the politics of beauty

“It wasn’t so much Iman’s blackness that defied the fashion world of 1975; it was that she was African. She might as well have been from the moon. Not only did an African have no precedent in the business of good looks, but this one exuded an authenticity that made just about everyone else seem compromised in some way — including black Americans.”

from the book “I am Iman“, on her arrival in new york in 1975 and her effect on the fashion world in general, and the dynamics between africans and black americans in particular.

iman abdulmajid was a diplomat’s daughter and political science student at univ. of nairobi when she was “discovered” by peter beard; she must have had an inkling of how much her arrival on the fashion scene would have in upending long held views of africans, as the primitive, unsophisticated other, incapable of fitting into mainstream notions of beauty.

stop motion studies, the remix

Stop Motion Studies – Series 13: montage of stop motion animations of people being photographed in the subways of tokyo, london, paris, new york and boston. (original animations for each of the cities were originally posted on the internets around 2003).

“It is said that 90% of human communication is non-verbal. In these photographs, the body language of the subjects becomes the basic syntax for a series of animations exploring movement, gesture, and algorithmic montage. Many sequences document a person’s reaction to being photographed by a stranger. Some smile, others snarl, still others perform. Some pretend not to notice. Underneath all of this are assumptions and unknowns unique to each situation.”

cg and jozi

two stunning computer graphic-based short films filmed in jo’burg, south africa directed by neill bloomkamp (famous for the dancing-transformer-citreon commercial).

tetra-vaal [click on the right of page for quicktime movie] mock commercial for robocop that can patrol the er, grittier parts of jo’burg.

alive in joburg [quicktime movie] mock documentary about aliens occupying jo’burg, their plight suspiciously like that of the black south africans they live amongst in the shanties of kliptown.

more on that conversation between africa and the new world

powerful quote about the power of african music:

One of the most important events of the twentieth century was the marriage of African and European musical languages. It wasn’t just one marriage – but a series of marriages in the American South, in Cuba, in Jamaica, in Brazil, and, of course, Africa. There is something about each of the two music cultures that seems to need the other; European music provided harmonic progressions organized round a tonal centre – an idea which, once you’ve heard it, is irresistible. African music offered its polyrhythms, rhythms that occur in layers a kind of beat which, once heard, is hard to live without.’

Hard to live without. Africa is part of everyone’s life, whether they know it or not. Along with ivory, slaves, diamonds, gold and oil, it has given us the soundtrack of modernity.

granta: the many voices of africa

419 ways to come up with the right scheme

the “419 scam” from the nigerian point of view, (”we are motivated by poverty, our victims are greedy and/or stupid”).

I Go Chop Your Dollar [quicktime movie].

I go chop your dollar
I go take your money, disappear
419 is just a game
You are the loser, I am the winner

419 State of Mind, part II[audio, mp3] by Mode 9, hip hop ditty narrating how the scams are executed.

No 9 to 5
So we transform to 419

[via my heart's in accra]