The Critical Witness

Am 29.05.2012 werden wir mit Bühnenwatch dem IAAW, Insitut für Asien- und Afrikawissenschaften an der HU Berlin, einen Besuch abstatten.

Apr 19

The missing ingredient in Sweden’s racist-misogynist cake by Shailja Patel

What makes the cake episode so deeply offensive is the appropriation, by both artist and his audience, of African women’s bodies and experiences, while completely excluding real African women from the discourse. It is a pornography of violence.

The scene is Stockholm’s Museum of Modern Art, on Sunday, April 15th. The event is the celebration of World Art Day, and the 75th birthday of the Swedish Artists Organisation. Five artists have been asked to create birthday cakes for the occasion.

This is what the world will see, in photos and on video, the next morning.

On the table, a huge cake, with a smooth shiny black surface, in the form of a caricatured African female body, sans legs. Naked, splayed on its back, it is composed of crotch, belly mound, large pendulous breasts held by truncated stick arms, a row of neck rings. Where the neck rings end, a living human head rears up through a hole in the table. The head belongs to the kneeling body of a man. It is tricked out in exaggerated blackface –large white circles around the eyes, drawn-on cartoon red mouth and pointed teeth.

Sweden’s female Minister of Culture, Lena Adelsohn-Liljeroth, approaches the cake with a knife in her hand. She performs a simulated clitoridectomy, cutting the first slice from the crotch, to reveal a moist spongy red interior. The head of the body moans and shrieks with pain. A roomful of white Swedes, men and women, laugh and applaud. Cameras flash. In the photographs, faces appear alive, avidly entertained, as the minister feeds the slice she has cut to the grinning head. More people cut and eat slices of the cake body, dismembering it. The head moans, yells, screams with each knife-stroke.

There are no people of colour in the room. There are no black women in the room.

The images go viral. The African Swedish National Association demands the Minister’s resignation, as do hundreds of viewers across the world. Hundreds more register outrage and disgust on social media. It is unacceptable that the body of an African woman can be represented this way, as an object for violation and consumption. It is unacceptable that a government minister of Sweden can publicly enact the violation and consumption of that body, and laugh as she does it.

SECOND LAYER

The artist who created this cake-installation, Makode Linde, is a biracial Swedish man, of mixed black and white heritage. He refers to himself as an Afro-Swede. It was he who knelt under the table, playing the head of the cake-woman.

“Within my art I try to raise a discussion and awareness about black identity and the diversity of it,” Linde says on Al-Jazeera. “The [recent] discussions [about my cake piece] have been mostly if I or the culture minister are racist or not. I think it is a shallow analysis of the work. It’s easy to take any image and put it in the wrong context.”

His intention, he says, was to prompt action against the female genital mutilation (FGM) practiced by certain African communities. The performance “went off the exact way I wanted it.”

“It’s sad if people feel offended, but considering the low number of artists in Sweden who identify as Afro-Swedish I find it sad that the Afro-Swedish Association haven’t followed my artistry and do not understand what my work is about.”

And he continues:

“If people can get this upset from a woman cutting a cake, can’t they use that energy towards the real battle against female genital mutilation?”

He displays no ambivalence about his appropriation of the body and experience of an African woman. There is no suggestion that he has ever spoken to women from communities which practice FGM, the ones his installation is supposedly intended to benefit, or that he has invited their feedback on this piece.

THIRD LAYER

The plot thickens.

Swedish arts blogger Johan Palme frames the incident as a ‘very efficient mousetrap’ for the Minister of Culture.

Apparently, Lena Adelsohn-Liljeroth, the culture minister, “is reviled by large parts of the art world for her culture-sceptic stance and for previously condemning provocative art in what many see as a kind of censorship.”

Therefore, she arrived at the event acutely conscious of the need to repair her tattered image and dissolve the perception that she is a threat to freedom of expression in Sweden. Handed a knife, and asked to cut into the crotch of the cake-woman, she knew that if she balked or questioned, she risked being pilloried as an enemy of provocative art.

“ Lena Adelsohn-Liljeroth tries to play along as best she can in what she sees as a “bizarre” situation, reciprocating the laughter.” writes Palme. “And on the other side of the cake, placed in the narrow space in front of a glass wall, stands one of the minister’s fiercest critics, visual artist and provocateur Marianne Lindberg De Geer, camera at the ready. And she snaps pictures of the whole series of events, as the minister is egged into doing more outrageous things, performing for the crowd.”

Palme also reveals that artist Makode Linde’s has another life: “he’s a club promoter and DJ, one of Sweden’s most successful, who knows exactly how to manipulate crowds and their emotions.”

Following the global outcry the Minister releases a statement:

Our national cultural policy assumes that culture shall be an independent force based on the freedom of expression. Art must therefore be allowed room to provoke and pose uncomfortable questions. As I emphasised in my speech on Sunday, it is therefore imperative that we defend freedom of expression and freedom of art —even when it causes offence.

I am the first to agree that Makode Linde’s piece is highly provocative since it deliberately reflects a racist stereotype. But the actual intent of the piece — and Makode Linde’s artistry — is to challenge the traditional image of racism, abuse and oppression through provocation. While the symbolism in the piece is despicable, it is unfortunate and highly regrettable that the presentation has been interpreted as an expression of racism by some. The artistic intent was the exact opposite.

It is perfectly obvious that my role as minister differs from that of the artist. Provocation can not and should not be an expression for those who have the trust and responsibility of Government representative. I therefore feel it is my responsibility to clarify that I am sincerely sorry if anyone has misinterpreted my participation and I welcome talks with the African Swedish National Association on how we can counter intolerance, racism and discrimination.

Still missing: the voice of any black woman. I wonder why Nyamko Sabuni, Sweden’s dynamic Minister for Integration and Gender Equality, and the only black woman in Sweden’s cabinet, has not been asked to comment. In 2006, Sabuni created a storm of controversy when she called for mandatory gynecological examinations of all schoolgirls in Sweden in order to prevent genital mutilation. If she had been the speaker at this event, would she have been asked to cut the cake? Could her absence from the debate be because the inconvenient fact of a live articulate powerful black Swedish woman, who actually makes policy on FGM, shows up Linde’s shock art for the puerile nonsense it is?

THE BASE LAYER

Nothing about me, without me has been the rallying cry of numerous movements for justice and representation at the tables of power.

It’s tragic that in 2012, this basic tenet of any political art or advocacy is continually ignored by the entitled. And never more so than when it comes to African women and girls, the world’s favourite target for rescue, the population everyone loves to speak for and speak about, but rarely cares to listen to. What makes this cake episode so deeply offensive is the appropriation, by both Linde and his audience, of African women’s bodies and experiences, while completely excluding real African women from the discourse. It is a pornography of violence.

Jiwon Chung, leading theorist of Boal’s Theater Of The Oppressed, offers a useful set of questions to apply to any art that claims to address the suffering of a particular group or class of human beings. Let’s apply them to Linde’s cake installation, and the argument of his supporters that it somehow serves women and girls from communities that practice FGM.

1) Cui bono? Who benefits?

Linde has achieved overnight global fame from this exercise – the kind of exposure and media spotlight artists dream of. Sweden’s Culture Minister, Lena Adelsohn-Liljeroth has established herself as a champion of provocative art. It’s not clear how any woman who has had FGM, or any girl at risk of FGM, is materially better off.

2) How do those whose suffering / body / experience is depicted feel? Do they feel they’ve been done justice?

A brief survey of comments on media sites and facebook postings about this event suggest that the overwhelming majority of African women feel ‘outraged’, ‘violated’, ‘furious’, ‘sick’.

3) Are you speaking for them (because you have a voice, and they don’t), or are they speaking for you, because what they have to say is so much more compelling than you?

The only one vocalizing anything in Linde’s art is – Makonde Linde. His caricature of an African woman doesn’t even vocalize words, just sounds of pain.

The next five questions, only Linde can answer.

4) Are you attributing clearly (giving clear credit?)

5) Are you dialectical?

6) Is your I a we? Is your we an I?

7) If their suffering were to disappear, would you be truly happy? Or would you have to look for something else onto which to glom your dissatisfaction?

8) Do you belong, do you truly claim solidarity with the suffering — or do you do it only when it fits in with your concerns and schedule? How do you support them outside your art?

Here’s an idea for truly provocative art. No more male artists, black or white, speaking for African women. No more ever-more-graphic ever-more-voyeuristic art on the suffering of African women. Stop using the female African body as raw material to be worked – unless you happen to live in one. Then, notice that African women are making their own work about their lives and struggles. Look. Listen. Learn.

* BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* Kenyan artist and activist Shailja Patel is the author of Migritude (Kaya Press, 2010), and a founding member of Kenyans for Peace, Truth and Justice. She has just been selected to represent Kenya at the 2012 Cultural Olympiad in London.

Apr 08

Apr 01

Call for Contributions: “Arriving In The Future - Stories of Home and Exile”

Edited by Asoka Esuruoso and Philipp Khabo Köpsell

Arriving in the future, Stories of Home and Exile will be an interdisciplinary approach to positioning. As a collection of poetry, short stories and academic essays on identity written by Black Writers who regard Germany as their home, and those who regard it as permanent or temporary exile, it will attempt to add a new layer to the debate and construction of Black Identity within the German context.

Guidelines:

Deadline for Submissions March 30^th 2012
Maximum: 8 pages (ca. 4,800 words)
No minimum
Poems can be on any subject
Essays should focus on identity
Short Stories can take place anywhere but should have some reference to life and experiences in Germany
Each author should submit a short bio and photo along with their writing
Submissions should be sent to: arriving.in.the.future@googlemail.com

Further submissions advice can be found here

Each author will receive:

A free copy of the book
Paid performance opportunities
The opportunity to buy books at a reduced price from Edition Assemblage
A DVD with video and audio readings of the texts and future performances

Concept:

“There is an oversimplification of the Negro. He is either pictured by conservatives as happy, picking his banjo, or by the so-called liberals as low, miserable, and crying. The Negro’s life is neither of these. Rather, it is in-between and above and below these pictures.”

- Zora Neale Hurston 1944

What she speaks of is identity in its flattest form. The identity that people once saw when they looked at a black face, flat, blank, static, like a snap shot frozen in time. There was no breath behind the lips, no thoughts behind the mind. We were caricatures of ourselves, like a child’s drawing. It is a false image. Diversity and texture have been and continue to be at the core of Black identity. To be human is by definition to be complex. Yet the Oversimplified image persists, like a ghost that you just can’t shake, or a photo you can’t wipe free.

To escape simplification, new layers needed to be applied. From the African American Slave narratives quest for human dignity, to Du Bois’ The Souls of Black Folk, Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eye’s Were Watching God, Franz Fanon’s Black Skin White Masks, Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, May Ayim’s Showing Our Colors and Blues in Black and White, and countless, countless more every literary generation has added a new layer to the image of Black identity and experience.

Writing, through their fingers, became a way to reclaim existence and define selfhood. Writing was much more than expression, more than the spiritual liberation of the burden of knowing. It was the creation of new realities and new unlimited spaces. It was the breaking of old frames to give space for a bigger picture. The existence of a thought became a fact in black and white. It became a solid foundation for new perspectives.

However while anthologies of African American literature have been published since 1845, and African writers such as Chinua Achebe, Ben Okri, Ama Ata Aidoo and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (among others) have gained acclaim on the world stage, the writing and experiences of Black individuals within Germany has, even to this day, been largely ignored. Literary studies on Black Identity within the German context are still very few and far between, and the layers this Black German identity have added to the image of broader Black identity has often been overlooked.

“…und wenn Du dazu noch schwarz bist” (Edition Con) and “Showing Our Colors: Afro-German Women Speak Out” (Orlanda) in 1984 and 1986 were really the first testimonies on the lives of the African Diaspora in Germany to gain notice within mainstream German society. For Black individuals living in Germany - for those living in isolation - these publications became undeniable proof of the validity of their personal experiences. These texts offered a foundation for numerous other publications and further literary expression. They gave a deeper background and a clearer focus that allowed further perspectives.

For Afro-German writers in the 1980s it was imperative to be regarded as part of German society, while for Black writers from other countries (either as travelers, immigrants, or refugees) the focus was on networking and contributing their own voices.

Yet in the early 1990’s the acceptance of Black individuals within German society suffered from a post-unification hang-over. It took a turn for worse with the firebombing of refugee homes, and the reoccurring presence of neo-fascist mobs. A sudden mainstream acceptance of exclusivist rhetoric and a new idea of the white German “self” vs. “the other” left undeniable traces across the German landscape and within the writing of Black authors.

“[E]s ist nicht wahr/ daß es nicht wahr ist/so war es/ erst zuerst dann wieder.” So reads the beginning of May Ayim’s poem Deutschland im Herbst, drawing disturbing parallels between the fascist Kristallnacht of November 9th 1938 and the murder of Angolan immigrant Amadeu Antonio Kiowa in 1990.

Parallel to the desire for societal acceptance a different question arose in the aftermath of this violence and rejection. Being a member of the African Diaspora, how does one definehome? For many people with African roots the concept of home and belonging can appear fragile. In the late 1990s, many Black authors negotiated this concept by depicting Africa as exile, utopia, or potentially a new/old place of belonging.

“I’m not at home/ still not at home/ not my country/ just my origin/ one of my origins” writes Olumide Popoola in her poem Nigeria – partly resigning, partly equivocating the concept of home.

Then in the late 1990’s TV celebrities like Arabella Kiesbauer, Mo Asumang and Mola Adebisi slowly made it possible for Black individuals to be regarded as part of German society by the white majority. Yet how fragile the concept of Black Germaness remains became obvious in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. The term Migrationshintergrund(migration background) gained new popularity and is still being used as footnote for the description of all Germans deviating from the 1930s image of the “Ideal German.”

Now the writing of the new millennium shows a new paradigm shift: The desire to be part of something much bigger. Black writers are again embracing the term “diaspora.” Accompanied by the academic discourse of Paul Gilroy’s Black Atlantic new alliances are being forged that stretch across the continents. Poetry is brimming over with Pan-African references from Ancient Egypt to the transatlantic slave trade all the way to 1960s Black power rhetoric.

“Dreihundert Jahre alte Seelen/ über den Ozean geweht”, writes Angela Alagiyawanna-Kadalie. While Chantal Sandjon lyrically dreams of “revolution in red black & green,” (the colors of Garvey’s Pan- African flag).

Like all those that have come before, this new shift will inevitably add its own layers, colors, and strokes to the ever-changing image of Black Identity. This process is unending, and yet is essential and just as important now as it has ever been.

“The problem of the 20th century is the problem of the color line…” So begins The Souls Of Black Folk Du Bois’ groundbreaking treatise on black psychology written over a century ago. Yet in this post 9/11 Globalize World fraught with economic, cultural, religious, and racial tensions his words ring just as true a hundred years later as they ever did. Du Bois was attempting to pull back a veil so that readers might gain a peak into the depths and meaning of the black soul, for he believed the health of any democratic nation is dependent upon the health of its minorities. They are like canaries in the coal mine of political freedom and equality.

Now through this collection of thoughts, stories, poems and essays by current Black writers in Germany Arriving in the future, Stories of Home and Exile will attempt once again to pull back a veil and give the world a another peak into the depth and meaning of Black German identity.

Mar 29

Trayvon Martin und die Herren von der Bundespolizei

Da ist was… das ist seltsam. Soweit hergeholt kann es nicht sein. Darf ich ausführen? Die Fotos kapuzentragender Schwarzer Politiker, Musiker und Celebrities in Hoodies sind bewegend. Natürlich sind sie das. Da wurde ein 17-jähriger Junge von einem testosterongeladenem Neighborhood Watch-Captain erschossen, weil dieser den Teenager für kriminell hielt. Dass dieser nur zur Halbzeitpause schnell Süßigkeiten und Eistee gekauft hatte, macht das ganze so unsagbar bitter, dass selbst Präsident Obama dazu Stellung bezieht.

Nun geht drüben ein echter Ruck durch die Gesellschaft. Auch Mainstream Talkshows greifen verspätet das Thema auf. Es scheint klar zu sein, dass es nicht okay ist und nicht sein darf, dass Menschen, ausschließlich aufgrund ihrer Hautfarbe und Kleidung als potentiell kriminell eingestuft werden. Trayvon Martin (und unzählige Namenlose) sind die traurigen Beispiele dieses rassistisch-motivierten Phantasmas. Republikaner, Demokraten, alle scheinen sich dabei einig zu sein.
Und dann kommt Deutschland.

Als ob wir uns alle in einem zusammenhangslosen Vakuum befinden, befindet das Verwaltungsgericht Koblenz genau diese Einschätzung für zulässig und für den Dienst der Bundespolizei unabdingbar. Und zwar im Kampf gegen das “Illegale”. Ist der/die Bahnreisende Schwarz oder auch nur vom Aussehen her nicht der “deutschen Kultur” zugehörig, dann soll es legitim sein sie/ihn stichprobenartig auszusondern, um sein “Deutschsein” zu überprüfen. Ist sie/er durch wundersame Fügung des Schicksals tatsächlich deutsche_r Staatsbürger_in, folgt der obligatorische Anruf in der Zentrale, um sicherzugehen, dass hier nicht noch ein offener Haftbefehl aussteht. An und für sich ist dieses Prozedere nichts neues. Wir erleben’s ja nun selbst zu häufig, als dass wir’s ‘Zufall’ nennen können. Neu ist allerdings, dass dies, was bisher von Polizei und Innenministerium vehement geleugnet wurde, vor Gericht von Beamten als Standardvorgehensweise beschrieben wurde.

Was hat Trayvon Martin damit zu tun?

Exakt die Einschätzung, die Trayvon Martin das Leben kostete, wird in Deutschland richterlich abgesegnet - die Kriminalisierung des Schwarzen Subjekts, wahlweise jeglichen Subjekts of color. Wir befinden uns eben nicht in einem soziopolitischen Vakuum. So groß ist die Welt nicht mehr. Wir, als Gesellschaft haben eine Verantwortung zu tragen, uns zu entwickeln, uns zu bessern und - platt gesagt - die Welt zu einem faireren, gerechteren Ort zu machen. Dies ist der Impuls und die Legitimation unseres Handelns, abgesehen von der Selbsterhaltung. Ein Bedauern der “menschenverachtenden Zustände in Übersee”, gepaart mit dem Abnicken diskriminierender Rasterfahndung im eigenen Land, ist - ich bedauere das pathetische Grummeln vom Olymp - Urin auf den Gräbern der Menschen, die für eine bessere Welt kämpften oder in einer schlechteren ums Leben kamen.

Vor noch nicht langer Zeit wurde uns gesagt, wir seien Deutschland. Das ist toll und doch manchmal ein fragwürdiges Zugeständnis. Bei all der Beweihräucherung demokratischer Grundwerte, im Angesicht des latenten Misstrauens gegenüber den eigenen Bürgern und Gästen, bleibt es doch, was es war. Ein Land mit einem schizophrenen Verhältnis zum eigenen Spiegelbild. Daran könnten wir doch mal arbeiten.

Mar 26

“There are the occasions that men—intellectual men, clever men, engaged men—insist on playing devil’s advocate, desirous of a debate on some aspect of feminist theory or reproductive rights or some other subject generally filed under the heading: Women’s Issues. These intellectual, clever, engaged men want to endlessly probe my argument for weaknesses, want to wrestle over details, want to argue just for fun—and they wonder, these intellectual, clever, engaged men, why my voice keeps raising and why my face is flushed and why, after an hour of fighting my corner, hot tears burn the corners of my eyes. Why do you have to take this stuff so personally? ask the intellectual, clever, and engaged men, who have never considered that the content of the abstract exercise that’s so much fun for them is the stuff of my life.” —

This really struck a chord. Even my boyfriend, feminist that he is, can have this reaction when I’m in tears after an NPR story. This is my fucking life. Excuse me if I can’t remove the personal.

This whole thing is the reason why confrontations with people that I consider friends always leaves me crying. Like, I get so angry and so flustered because it’s not just some stupid game to me, like it is to them. It’s something that’s real and personal.

Which is why I don’t argue with my family anymore. Same-sex marriage, abortion, reproductive rights, equal pay, etc. are not just some political talking point, they affect my life.