a handle, a lever, a means

From The Fire Next Time:

One would never defeat one’s circumstances by working and saving one’s pennies; one would never, by working, acquire that many pennies, and, besides, the social treatment accorded even the most successful Negroes proved that one needed, in order to be free, something more than a bank account. One needed a handle, a lever, a means of inspiring fear.

[esplayer url=”http://www.pen.org/audio_archive/baldwin_tribute/rux.mp3″ duration=”11:46″ ] Read by Carl Hancock Rux.

via pen.org, tribute to Baldwin, 2001.

Related:  [esplayer url=”http://www.pen.org/audio_archive/baldwin_tribute/traylor.mp3″ duration=”7:37″ ] On Solid Ground  by Eleanor Traylor.

[esplayer url=”http://www.pen.org/audio_archive/baldwin_tribute/baraka.mp3″ duration=”11:15″ ] Our Man Jimmy by Amiri Baraka.

Madrid

I visited Madrid, a couple of weeks ago; (my first time in Europe).  I went there for the opening of Lugares de Transito, a project terminating as an exhibition and a book.  The exhibition is of photo-based works, done by collaborating artists – one from Spain and one from a host city.

The artists are Tatiana Fernández Gueara and Aleix Plademunt (Santo Domingo); Humberto Díaz and Daniel Silvo (La Habana); Juan Pablo Garza and Carlos Sanva (Maracaibo); Mateo López and Juan Carlos Martínez (Bogota);  José Manuel Castrellón and Matías Costa(Panama); Byron Mármol and Juan Diego Valera (Guatemala City) ; Gonzalo Vargas and Esteban Pastorino (Quito); Adler Guerrier and Rosell Meseguer (Miami).

The curator of LDT is Marta Soul.  And a local curator in each host city also contributed to the project, they are Michelle Ricardo (Santo Domingo), Tania Hernández (La Habana), Luis Gómez Rincón ( Maracaibo), Roxana Martínez ( Bogotá),  Johann Wolfschoon (Panamá), Stefan Benchoam (Guatemala), Paulina León (Quito) and Gean Moreno (Miami).

The exhibition is taking place at Tabacalera, espacio PROMOCIÓN DEL ARTE. (here’s an nice image of my piece).  An old tobacco factory built around 1780-1792.

The other half of the building houses a C.S.A.(Centro Social Autogestionado).

  

The press release

Exposición ‘Lugares de Tránsito’

22 junio – 2 septiembre

Tabacalera. Espacio Promoción del Arte
C/ Embajadores 51. Madrid
www.lugaresdetransito.net

El Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte inaugura el próximo jueves 21 de junio, la exposición Lugares de Tránsito, organizada por la Subdirección General de Promoción de las Bellas Artes en Tabacalera, donde se mostrarán 8 proyectos fotográficos desarrollados en América Latina, resultado del trabajo realizado bajo la premisa de investigar otros modelos de producción en la creación contemporánea.

El proyecto Lugares de Tránsito comenzó su andadura en 2009, siendo este un programa de residencias artísticas comisariadas, en el cual una pareja de artistas, junto a un comisario local y la labor curatorial de Marta Soul, compartieron la tarea de realizar un trabajo fotográfico de reflexión y autoría compartidas. Lugares de Tránsito, con especial acento en el ámbito de la fotografía, aborda la valoración del lugar y de lo común a partir de proyectos artísticos vivos. Experiencias que miran a América Latina como realidad compartida, como escenario participativo desde el que se construye una ciudadanía con personalidad propia.

Durante los años 2010 y 2011, La Habana, Santo Domingo, Maracaibo, Bogotá, Miami, Guatemala, Panamá y Quito han sido escenarios del proyecto y se muestra ahora en España, en el espacio de Promoción del Arte en Tabacalera, la exposición que, comisariada por Marta Soul, exhibirá los trabajos de los dieciséis artistas participantes: Tatiana Fernández y Aleix Plademunt, Humberto Díaz y Daniel Silvo, Juan Pablo Garza y Carlos Sanva, Mateo López y Juan Carlos Martínez, Adler Guerrier y Rosell Meseguer, José Manuel Castrellón y Matías Costa, Byron Mármol y Juan Diego Valera, Gonzalo Vargas y Esteban Pastorino.

Lugares de Tránsito es un proyecto de la Agencia Española de Cooperación Internacional para el Desarrollo (AECID), ideado por Eneas Bernal, Sara Cabanes y Marta Soul, y organizado por la asociación Hablar en Arte, en el que participan la Red de Centros Culturales de la AECID y las Oficinas Culturales de España en Iberoamérica. En su presentación en España, se han sumado al proyecto: Casa de América, colaborando en la organización de un foro de pensamiento, y el Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte, que ha organizado la exposición que, a partir del 22 de junio, estará abierta al público en Tabacalera.

Leonardo, chef

Leonardo was a mad chef. He enjoyed kitchen contraptions, of his own designs; but, how would it run? “By wind or by water? By cogs and by cranks? By oxen or by peasant-power?”  In the late 1490s, most things ran via peasant-power.
Assassin’s  Creed did a good job shaping my image of Leonardo; I don’t see him as an old man anymore.  Leonardo in the game loves a puzzle, old language and of course, puzzles buried n old language. This blog  post on The Kitchen Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci , HarperCollins Publishers; First Edition edition (April 1, 1987), has also informed that image.

via

‘Malcolm X’ by Manning Marable

Thomas Powers reviews ‘Malcolm X’ by Manning Marable, in the London Review of Books – 25 August 2011.  I never read Autobiography of Malcolm X; I frankly I didn’t want to.  I will read this, though.

Did Malcolm Little really believe this?

Reginald reported that he had not only found but met God, whose correct name was Allah, and who inhabited the physical form of the Honourable Elijah Muhammad, a light-skinned black man with asthma from Georgia who understood everything.

Little, more than likely, understood injustice, power, ruling by fear and violence, so, he would have believed this point the deeds of devil white men.

Black men had been enslaved and deceived. History had been ‘whitened’ to expunge ancient black kings and civilisations.

Powers writes that Marable suggests that

…the Muslims he met on a trip to Mecca in 1959 were the first to tell him plainly that Islamic belief, the Shahada, accorded no special status to the Honourable Elijah Muhammad. The Quran was not ambiguous: ‘There is no god but God, and Muhammad is the messenger of God.’ Elijah Muhammad’s claim was therefore false. All educated Muslims knew this…

MDPLS seems to have a copy.

LAND invites you back to the island…

LAND invites you to view/download the island Ebook.

On December 3, 2010, LAND (Los Angeles Nomadic Division) and OHWOW organized the island: a one-day, dusk ’til dawn exhibition during Art Basel Miami Beach. Seventeen artists created site-specific installations on Flagler Memorial Island located just a few minutes from the mainland in Biscayne Bay.

As the exhibition has now disappeared, ghostlike and mythical, into the Miami landscape, LAND invites you to view the island Ebook – a digital publication created by LAND to bring you back to the island.

 

via LAND.