NAME OF ARTIST 101
CREATIVE CULTURE & ARTIVISM ISSUE 10 / FEBRUARY 2017
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ISSUE 10 / FEBRUARY 2017 EDITORS IN CHIEF
Charlotte Specht & Guille Lasarte MARKETING & ADVERTISING
Mario Rueda mario@bookastreetartist.com PROJECT MANAGER
Sophie Smeets COPY EDITOR
Charlotte Kench CONTRIBUTORS
Pepper Levain, Roxanne Goldberg, Nicole Schild, Janielle Williams, Russell Smith Photography, Jansen, Neels Kleynhans (NK Photo), JOS*, Camille Charlier, Alexandra Maciá, Teresa Schmidt-Meinecke, Sidney King, Deia Schlosberg, Fabian Stürtz, Patryk Witt, Ruben Neugebauer FEATURING
Hoda Afshar, Center for Political Beauty, Sandilé, Khaled Barakeh, Thomas Dambo, Josh Fox, Urban-Think Tank & Theatre4Change, Atong Atem, Luo Yang, Refugee Radio Network, Nevercrew, Quichotte SPECIAL THANKS
Becca Roithmayr, MO-Industries.com, Pau Quintanajornet (back cover stencil) PRINTER
MEDIALIS Offsetdruck GmbH Heidelberger Str. 65/66 12435 Berlin, Germany PUBLISHER
Book a Street Artist Markgrafenstraße 12-14 10969 Berlin, Germany info@bookastreetartist.com www.bookastreetartist.com ISSN 2509-842X www.pantamagazine.com panta@bookastreetartist.com
Cover photo by Atong Atem Photo on opposite page by Camille Charlier of Thomas Dambo’s artwork
LETTER FROM THE EDITORS This issue marks the tenth edition of PANTA and its third year in existence. What began as a playful project developed, rather organically, into an independent magazine that tells the stories of artists from all over the world who use their craft for a good cause. Creativity is a strong tool to promote change and our mission is to show that there is so much more to art than what we can find in the institutionalized art world. In this sense, we seek to explore the bigger picture of what art has the power to achieve for communities and societies at large.
In this sense, PANTA naturally shaped into an artivism magazine over the years, and this is the theme we are celebrating here. We hope you enjoy the work featured in this issue, most of which is concerned with filling a void. Each artist present on these pages has at some point encountered a lack of awareness, information or representation of their respective cause and we honour them for having the vision and the perseverance to transform that emptiness into something tangible, beautiful and meaningful. Thanks for reading!
GOT SKILLS? www.bookastreetartist.com
Image by TAPE OVER || Tape crew from Berlin
I S S U E 10 / C O N T E N T S
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PHOTOGRAPHY
HODA AFSHAR
Tell us a bit about yourself – where you’re from, your trajectory and your development as an artist. I was born and raised in Tehran, Iran, and after finishing my bachelor’s degree in photography, I moved to Australia to experience life in a different part of the world. In Iran I started my practice as a documentary photographer and photojournalist, photographing different aspects of life in Iran and exploring the issues affecting different social groups, especially minority communities. After migrating to Australia, the focus of my practice shifted somewhat: I began making more staged work in which I explored similar issues, but from a more conceptual perspective, and
especially in relation to the lives of non-Western subjects living in the Western world. So in this sense, I became the subject of my own work – I began reflecting on my own experiences and encounters as a way of approaching larger questions to do with identity and representation. This fed into my PhD research-based practice in creative arts, which I started in 2011. About three or four years ago I also began a new series about contemporary Iran in which I explore my changing vision of and relationship to my homeland. During this period, I have exhibited my images throughout Australia and internationally. The first major exhibition of my Iran series took place last November in Melbourne.
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12 PHOTOGRAPHY
HODA AFSHAR 13
Migration is something that shatters your world... It’s a strange, liminal existence, but it also gives you a particular kind of vision: a way of seeing the entire world as a foreign land, as Edward Said puts it. What made you use photography as a means for analyzing your relationship with your homeland and as a medium for storytelling? Since moving to Australia, photography has become a way for me to tell my story of migration, to explore themes about home and exile, foreignness, belonging, and more specifically, how cultural identity influences our art and daily experiences. For me, it’s impossible to separate my image-making from the sense of familiarity I feel towards a particular place, and this is also reflected in the work I make when I return home to Iran. Photography for me has become a way of reading, seeing and making sense of the world and of my own being and experiences – including my experience of diaspora. Does part of the significance of your series In the Exodus, I love you more come from its condition as an ongoing series? Or is it a project you’d like to ‘conclude’ one day? Exactly – because the focus of this series involves exploring my changing relationship to Iran, I could continue adding to it for the rest of my life. I can’t really imagine what its conclusion would be, and I’ve loved the process of discovering something new each time I return to Iran to add to the series. But part of my aim with the work has also been to develop a certain way of “seeing” as an insider-outsider, and after several returns I feel more comfortable and familiar with the language that I have developed. So perhaps this chapter will conclude when I feel that this language is no longer useful for discovering anything new – when it has exhausted itself.
ARTIVISM
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T HE ART OF EATING R EFUGEES Words by Charlotte Specht
Photos by Patryk Witt Ruben Neugebauer All photos courtesy of Zentrum für Politische Schönheit
For Philipp Ruch, there are two kinds of people in this world: the 97% and the 3%. The majority of the population whom are either lethargic or unaware during times of political unrest and the remaining 3%, whom Ruch calls ‘the martyr quota’; those that actively protest.
RECYCLED ART
Thomas Dambo and the
Art of
Abandonded Things Words by Sophie Smeets Photos by Camille Charlier & courtesy of Thomas Dambo
MUSIC
She’s 23, cool as a cucumber and recently released her first EP, I’ve Seen That Face Before, without any external help. I spent an evening photographing techno artist Sandilé and chatting about her music and what it’s like to be an independent female musician in the techno scene.
Words & photos by Pepper Levain
FOR THE
MOMENT
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34 MUSIC
Pepper: Sandilé, why is techno the genre of your choice? Sandilé: I don’t know if I have ever consciously selected a genre for myself. It rather just happened. First I started out listening to dubstep, not techno. I felt this 4/4 sound was rather boring. As I got older I realised how many variations and differences there are. I found this fascinating and wanted to look further into it. Also, I went with my friends to techno and house parties since they didn’t like dubstep as much as I did. All of that made me drift more and more into the direction of techno. P: When and how did you start making music? S: I’ve always made music. I used to play piano and the drums and sing in a band. I also went to a music college but they kicked me out due to my lack of attendance (laughs). I can’t really say when I started DJing actually, I’ve been doing it for quite a while now. Back home when I was a teenager I used the sound software Traktor and I just mixed and played tracks to myself. At some point I befriended a party host and DJ, who asked me to play the warm up at his birthday party. This kind of got the whole thing rolling. P: What inspires you? S: All my favourite pieces of music inspire me. When I listen to them I just think ‘wow – this track is simply perfect’ and this inspires me to achieve producing a track that I feel is equally perfect, but seen from my very personal perspective. P: What is one of those perfect tracks? S: Wax – 3003B. P: Is there a particular place that you associate with your sound? S: Yes, a blue bridge in Cologne. A lot in my life happened there and I actually dedicated a track to it, called Blaue Brücke. P: What does it feel like to stand in the club, having the crowd dancing to your music? S: I hate being the centre of attention and being looked at by everyone. The first ten minutes are a nightmare to me. After those ten minutes, however, I enter this tunnel mode and can get fully lost in what I’m doing. Then I connect with the sound and can really enjoy myself.
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P: Describe the techno scene – what’s the vibe? S: There is a huge warmth and presence there – for the moment. What’s just been created vanishes immediately after it has happened. Say you play a great set at a party, it feels enormously eternal and powerful. The next morning it already feels so far away and nobody really remembers anything. It’s perishable but what is happening is still genuine.
P: Does techno connect people? Or is it just a bunch of isolated souls dancing in the same room? S: Both. If you are at a good techno party, you easily achieve this feeling of community and connect with people. Especially when the space fills up with that strong positive vibe. Being an artist though, it’s more of an isolated thing. Sometimes I would sit there with my headphones on, in front of a computer for 14 hours without moving at all. In those moments, that is the only thing in the world that interests me.
There is a huge warmth and pre What’s just been created vanishes Say you play a great set at a party, it f The next morning it already feels so far awa It’s perishable but what is
esence there – for the moment. immediately after it has happened. feels enormously eternal and powerful. ay and nobody really remembers anything. happening is still genuine.
P: When producing tracks yourself, is there a story or theme you work into them? S: Hmm... I think with techno there is no such deep content actually. The main goal is to get blown by the beat. P: Is there any sensuality and emotions at all? S: Oh of course. The last edit I’ve done; Pepe Bradock – Deep Burnt, is very sensual to me. Of course I do express myself through my music but techno is definitely not the most emotional genre. There is personal content in each of my tracks but those are totally private. I work stuff out by abstracting it through sounds. It’s a very intuitive process based on the very moment. Also, naming my track titles is influenced by whatever is happening in my life right now. P: Kind of like little soundtracks, just without the film. S: Yes, exactly! P: Do you enjoy the world during the daytime? S: No. I don’t like big groups of people or the stereotypical human being I find on the streets at daytime. Summers are too warm for me so I can only handle temperatures at night. P: What kind of humans do you like? S: People that do not follow a strict line of how life is supposed to be lived: free minds with their own rhythms. P: Can you connect with mainstream music at all? S: I could seriously throw up when listening to chart music. The songs all sound the same and function for a certain principle to make fast money. But of course I listen to other stuff than techno. If I only listened to techno I’d go mad! Just this morning I got my hip-hop records out, KRS-One and Wu-Tang…
P: Are there many female techno artists? Do you like the term DJane? S: It’s definitely male terrain. Personally, I’m used to it since I used to be a professional BMX rider. I had never questioned the term DJane so much until someone said something that is actually true: DJ is simply an abbreviation for disc jockey, which is a gender neutral term. DJane starts a gender thing that wasn’t needed. She can be a disc jockey just as much as he can be a disc jockey. P: That was a clever cookie. S: For me it doesn’t really matter whether a man, a woman or an animal hits the button, it’s really more about the sound. P: So what is the reason for the dominant presence of males in the scene? S: A lot of girls would like to produce or play in the clubs. Actually quite often girls tell me that and say they just don’t know how to start or that they are too shy getting into it. P: I remember that phenomenon from the skateboard scene… as a teenager I started skateboarding also as a protest against all the groupie girls cheering at the guys at the half pipes. S: Yes, it’s a shame. In Cologne I’m about to start an event series to support other local underground artists that must be heard. Underground and unknown definitely doesn’t mean amateur! I’m excited to meet new artists and of course it would be great to discover some new female DJs as well. P: Great! Any plans for the future? S: I don’t really plan. I simply hope that I keep loving and enjoying what I do as much as I do right now. ∆
Labels: Like Records; Boutade Musique Soundcloud: www.soundcloud.com/tanteturnkopf
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CONCEPTUAL ART
KHALED BARAKEH
Words by Nicole Schild Photos courtesy of Khaled Barakeh
Photo above: The Untitled Images (2014)
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Creativity as a medium for change
K
haled Barakeh sees his art practice as a tool for making a change, as he says, “on the ground”. This is a perspective that has developed over the course of a career that bridges his formative years in Syria with his current life in Europe, where he relocated in 2008. Now based in Berlin, he works across a number of disciplines, which, in combination, can be described as site-specific conceptual art with a strong political bent. His works speak of the connections and networks that exist between people and cultures, and, equally, of the lines that demarcate these as separate entities. Born in a Damascus suburb in 1976, Barakeh grew up in Syria. During his school years, art class was essentially a free period with no teacher overseeing it. Still, Barakeh enjoyed Arabic calligraphy, which, he says, offered him his “first relationship to lines” before he had learned to draw or paint. Later, while undertaking compulsory service in the military, he would discover his talent for painting while carrying out his assigned task of repeatedly painting images of the president. “It wasn’t pleasurable, that’s for sure,” he recalls, conceding that the experience was nonetheless good for honing his technical skills. This was followed up with art school in Damascus, where the curriculum was squarely focused on the classical techniques of artwork production, with no attention given to conceptuality. “I came from a very traditional
background in terms of painting and art in general,” says Barakeh. “In Syria, it was very commercially-based, with very few exceptions… there was nothing really innovative happening.” One of two key points of influence in Barakeh’s life, alongside the advent of the Syrian revolution in 2011, was his relocation to Europe. “I went to Paris in 2003 the first time, and I was artistically and culturally shocked – not in terms of the society or the city, but in terms of the art world I found there,” he says. “I went to the Palais de Tokyo and got absolutely nothing from the exhibition. I talked to the artist, I read the text... I didn’t understand. I was completely confused. At that moment, I decided to come to Europe and continue my studies.” Returning to Damascus, Barakeh ran a successful visual communications company for five years as a means of saving the money he needed for a European art education, first in Denmark and later in Germany. The influence of Europe’s free-thinking art scene then began to enter into his approach to artmaking, underpinning his technical prowess with creatively articulated political statements. “When I came to Europe, my work shifted with me, so I started observing and learning,” he says. “I really enjoyed the conceptual art because I felt I could practice whatever I want; I can embed whatever I want in my art.”
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PHOTOGRAPHY
and the third culture kids Interview by Charlotte Kench Photography by Atong Atem
As far as I’m concerned, it’s Atong’s world and we’re all just living in it. This powerhouse is the creative force behind the striking and internationally celebrated photographic portraits that grace these pages. As a South Sudanese artist in Australia, where even the most insidious strands of structural racism still linger throughout our institutions and extend to our recent history, Atong approaches her art and photography as a means of reclamation, representation and carving out a space for herself in a world that does not necessarily cater for her. To revise the opening statement: what follows here is (the tip of the iceberg of) Atong’s world and we’ve been lucky enough to catch a glimpse of it for you.
DOCUMENTARY FILM
HOW TO let go of
SAVE THE WORLD A novel approach to the climate change doc Words by Sidney King Photos by Deia Schlosberg
The title of Josh Fox’s latest documentary on climate change is long enough to qualify for a Sufjan Steven’s album – not to mention the filmmaker’s love of banjo playing. How To Let Go Of The World And Love All The Things Climate Can’t Change is not your runof-the-mill climate change documentary - it’s a unique and welcome take on a critical world issue and on the sub-genre itself. We were fortunate enough to ask the writer and director about his latest endeavour and the success of his academy award nominated film Gasland (2010).
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It’s 2017 and we’re still waiting on Captain Planet. He’s the Godot of our generation – the highly anticipated character in Samuel Beckett’s play who is notorious for having never showed up. With twenty years in theatre, Josh Fox understands all too well the Godot-esque existentialism that has arisen from the overwhelming challenge of climate change and the underwhelming response from world leaders to counter it. However, in his latest documentary, Fox isn’t talking to us from a dystopian future – i.e. the “we’re all doomed” approach – nor with the hopeful catchcries that we have grown accustomed to – à la “If we all just recycle, go vegan and ride our bikes everywhere, we can save the world!” No, Fox occupies that uneasy place between
While he admits that this opening is “very odd for a climate film”, Fox is celebrating the New York state government’s decision to ban fracking in the upper Delaware basin – Fox’s homeland and the impetus behind Gasland. The outcome of this ban owes a lot to the success of Gasland – both the film and its accompanying campaign – in mobilising people to start an anti-fracking movement in America. Fox attributes the impact of the film to the fact that “we didn’t just rest on our laurels and put the movie on TV and say ‘That’s good, goodbye, we’re going home now’. No. It was a campaign from the beginning. We made sure we were on the frontline and giving the information to where it was needed most”. The film was toured
Josh Fox filming Gasland
resignation and conviction – one that has yet to be fully fleshed out by other climate change documentaries. Ironically, it is Fox’s proximity to defeat that makes the film so refreshing. After a reel of environmental experts unveil their distressing verdicts on the “major overhaul of every human system: politics, food, energy, transportation, media – and all in the next three to four years”, Fox confesses, “I don’t know about you but I’m about ready to watch a few cat videos right now”. Too right, Mr Fox. Too right. Nevertheless, How To Let Go begins with a victory dance. Fox twirls around to The Beatles’ “Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da/Life Goes On, bra!” in the opening credits.
relentlessly across the state of New York and the public awareness campaign began to produce tangible results. After the film, the record for public comments on the government’s environmental impact studies – 1,000 comments for the whole state - was continually smashed in every stage of the scoping process. From 10,000 to 78,000 and then a whopping 204,000 comments, it took the Environmental Department of Protection several years to respond to the growing number of comments in each round of their investigation. This gave the anti-fracking movement time to grow, and as Fox says “the time that we bought commenting on the process allowed science to really study the issue”.
Fox occupies that uneasy place between resignation and conviction – one that has yet to be fully fleshed out by other climate change documentaries.
Josh Fox filming How to Let Go
Josh Fox filming Gasland
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Whilst little scientific evidence existed to support the film’s claims in 2008, by 2014 there were roughly 500 peer-reviewed studies on the negative impacts of fracking – some of which were conducted by leading American universities. When it came time for the state to make a decision, they had both an unprecedented amount of citizen participation and a wealth of science to back it up. The Delaware basin was safe – for a while. Fox found the momentum for How To Let Go – the third part of the Gasland series – after he realised that although his home in Delaware was no longer under threat of fracking, the trees were dying as a result of a pest that was spreading due to rising temperatures. This incited an even greater endeavour, taking him across six continents in which the consequences of climate change and the fossil fuel industry were forcing local communities to take action. From the severity
of Hurricane Sandy to melting Icelandic glaciers, the rising sea levels threatening island nations like Samoa and Vanuatu to the cities in China where no one dares to open their windows – Fox navigates each new context with one question in mind. If it’s too late to stop it now, “what are the things that climate can’t change?” It is this approach that drives his travels and shapes our reception of the people he meets. Yes, this is happening, yes they are fighting and no – they didn’t stop dancing, singing and laughing at life. There are two quotes from the film that help summarise Fox’s unique approach to the world’s climate crisis. Ones that might even help us to peer our heads out from under the intoxicating escapism of cat videos. Environmental Analyst Lester Brown reminds us that, “as environmentalists, we’ve been talking for decades now about saving the planet, but as I think about it,
The planet’s probably going to be around for some time, what’s at stake now is civilisation itself. Opposite page and above: Filming How to Let Go Right: Josh Fox speaking at a climate change rally
the planet’s probably going to be around for some time, what’s at stake now is civilisation itself ”. Putting it into perspective, we’re just the final minute of the final hour on Carl Sagan’s ‘Cosmic Calendar’ of Earth’s history. Although we could crumble under the weight of the world, Mika Maiava, Pacific Climate Change Warrior, explains why he and his community won’t succumb to existential stasis: “We don’t feel depressed because we know we can do something about it!” So, we can wait idly for Godot to appear or, like in the final quarter of a game you know your team is going to lose, you can still give it your all. Either way, as Mika says, “you’re not doing yourself a favour” by just sitting there! ∆
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THEATRE
Words by Janielle Williams Photos by Russell Smith Photography Jansen / Russell Smith Photography Neels Kleynhans / NK Photo
Alfredo Brillembourg and Rebecca Looringh-van Beeck of Urban-Think Tank took a break from last-minute preparations for the play Holy Contract to talk about the interdisciplinary design practice’s recent collaboration with Theatre4Change. Since 1998, Urban-Think Tank (U-TT) has conducted research and pursued concrete design projects addressing a wide range of subjects wherever they are concerned with contemporary architecture and urbanism, in sites spanning from Venezuela to Brazil, Bosnia & Herzegovina and India. Founded by Alfredo Brillembourg and Hubert Klumpner in Caracas, Venezuela, one of U-TT’s most notable initial projects was a cable car system that facilitated travel between the barrio San Agustín and central Caracas. Before then, the city’s mountains and highways formed a physical border between the informal settlement and the wealthier city centre, where there was greater access to employment, day-care, supermarkets, libraries, hospitals and other essential services. Since then, U-TT has sought to recognise and resolve a universal phenomenon: the divisive power that economic imbalance has in shaping societies and infrastructures. For the last three years, the practice has been working in the Khayelitsha township of Cape Town, South Africa, on the ‘Empower Shack’ housing project. Engaging deeply with the local community, part of the team has more recently been collaborating with non-profit group Theatre4Change to bring us an experimental theatre production inspired by the late American singer Gil-Scott Heron.
PHOTOGRAPHY
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GIRLS Words by Roxanne Goldberg Photography by Luo Yang Courtesy of MO-Industries.com
A young Chinese woman looks solemnly at the viewer, her chin cupped between scarred hands. Five years prior, the then sixteen-year-old Zhou Yan was doused with gasoline and set ablaze. Despite the vermillion blisters that line her arms, face, legs, and chest, Zhou does not appear a victim in the portraits taken by Lou Yang. She is serene, yet striking, sensitive, yet strong. Luo’s particular talent for capturing the complexity of an individual’s inner world is what makes the 32-yearold one of the most compelling photographers of her generation. Based in Beijing and Shanghai, Luo is most well-known for her ongoing portrait series GIRLS, parts of which have been exhibited extensively throughout China and Europe. GIRLS has been lauded for its ability to submerge viewers into the depths of Chinese subculture. But what makes Luo’s photographs stand out from the recent wave of photography attempting to defy long-believed and largely erroneous Western conceptions of Chinese women as submissive and traditional, is Luo’s eschewal of voyeurism in favor of empathetic camaraderie.
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Viewers, regardless of their cultural backgrounds, identify with Jin Jing (2015), arms above her head in naked abandonment; Jo (2009), legs splayed and raised as she eats watermelon in a crowded bed; Gao Zhe (2009), lying on her back with a cigarette burning in between her fingers, an ashtray balanced on her stomach, and a lover at her side. We see women nude and sometimes tattooed, bruised and never airbrushed. As Dr. Eva Morawietz, CEO and founder of MO-Industries, writes in the GIRLS catalogue, “GIRLS are bad-assed and self-aware, yet insecure, vulnerable and torn, with a supreme sense of cool.� Luo explains that to achieve the delicate balance between tenacious and tender, she spends significant time talking with her subjects before the camera comes between photographer and subject.
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“We build up trust and get to know each other. I think that’s why [the women] are relaxed and natural when we start shooting,” explains Luo. “It’s then when I get the images I’d like to achieve; when the girls feel brave and fearless.” Luo’s process is a psychological one. Before she begins shooting, it is important she and the model connect on an emotional level. Luo works to maintain a relaxed, often humorous environment conducive to a safe and honest unveiling of a woman’s most masked attributes. Whether the location is public, as in an abandoned highway where Pi Pi (2015) stands in transparent panties, or private, as in the affectionately messy domestic setting for Da Fei with her boyfriend (2008), Luo promotes a confident, fearless zone where she and her model can play and connect, nearly forgetting their purpose of taking a photograph. In conversation about her shoot with Zhou, Luo described their shoot as “relaxed and even naughty and funny.”
PHOTOGRAPHY / LUO YANG 81
Luo says the sensation when a shoot is over is one of “release” and “encouragement.” Luo, who plans to one day open a Chinese-based organization to help women under physical and emotional pressure, says she benefits psychologically and emotionally from the shoots as much as her subjects do. The mutual exchange between photographer and subject, which Luo describes as a “natural flow of energy,” is perhaps best encapsulated in Luo’s belief that each image contains her shadow – her emotions and confusions. To view Luo’s photographs is to enter the inner worlds of these women – realms that cannot be succinctly sealed with a bow, but are rather wrought with the anxieties and tensions of modern life. Luo does not express the uneasiness inherent in the 21st century with speed. Instead, she uses film cameras in order to deliberately slow-down and develop a candid, snapshot quality to the images that are in fact, highly staged.
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LUO YANG 83
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The poses in some photographs are more obvious than in others. Ro Ro (2014), for example, shows a nude woman slumped over and staring into the camera, her head resting on a table as the morning sun fills the otherwise somber room with light. The stillness of Ro Ro is in stark contrast to Sabus (2013), in which a woman is holding a red-tipped microphone whilst straddling a singing lover who is strumming a guitar. What unites these images is not only their raw albeit contrasting sentiment, but also their tactility. Luo is adept at wielding the wide array of textures film offers, in addition to light and form, to manipulate the unique psychological framework of a single image. It is this expertise that makes each of Luo’s photographs unnervingly convincing.
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Portrait of the artist
Luo’s photographs have a certain rebel quality that has become a signature feature of the Contemporary Chinese photography movement. Among Luo’s peers are Lin Zhipeng and Ren Hang, who, like Luo, mainly photograph unapologetic nude women who are daring and assertive. But Luo, Lin, and Ren do not make political statements. They instead use the body to assert their individuality, effectively extracting the cultural and historical concerns of the previous generation into a more intimate and personal realm. In this way, the portrait of Zhou is not intended to be a statement about the socio-political events that led to her being attacked. The photograph is instead an intimate portrait of a woman – her emotional landscape as conveyed through her eyes, her gestures – and a trace of a keen photographer, sensitive to the unique complexities that compose this particular individual. ∆
RADIO
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Interview by Charlotte Kench Photos courtesy of Refugee Radio Network
REFUGEE RADIO
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Integration means both of us, we integrate; I learn you and you learn me.
Just a few days before Christmas in 2014, Larry, Asuqou, So, Sammy and Ab Yally Yally produced the first ever episode of the Refugee Radio Network in Hamburg. Having been so disillusioned by the lack of accurate information in the German media concerning the refugee crisis, the team was thrilled that people from all walks of life called in to contribute their voice and start some much-needed discussion. Founder and Editor in Chief Larry Macaulay took some time out of his busy schedule to discuss the importance of alternative media, self-representation and art-based cultural integration.
What motivated you to create Germany’s first Refugee Radio Network? We created RRN in 2014 as a necessity. When engaging with the local German community we found out that they didn’t know much and they had the wrong information fed to them. So we started teaching them and passing this information out – about refugee deaths in the Mediterranean and the war in Libya – in order to fight the mainstream media’s negative narrative about refugees. It’s always “They are dangerous people, they are terrorists...” That’s what motivated us to create the first refugee radio in Germany. Radio is one of the most accessible ways to reach fellow refugees, especially for those who don’t have access to social media. I was a radio presenter for a music show when I was in college and I was also a radio activist during the pro-democratic movement in the 90s in Nigeria. Then I came here, I saw the vacuum and I said, “How can we reach people who aren’t coming to the protest grounds?” It was tough in the beginning but a lot of mainstream media has picked up – from the internet and TV to print media and radio. We are not competing with the [mainstream media], we are here to represent ourselves and not to allow others to talk for us. We are the ones on the streets, at the carnivals, in the refugee camps and at the protest grounds. We’ve been to most of the biggest refugee conferences in Germany over the past eight months
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If there would be one thing in the world that you could change instantly, what would it be? It’s hard for us to answer this question without bumping into simplistic good intentions… of course having the socalled “magic wand” there would be many things that we would like to change. For example, the redistribution of wealth, the rights of minorities and society’s reliance on profit and the exploitation of natural resources. It would also be nice if the word “stranger” could only have a positive meaning. Changing these things instantly would be fascinating and ideally, beautiful, but perhaps not as useful as if they were to come about gradually and with a shared consciousness.
Why is art your weapon of choice to raise awareness? Even before we met, we have always been interested in movements, organizations and people who have fought or expressed themselves for the rights of minorities and for social equality and human rights in general. To be able to channel certain concepts through our work, however, is something that came with time and it’s always in progress. We’ve gone for artistic expression as a means of communication quite spontaneously, for the pleasure of creating, building and, in fact, communicating. Insisting on our path and choosing to work primarily in public spaces, amongst the people, we have gradually developed a vision about discussion and exchange. With the passing of time
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Images of whales often appear in your art – why is that? As mentioned, our work is based on the comparison, on the relationships between the components that comprise a system. To further this concept, we have been working on a kind of code over the years. It’s a code that we use and gradually develop; based on the archive of components we have built over time. Various mechanical and natural elements are part of this archive. Among the latter, the cetaceans are animals that allow us to create a much broader discourse with and on the power of their image. The whale is an animal that is easily recognizable, although it’s not easy to be able to have a real and close-up experience with one. That’s why we believe it can give us the opportunity to build a communication that is direct, yet absolute. We often use the image of the whale to insist on the relationship between man and nature. In other situations, the whale allows us to
add a more specific reflection or an empathic connection. For many years, for example, the whale has enabled mankind to “turn on the light.” Historically, whales have been killed for the purpose of obtaining oil from their blubber that could be burned to produce light. Even today, the adverse effects of the relationship between cetaceans and mankind persist. In addition to hunting in some areas of the world, pollution, exploitation of resources and climate change continue to have significantly harmful impacts on their health and habits. Therefore, we are interested in the visual value that the whale possesses as an environmentalist icon. It’s a direct message, but allows us to extend that reflection in whatever direction interests us. It encourages us to think about the system of which we are all – consciously or not – an active part.
In order to experience different places and local realities, we are finding ourselves more easily immersed in the contrasts and the different ways of living on the streets, of sociability and the ways in which politics affect the population.
What was the mural or painting experience that marked you the most? Each mural we make is a very intense experience for us and often involves living in a new place for a few days, immersing ourselves in environments and cultures different from our own and in which we have to quickly find a work/life routine. In terms of our artistic path, the physical and geographical path then becomes a single line for us. Each step is related to the previous one, despite the distance and difference between the contexts in which we create. Every detail is important, for better or for worse. In order to experience different places and local realities, we are finding ourselves more easily immersed in the contrasts and the different ways of living on the streets, of sociability and the ways in which politics affect the population. We consider our recent trips to New Delhi, Manchester, Cairo and Vancouver among some of the most impressive in our travels. ∆
I have tried in my way to be free. Leonard Cohen
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