” Not only would she be facing criminal charges but her parents would be affected negatively too.

In an article by Independent, a judge by the name of Christopher Hardy, stated in a case involving graffiti tagging, that despite some notably artistic graffiti; “the trouble is that it has been sprayed all over other people’s property without their consent and that is simply vandalism.”

Reaching a sort of compromise, many cities, including Prague, have created specific walls where graffiti is allowed. Even Komwag, the Prague city cleaning company, has started a program since January 1st in 2010 to clear buildings off graffiti, and have successfully cleaned almost 400 public spaces and privately owned buildings.

Despite the laws and efforts to clean, new graffiti continues to arise around cities all over the world.

So, the next time you see a tag while walking past the building next to your home, take a moment to observe and think about the purpose behind the creation of it. After all, we all want ourselves to be recognised to have existed and to leave our story in this world, as people did in the caves of Altamira.

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Rainfall | Ján Tompkins it’s 6:15 on a wednesday morning the rain skims my window tapping the present away I sit in bed, three-quarters awake slanted to one side regretting my very being for having to be up at this hour and that one-quarter of my being that’s still asleep is the strongest quarter, he’s still dreaming of a day in the future, a future close enough that bright tangerine and daffodil smears in the sky reflect in his irises, but far enough to have to squint to see the sun that’s projecting that masterpiece across the shore a future where we’re together again where through our soaked parkas we can feel each other’s heartbeats where the pacific mist kisses our cheeks and pine needles stick, nestled in our hair, under the redwood canopy and where our stars turn up after that very sun sets over the starlit coast where our feet are burrowed in the soft, wet sand, whose grains are washed from our toes with the rising tide The rain skims my window tapping the present away I love the rain it’s like wherever I am, I can feel you with every rainfall it’s 6:16 now on a wednesday morning and I miss you 16

Sunshine | Ján Tompkins It’s 4:18 on a thursday afternoon the sun’s touch settles uninvited, on my skin but she doesn’t need an invitation her warm embrace, shades the world in a tangerine glow and I, born of the heat of the august sun and the salt of the summer sea, long for the sweet rain, long for the sweet you from the burnt amber tiled-roofs of this land to the pine-needled roofs of yours I want to feel the breath of the sun through the mist that’s blanketed our cheeks through the incense that perfumes those cheeks, and stained your cherry-stem fingers that mingle their scent with the soft hairs on my head and the ambrosial, sun-veiled hairs on yours those hairs we wear flowers in, like the summer of ‘67 sang to us fifty years later, I want to be blanketed by our words that bloomed into reality honeyed words steeped in blissful longing longing for your doug fir and redwood forests longing for your sun-kissed coast longing for those forests you spend your days in, wrapped in evergreen ferns with sandy, grounded soles and how your forests exist inseparable from her sea that very sea that warmly lives on in the iris oceans of your eyes it’s like wherever I am, I can feel you with every sunshine whose summer palette is greeted by the tranquil rainfall it’s 4:19 now on a thursday afternoon and I miss the rain 17

Vinyl is the New Black Klara Chmelarova

I

n 86 years of existence Vinyl Record became both art and a statement.

A loss-less format of the Long Playing Record (LP) captures music as the artist made it.

“The 300 crown poster from Van Gogh is not art, the original painting is. Vinyl is a true art.”

Magdaléna Zemanová - owner of the Happyfeet record shop in Pasáž Lucerna - saw the Vinyl Boom from the beginning.

place reeked of old plumage, but, we built something from it.”

“I was 19, I had 13,000 crowns in my pocket and off I was to Prague to make a living from LPs.” She has been selling Records for 12 years and experienced many ups and downs. “I began my business in 2007, right in the middle of the Great Recession.”

Over 3.2 million Vinyl records were sold, that’s the most in 25 years. “The world is getting too quick, products are made for quantity and not quality. So people are starting to turn back to things that can slow it down.”

The 2000s’ obsession with CD burners and free music gives under the need to own something of a value. Same year Vinyl skyrocketed, CDs declined by 11.7% — a one-tenth drop against previous years.

“If we take a look at David Koller, a Czech Happyfeet settled in Pasáž Lucerna 6 years ago. musician, his CD [ČeskosLOVEnsko] now costs 299 crowns — half the price of LP. But, it might “This space used to be toilets.” Zemanová waves not play after 5 years. The 515 crown Vinyl is going to last next 40-50 years. Plus it can towards the rack with Rock records. “Whole 18

Magdaléna Zemanová. Photograph: Record Stories

The start was slow and Happyfeet moved from Štěpánská Pasáž to Roxy Club, there it got closed after a year and a half. “I was pretty burned out. Regardless of how hard you try, you will get kicked, that’s a part of it.”

From here, Zemanová watched as the year 2016 marked a new age for Vinyl.

rise twice its former price. CD can’t be sold higher than its purchase price. Purely from the economic standpoint by buying Vinyl records you invest. People are starting to appreciate original medium.”

bought to be played. People get the digital album for use and then an LP as an artifact.

Most wanted are the re-editions of cult records.

The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Rolling Stones, Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Pearl Jam - those bands are not bound by generation and most target groups want them as a collectible.”

Michal Máka, the Marketing and PR executive of Supraphon agrees. “On a local scale it’s Classic Rock comprised 63% of last year’s Vinyl still a zero profit market. But, it will get there.

Customers want it and artists want it as well. It became a set trend.” Registered in 1932, “The alternative market, opposing the Supraphon got on board just mainstream music platforms, started it and as the RCA launched first from there public rediscovered LP’s magic.”

Long Playing album in history.

Over the years the company became a synonym for Czech LP industry and watched the medium change.

Boom, in-keeping with LP’s Underground roots.

Vinyl records can’t compete with Spotify or Máka’s words ring true in Happyfeet. The veneer Youtube in distribution, they complement it. of Vinyl allures both students and old timers.

“LP became an accessory to the digital output “It’s a grey zone as it has always been. That’s the beauty of it.”

— part of the merchandise. Not every Vinyl is

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