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art in all its forms
5/12/13
5/2/13
4/29/13
'To present the world in a new light'
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"It is not a question of avoiding issues but of being crafty, like the politicians, in portraying them. Literature is above all story-telling. And as China Achebe has said, story-telling is a threat. Story-tellers, poets, writers have always found ways of confronting tyranny, especially in places where conditions are dangerous and deadly. Throughout the ages, writers have developed and employed myriad literary devices and explored the fullsomeness of language through, for example, satire, realism, magical-realism, fables, and so on. Writers throughout the ages have found ways to talk about issues like politics without seeming to talk about them. The function is not to present the world as it is, but to present it in a new light through the narrative power of art. Literature does not ask, 'what is it about?' It asks. 'how do we tell it to make it real?'
"So if I have to answer the question, 'Should literature be political?' I would say, 'Yes, but not in an explicit way.' The purpose of literature is not to represent but to re-present: to hold up that mirror in a light that enables us to see reality both reflected, inflected and refracted. As writers, we live lives that are not navel-gazing but conscious and fully-engaged with the world. Gaugin said, 'Art is either plagarism or revolution'.
"Let me end by taking issue with the title of this debate. Should the subject matter be prescribed by anyone? I say no. Let us end by revolting against those who would apply the word should to art, even in a question. To young writers I say ignore prescription. Don't be left behind. Write on."
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Poet, novelist and short-story writer Olive Senior answers the question: Should literature be political? at a special discussion on Sunday at Trinidad and Tobago's Bocas Lit Fest
4/21/13
4/14/13
With this bread
FROM last night's launch of Bread - a new EP by the band with the best band-name ever, Gyazette - at the Trinidad Theatre Workshop, Belmont. FIND out more here.
4/1/13
Check out Draconian Switch 20
From 'Lightraits' by Kriston Chen, featured in the latest issue of Draconian Switch.
Draconian Switch, Issue 20, ably designed by the excellent Kriston Chen, is now out. Edited by Mariel Brown and published by Richard Rawlins, this issue features fiction from Sharon Millar, art by Sheena Rose, Ewan Avery, Kriston and much more! Am also pleased to be included in this 20th issue via a review of Trinidad artist Steve Ouditt’s latest show at Medulla Gallery (special thanks to Kriston for his company on a recent visit to the Medulla space). CHECK out DS 20 here.
'Bodies clothed in solid colour'
Mohammeds - an exhibition and artist talk by Sandra Brewster at Alice Yard
From the artist:
Among the series I’ve worked on, the Smiths have been a recurring theme. The name Smith, a large section of a North American telephone directory, conjures up ideas of sameness and commonality and invisibility, as there are so many. Offering an element of humour, I use the name to mock the notion of a monolithic Black community — of course not all Smiths are related, or look or act the same. The Smiths are afro-headed characters that I present as paintings on slabs of wood, their bodies clothed in solid colour and their faces replaced with the Smith section of the phone directory. I continue to use them in various visual narratives and pieces that offer a questioning around concerns of identity and representation. Now the Smiths from Toronto have turned into Trinidadian Mohammeds.
3/11/13
'I see myself as a double outsider'
"I see myself as a double outsider. In Trinidad I am a white person and in the UK
I am a Trinidadian, even though Roffey is a British name and I have British
passport. I am born here. So I am a Trini in the UK and here I am a white
Trini. I’ve learnt how to sort that and make that work. As a writer it is
absolutely fantastic because the more marginalized you are, the more accute
your perspective is pulled in and you have to deal with that. You have to deal
with being an outsider in both cultures. So for me that works..."
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The Trini novelist Monique Roffey gives an insightful, provocative and altogether delightful interview at Spaces Between Words. LISTEN to full interview here.
2/25/13
135 drawings and collages by Steve Ouditt
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FROM THE ORGANISERS:
"Visual artist /designer Steve Ouditt
will be exhibiting locally for the first time in 18 years at Medulla Art
Gallery in March. The exhibition, Proceeds to Mental Health is a
prolific body of work comprising 135 drawings and collages exploring mental
illness and its correlating transgressions in daily cognitive perception,
social behavior, class, politics and corruption.
2/18/13
Neither here nor there
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Installation, Eastern Main Road, St. Joseph, Trinidad. 2013
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"ALL OVER Trinidad and Tobago, strange sculptures are appearing. Small, angular and at odds with the shapes and geometry of things around them, they look like alien sand-castles beamed down from a space-ship. On the Brian Lara Promenade in the capital, Port of Spain; around the scenic Queen’s Park Savannah; along the busy liming spot of Ariapita Avenue; on an island in the middle of a busy main road or camouflaged on a non-descript pavement that could be anywhere on the island, they provoke stares and wonder. What are they? Where did they come from? Who put them there?
"These objects seem to materialize overnight. Though they look like little sand-castles, the sculptures are made out of grey board, wire, fiber rods, and duct tape. Some are covered with bond paper and then sand is stuck on their surface using wood glue. Beneath their apparently casual incongruence, then, is a careful deliberation. This is the work of the collaboration known as Pinky y Emigrante: artists Alicia Milne and Luis Vasquez La Roche..."
-From an essay on the collective known as Pinky y Emigrante (P&E) at the ARC website. P&E is a collaboration featuring Alicia Milne and Luis Vasquez La Roche, with whom I recently collaborated with for an e-chapbook. READ the full essay here.
P&E will talk about their work at Alice Yard this Thursday. FIND out more here.
1/27/13
Film review: Zero Dark Thirty
The central achievement of Zero Dark Thirty is that it manages to be an effective thriller, even though we all have a sense of what the ending is going to be.
Like The Hurt Locker - which must be regarded as this film's logical companion piece - Kathryn Bigelow's thriller seeks to approach the war on terror from the perspective of the human characters on the ground fighting it. This time around, her focus is on an intelligence agent, Maya, who, like the Jeremy Renner bomb expert in the The Hurt Locker, internalises pain and her own mysterious circumstances under a kind of steely, relentless ambition to do the job no matter what. Only at the end is there some kind of release, but we never get close enough to understand what else the ambition may stand for or whether it stands for anything at all besides a purity of devotion; a single-minded integrity.
Once more, there are some excellent set-pieces where the suspense is almost unbearable. A key operation to lure a potentially invaluable source in the hunt to kill Osama Bin Laden turns out to involve incredible risks on the part of many involved; there is much danger lurking in public places where agents search for clues; homes are attacked; there are scenes of torture.
Speaking of torture, there have been claims that the film glorifies torture as a method of getting valuable information. I disagree. The film has no opinion: it simply shows an account of what it says happened and leaves the audience to judge the moral issues involved. This is also the approach to the final, nail-bitingly suspenseful scene at Abbottabad. And, ultimately, this is the film's approach to its central character who at times seems to over-step lines in a manner that sometimes raises questions about whether or not she can be trusted. Something of Claire Danes agent in the TV series Homeland seems to inevitably come to mind here. There is a puzzle at the heart of the performance of Jessica Chastain that asks the audience to decide whether or not we trust her or are willing to make a leap of faith. The film is so good because of this move. The movie lets the audience decide what they need to decide about her without getting in the way, right down to the last scenes.
Bigelow is not big on lecturing to audiences and it shows with the film's single-mined focus on the action at hand. That focus comes to mirror the resolve of the agent.
1/2/13
Sound System Version 4
"Land of Tomorrow and the University of Kentucky Department of Art, in coordination with the Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft, are pleased to present Sound System Version 4, a sound collaboration between Christopher Cozier, Daniel Haun, Robin Foster, and Martin Raymond, with sound sequences by Ebony G.Patterson, Sheena Rose, Jomo Slusher, Sheldon Holder, Chantal Esdelle, Christian Campbell and Yvette Grey."
READ MORE AT Visual Matters HERE.
12/31/12
Film Review: 'The Hobbit' has a heart of darkness
The Hobbit is easily the best of the Lord of the Rings films. It's powerful and self-assured and I
found it far more enjoyable than the previous two instalments. Perhaps what causes this is
a combination of factors including: a more conscious effort to cultivate areas of ambiguity in the plot
while keeping that plot elegantly focused; the sense that a mythic world is
being powerfully reinforced; and knowledge of the events which are to unfold in
the later movies and the resultant sense of dramatic irony bathing everything.
On the
first point, consider the opening montage recalling the fall of the Dwarf city
Erebor to the dragon Smaug, the key event that sets in train the action of the
film. It is suggested that the timing of this event is linked to the discovery
of a strange stone – called the Arkenstone – in the depths of the mines beneath
the city. Like the titular rings of the series, the stone has an effect on
whoever possesses it; the power represented in the inanimate object achieves a
kind of physiological corruption. The causal connection between the stone and
Smaug is never explicitly explained but the narrative seems to hinge on some
unspoken force, suggesting a moral compass rather than stating it. As in a
parable or myth, we are invited to wonder about the link between the physical
and the moral: corruption of the soul (greed) appears to invite a physical
attack on the city. In the end, the film never shows us Smaug overtaking the
city. The entire sequence makes clear that he takes over Erebor without
actually showing his face. What we do see are silent mountains of gold, hoarded
by the Dwarves, glimmering, bringing fire and doom.
Then there
is the matter of the 3-D which is something of a gift: giving us Gollum
like we have never seen him before. Gollum was already creepy in 2-D CGI but to
see his eyes glow after catching a sliver of light in 3-D is to better
appreciate his animus.
Another
aspect of the older films heightened in this movie is the use of the eagle as a
kind of motif. As in the Return of the
King, eagles arrive at a key point to save the day. They were seen on-screen
briefly and almost indirectly in the last movie. Here, Peter Jackson gives us
more time with them, to see them clearly against the sunlight, though they
never take over the show as the Tiger does in Ang Lee’s Life of Pi. These eagles ask us to accept them as symbols. At the
same time, and much like the Tiger in Life
of Pi, they cut open the narrative and ask us to accept something more
sublime and ambiguous than just an easy metaphor involving the role of the United States
There has
been much discussion of The Hobbit’s
high frame-rate, but this will not be a factor in most cinemas which are not
equipped to play the new format (which supposedly renders a sharper image). Though
it’s easy to say this film was nothing more than just another money-making
opportunity for the producers, I found The
Hobbit to be the justifiable foundation stone upon which all the other
films are built. In this movie, there is the clear sense of being enmeshed in
another world, a sense exquisitely heightened by the 3-D which – more than just
being a means to justify a higher ticket price – allows greater room for differing
textures of golden light and for a deeper immersion into that never-ending darkness
Milton described in Samson Agonistes
(“O dark,
dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon / Irrecoverably dark, total eclipse”). The film, one of the best of the
year, provides spell-binding sequences which linger in the mind. It is a
majestic entertainment.
****
