Art : Jerry et Kadafi participeront à Ghetto Biennale
Ghetto Biennale est un grand événement artistique qui aura lieu à Port-au-Prince du 30 novembre au 18 décembre à la Grand-rue dans les ateliers d'Eugène et Celeur. Il permettra de réunir des artistes locaux et des artistes internationaux qui viendront travailler sur place afin de participer à une exposition collective le 16 décembre 2009. Plusieurs disciplines seront représentés à cette première qui va mettre cote à cote les arts urbains et les arts classiques dans une exploration conjointe de la culture haïtienne confrontée à la violence, la misère et la marginalisation.
PARTICIPATING ARTISTS & SCHOLARS TO EXHIBIT IN GRAND RUE ON 16th DECEMBER 2009
ARTISTSAllison Rowe – United States of AmericaMapping the CoastWhen the earth gets warmer, ocean tides rise and coastal spaces disappear. If, as scientists believe, the current global warming trend continues, our planet is going to look very different in a few short decades. The low lands of coastal cities like Port-au-Prince will soon be gone and replaced by water.In an attempt to prepare people for these massive geographic changes, I will be mapping the future coast line of Port-au-Prince during the Ghetto Biennale. This project will be determined by time, not distance thus allowing this map to grow organically as I attempt to go around, over or through the many industrial areas that line the ocean.
APROSIFA - HaitiBuilding a New WorldFive of APROSIFA 's young members will participate in the Ghetto Biennale in December 2009. They want to build a big sculpture that they want to call: Building a New World.
They see, today social inequality, racism, war are hurting too many people. As artists they want to promote social justice, change worldwide. They want this piece inspires love, solidarity, social justice for a new world.The young people: Fenel Mathial, Ronald Cadet, Nathalie Fanfan, Jean Walgens Pierre, Jean Robert Almonord
Bill Drummond – United Kingdom
The17: Port-au-Prince 2009The17 is a choir, but the choir is made up of different groups of people every time they perform. And it does not matter if those included in The17 are the world’s worst or greatest singers. And the only audience for The17 are those that are taking part. The17 began touring in 2006 and have performed more than 300 times all over Europe, including Moscow, Oslo, Stockholm, St Petersburg, Vienna, Zurich and London.
On Monday and Tuesday the 14th & 15th December 2009 we – my colleague John Hirst and myself – will want to create a performance by The17 in a school in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. This will be The17’s first performance in the new world of the Americas. The performance in Port-au-Prince is to be twinned with a performance of the same score that was performed in a school in England in October 2009.
With the help of a translator we will want to work with ten separate classes in the same school over the two days. It would be good if these classes reflected the age range of the school. With each class we would want to work with them for a minimum of 30 minutes. In that time we will record the class singing a chosen note or musical phrase for five minutes. All ten recordings will be mixed together to make one five-minute piece of music. At the end of the school day on the Tuesday, we would then like all ten of the classes to gather together in one place, to listen to the recording they have taken part in making being played back to them. We hope it will be like no other music they have ever heard. The music will contain nothing but their voices, there will be no words and no tune, it may be frightening and it will be huge. After they have heard what they have done we will play them back to them what the students in the school in England did. We will then want to take a photograph of all ten classes together. We will present to the school a large group photograph of all the students in the English school.On our return to England we will play to the students there what the students in Port-au-Prince recorded and present them with the photo of the students in Port-au-Prince.
This performance in Haiti and the one in England are both part of The17’s Coast-to-Coast world tour. The photographs taken and other information will be used in a book and exhibition documenting the world tour. John Hirst and I will arrive in Haiti with the recording equipment that we will need for this performance but will have to source a PA system that we can take into the school while in Port-au-Prince. During the week that John Hirst and I are in Haiti we will also be giving a performance by The17 in a local Voodoo temple and giving a talk about the work of The17 and what we have been doing in the school, to the other artists attending the festival.
Carole Frances Lung – United States of America
Made in Haiti“
The apparel of this god is in keeping with his people, he likes to dress himself in an old black overcoat, torn old black hat with a high crown and worn-out black pants.” Pg. 220
Zora Neale Hurston Feel My HorseHaiti has the potential for being the next victim of multinational apparel manufacturers. Responding to this Frau Fiber, itinerate textile worker and activist, subverts this system, by collaboratively instigating Haitian textile workers to repurpose used garments from the west, turning them into fantastically, shabby couture apparel, and exporting them back into the United States.
Cat Barich, Tania Stanic and Dalia Neis – Germany & Croatia
Radio Grand RueWe will be running Radio Grand Rue a temporary Internet radio station. Transmissions will include sound collages recorded in various locations of Port-au-Prince. As well as recording and broadcasting the final conference and setting-up a sound installation for the opening of the Biennale, we like to give platform to other participating artists by broadcasting interviews and sound contributions.
Chantal Regnault - France
Haitian Graffitti ArtistsOver a year ago, graffiti style color and b/w drawings started to appear on downtown Port-au-Prince walls and rather rapidly made it to uptown Petion-Ville walls. At first, most of them were signed “
Jerry” but were soon joined by two other ubiquitous artists “
Marc” and “
Kadafi”. Today they have joined in what they called” the Haitian Graffiti Movement”. Shortly after the pop star death, Jerry’s version of Michael Jackson made the New York Times.
An audiovisual piece using still photos and video segments will document the artists and their work. The artists will give us a filmed tour of various Port-au-Prince neighborhoods where their art is on display and will engaged with the onlookers, seeking their reactions and comments. They will also be filmed as they produce new drawings . The final document will be screened in the yard of the downtown workshop of the Grand Rue sculptors Eugene and Celeur who are hosting the Ghetto biennale.
Crow Cianciola and Ace Lehner – United States of America
OINGOOur project looks to the ghetto biennale as a counter exhibition, disrupting conventional art scene exclusions, as well as a bold conversion of global power systems, centers of art production, and cultural transmission. As U.S. artists proposing to travel to Port-au-Prince, Haiti to participate in the Ghetto Biennale it is important to us to be part of a critical dialogue about globalism. There are approximately 10,000 NGO’s operating in Haiti, all backed by the interests and finances of the US, France and Canada. Many of these NGOs are immersed in agricultural production. The resulting farms are part and parcel of the global industry of economic assistance. We are interested in utilizing tangerines and oranges from farms that have become part of the Haitian agricultural landscape through the presence of US funded NGO’s. For the duration of the Biennale we will appear as OINGO(oranges in non-governmental organizations) or ODONG (oranges dans des organismes non gouvernementaux) as a parody of an NGO, we will perform the systematic contradictions and dysfunctions of Non Governmental Organizations. In preparation for the Biennale we will purchase oranges and tangerines in the local markets. We will tattoo images on the citrus fruit of other artwork shown in the Biennale, plus Creole pigs, rice and bags of sugar and Contreau bottles. As the Biennale begins we=20 will set up altars (organized piles of tattooed fruit) wherever most feasible depending on the constraints of the Biennale but preferably in public highly trafficked areas of Port-au-Prince. During the Biennale we will operate as a uniformed team, one of us continuing to tattoo images on the citrus and assemble altars, while the other gives away the tattooed fruit and interacts with passers by via our translator and attempts to communicate using an English/Kreyol dictionary.
Daniele Geminiani - Italy
The Island Ghetto Biennale in London
The Island is the studio of Italian artist Daniele Geminiani located in London East End, which is used to present the work of various artists as well as collaborative projects. It is a space open to the public and receptive to interconnections. Projects are developed as moments in which a dialogue can be stimulated; they arouse/originates from the artworks and link their contents to the subjects and issues developed troughout The Island’s activities (over the time).
The studio presupposes by its very nature the exchange among quite dissimilar geographical places, environments and social realities. With this approach The Island will exhibit sculptures by Haitian artists André Eugène, Celeur Jean Hérard and Guyodo Klere and it will be an actual part and partner of the Haiti Biennale in London. The space will host a follow-up conference in January after the Ghetto Biennale to disseminate the experience to artists in London.
Among the many existing curatorial models of art biennials all over the world, the idea of presenting the Ghetto Biennale in the UK, is directly related to the issues that give rise to the Bienniale itself, such as for Haitian artists to overcome the dual isolation of an island and of a ghetto.
Destin Domond - Haiti
FOSAJDomond is an naïve painter who work with figurative abstraction, he is an artist who is unique in the way he works. In the Ghetto Biennale he wants to make a triangular flag for each nationality artist who is present for the Biennale and finish with a big Haitian flag which will be bigger than the others. He wants to decorate all of Grand Rue with these flags. For it is a way to show all the differences that there are, social, economic that we have between artists from different countries, all artists are brothers and one must support the other and share knowledge too.
Domond se yon atis pent nayif ki travay abstraksyon figiratif, se yon atis ki inik nan jan li an, nan kad GHETTO BIENNALE li vle reyalize yon drapo triyangilè pou chak nasyonalite atis ki ap prezan nan biennal la epi pou fini ak yon gwo drapo Ayiti k' ap pi gwo tout lòt yo li vle dekore tout ri gran ri ak yo. Pou li se yon jan pou montre ak tout diferans ki genyen , sosyal, ekonomik ki genyen ak atis ki nan diferan peyi, tout atis se frè epi, nou youn dwe sipòte lòt, epi pataje konesans tou. Pou reyalize pwojè sa a Domond anvizaje alafwa koud twal ak pentire yo tou li ap mande pou nou jwenn otorizasyon pou li ka mete mete yo sou gran ri .
Ebony Patterson - Jamaica
Jessada Considering the parallels between my own imagery and Vodou’s depiction of Loa’s in the ‘spiritual arts’, I will create 5-6 drapos (flags) re-contextualized with images of young black males referencing 5-6 of vodou’s Lwa ( spirits). The Flags will be embellished in sequence and rhinestones flower petals and its central image will be photo based. These central photo based imagery will make a direct comment on the face of Haiti’s gangs and its leadership, which is very reminiscent of Jamaica’s gang structure- the young black male. This was quite apparent in a film, ‘Ghosts of Cite Soleil’; which shows the glamorized and idealized machismo associated with gang culture .The film also reveals the relationship that the members of these communities have with its ‘chiefs’. They are feared, revered and respected and are often treated as demy- gods. They come from inner city life where the laws of the street prevail over the laws of the land. With this proposed project I will research Haitian vodou and spiritual practices in Jamaica that by and large are reflected strongly in dancehall culture, and its contributions to constructs of masculinity dictated by both inner city gang cultures.
Flo McGarrell - USA
Kathy Goes to Haiti, Final ChapterA small independent short video production takes place during the preparation phase of The Ghetto Biennale, the shoot itself is the artwork. We endeavor for this project to continue on past the biennale in the form of a full fledged film production to be completed in Cap Haitian and Jacmel next spring.
The story is of a middle class American white girl who goes to Haiti with no money and knows no one. A promiscuous exploration of Port Au Prince and Cap Haitian and back ensues. The story is actually a mathematically structured experiment: The beginning and end of the story are eerily devoid of emotional expression, the conversations and characters are simplistic even. Then at the very center of the story (measured exactly in number of pages) is a completely literal climax of emotion -- wherein Kathy confronts her need for love and sex from a married bourgeoisie playboy named Roger who is described as resembling a young Fidel Castro. Bluntly portrayed sex scenes are interspersed with maddeningly simple conversations between the protagonist Kathy and the men women, and children she meets.
The final chapter which will be shot at the GB is the chapter where Kathy returns to Port Au Prince looking for Roger and instead gets a reading from a Vodou Priest. This chapter was written outside of the structure of the rest of the book, Acker states that this chapter was the most interesting to write because it was a purely journalistic account of her visit to Haiti. Thus we will allow ourselves the freedom to deviate from the script at times and let the experience take us where it will...
Collaborating with Flo McGarrell is Cary Cronenwett (Cronenwett and McGarrell also had a creative partnership realizing the film "Maggots and Men") students from Cine Institute in Jacmel including Zaka Claudel Chery, Herman Desorme, and several other talented artists and filmmakers from the US including Zackary Drucker as the lead, Laura Teodosio, and Erin Durban, Leah Gordon from the UK, and Atis Resistanz Andre Eugene as the "Voodoo Doctor".
FOSAJ - Badio Joseph Junior, Prince Luc, Lamitie Marc-Arthur, Eder Romeus, Jean-Paul Sylvaince & Obelto Desire - Haiti
Poukisa Diskrimine?We are a group of artists from FOSAJ, an art center in Jacmel. For our participation we will make a big outdoor mural on the theme of 'What is discrimination?' Each artist in this group is going to approach this question, in their own way, to reflect a sense of their own suffering or else to relate to other forms of discrimination in their environment (racial, dreads, people living with a handicap, religious etc). In this sense we feel as Jacmelien artists from FOSAJ we can bring a breath of fresh air to the Biennale. To realize this project we need a big white wall on Grand Rue, or around the area, and each artist will be limited to an equal piece of the wall. We must collaborate with one and another to create a homogeneous work. All this work will be documented by a film-maker (Zaka Chery Claudel) who will shoot time lapse video, that will then be projected on the wall of the FOSAJ gallery where they will have an exhibition on the same theme.
We are a group of artists from FOSAJ, an arts organisation from Jacmel with members, Badio Joseph Junior, Ambroise Anderson, Lamitie Marc-Arthur, Jean-Paul Sylvaince & Obelto Desire who are participating in the Ghetto Biennale which is going to happen in Port au Prince. For our participation we will make a big outdoor mural in Grand Rue on the theme of 'what is discrimination.' Each artist in this group is going to approach this subject in their own way, to refect a sense of their own suffering or else to relate other forms of discrimination in their environment (dreads, gays, voudouists etc). In this sense we feel as Jacmellian artists from FOSAJ we can bring a breath of fresh air to the Biennale. To realise this project we need a big white wall on Grand Rue, or around the area, and each artist will be limited to an equal piece of the wall. We must collaborate with one and another to finally create one homogenous piece of work in the end. All this work will be documented by a film-maker who after this project will finish the film at FOSAJ where they are going to have an exhibition on the same theme at the same time, and there will be a screening of the film on the wall of FOSAJ which will show the same work.
Co-conceived by Hermane Desorme and Maksaens Denis, performed by Lakou.
Zonbi ZonbiA performance that employs dance, text, theater, costume, live video, and live painting. Zonbi Zonbi explores all types of zonbification - thus its not only just after death that a person becomes a zombie - which is to say that many people become zombies without even knowing it. It all turns on their job, beliefs, problems, dreams, religion, and fantasy. With all difference and necessity that life gives us . . . "Nou tout se Zonbi! We are all Zombie!"
Jesse Darling – United Kingdom
Trash ChurchInspired by the Levi-Strauss's principles of bricolage and magical thinking, rising out of the waste that washes downstream from the mainstream [and from the first world to the third], Trash Church is a bricolaged structure for worship and contemplation built from surplus and obsolete materials. The specific aesthetic will evolve out of available building materials, and from the building process itself, which should be experimental, relational, performative, collaborative and carnivalesque, available for and open to change. The structure may or may not include aspects of new media, ancient sacred architecture and vodou. This will be an immersive and relational work, properly experienced only in real-time, like everything worth doing in and out of the material world. Jesse Darling works in installation and performance: she was born in 1980 in Great Britain and has been down and out in Amsterdam, Berlin, Paris and New York. She draws inspiration from mass-production fallout: the rising effluvia [human, industrial and philosophical] that we cannot absorb or get rid of.
Laura Heyman – United States of America
Photographic PortraitsCan someone from the first world see/photograph within the third world without voyeurism or objectification? For the period of the Biennale, I will test this query by opening a roaming, formal portrait studio. Members of the local community will be invited to make appointments to have their portrait made. They may then choose to either come to the studio, or have the studio come to them. Formally, the portraits will follow the example of artists like Mike Disfarmer, James VanDer Zee and Seydou Keita, who used the commercial and utilitarian aspects of their practice to portray their subjects with a consideration and respect that was both clear-eyed and beautiful.
The difficulty in this case is how to avoid enacting the familiar and problematic situation wherein the first world artist takes home a photograph of “the other” as souvenir. It’s possible that any interaction between these two parties will smack of imperial beneficence, especially if that interaction is instigated by the first world. In order to minimize that effect, each portrait will remain with its subject, ie, they will not be displayed as the results of this collaboration. Instead, documentation of the project will concentrate on the point of exchange between the two parties; the discussions and negotiations regarding how the sitter wants to be seen/photographed. The life of the image will be entirely determined by its subject – potentially occupying a place of importance in the home, or as an exchange between loved ones.
Laurence Kent Jones – United States of America
Panoramic Views of Grand Rue I am an American diplomat assigned to Port-au-Prince, and I have been living here for the last two years. I have been an active photographer on the streets of metropolitan Port-au-Prince, both in the context of my work in the priority zones and on my own account. In addition to more traditional street photography, I have been making panoramic photographs, including mural shots of whole neighborhoods. I have always been ambitious as a photographer to get it all into to the frame of a photo. In the context of Haiti one way to do that is to push the frame wider by using panoramic techniques.
My concept for my presentation at the Ghetto Biennale is two fold. I propose to exhibit a collection of my Haitian photographs consisting of street scenes and panoramic cityscapes, focusing, to the degree that my work allows, on the downtown Grand Rue area. In the context of my exhibition and the larger Biennale I propose to give one or more full demonstrations of the creation of digitally stitched panoramic photographs, starting from the capturing of the images to digital processing and stitching (combining multiple photographs into a seamless whole) to printing a mural sized final piece to be immediately displayed.
Recognizing that no high tech equipment is inexpensive in the Haitian context, I nonetheless propose to make the technique as accessible as possible by using an inexpensive camera, generic Windows computer and low end printer. The necessary software is all available as freeware, and I will distribute CDs containing the necessary programs for both Windows and OSX operating equipment to any who are interested in the process. I will not buy any new equipment for this project, but will work with what I have on hand and scrounge or make any necessary additions, encouraging potential practitioners to do the same.
Nancy Mauro-Flude – Tasmania, Australia
Dances with her shadow - paraphernalia
The clue lies there...The symbols of the divine show up in our world initially at the trash stratum" Philip K Dick 'dances with her shadow - paraphernalia' is a live noise performance act. Moving through a amongst a matrix of live electronic curiosa a performer, as a fictional species divines samples from diverse sources - glitches, break beats, noise, broken up lyrics and abstract movement make sounds like a radio transmission coming from else where maybe even as far as Tasmania ...
A playful ode to the history of paraphernalia and its subjugated etymology. Like bricolage, most people have no regard for paraphernalia because it appears messy, futile or secondary while in reality it reveals essential life processes. It puts us eye to eye with vital operations far removed from what the Western Philosophical tradition believes to be a progressive way of thinking. The word is ultimately from Medieval Latin as the brides property apart from her dowry that she can dispose of at her own will. Personal amulets menstruation items talismans, gadgets, a bottle of oil, a doll, bibs anb bobs, things that are usually judged as waste trash or excessive divination odds and ends items that are usually prone to healing belief in auguries or tokens for predictions.
This work is also a gesture to a painting 'Rope Dancer accompanies herself with her shadows' (1916) by Man Ray. The painting seems to reflect a philosophical principle in which Duchamp, also believes that the value of an object lies not in the object itself, but in the mind of her who creates the value.
Like in 'Dances with her Shadow' in the painting the dancer is accompanied not only by her shadow but also by music, the cables across the bottom, the position of her feet on the strings, as if the dancer were indeed accompanying herself musically. The dancer figure is a transparent abstraction - do the accompanying paraphernalia represent reality, or only the illusion, idea, or shadow of reality?
Oceana Granata - Italy
I can't explain this, I only describe it
I will visit over a period of 7 days different situations in Port au Prince that I may not particularly understand or identify immediately. These may be markets, religious ceremonies, cemeteries, roadside food stalls, mechanics workshops? My visit to each situation will be a life-drawing session. I will watch, "try to understand" what is happening, choose a scene and whichever filtered information might be important or valuable to me will be transferred on fabric and paper with a naive impressionistic approach. I will use oil colours and pencil.
After the 7-day "excursion", I will use the three days left and find three of the local artists who will be willing to act as "a Jury". The Jury will function as the board of artists, who get to send those pieces they like to the final exhibition. If none of the pieces is successful, none will be exhibited. The assessment will take a maximum of 24 hours. I will submit chosen work and use the last day for the installation.
Philip Tonda Heide – United States of America
Wish CityAn installation of video portraits. Project description:
I'm interested in researching in the relation between peoples' inner and outer realities. Video-portraits of people with closed eyes, telling about their wishes and dreams. The videos will show the person in his/hers physical environment, as well as give an insight into his imaginary space. My aim is to have a collection of such video portraits of people from several various cultures all over the world, and to see the possible similarities or differences across cultures, and to research in how far the local culture versus mass media is reflected in peoples' dreams.
Rob Peterson – United States of America
The Apprenticeship SystemFirsthand accounts of the apprenticeship system and the Grand Rue artists’ relationship to materials are at the core of this project. Using sound recording technology and displaying the finished work as a four channel audio sculpture the goal is to engender a dialog from which both cultures can take away something meaningful. My approach will encompass documentary, deep listening, recording that focuses on the sounds that are often caught between the labels of ‘background’ and ‘foreground’ in our consciousness, and environmental sound recording
Roderic Southall, Obsidian Arts in partnership with Diaspora Vibe Gallery – United States of America $2.00 a Day + Things We Ought to Know = Will Cause a Revolution
Contributing Obsidian Arts Collective Members – United States of America
Hugo Moro:The work that I am envisioning doing in Haiti will take the form of healing ceremonies or altars whose meaning will be developed from my memories of the syncretized Christian/Santeria ceremonies which I witnessed growing up in Cuba. The work will contain rituals and meanings invented by me to besiege unknown powers to help us heal.
Artist Statement - I come from a family of homemakers, blacksmiths and carpenters. I see a work in my mind, think it through down to minute details in a most obsessive way, I repeatedly envision myself going through every step of construction, conceptual and formal problems are encountered and revised. Only after I have imaged the finished piece in my head do I begin to make the construction. Ostensibly this method leaves no room for discovery or epiphany; just the opposite is true. As soon as the piece begins to develop, a new element, perhaps an accidental crack in a cast form, a random discovered fact during research, an ironic joke overheard, changes everything.
Christopher-Aaron Deanes: As a Contemporary African American Christian artist, I hope that this be an opportunity to explore the religions in Haiti and 70% of the population of Voodoo patrons. Voodoo is taken very seriously in Haiti by many intelligent and learned members of the Haitian society some believe in Voodoo as do German theology professors in Christianity. In no way do I intend to convert, or make a mission to convert others, however I hope to explore the sources, intents, the connections to their community and culture. I also hope to explore the minority of Christian community there and their traditions. This would be a definite area of culture less explored. Artist Statement - Christopher recently began examining the way we view things through what we understand on the surface of our society and the revelation of a God-head or spiritual hierarchy. Questions stirred dealing with the canonicity of mans perception of whom and what is God authority in images? Christopher has started to depict images of common people as Saints; as painted by 16 Century through 18th Century artist. His goal is to create conversations and environments that will challenge perception and thoughts about a higher power. Eye candy and mind food is modern art.
Edgar Young: I plan to bring a small sketch book, a small pack of unsharpened pencils and sonic recording device in which I will record my findings, both pictorially and literally. I will be translating my finding onto wood with charcoal, etchers, acrylic paint, and aerosol paint for the exhibition in Haiti and upon my return to the United States I will continue that process. This process will require minimum three days of deep soul searching and meditation to properly prepare for the translation process to begin. My findings (sketch book, sonic recordings and small pack of pencils) will be made available for examination for the viewer to explore. I want this project to be a soul searching experience for both the viewer and myself. Just as I used my finding to translate the situation on to wood, I believe it is through sincere soul searching that we are able to find solutions.
Jacquenette Arnette: The framework of my project is simple. I want to create a body suit, like a mummy’s costume out of uniquely Western consumer products packaging. I will wear this suit to Haiti than I will cut it off and suspend it. While I am in Haiti I will fill the ‘inside’ of the wrapping with materials I find in Haiti. This part of the project I cannot fully realize until I am there. Given the history of Haiti, many around the world have come to believe strongly in the existence of true zombies while ill-informed visitors are told stories of lifeless bodies being snatched away from their graves and mysteriously brought back to life to work as unpaid laborers in Haiti’s agricultural industry. For the viewers/ visitors part, the presumptive zombie-makers revel in the resulting free publicity and industry. It seems, then, that zombie-making is a business. I am working with the notion of being a Zombie, a consumerist zombie that will be unleashed in Haiti, the land of Voodoo and souls held by magic. The thread that I am following is filled with parallels from the 1st and 3rd world not just about zombies and the living dead but consumerism, culture, individuality and source. I want to make a simple correlation between Western Ideas of socialization via shopping and consumerist identities cross referenced in Haiti by what I see.
Artist Statement - As an artist I am consistently concerned with the ways that we communicate. How one stranger communicates to another person, not just ideas, but the instinctual framework of their unique social experience that they live in. In my work I speculate the origin of imagery, cultural norms, colloquial language, and trends. I try to mediate the both vast and minute differences in our continually homogeneous global community. I use all of these observations to create a new visual vernacular.
Luis Garcia Nerey: My basic attempt is to construct a shelter-like structure mainly consisting of found objects. The materials will be gathered in Haiti throughout my stay and will serve as the structural part of my installation. My work in general, is loosely based on the theory of Constructionism with an emphasis on Social Construction. The importance of this philosophy lies not in the prior but in the process. Although, there is a prior general concrete idea for this specific project, its success can only be achieved through the unpredictable interaction with the environment and its people, which will occur in the process of the works production. In recent years I have traveled to many different places throughout the Americas and abroad with similar projects. I have found myself immersed in different cultures, belief systems and political views. What has fascinated me the most, is how through the interaction within the day to day social dynamics my works evolve and become interwoven with the fabric of set society. This interaction allows the work to be less planned and more spontaneous, hence, taking on the Contructionism philosophy view. It allows the work to be constructed not only by me but also by the environment in which it is presented.
Artist Statement - My works deal with many subjects. In recent pieces I have been commenting on the abundance of discarded materials and how one can transform something left to waste into something valuable and meaningful. Although the focus on my latest works deals with this subject, my core intentions are always for the viewers to interact with the piece with the purpose of giving them life. This interaction between the viewer and works is what I'm ultimately interested in.
For me, it is about participation in the form of interaction. I create installations that invite the viewer to be part of the work, therefore involving them in the process of constructing the conceptual idea behind them.
Seitu Jones: Haiti’s urban and rural environments are being degraded on a scale that is unprecedented in the Americas. I will research what plants that are native to Haiti can thrive in an urban environment and what plants can be grown for food in the streetscape. I will order those seeds from the USDA seed bank and bring them to Haiti. In Port Au Prince I propose identifying a group of children to help me mix the seeds with native soil to create at least 1000 seed balls that can be distributed or thrown onto small areas of exposed soil. The soil and seeds in the seed ball will mix with the earth and with water and will spawn the plants that will aid in greenlining Port Au Prince. Some seed balls will be rolled by hand and pressing the seed mix into a small mold. The 2"-3" seed balls will be created entirely in Port Au Prince, displayed and then given away during the exhibition. I further propose identifying a Grand Rue sculptor I can collaborate with to create a set of small garden implements based upon the forms of Haitian cosmograms that after the exhibition will be left with an identified set of caretakers of the small gardens created from seed balls.
Artist Statement - I create environmentally based art that honors the communities in which it is found. I’ve pursued a disciplined aesthetic, academic and community course of study to build an artistic practice that integrates art, nature and community in meaningful ways. My research on the relationship of plants and humans, landscape design, and environmental theory undergirds my understanding of the critical intersection between the natural environment and the public realm.
Tracey Moberly – United Kingdom
Power in the BloodPower in the Blood is a Socio-Demography arts project created by community members in Port-au-Prince, Haiti using MOBILOGRAPHY…
Mobilography (from "mobilis" (lat.) - movable and "grapho" (gr.) - to write) is a branch of photography that creates pictures using such devices with built-in cameras, as cellular phones, palm pilots, compasses, binoculars, lighters, etc, not originally intended to be used for professional photography.
The mobile phone industry has revolutionised the globe in terms of instant and cheap communication with vast social and political outcomes. Less than a decade ago the ‘text messaging era’ slowly crept into some societies. In more recent years text messages are being superseded by the mobilographic image. A photograph on a mobile phone used to convey the statement or message that an otherwise long winded text might once have done. As technology has advanced so has the built in camera facilities within the mobile phone that enables the user to do this. Mobilography* creates a visual language which captures symbols and works of art in your immediate environment.
Working with a generational populus of varying ages from 14 years upwards the local participants will be asked to participate, document and communicate via a mobile phone taking photos of their daily routines, environs & everyday lives developing a complete socio-demographic art form that can be used to represent and further archive that exact space and time in a democratic context. Initially developing it as a 2D photographic project. As part of the final presentation a selection of images will be chosen to be develop into a series of flags by the local audience and neighbourhood communities. Selecting the photos that best convey everyday day life or aspects of the Port-au-Prince region.
The mobilography art flags are inspired by the history of the Haitian flag. 18 May is National Flag day, the anniversary of the first red and blue Haitian flag sewn by Catherine Flon in 1803 from a French flag with it's white centre removed. I come from a small community in the valleys of South Wales and the power and symbolism of national flags has always interested me: the Welsh is the only flag of its constituent countries not to be represented in the UK's Union Jack. Both the St George flag of England and the Union Jack have been appropriated by xenophobic and white extremist groups and this process too is worth exploring as a mirrored opposite of the symbolism embedded in the origin of the Haitian flag.
Vivian Chan and Philip Lyons – Malaysia & United Kingdom
Ghetto ArchitectBoth Vivian Chan and Philip Lyons are co-founders of Chan Lyons Architects – a London-based architectural and design practice. They would like to explore how the process of briefing, designing, conducting design workshops and the actual process of construction take place in the unfamiliar territory of the ghetto. Their contribution at the Biennale is a site specific inquiry into the architectural design and building process resulting in the manifestation of a children’s art gallery in Port au Prince. Using a hands-on approach, with extensive consultation with the local children and with the guidance of the Grand Rue artists- they will derive design options through a series of ‘crayon+model’ workshops culminating in a ‘public planning’ forum. The final design will be built with the help of the local people and with local indigenous building material. The entire process will be captured on film- the video to be one of the first exhibits to be displayed alongside the children’s sketches in the completed gallery. The video will also be shown back in London as part of a cross-cultural discourse.
ACADEMICS AND ARTISTS TO SPEAK AT CONFERENCE 18th DECEMBERDonald CosentinoDonald John Cosentino, Ph.D., is Professor of Culture and Performance (Folklore, Literature, Visual and Material Arts, Popular Culture, African and Afro-Caribbean Studies) at the University of California-Los Angeles. Joined WAC in 1988. Cosentino has done extensive fieldwork on African and diasporic cultures in Nigeria, Sierra Leone and Haiti. He is the author of "Defiant Maids and Stubborn Farmers: Tradition and Invention in Mende Story Performance" (Cambridge, 1982) and "Vodou Things: The Art of Pierrot Barra and Marie Cassaise" (University of Mississippi Press, 1998). He is the editor and chief writer of the award-winning catalogue for "The Sacred Arts of Haitian Vodou" (1995), a traveling exhibition he curated for the UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History, and "Divine Revolution: The Art of Edouard Duval-Carrie" (2004). Cosentino has been co-editor of African Arts magazine, published by the UCLA African Studies Center, since 1988. Ph.D., African Languages and Literatures, University of Wisconsin, Madison. He is a recipient of a Guggenheim writing award.
John Cussans John Cussans teaches post-graduate fine art theory at Chelsea College of Art. My interest in Haitian Vodu stems from research into the aesthetics of horror in contemporary Western culture. This interest culminated in my PhD thesis ‘Revolting Subjects and Epidemic Disorder – Georges Bataille, Heterology and Broadcast Horror’ which I completed at the RCA in London in 1995. This research led me to the work of Anton Mesmer whose practice of animal magnetism was fashionable amongst revolutionary Republican circles in France and her colonies. Mesmer himself is said to have claimed responsibility for the foundation of the Haitian Republic, on the premise that is was consequence of the practice of animal magnetism amongst the slave communities there. This far-fetched claim, however implausible, when thought in relation to the myth of the Bois Caiman ceremony, resonated weirdly with Bataille’s theories regarding the revolutionary potential of ritual sacrifice as an unleashing of contagious social energy. It was this correlation of events and ideas, and on ongoing interest in the relationship between Materialist and Spiritualist accounts of social and historical change and human agency, that has informed my interest in the history and mythology of Haiti and Vodu culture, particularly as it is encountered and distorted in the colonial imagination, popular culture and mass media.
Katherine Smith Katherine Smith is a PhD candidate in the World Arts and Cultures department at University of California Los Angeles. She is currently finishing her dissertation on the Vodou spirit Gede, titled Gede Rising: Haiti in the Age of Vagabondaj. Katherine has been spent significant time in Haiti since first coming in 1999.
Myron M. Beasley Myron M Beasley (Ph.D) is currently Professor of American Cultural Studies and African American Studies at Bates College, USA. Educated at Ohio University, Harvard and the Sorbonne, his area of interests are in the intersections of ritual performance, art history and criticism, and death and loss in the African Diaspora. He has conducted critical ethnographic fieldwork in Africa, Brazil and currently Haiti in which some of his academic work can be found in such books as “Communication and Sexualities” and such leading international monographs as “Text and Performance Quarterly” and “ Performance Research.” He has edited a special issue of Performance Research on the topic of “Diaspora/Blackness.” In addition to his work in ritual performance he as curated such projects at AS220 to the Louvre Project with Toni Morrison, and his short film “Ritual/Feast” was part of a food festival series at the Whitney. " Ritual, Sacred Spaces, and the Body: Men of African Descent and the Performance of Sexuality" which appeared at Performance International-PSi 6. In addition to his ethnographic work, he has performed and worked with the Alliance Theatre, The Atlanta Children's Theatre, Co-Founder of the Atlanta Reader's Theatre Troupe, directed productions in the Atlanta University Center and served as director for the Hampton Players and Company. He has been awarded, both nationally and internationally, for his outstanding teaching and has received grants from the Houk Foundation, The Wayland fund, Mellon Foundation and Harvard University.
Polly Savage Polly Savage is a Teaching Fellow in the Department of Art and Archaeology at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, where she teaches courses about African Art and Art Theory. She worked for five years as Assistant Curator at the October Gallery in London, and now works as a free-lance writer and lecturer, based in southeast London. She is currently conducting research about contemporary curatorial practice and post-independence history in Angola, through the department of Curating Contemporary Art at the Royal College of Art, London. Her research has previously covered art practice and post-colonialism in Madagascar, Haiti and Brazil, with particular focus on exhibition practice. She first visited Grand Rue in 2007, and can’t wait to go back.
Toni Pressley-Sanon Art, the Lwa and the Sèvitè who Love Them
I have spent the past two years researching the connection between the belief amongst Vodun practitioners both in Africa and in the African diaspora that spirits live in trees and the art that they create. In Benin Republic, West Africa, one finds an example of art that reflects this worldview. In a tree sculpted by Beninois artist, Savi, the scenes of human history in Benin that he carves from the tree are also scenes of spirit life. The images that Savi carves into the tree bole seem to emerge from within making visible the spirits already present in the wood[1].
I found what I consider a comparable example of a “woodworker making visible the spirit present in the wood” from across the ocean is a statue of the lwa by Haitian sculptor or (bos pié-bwa, in Haitian Kreyòl), Nacius Joseph. According to LeGrace Benson, Joseph is continuing an old tradition in Haiti of carving from the trunk-base and roots of trees. She calls this practice travay rasin or root work (430). The artist was engaging in ritual recollection and veneration of ancestors--that is, “deeply felt directed attention to the most cherished beliefs and practices”, some of which are also conveyed by stories, songs, dances, dramatized rituals, and creation of objects that “serve to inculcate the necessary habits of attention in themselves and into the next generation” (429-430). The sculpture portrays Papa Loko, the lwa of agriculture and lwa Damballah, the beneficent serpent who bestows rain and harvest to his sèvitè. The artist uses the physical form of the wood to “reveal its immanent spiritual content” (430). Like Savi, Joseph pays attention to the wood as a workable substance as well as the spiritual presence that it holds. Benson identifies the way that Joseph approaches his material and his art as a persistent way of attending to the world—one that she attributes to Lan Guinée, a mythical Africa. This worldview recognizes the interrelatedness of the earth with the spirit world, with history and its relationship to contemporary society.
The way that both artists’ conception of a method of carving that follows the natural lines of the tree in order to give the impression of figures emerging from the wood also speaks to a shared cultural aesthetic that honors continuity, memory and spirit’s integral role in it.
While I have been working on this project for the two years I know that I have just begun to scratch the surface. I hope to look at the way that the artists who work in Grand Rue, see the spirits of the lwa and the ancest ors and bring them to life during and following the artmaking process. I will do so through both, observation and interview.
Jana BrazielJana Evans Braziel is Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature and Affiliate Faculty in Africana Studies and Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University of Cincinnati. Braziel’s scholarly and pedagogical interests are in American hemispheric literatures and cultures, Caribbean studies, Haitian studies, and the intersections of diaspora, transnational activism, and globalization. Braziel is the author of three books: Diaspora: An Introduction (Blackwell, 2008); Artists, Performers, and Black Masculinity in the Haitian Diaspora (Indiana University Press, 2008); and Caribbean Genesis: Jamaica Kincaid and the Writing of New Worlds (SUNY, 2009). Braziel’s fourth book, Duvalier’s Ghosts: Race, Diaspora, and U.S. Imperialism in Haitian Literatures, is forthcoming in 2010 from the University Press of Florida. In June 2010, Braziel will finish her fifth book Entangled Gardens: Genesis, Environmentalism, and Political Economy in Caribbean Literatures.
Currently, Braziel is also working on two interrelated manuscripts: the first, tentatively entitled The Fog of War: U.S. Cultures of Violence, 2001-2008, addresses violations of human rights and cultural representations of violence in the global terror war as exemplary of “new world order” policies; and the second, entitled All too Human? Haiti, Humanities, and Human Rights addresses the issues of social, economic, and political rights as engaged by and portrayed in Haitian and Haitian diasporic cultural forms, primarily literature and film.
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