06-06-2024
This is a site which vindicates all the points we, at TINYisPOWERFUL, are advocating for when we talk about urban policies and architecture.
To see these powerful black women get the exposure and professional recognition they have sought, deserve and which will make a difference in the teaching and the projected image of their profession, is essential for the Ecofeminist space.
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In defense of Ecofeminism, I need to clarify something.
This bias of mine for the promotion, the explosion really, of the feminine presence in the professional world does not reflect an unfounded fantasy, does not project women as the miracle cure from supremacist male capitalism. For one thing, yes, if we keep going the alfa-male way, the world is doomed. But, no, all women are not saints or honey! Just yesterday, the behavior of Marjorie Taylor-Greene vis-a-vis AOC speaks loudly of what women can also do! Not to mention Medea and many other legendary or historic characters!
What I believe is that once the dissociation monster is tamed, meaning once men do laundry, wipe babies clean and facilitate children growth, when women have equitable access to all professions, then Jung will declare that the time has come (Kairos) for “the metamorphosis of the gods, of the fundamental principles and symbols.” Meaning for the deepening of the collective field of (un)consciousness whose foreground is presently encumbered with images of violence and domination; whose middle ground resembles a land devastated by war and climate degradation; on a background of greed, envy and aspirations to eternity!
I believe that ecofeminism is acknowledging the disaster, questioning the gloom and the doom, without denying the pain soon to come. It proposes one clear path: solidarity based on the collective affirmation that ‘to go it alone’ is to perpetuate (self)destruction. I, at this moment, am spending my intellectual lifeline promoting the collective consciousness paradigm, of which I see TINYisPOWERFUL be an active part of. We are not a crowd, we are not even a bunch! We are very few in number, but we are together and seeking others to form a cohort.
06-07-2024
It is so important to realize that the push from the extreme right to obliterate diversity, wokism, everything gender, everything LGBTQ, everything immigration … is universal and usually financed by billionaire industrialists whose major purpose is to secure and expand their financial class privileges. They have developed a very smooth narrative which disguises their bluntly materialistic intent into a cultural fight in defense of the soul of America. There is a slick internal logic to the narrative which makes it very difficult to counter in a short take. Lately, I can hear more ‘communist’ or ‘marxist’ slurs uttered to describe whoever is left of them, in an attempt to tetanize audiences, Joe McCarthy style.
What makes the narrative hard to undo is that it is a chain of sophisms, designed as a loop where, whatever your point of entry, you risk being sucked in and gagged.
Key words in the chain are, in no special order: gender, trans, woke, border, terrorist,
media, America, migrant, Palestine ….
I notice that there is no mention of climate change on any list. It is not my negligence. It means that it is an issue better ignored altogether.
06-10-2024
Putting away some notes that have been piling up on my worktable, I find some interesting bits, some of them already in the diary. There may be some repeats.
– Artists never stop questioning the image the world has of itself.
– Art gets us ready for the unknown.
– May 68 slogans: Power to the Imagination – Be realistic, ask for the impossible.
– For Loic Wacquant too, Black people represent a CASTE in America. Racism is terror through exploitation, subordination, exclusion – stigmatization, pauperization, apartheid (residence, schooling, healthcare, exploitation, voting)
Domination by one class of one race, inseparable.
– Remember Hans Mayer aka Jean Améry? “… the violence of the oppressed is the revendication of their dignity, an opening to their historic and human future.”
Whereas the violence of the oppressor is a sheer affirmation of their blind power.
In reference to the implementation of the DAHIYA DOCTRINE: to (re)establish the notion of Israel’s invincibility. In total contradiction with the idea that the best way to defeat the Hamas – since it is the Hamas which is being fought against, not the Palestinian people, right? – is to offer said people a political perspective, a future of hope and dignity.
06-12-2024
Wondering about the meaning of my latest visual choice concerning the Tale for Reparations:
Yesterday, I decided to carve a very big fish out of a block of polystyrene!
Then, gazing at it, a bit numbed, I started sticking feathers I had to its body. Why?
Purchased more feathers and covered the fish with fine, fluffy white feathers. Why?Named it ‘Mother Fish’ right away! A representation of an extraordinary parturient female, very heavy with eggs in her belly, ready to lay them in such a way that they will be collected, farmed and processed. Clearly suggestive of fishery-type farming, urban farming.
Then, I read the first paragraph of an article by Philip Oltermann in the 06-12-2024 issue of the Guardian.
“Bertolt Brecht believed that theatre should not merely entertain its audience but make them think politically. To achieve this effect, thought the German playwright and poet, a play should not be polished – but jarring. Actors should break out of character to address their audience, plot lines should be broken up and interrupted. In one memorable phrase, he described his ideal play as one that could be “cut into individual pieces, which still remain fully capable of life.”
Brecht says it all. The political thinking should seep through the different pieces of the installation, across their disparity, as they share a common intent, yet constantly interrupted … presently by a caricatural Mother Fish. In the end, what is ‘a Tale for Reparations’ but an assemblage of multiple visual streams pointing in the direction of what I presently conceive as Ecofeminism. To be in search of meaning through the construction of an array of ‘jarring’ visuals and thoughts, “cut into individual pieces”, although “still fully capable of life”! Rather than of coherent, singleminded, unidimensional but wholly predictable renderings of safe thinking!
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This train of thought, as it forages freely in the land of ecofeminism, is so much in sync with what I am reading in the Graeber-Wengrow book ‘the Dawn of Everything’. Their reporting on the 1700’s socio-political life of the Wendat people (women and men), and the thinking of Kandiaronk, one of their statesmen, is so impressive and convincing. How he cannot imagine a wealth inequality between his people, since there is no transactional commerce in their world, not even the notion of it. How about the way Kandiaronk explains what liberty and autonomy mean, in a society where there is no notion of private property either! How about calling this a state of ‘reciprocal communism’ sans enlightened vanguard (my proposal)? And how about the chain Money-Greed-Inequality-Violence, which he discovers in European societies. He dissects it, studies it and condemns it fully as the root of social rot.
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Yesterday, three days after the Macron earth-shaking decision to dissolve the French Assembly, to call for new elections and force France into a possible state of self-destruction; two days after François Ruffin launched the idea of a New Popular Front; one day after the French Left decided to present a united front against the strong possibility of a fascist government, I was watching one of the thousands of meetings-of-the-mind taking place presently in France – to save France, literally, from shame. What was that cohort of interracial, inter-generational, inter-union and grassroots citizens debating around … but The destructive chain of Money-Greed-Inequality-Violence? That of Kandiaronk, precisely.
As if the French people, fully conscious of the emergency, were attempting to build a bridge across time, not BACK to Kandiaronk and the Wendat people, but WITH them, to add a renewed sense of continuity between them and us; yesterday and tomorrow; 2024 and the French Revolution – History in the making – After all,… It has been uncovered that the encounters between Jesuit missionaries and Wendat folks of New France (Quebec), and the visit of Kandriaronk in Paris, did bear fruit! The wisdom of the savages rubbed off on a civilized man of god who wrote about it, shared it and… then proceeded, by all means, to hide his sources!
And what a better way to hide your sources than to silence them? Ethnic what, you say?
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Again and again, I return to the punishment still exacted on an other New World community, for its affront to the French colonial power: Napoleon’s army defeat in 1803, by Haitian slaves, the Haitian people.
Why couldn’t I read today’s events in France – the coalition of a constructive left-oriented political force – as a collective way to mend the fabric of History across centuries. Maybe an episode in the REPARATIONS saga, which, indeed, only the culprit can weave. France, in this case…
And how could I not see the relationship with the Tale?
Is this enough fuel to go back to the studio with determination and hope?
06-13-2024
May the million of eggs gestating in Mother Fish’s belly be as many blessings to the artists, activists, educators, young and old, soon to march our streets for America’s glorious future of liberation, transformation, equity and access!
06-15-2024
You say access?
I say excess!
This morning, at the very end of my walk, in the middle of the hot tarmac, there was a Monarch, as dead as Louis the Sixteenth, with its head crushed but still attached, wing extended, in perfect order. I picked it up to show Gwylène. A closer look revealed a cluster of light yellow pinheads hanging from the flattened abdomen. Monarch eggs. Worth an ecological fortune. So moving, at a time when human females are losing their right to choose … and when the Tale for Reparations welcomes a Mother Fish, Ovulator Liberalis, at its Charleston urban fish farm!
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In Abriel’s project, art cannot be just an added flavor, an ingredient. Not an instrument. It has to be a filter for all her thoughts and processes. Rather an organ which secretes its drops of irrational at a patient pace.
A pituitary with imagination!
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This above use – abuse – of the words irrational and imagination and the introduction of the pituitary, (orchestrator, storer, dispenser of all functions of life itself), reminds me of the real research I conducted when Camille asked me to run a Question-Relay around the notion of irrational, years ago at Azule. Ever since then I wonder whether it is not the bottomless complexities, the infinite possibilities of junctions, conjunctions, cross-influences, intersections, among the random and ever-changing materials of everyday living, which can generate only one thing: irrationality, the irrational, which, also stimulated by imagination, acquires the ability to project humanity’s hopes for survival!
Wow!
No worry though! This is but the result of my refusal – total – to admit that there may be an other orchestrator of our daily pains out there. After all, if I push back on materialism, marxistic or not, and if I reject the arc of history notion … what is there left but to promote and practice solidarity and love for Humanity and its provider – mother Earth?
I demand the right to go mad before the carnage in Darfour, in Palestine, in the Congo, wherever children die in their mother’s sight and wherever the destruction of nature meets indifference. All this utter cruelty with origins in ignorance, greed, stupidity and cowardiss.
Imagine the archetypal convict waiting for the hangman to draw the death chamber curtain. The sky, the birds, all gone. And the water, the fish, the open fields … “Might as well be dead” they say.
06-17-2024
This morning, I learned that in 2020, an unknown manuscript of LF Céline had been found – actually, I believe I had read something about a suitcase full of loose handwritten pages or bundles of them, clipped together with clothe pins … Whatever! I had forgotten. It took the Guardian and an article by John Banville to alert me about ‘War’, a translation of ‘Guerre’ published in France in 2022 by Gallimard – no relation!
The fun side of this information is that Banville made a mistake when he called Céline’s sidekick Bébert. Bébert is the name of Céline’s cat! Bardamu is that of his sidekick, at least in his preceding masterpiece, ‘Journey to the end of the night’ , of which ‘War’ is a follow up, if I understand.
Of course, I had to find a way to communicate with Banville. I did. Whatever comes next I don’t know, but this episode brings back so many memories, mostly very bad, about the way my father never warned me about Céline’s antisemitism, his vehemence, his terminal bitterness. I had to discover this for myself some 10 years or more later; after I had left France. Yet an other reason to lose respect for my dead father! And to reconsider my love for Céline, the writer, who, however, does not have his equal in the way the texture of his literature matches, pixel for pixel, that of his soul. This, in fact, makes me believe that, when he wrote his ‘Voyage’, he was not yet tormented by antisemitism. This horrible bias may have developed with time. With the politics of the time, which were so polarized and brutally quick to finger-point at jews, with the presence of Action Française and its satellites, with the rise of Leon Blum as prime minister for the Popular Front and the aggravation of Hitler’s presence, rising to power next door.
What I believe is, first of all, that Céline cannot be forgiven one ounce of responsibility for his hatred and anti-jewish wrath. Second, what may have cost him his soul is his pride. His contempt, I should say, for whoever would question his place in the literary world of the time. One encounter with one Jewish critic, on an already fertile terrain, could well have triggered the worst blanket-hatred for the whole Jewish world! It takes so little to assign guilt, to find scapegoats. That is how weak he may have been at this level. From interviews taped and/or filmed – right after he came back to France after his incarceration in Denmark, or further on – I discovered how late in life he developed an utter scorn for pretty much all living creatures, except his cat and his wife Lucette.
06-24-2024
This lapse in the diary partly reflects my work on the Big Mama Fish! She has morphed into a feathered creature, a hybrid of sorts, which I have a very hard time making as visually striking as I had planned. I like the metamorphic quality in her. Now, I need to bring her the distance afforded by humor and give her more weight, more reality. Above all, I don’t want to forget that Big Mama Fish represents fish farming in the installation. She is a reproduction machine. Why not sit her on a nest, in the middle of a factory floor, robot-like, out of the water required for fishes to live. Or I could try to put her in a bubble! This may be too literal?
06-25-2024
Today is the day. Julian Assange is free and on his way back to Australia.
Also, today is the day when I read this simple article by Antoine Perrault, written around Scotland, where he found, among other things and people, an amazingly serene and clear-minded political culture. At least as far as immigration is concerned; this issue which, after all is warping the collective mind of right and left parties, in America, in England, in France, Europe, the world.
Perreault, in Scotland, met with a French septuagenerian who immigrated there in his 20’s. He explains that one cannot understand 21st century Scotland if one does not make a difference between CIVIC NATIONALISM and ETHNIC NATIONALISM. Here Christian Allard, the Frenchman in question, borrows directly from Khristy Backman, representative for Aberdeen-Ouest, who praises the benefits of letting in world cultural influences which keep Scotland currant … And give a deeper meaning to its quest for independence [this latter remark my interpretation].
Here lies the importance of internationalism at a time when politicians, from Putin to Trump and Netanyahu, do not hesitate to massacre whoever they see as threats to their national integrity. Let’s hope that the list of despots does not include Bardella and Le Pen, as of next week, in France. All those politicians preach for border walls and total discrimination, although they know there is no stopping the world migration of humans whose mode it is to be on the move.
– Animals migrate – Different reasons? Same behavior?
I am simplifying for the Bardellas of this world. They know some but they understand nought! And they sure do not want us to understand! Confusion is their best propaganda tool. So, Kristen Blackman’s simplicity and clarity is like cool water on a hot open wound. But caution: this simplicity could be misleading if the three words CIVIC, ETHNIC and NATIONALISM were just open-ended, declaratory slogans.
It is the way they intersect – in the phrase
CIVIC NATIONALISM v. ETHNIC NATIONALISM
which opens spaces for interpretation, activates them and, for me, creates a moment of enlightenment.
As a matter of fact, at this morning creative sync, I voiced my trust not in words, words alone that is, but in words uttered in a context. TINYisPOWERFUL needs to keep developing an environment where words are not open to confusion. I suppose that the presence of a lexicon on our website relates to this search for reality. Mostly at a time when cultural wars very much revolve around words, intentionally manipulated.
06-26-2024
I just read that many left wing Jews will not vote for the New Popular Front, in France. They just don’t believe that LFI leaders are not antisemitic because they refuse Israeli violence. Meaning that they would rather vote for right wing parties which have a history of antisemitism dating from centuries. I don’t know how to sort this out. I only understand that the French right has fallen in the ‘pro-Palestine = antisemitism’ trap. Also, French history shows that in times of socio-political turmoil, when there is need for scapegoats, one always finds the Jews. Grave danger ahead. Blame it on my upbringing in a reactionary family; a set of reflexes were forced on me, which I still resent, but which, at least, I can trace, spot and judge for what they are. It really was like the rape of a youngster’s mind, to be confronted with relentless racist refrains against anybody not white, not French … any ‘other’.
My family story is one thing. To see this xenophobia at such a scale today astounds and hurts me and Gwylène. But today, the rubber hits the road. There are critically tight upcoming elections in both France and the US, where the confusion around the Israel-Palestine conflict makes it impossible to be deciphered. It is a 100% binary situation and, again, binarism is a frame within which no mindful dialogue can take place. Indeed, just as in the US today, with its two-party system, binarism is a fertile ground for disinformation and fake news. It pushes voices for clarity and open-mindedness to the side, leaving the political arena helpless against innuendos, lies, insults and violence.
What is helping me skirt the binary typology of the time, from October 7 on, is espousing Hannah Arendt’s alternative vision for a longterm, value-based solution to the conflict. Not the elimination, pure and simple, of Hamas (possible?) – and consequently of Palestine (not possible); not a two-states solution, wishfully hoping that the violence inflicted on generations of Palestinians did not imprint permanent scars on the collective unconscious of these two co-existing States, spontaneously turned virtuous and peace-loving; but, a one-state solution which, in very-very few words, could be affiliated, following the Kristen Blackman’s ‘civic nationalism‘ model talked about yesterday (Scotland): a nation based on civic and not ethnic values. This would be a titanic accomplishment, the type of which the world urgently needs, lest it dissipates in a nuclear cloud.
Right after I wrote the above paragraphs, Gwylène and I had lunch. Then, before going to the studio, I made a quick stop at Médiapart. I found the following! … Coincidence?
To the question ” Does a scenario of hope still move you?”, Ilan Pappé – author of ‘The ethnic cleansing of Palestine’, published by La Fabrique – answers:
<Yes, that of a single democratic State. I am working towards this. I am not dreaming. I am a member of the One Democratic State Campaign – ODSC, which assembles both, Palestinians and Israelis. We are receiving more and more support, more from Palestinians of course, it is logical, less from Israelis, but we are very hopeful.> (Mediapart, 06-26-2024)
(I just bought Ilan Pappé’s book!)
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Yesterday, at the Creative Sync, much good work was accomplished I believe. This Organizational Chart that Morenga, on behalf of the Donnelley Foundation, has offered us as a development plan, proves to be precious because it makes TINYisPOWERFUL face some of its blindspots and weak points. One of them is how to expand outside our circle; another concerns how to characterize convincingly the content of the IN/WITH community appellation. This, of course, interests me particularly, as it helps define my role in the collective. In the collective, I am a resource for the practice of art in/with community, precisely. And I can theorize on this practice. The Diary is an aspect of the theoretical work, so is my participation in the Lexicon and, of course, the continuing development of ‘a Tale for Reparations’, around which everything I do pretty much revolves!
My check-in, at yesterday’s sync, was about Civic vs Ethnic nationalism. An example of how I am trying to bring more reflexion to the collective and get us to build a reserve of specific concepts which should differentiate our work from others’.
06-28-2024
Catastrophe! Biden must have been drugged up by Putin agents! He was fully inoperative for a good part of the 90 minutes the Trump-Biden puppet show lasted. But you know what? I believe Trump pushed his luck too far this time. There is no changing this neurotic lier and CNN showed its true colors when it did not find it important to have a fact checker who would systematically raise a red flag or activate a buzz every time the man lied. What is journalism but the search and diffusion of true facts for the edification, the information of the people. CNN is derelict… How would you like to be vilified, accused of total falsehoods in front of millions of people? Biden was. And he could not rebut for lack of time. “Your minute-and-a-half is up, sir. Sorry”. The CNN staff showed the indifference of a clock! Too easy for them though. Bad journalism. And who will pay the price? This was not a debate. It was a litany of insults raining on the old man, as thick as drones on Kiev. Or Gaza City – in which case, shouldn’t he stop supplying Israel? Shame and shame.
I remain amazed by the level of apathy the American citizenry seems to manifest although the issue is existential. As if all this is entertainment because it is on TV! And very bad entertainment at that!
06-29-2024
Reflecting again on Biden’s performance the other day: he was shellshocked. He was an eighty one year old man under attack and unable to react fast enough. Unable to punch back. Unable to run, forward or away. And now he is blamed, more for being old than for being shellshocked. There is no empathy left in the reactionary American culture. John Wayne has shot James Steward in the head first and then in the stomach, the groin, and the head again – for good measure. As Trump said, Joe Biden is a Palestinian. He could have said … a Sioux, a Black man, a homeless, a trans person. Not an immigrant though. Because he keeps a special weapon of torture for immigrants: family separation. How low will cruelty drag America? And how much ‘love’ will it take to overcome this wave untamed?