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Culture
Maryam Saleh: The Raw Voice of Revolution
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15 May 2012
Maryam will be singing her own original songs, now fully developed in terms of music, expression, and even politics. (Photo: Al-Akhbar) The outspoken Egyptian singer comes back to Beirut to take part in the “Women in Threatened Societies” festival.
During the last few days of the curfew imposed on Egyptians in June 2011, fifteen people spent the evening in a small flat in central Cairo waiting for its 5am end.
High emotions, raised by the enormity of the situation outside, were diffused by listening to Sheikh Imam songs and emptying bottles, one after the other.
The group fell silent and Maryam, reclining, began to sing: “How long can one go on putting out one fire with another? O decorated ship, with thousands drowning inside you, I am bored with you now and I will find me another way. But all along the road, I will breathe in your soil as if it was part me.” (All Along the Road).
A year later, Maryam is releasing her first album, I Am Not Singing (produced by Eka3), at the Babel Theater in Beirut as part of the “Women in Threatened Societies” festival.
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Entrevista con Alain Badiou
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09 May 2012
Eduardo Febbro
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Alain Badiou es un pensador que podría llamarse polifónico: ha abordado la filosofía y la política, la historia, el marxismo y la vida contemporánea, pero siempre parece haberlo hecho con la mirada puesta en el presente: buscando los modos en que el pasado puede ayudarnos a construir un futuro mejor. Una semana antes de su llegada a Buenos Aires, Radar lo entrevistó en París para que desplegara ese mapa de su pensamiento por el que orbitan las revoluciones árabes y el desastre ecológico, el duelo por las revoluciones del siglo XX y la salud del capitalismo, el mercado de las opiniones contra la comunidad de las ideas y, fundamentalmente, el amor como centro de gravedad ineludible a partir del cual comenzar la construcción de una nueva forma de futuro.
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Canada: The Ktunaxa
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02 May 2012
Living the Language
Can the internet save a language? For the Ktunaxa nation, an indigenous people inhabiting parts of north-western America, the answer may just be 'yes'.
The Ktunaxa language is related to no other on earth and only a handful of people speak it fluently. Most of them are members of the oldest generation, something that has spurred a race against time for a community that must record and preserve as much of the language spoken today as possible. In a few years, it might already be too late.
The challenge is not only to record endless hours of material but how to make it available to those wishing to learn the language. Here is where the internet comes in to play. Dedicated young community members, such as Marisa Philips, are working hard to publish recordings, interactive games for children and written language material online.
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Art and the Arab Spring
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26 April 2012
Daanish Faruqi is editor of the recent book From Camp David to Cast Lead and is currently a research fellow in Doha.
Art should have a prominent position in revolutionary politics, but as "signposts, not as overt political manifestos"
Sculptor Abdulrahman Katanani is one example of the fact that Arab artists are 'already among us' [Al Jazeera]
The function of art - one of the functions of art - consists in bringing spiritual [geistigen] peace to humanity. I believe one cannot characterise the state of consciousness in contemporary art any better than by saying: more and more people are becoming conscious that spiritual peace is not enough because it has never prevented, nor could it ever prevent, real strife, and that perhaps one of the functions of art today is also to contribute to real peace - a function that cannot be foisted upon art, but must lie in the essence of art itself.
- Herbert Marcuse, "Society as a Work of Art"
Doha, Qatar - Cai Guo-Quiang's exhibit in Doha was exquisite. Incorporating techniques from Islamic artistic heritage such as miniature paintings, Saraab ("mirage"), the celebrated artist's inaugural solo exhibition in the Arab world creatively synthesised the hitherto unexplored historical and cultural dynamics of the Arab Gulf and China.
For instance, through controlled gunpowder explosions, he produced a dazzling canvass of 99 horses that simultaneously highlighted the symbolic nature of the number 99 - a reference to the 99 names of God in the Islamic tradition, and a symbol for infinity in Chinese culture - and of the horse more generally, with the majestic steed featuring prominently in both cultural milieus.
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Diego Rivera: public art, private museums
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26 April 2012
Hamid Dabashi is Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University.
Columbia University
The display of Diego Rivera's artwork in a private museum defies all that it was meant to represent
Rivera's murals such as 'Agrarian Leader Zapata' would be better off in Zucotti Park than in MoMA [AP]
New York, NY - It will cost you $25 to get admitted into the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. If you happen to go there with your spouse or partner, that will be $50. If you have two children who are accompanying you on this visit and they are over sixteen, that will amount to $100 - children under sixteen and senior citizens get a small discount. Any other discount, perhaps, for ordinary folks? "Are you with any corporation," the kind and polite person behind the ticket counter will ask you if you were to enquire. So if you happen to work for Goldman Sachs, for example, will you get admitted for free? "There are other benefits too," the helpful staff will tell you at the grand foyer of MoMA.
Now suppose you like an exhibition at MoMA and you want to buy a catalogue of the artist exhibited. That will cost you somewhere around $50. This whole visit of a family of four to MoMA will amount to about $150.
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Jeremy Hardy thinks… about Margaret Thatcher
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19 April 2012
This is set to be Margaret Thatcher’s year. At the time of writing, she is still with us, but obits are being updated. I know this because I am sometimes asked to appear in programmes being prepared for posthumous broadcast. I refuse, because I have no wish to speak ill of the dead, even when they are still alive. But I’m sure all manner of people have lined up to pay homage, Tony Blair gushing, ‘She was the People’s Pinochet.’
No mention of her friendship with the Chilean mass murderer and torturer appears in the rather silly film The Iron Lady. Indeed, according to that version of history, her motivation in taking on General Galtieri was in part that he was a fascist. But, in common with her friend Reagan, fascist dictatorship wasn’t something she frequently held against people.
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Jeremy Hardy thinks… about Margaret Thatcher
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19 April 2012
This is set to be Margaret Thatcher’s year. At the time of writing, she is still with us, but obits are being updated. I know this because I am sometimes asked to appear in programmes being prepared for posthumous broadcast. I refuse, because I have no wish to speak ill of the dead, even when they are still alive. But I’m sure all manner of people have lined up to pay homage, Tony Blair gushing, ‘She was the People’s Pinochet.’
No mention of her friendship with the Chilean mass murderer and torturer appears in the rather silly film The Iron Lady. Indeed, according to that version of history, her motivation in taking on General Galtieri was in part that he was a fascist. But, in common with her friend Reagan, fascist dictatorship wasn’t something she frequently held against people.
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Elia Suleiman's cinema as the premonition of the Arab revolutions
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18 April 2012
Hamid Dabashi is Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University.
Exploring the emotive universe from which the Arab Spring finally blossomed
Elia Suleiman's is the cinema of the suspension of belief [GALLO/GETTY]
New York, NY - What if Bashar al-Assad does not fall and all these heroic Syrian sacrifices are for naught? What if Omar Suleiman becomes the next Egyptian president - or any other former aides to President Hosni Mubarak come back to power? What if "the Islamists" take over Tunisia, or Egypt, or succeed in Syria? Is Ali Abdullah Saleh really deposed? Maybe he is still running Yemen from behind the scene? What about Bahrain - why is scarcely anyone talking about the brutal repression of the Arab Spring in that tiny island, the home of the US Fifth Fleet? Aren't the Saudis and the Gulf states in cahoots with the US, the Europeans and the Israelis to repress these revolutions where they can or else hijack them where possible? There are reports that prominent Bahraini activists, such as Nabeel Rajab, are barred from entering Egypt by security forces for fear of collaboration between regional revolutionaries.
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Acusan de antisemita al Premio Nobel Günter Grass por su poema sobre las armas atómicas israelíes
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06 April 2012
Traducido del alemán para Rebelión por Germán Leyens
Süddeutsche Zeitung publicó un poema de Günter Grass en el cual el Premio Nobel de Literatura opina sobre la participación alemana en el armamento israelí y la posibilidad de un ataque contra Irán.
Günter Grass ataca al Estado de Israel en su nuevo poema sobre el conflicto atómico con Irán. El periódico informa que representantes de organizaciones judías y políticos alemanes han reaccionado con una serie de imprecaciones contra el autor. Lo acusan de antisemita y de ignorar la situación política de Oriente Medio.
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El rock proletario y la música revolucionaria, alzados contra el copyright
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28 March 2012
"¿Es revolucionario que mis discos, mis libros, mis canciones o mi película usen las obsoletas leyes del Copyright, que podrían ser usadas por las grandes transnacionales del entretenimiento para multar y arrestar a las personas que les gusta mis obras?”
En otros países recrudece la “guerra de Copyright”: las grandes empresas del entretenimiento ordenan el cierre de sitios web, el arresto de personas y la implementación de leyes controversiales en pro de sus intereses, como SOPA y PIPA (en Estados Unidos), Sinde-Wert (en España), Döring (en México), Lleras (en Colombia) y el convenio ACTA en 31 países. Si bien algunos músicos están de acuerdo conque se arreste a las personas que descargan sus MP3, en países más civilizados como Venezuela los artistas más bien se sienten honrados de que la gente los conozca, descargue y comparta sus canciones. Se está experimentando con nuevos modelos que permitan a los artistas vivir de su música, y a sus fanáticos el poder obtener sus canciones sin dejarle la mayor parte del dinero a grupos económicos multinacionales.
"Son de la caña", el primer disco de Dame Pa Matala.
Foto: CornetaRota
Grupos como Dame Pa' Matala están acostumbrados a tocar y vender sus discos ya no en discotiendas, sino en sus propios conciertos, con un éxito impresionante. Mucha gente ha descargado sus MP3 por Internet, pero eso no impide que vendan cientos de discos en sus conciertos.
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