Every pretension to Africa for Africa Day

Africa Day in Manchester

I had planned nothing for the past Bank Holiday weekend except to catch up on some much-needed rest and sleep when I was offered a ticket to attend the Echoes of Africa event at Aviva Studios/Factory International on Saturday the 24^th.

This was in commemoration of Africa Day, previously known as African Freedom Day or African Liberation Day, initiated by the Organisation of African Unity on the 25^th of May 1963.

Looking at the agenda of events running from 11:00 AM to 6:00 PM, I was unsure if I had the stamina for 7 hours of potential revelry and entertainment, but I was determined to show up, if only out of gratitude for the invitation.

Please, I’m not fooled.

The Live Painting Workshop, which had begun in the early afternoon, was already underway when I arrived. I took a seat on one of the long sofas at the back, and I tempered my cynicism regarding the artistry of the participants, who were pretending to represent some essence of Africa. It easily resembled a messy children’s paint class, yet people of all generations were engaged in it.

We have been led to believe that a certain combination of vibrant colours and abstract shapes is representative of Africa in context or origin; it reflected everything Toto’s Africa was, but not the reality of what Africa is. The inspiration for the song originated from a late-night documentary about Africa and likely the recollections of missionaries to Africa who became teachers for American schoolchildren.

An unrelatable discussion

The next item on the agenda, beyond the over-representation of Nigerians on the discussion panel, focused on a topic likely more suited for those seeking a career in Afrobeats or some contemporary genre of African music. Having first met a lady of Portuguese and Guinea-Bissau descent who knew the lyrics to everything the female disc jockey played; I spent more time with a grandmother of Caribbean heritage tending to her noticeably Caucasian grandson.

Indeed, what is now deemed the music of Africa is quite pervasive; it has a global audience, and collaborations are extending its reach into places one would never have expected such music to resonate.

Yet, in my conversation with the grandmother, I thought a more relevant topic would be how we preserve the significance of our African heritage in the diaspora and provide younger generations a sense of belonging in the various spheres that influence education, experience, and identity.

Music and fashion to the world

Perhaps this was not the forum for such a cerebral debate, and thus far, it had only intensified my scepticism regarding the purpose of this gathering. Each time we were urged to make more noise like Africans, there was a feeling that English reserve had crept upon us unawares.

The live music performances were interesting, but I knew none of the artists or their music, and I was barely connecting until one performer took the stage like the Bobby Caldwell of Afrobeats.

If there were no visuals, one would imagine the performer hailed from a large city in Africa; he had mastered everything and could pass for being as good as the popular Afrobeats artists.

Then came the fashion show; the mispronounced words by the compere regarding atelier to Aso oke were quickly forgiven when it became clear that the distinction between African designer and African fashion meant the latter garnered less attention compared to the former. Some of the items showcased on the catwalk were comical at best, but I am not the target audience for this kind of attire.

Before I knew it, it was almost 6:00 PM—a delightful day out and a reminder that the Echoes of Africa were just that; an echo is a reflection of the original sound and should not be mistaken for the real thing.

(Un)Defining Queer @ The Whitworth

A cultural outing

This evening, I was invited to the preview of the (Un)Defining Queer exhibition at The Whitworth, an art gallery that is part of the University of Manchester, featuring exhibits by various artists.

Prior to arriving at the gallery, I met one of the more prominent artists with two exhibits on display, Ajamu X. I have heard of him and known about his work, but I had yet to have the opportunity to make his acquaintance. It was quite propitious.

We had a quick view of the exhibits before it was opened to viewing and then attended an opening function of introductions, acknowledgements, and a speech before we were entertained by a drag act and some dance performances.

A rather well-attended event, it was, whilst I am not that deposed to networking amongst crowds, Rev Jide Macaulay and Ajamu X were in their element. I found a place to sit down and engage in conversation with a German lady, met a rather active 93-year-old lady who preferred to stand than sit down and took in the atmosphere with the occasional engagement to familiar faces.

It has been years since I last visited the gallery, this exhibition would require a proper visit, and since it is running until December, I should consider a return before long. Sir Joseph Whitworth, for whom the gallery is named was renowned for the standardisation of machine equipment and screw threads and also has major streets and a park in his honour around Manchester.

(Un)Defining Queer at The Whitworth, Manchester from the 27^th of January to the 3^rd of December 2023.

Image: Ajamu X, Bud Kim, 2018 © the artist, Ajamu Studio

Skipping on lava

Only what I saw

Visited with the inscrutable in language so easily misunderstood, the project takes a chimeral form too nondescript to give shape to coherent thought that you are lost in a labyrinth of dark tunnels with eerie sounds masking the booming roar of a menacing minotaur.

My sobriety defeats me as I approach the caldera of a volcano ready to enter the mouth of the dragon that prances on the fires of the belly of the earth, I am scalded by its breath and starved of oxygen almost ready to swoon into the ethereal nothingness of the end.

In the abandon that ensues, not reckless in the least, we are become Pompeii and in looking back at the conflagration that has begun to surround us, we become the only friend of Lot’s salty wife.

Blogging something out of nothing

The process of nothing

Then a day comes, it is almost over and of all the events that happened in the day you wonder how there cannot be something to write about. Maybe there is something to write about and since I just woke up to take my pills, I am a bit slow on the uptake and tired in the head, as if that has ever stopped me, Brian will have you believe differently.

Yet, with everything coursing through my mind like neurons in riotous tumult, a few things looked plausible for a late blog and then it all seemed like hard work which for this time of the day can best be done without. Now, you might call it writer’s block, it could fall in the spectrum of that nebulous term, but it is closer to fatigue than the absence of material.

This is probably something I am beginning to perfect, the art of having nothing at all to write about and in writing about the dearth of things to share, I have just enough paragraphs to pass for another blog, and the deed is done. We can conclude that a blog is just as difficult to write as it is easy, even the process alone is blogging, and so, there we have it.

Furloughed: Checks, posts and views

A furloughed week

As a consequence of a frank professional assessment of a situation I was working on, I have found myself inadvertently furloughed to work just one day this week, as that is the only billable activity on my schedule. The disadvantage for me is that I do not get paid for days that have no billing, I am dependent on my resource manager to assign new projects to my schedule, or I am technically out of work.

However, not to be idle, I chose to book a sexual health check today, as before now, each visit to that clinic has me spending almost 5 hours there, I seem to always be the last to be seen. They have changed the arrangements from a walk-in clinic to an online appointments system that is open at noon for slots the day after. I caught the first slot of 8:30 AM today and still did not get called by a doctor until 9:15 AM. An improvement, but I arrived first, two people arrived after me and they were seen before me.

In any case, we had a pleasant session from answering questions that were heretofore embarrassing to me giving a detail medical report of my situation. Blood was drawn, swabs taken, and I gave a urine sample; all done in about 30 minutes.

I left to post a letter that was processed as registered post, taking time to ask questions about the normal operations of equipment and systems in the Post Office as part of my activities in the last few weeks included investigating the performance of Post Office environments.

Legacies that last

Then as I made my way home, the Whitworth Art Gallery which had undergone renovations a few years before became a point of interest. I decided to consider some appreciation of art, so I walked in first for a coffee and a croissant before looking around.

The gallery is named for Sir Joseph Whitworth Bt. who donated funds for the gallery and is renowned for setting the standards for the screw thread known as the British Standard Whitworth and the pioneer of the sniper rifle. His name features prominently around Manchester on Whitworth Street; where I live, Whitworth Hall, the Christie Hospital which he funded and is now one of the foremost cancer treatment centres in Europe. His legacy also funds 10-15 scholarships for engineering degrees and now to doctorate level.

At the gallery, is saw prints by Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (1746 – 1828), known to all as Goya and William Hogarth (1697-1764) in a curated exhibition titled Prints of Darkness: Goya and Hogarth in a Time of European Turmoil which runs until August 2019. The subtext is these men challenged orthodoxy and the abuse of power in times when the powerful had an untrammelled ability for impunity without accountability.

History is panels

At the exhibition, I learnt that Hogarth as an active governor of the Foundling Hospital founded by retired sea captain Thomas Coram in 1739, persuaded other great artists to donate works to the hospital and thereby pioneering socially engaged artists.

Then in his moral depiction of the Four Stages of Cruelty, he works progressively from childhood cruelty against pets, to adult cruelty against beasts of labour, then criminality that includes robbery to murder, ending with the reward of cruelty where the criminal having been condemned to disembowelled when brought down from the gallows.

On seeing the print of The Cockpit, I did wonder when the meaning evolved from watching a cockfight to being the helm of a water-going vessel or the flight deck of an aircraft.

We always need rational thought

Hogarth like Goya was a fierce critic of organised religion that held sway over people with superstition leaving little room for rational thought. In his Credulity, Superstition, and Fanaticism, he satirises and excoriates the belief in the Cock Lane ghost and a Mary Toft who was the perpetrator of an elaborate hoax suggesting she gave birth to a litter of rabbits.

One can aver that we desperately need a Goya and a Hogarth in these times to challenge the illogical and mad dash to Brexit along with the lies and terminological inaccuracies that has bewitched the populace into accepting that what is essentially damaging to them is more desirable than the status quo.

Another exhibition, Four Corners of One Cloth: Textiles from the Islamic World, filled me with fascination. On show was a piece of Kiswah, the cloth that covers the Kaaba the holiest shrine of the Islamic world which is apparently changed annually on the 9^th day of the month of Hajj, divided and sent around the world.

Until I saw the narrative of the items of clothing from the last nomadic tribe of the Qashqai from Iran, I had always wondered where Nissan got the name for their Qashqai. Now I know.

I guess I made more use of the day than I could ever have envisaged.

Some of the pictures of panels, prints and exhibits I took at the gallery are in this slideshow.

The passing of Brian Sewell

The passing of Brian Sewell

Brian Sewell who died on the 19^th of September 2015 was a very fascinating and interesting man. I first made an acquaintance with his views and writings in the 1990s when he was the art critic for the London Evening Standard.

He along with Victor Lewis-Smith who then wrote for the Time Out magazine as the television critic under the by-line ‘Rebel without a corset’ had an interesting use of phraseology and delivery that I could not overlook.

On television, he had an utterly patrician persona, his accent was once described as sounding posher than the Queen’s and I remember him appearing at a Chelsea Flower Show and reviewing a garden exhibit that he termed, ‘Utterly, utterly loathsome’.

Back to his writings

Yet for his sometimes acerbic and contemning wit, I always found him endearing, knowledgeable and dare I say, funny in a way that required an ear and an understanding that always put me on a learning path.

Earlier this year, I found myself reading the following books one after the other, Jeremy Hutchinson's Case Histories: From Lady Chatterley's Lover to Howard Marks, Closet Queens, Outsider: Always Almost: Never Quite, The Orwell Essays and currently, Against The Law: The Classic Account of a Homosexual in 1950s Britain.

The first two books along with a third which was a children’s book written by Brian Sewell as he recuperated from surgery in a hospital earlier this year, seemed to have a common theme of injustices suffered by some persecuted by pernicious laws against pornography, obscenity, blasphemy and homosexuality up the first three-quarters of the 20^th Century.

History in the stories

These again for me contained elements of recent history that were necessary for me to understand how far British society had come with the emancipation of human rights to its culmination in the legal recognition of same-sex marriages.

Outsider: Always Almost: Never Quite was Brian Sewell’s first part of a two-part autobiography which I read on my Samsung tablet using the Amazon Kindle app, it was revelatory as well as educational, the Kindle app allowed me to annotate words and phrases that I needed to learn the exact meanings of even if the contexts of their usage was helpful enough.

Mr Sewell had a penchant for the use of the obscure and archaic which also displayed a great erudition and the depth of expression of English that we so miss nowadays pandering to the lowest common dominator to communicate.

Of a persecuted sexuality

I will eventually get to read the second volume of his biography, but in the meanwhile, reading the articles that won him the 2003 Orwell Prize meant I downloaded the complete anthology of George Orwell’s books for my reading pleasure.

Brian Sewell was homosexual and there was some graphic detail of his sexual exploits after some years of asceticism and abstinence, he would have been a witness of the events of the Montagu Case which set off the campaign for relaxing the laws against homosexuality just around the time that Alan Turing sadly committed suicide.

Peter Wildeblood one of the defendants in the Montagu Case gave a very personal account of his persecution and prosecution in his book Against The Law: The Classic Account of a Homosexual in 1950s Britain.

There is probably not much else I can write about Brian Sewell that has not yet been written in tribute to him, but with his passing is sadly the loss of a kind of English expression championed by writers like George Orwell before and might presently be seen in Will Self, flashes of engaging prose written with rich philosophical and historical insight and analogy, much to educate the inquisitive mind beyond story and fact.

A uniquely different man

That Brian Sewell was not much honoured in his lifetime might be because he was as non-conformist as they come, yet loyal to all his friends even when the friends became pariahs as how he stood by Anthony Blunt, men of such principled stance and integrity are few to come by today.

In all, I acknowledge Brian Sewell and may his gentle soul rest in peace. If he ever gets the chance to be an art critic in heaven, I hope whoever designed the place did a good job to earn a modicum of rare praise.

Thought Picnic: Cultivating the art of conversation

Begin the talk

There are so many places I have been to, diverse and strange, all of which if the opportunity comes I will strike up a conversation starting with subjects from the mundane to the serious.

The English usually start with the weather and before you know it, the conversation wends and weaves, in and out, around and about anything, no preconception governs the direction and exchanges as the chat ebbs and flows.

On trains and on planes, I have had uncanny moments with people I could not have chosen to sit in proximity to me, the distance of randomness closed down by experiences intertwined into the fabric of the varied human story.

Converse to art

There are times I have resisted the self-absorption of social media distractions to interact, genuflect, and exercise a broader range of expression that comes with the physical presence of another human being who by interest or sense of adventure is doing the same as myself, it is a wonderful thing.

The art of conversation needs greater utility and honing, even conversation for the mere sake of it alone can be enriching and fulfilling bringing with it humour and mirth, knowledge and wisdom, insight and direction, advice and opportunity, there is really no telling what can result, but one cannot doubt its usefulness.

Do not fear

The worst that can happen is that some people will remain glum, but the tongue-tied are not necessarily dumb, they just need to be eased into a comfortable place to be engaged.

We must be careful that modernity and technology does not rob us of this experience as we bury our heads in concentrated engagement with devices and tools, completely oblivious of our surrounds to appreciate the beauty of nature, the natural and the native means of interaction amongst our nearest human neighbours.

Civility with awareness

In doing so, we begin to lose the ability to observe as our sense of awareness wanes giving way to less civilised and uncultured tendencies, like ignoring when we are being addressed, mindlessly walking in public places at risk of bumping into others or walking into the path of danger or even just the simple act of asking for directions.

We surely have not advanced in civilisation to lose the essential utility of civility. We need to give ourselves breaks from these distractions to enrich ourselves with useful sensory communication that comes from deploying the art of conversation as every opportunity we can find.

Start with the familiar, the common and the easy and that could well lead to the intricately complex. We are bundles of experiences too diverse to be constrained to silence, let us break the ice and talk.

The intrigue of a pencil in deft hands

A chance meeting

I am one to make conversation at the slightest opportunity if occasion warrants it.

At the station, I saw this rather handsome young man with what looked like a big folder portfolio of work; I had gone into the waiting room and turned on the heater; it is getting cold in dear old Blighty.

We got on the same coach and a momentarily loss of consciousness due to incidental slumber had my tablet fall out of my hands to the floor; he helpfully reached and picked it up then asked if it was OK, commenting they are usually made of sturdy stuff. It was fine.

Definition better than doodles

I apologised for my sloppiness and in minutes I saw that he had already drawn a few pictures on his pad; that caught my attention and curiosity as I asked by way of making a statement, you are an artist.

He responded, “I am an animator,” paused, then said, “or at least training to be one.” What I later read was this is a man who is now following his passion having had a career in reinsurance.

I caught the glimpse of a dog's head, one of the vicious kinds with the jaw bone structure to do you some damage as I quipped about whether he will like to work for Pixar. He did find that interesting enough to respond ambitiously, I by then had said a prayer of agreement in my mind without voicing out, I hope you do.

Imagination and play

We went on to talk about the vivid imagination that goes into animation and how it connects one's childhood with one's maturity as the pencil touches the paper.

By which time, I asked if he had a website, he said he didn't but he had a blog, one managed from his school. “I do have a blog too,” I said to him confessing I was still struggling to pen my 2,000th blog as I reached my ninth year of blogging.

As the conversation developed, I had obtained the link to his website, logged on to it, read a few blogs all with illustrations, saw how prolific he was and read his short biography where I learnt he liked Looney Tunes type characters.

My encounters with artists

A southpaw with a gift of artistic expression and I wondered whether I was about to relive history again because decades ago in school, I ran into a group of amazingly talented artists and it changed my life.

I told him I liked the Animaniacs cartoons which he did too, I then introduced myself, told him about what I did for a living, shook his hand; much smaller than mine but with a good manly grip.

The 30-minute journey was up but in meeting an utterly pleasant, handsome and talented man with the knowledge that I can follow his quest for complete genius that I hope will come with the recognition and success that would exceed the ambitions of his wildest imagination – I could see a world of new reality ahead of him much as I warned that he might get more visits to his website because I was going to write about our brief encounter.

What he did not know was that he had already set me up for the excitement of watching Skyfall later on.

Meanwhile, let me introduce you to Fox In Motion 2, it was started recently. Visit, appreciate and comment. Thank you.

Thought Picnic: What Makes Men Attractive?

The appreciation of the art of man

For as long as one could contemplate the whole idea of beauty, slim and skinny seemed to be the thing that captured the mind’s eye.

The masculinity or femininity was almost immaterial, there was just something about being lean and it gave the reason to find more meaning in the person.

The athletic exuded bodies that made you want to spend the rest of your living days in a gym, breaking sweat like Niagara Falls until all fat fell off and Michelango’s David stepped forward in the flesh.

O, the dancers, they were in a different world, from classical ballet to contemporary dance – many older will quite easily pass for half their age, their bodies sculpted by the regimen of movement and the discipline that has kept them at peak condition.

No rule, just perception

The way people carry themselves does matter too; the fickle engagement with manner of dress goes with the detail of gait, the bearing of the face ranging from juvenile with disinterest to rugged but unruffled and uncluttered with hairs.

Tall is good, smile is heartening, speech is welcome and maybe there is a friend in the stranger that made you steal a second and almost lingering look, the glasses having lost their function for reading to assume that for closer inspection from afar.

For all the uniqueness and difference in experiences one might have had that does not gel with the norm or the usual, your heart seems to skip a beat as you ask yourself – What makes men attractive?

Mandarin unbids Christies auction

Going, going but not gone

I am sure there are few who were not wide-eyed in amazement at the returns from the sale of artefacts from Yves Saint Laurent’s [1] (YSL) estate, the financial estimates were huge some people were already saying that the art world was going to shrug off [2] the credit crunch and recession.

When it comes to the return of antiquities, nothing bring focus to that issue more than when they are about to change hands and they are not going to those who lay legitimate heritage claims to them.

There are elements to the fact that YSL and his partner who is a patron of the arts were probably a tad acquisitive and his estate has turned into a treasure trove of sorts with records tumbling [3] like Chinese acrobats in one of their amazing performances.

Ratting on a rabbit

At dispute were two Chinese bronze sculptures of a heads of a rabbit and a rat (originally 12, 5 have been returned, these 2 on sale and whereabouts of the other 5 are unknown) allegedly looted from the imperial Summer [4] Palace by French and British troops towards the end of the Second Opium War in October 1860.

The Chinese authorities had remonstrated about the sale and asked for the “rightful” return of the bronzes to China and they even tried to prevent the sale of the artefacts but when the sale went ahead they threatened [5] the business of Christies [6], the auction house.

One can say that some Western businesses are well behind the curve on doing business in China [7] and have not fully understood how business and government can be conflated in one singular purpose of patriotic fervour.

That would be nothing to pay

A Chinese bidder who happens to be an adviser to China's National Treasures Fund which works on recovering looted treasures won the bidding at $19 million for each bronze sculpture to the whooping and applause of the auction attendees no doubt.

Just as the Christies might have been rubbing their hands with glee and the resulting commission the bidder has flipped a patriotic card and said he will not pay and cannot pay [8] – he has created the symbolism that the bronze sculptures cannot be sold.

Methinks Christies has been seriously wrong-footed and caught in what might even been Confucian in its origin – What you do not own, you cannot legitimately sell.

Undue diligence

How this threatens the business of Christies is myriad and could be quite damaging in that a bidder without adequate funds was able to command and win a bidding war in a reputable auction house – even if someone else had won the bidding, the thought that one of the bidders was a phony would leave bidders concerned about auctions.

Surely, if Christies had checked and verified the credentials of the bidder they should have been conscious of the possible political and sentimental twist to the issue – the Chinese demanding the return of the looted bronze would hardly be wanting to pay for what they claim is legitimately theirs.

It all also smacks of the phony and fraudulent schemes that have become reminiscent of our financial services where mythical reputations serve as fronts for nefarious deals which unwittingly entice people into transactions they should never engage in. Due diligence, is that now so foreign to business transactions?

This enterprise despite its patriotic undertone is no less fraudulent and it shows that anyone is capable of large scale fraud especially where the gullible meets the crafty.

It would all end badly

Much as Christies and the French courts might term the sale legal, it is unlikely that any money would exchange hands, the bidder would most likely have the full support of his government such that the legal wrangle would just sap Christies of requisite enterprising energy to weather the global financial crisis.

This is a major embarrassment for Christies as they scramble to preserve their reputation as a dependable auction house despite their other successes.

There is no telling the public relations nightmare that might ensue as researchers dig out details of how less powerful lobby groups and countries have been unable to prevent sales of their relics in Western auction houses.

Any customer would well be wary of any heirloom that seems to have a suspect provenance even if the claims go back over a century.

The bigger lesson is doing business with China is probably straight forward but when a tinge of sentiment borne of heritage is added to the mix, it is a high wire act without nets – he who walks the wire might well end up splat on the ground.

Do not run the gauntlet of mandarins, you might get seriously hurt.

Sources

[1] Yves Saint Laurent (designer) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[2] Record-breaking YSL art auction shrugs off crisis | Reuters

[3] Records tumble at YSL sale - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

[4] Old Summer Palace - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[5] China Gets Tough With Christie's - Forbes.com - Magazine Article

[6] Christie's - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[7] Understanding Chinese business culture and etiquette

[8] BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | China relics buyer refuses to pay

Chinese bidder of looted sculptures refuses to pay _English_Xinhua

Reasoning without cartoons

Is it me you are painting?

In this day and age, a likeness indicates a quality of similarity from which a difference from the original cannot be found.

There have been instances where a pictorial representation of a criminal can drawn by a police artist though based on the evidence of an eye witness.

Except by some inspiration, it is unlikely that an artist would be able to produce the portrait of any particular semblance to anyone the artist has not encountered by reason of some sensual stimulation.

Again, if any did produce a piece of work it is within the prerogative of that artist to give it whatever name to express the content, intent and concept.

Art is what you make it

The appreciation of art is however a personal understanding of the subject or object being observed; the enlightenment that ensues could be influenced by interpretation that one may or may not subscribe to.

If anyone, having scribbled carelessly or with determined genius with a pen or brush presents a portrait of yours truly, it is still left to me to validate that piece of art as my likeness.

If I do not acquiesce to the artist’s fantasy of having described in art, my likeness, no expert can convince me otherwise even though more people see me than I see myself in a mirror.

Probably nothing like the real article

“Nothing like the likeness of Him” and “No man has seen His face” are from the Mohammedan and Judeo-Christian books of religious instruction – these should put paid to any artist who assumes the idea of depicting God in pictures.

After God, we probably can assume that no contemporary man can depict in accuracy the visage of either Jesus Christ or Mohammed.

If we are conscious of that fact, then reason should suggest that any attempted work of depiction can as well be classed as charlatans striving at what they know not; and hence be ignored.

Reasonable doubt is enough doubt

Just as one would reject any depiction that does not suit our recollection of facts or details, a depiction that has no clear basis in fact should of course be dismissed.

Why then are cartoons which have no basis in fact, no proof of likeness, no authentication by the subjects or consideration for reverence the topic of rancorous commentary?

It is high time that our quest for greater faith in God allowed humanist doubt to dislodge the misrepresentation of innocuous scripture which excites many into becoming rather feeble-minded.

Let reason prevail

For those who have whipped up the frenzy that encompasses this saga, it is a unfortunate that men could be herded like cattle into a cause that would normally have had the reasonable well involved in more profitable things.

References

BBC NEWS | World | Middle East | Q&A: Depicting the Prophet Muhammad:

Thinking Cap – Seeing God