Uzma Falak on Rollie Mukherjee’s work: In Koshur – the Kashmiri language – the metaphors of pain invoke sky, earth, mountains, fire, sounds, textures, smells, colours, erasure, departure, and objects like knife, axe, saw, nails. Artist Rollie Mukherjee’s work is a home to these metaphors. Through her paintings she evokes the geography, the body, the edifices of pain. Her work is not only pain in translation but the body in pain itself. Pain exists as a paradox: it is ephemeral yet it renders everything else insignificant. It is irretrievable yet it leaves a trace. But like pain itself, its trace is equally enigmatic. It finds a home in memory even though, as scientists now debate, memory itself doesn’t have a home. The question is do we enter the sovereign territory of pain or is it the pain that enters us? If the latter is true, then isn’t the familiar expression I am in pain, a betrayal of our sensorial experience, the pain is in me? In Koshur, pain is borne or possessed as is observable in the expression mei cha dagh (a literal rough translation would be: “I have pain”), or dagh lalnawaan (cradling/bearing the ache or pain). Pain asserts its sovereignty over the body but simultaneously evokes a longing in the body, for freedom. It may appear otherwise but a body in pain is undeniably alive; pain is a sign of life. More here.
Category: reviews
A Play That Confronts the Horror of Solitary Confinement
went to see “mariposa and the saint” at MuCCC.
there are about 100,000 people in solitary confinement in american jails right now, 5,000 just in the state of ny. some of them are in for a few weeks, others for years, many for decades. there was a woman in the audience today whose son is in solitary confinement. he’s 18 years old. the kid in the special housing unit (SHU) next to him is 16, the same age as my daughter. a child. both are routinely harassed and brutalized by prison guards (bones and teeth have been broken) and any kind of resistance simply entails more time in solitary. much like mariposa, whose real life story is told in the play, in her own words, through the letters she wrote to activist, playwright and actress julia steele allen. she was given 4 additional years in solitary for throwing a glass of water at a male nurse. it’s enough to make one physically sick.
this horror must end. pls learn more here and urge your representatives to pass the humane alternatives to long-term (HALT) solitary confinement act. we can do this. more here.
The India-Pakistan masterpiece that fell through the cracks
“Inspired by the early works of iconic Indian director Satyajit Ray, Jago Hua Savera is moulded in neo-realism, a genre shaped by Italian greats like Luchino Visconti and Vittorio De Sica. Shot in black and white on location on the banks of the majestic Meghna river in Bangladesh, then East Pakistan, the film portrays the hardships of a fishing community in Saitnol village near Dhaka, which is at the mercy of loan sharks. It presents an unusual collaboration between Pakistani and Indian professionals, only a decade after the bloody partition. Faiz’s script was inspired by a story written by popular Bengali author Manik Bandopadhyay. Towering Indian musician Timir Baran, who lived in Kolkata (Calcutta), provided the music.” More here.
Venice Biennale 2015: Chiharu Shiota
“Chiharu Shiota‘s ‘The Key in the Hand’ is an elaborate entanglement of red wool and keys that dangle above two ancient looking boats. The installation was located within the Venice Biennale’s Japan pavilion in 2015, nearly blocking out the ceiling with its mass of crossing strings. It includes a collection of more than 50,000 keys. The piece points towards memory through its composition and materials – the keys were collected from thousands of people around the world.”
I can’t help but think how this artwork embodies the Nakba and the refugee crisis we are witnessing right now.
Noam Chomsky in Rochester
Went to see REQUIEM FOR THE AMERICAN DREAM yesterday at the Little Theatre. This was the first time Noam Chomsky saw the film himself. He was seated right in front of me. I was tempted to take a picture of the back of his head, with the film playing in front of him and post it with the caption “Chomsky watching Chomsky” or something to that effect but then I thought it would be too juvenile and with much self-discipline, I abandoned the idea.
The documentary is excellent. It parses hours and hours of interviews with Professor Chomsky and creates a clear and engaging narrative. As a filmmaker, I understand the challenge. How do you take a series of lectures by one of the most eclectic intellectuals of our time and cut them into a cogent and gripping 73 minute film? The answer: sharp editing, copious b-roll and terrific graphics and animation. The importance and urgency of what Professor Chomsky is saying helps too, of course.
He talks about the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a few (a fraction of one percent) and puts this phenomenon in a historical context, he explains how the “rabble rousers” of the 60s and 70s were crushed, how the media and their focus on consumption have produced a “me” culture and undermined solidarity, and how this will continue to shape an increasingly ugly society. The film ends on a positive note by reminding us of Howard Zinn and his bottom-up view of history – the idea that the countless small actions of unknown people drive all great historical events. Ultimately it’s always been, and it continues to be, up to us.
In the post screening Q&A, I got to make a comment. I told Dr Chomsky that as a Pakistani American filmmaker I had shot a film in Lahore in 2009. The film was a broad survey of public opinion about issues of interest to Americans, e.g. the Taliban, the War on Terror, American foreign policy in the region, and a polling of what average Pakistanis thought about Americans. I interviewed a wide spectrum of people and most of them were quite politically astute. Many talked about the corporate nature of American media and how the American public was totally brainwashed. Yet some mentioned Dr Chomsky by name and said, “But then there are also people like Noam Chomsky in America.” The audience applauded vehemently. I concluded with how it was important for him to know that, even as a single individual, he’s an antidote to American imperialism and aggression. Again much applause.
In typical Chomsky style, he evaded the compliment completely and began to talk about international polls and how public opinions around the world are of immense consequence. He ended by complimenting me on recognizing that fact.
Nate Baldo (from Jewish Voice for Peace) asked a brilliant question about American military aid to Israel and increasing grassroots resistance to the occupation. Interestingly enough that was the issue Dr Chomsky spent most of his time discussing. Of course he did not mention BDS, but this was a full house (500 people or more) and an excellent forum for educating people on Israel/Palestine. All in all, a spectacular evening with an intellectual icon.
Thank you Tatyana Bakhmetyeva for organizing it and for getting us tickets to a sold out screening 🙂
Kathryn Bevier’s artwork at the Geisel Gallery
saw Kathryn Bevier‘s beautiful artwork at the Geisel Gallery yesterday (1 Bausch and Lomb Place, in Rochester). kathryn uses the encaustic technique of painting with pigmented wax to create vibrant compositions. her work has a calming, serene elegance to it and of course anything that involves image transfer, collage, texture and multiple media speaks strongly to me. i was particularly taken with her “shadow self” series. this picture (taken with a flip phone) do not do justice to her work. u can check it out until the end of january.
Beasts of No Nation
“Beasts of No Nation” is a stunning film. It is written and directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga and based on Uzodinma Iweala’s novel about a child soldier. The film is beautifully written and shot. Not only should Idris Elba have been recognized for his excellent work, but I’m even more shocked that no mention has been made of the incredibly sensitive, masterful performance by Abraham Attah, the film’s child protagonist. The Academy Awards are rubbish.
Najla Said in Rochester
Oct 19, 2015: Saw Najla Said perform her one-woman show “Palestine” yesterday at Temple B’rith Kodesh in Rochester, NY. I was familiar with her play based on interviews and clips I had seen online. I was particularly taken by a short sequence I had found on YouTube in which she talks about Arab culture and how the language itself embodies this marvelous warmth and hospitality, this yearning to connect with immediacy. It’s a lovely piece that debunks stereotypes with immense passion and poetry. She sets it up with the caveat of not wanting to be an Orientalist. Obviously 🙂
We showed that clip at Celebrate Palestine last year, an event that launched the Witness Palestine Film Series 2014, where we celebrated Palestinian food, music and literature as a form of resistance to erasure. Najla’s dynamic description of the beautiful intricacies of Arab culture was a perfect fit for that evening.
As I settled down in the front row yesterday, I didn’t know what to expect from the entire play. I was instantly moved by how she greeted us and introduced herself in Arabic, rather than English, before she proceeded with the show. She was animated, poignant, funny, courageous, transparent. Her story is personal but because of the family she grew up in and the rich mix of geographic, cultural, linguistic, ethnic and political contradictions she had to navigate from a very young age, there is much that resonates with many. The show progresses with immense energy, energy that is translated into impressive physicality. There are ups and downs and some wonderfully reflective moments as well. The end is breathtaking. It has a quiet elegance, an emotive power that’s almost surprising. We learned later, during Q&A, that it was the first thing she ever wrote, when she began to write the show. And Edward Said endorsed it enthusiastically 🙂
Catching up with life
Many things have happened over the last few weeks and I haven’t had time to articulate them, organize them, record them – basically write about them.
During the Fringe Festival, I saw “Marx in Soho” a play written by one of my heroes, historian Howard Zinn. It shows “Marx as few people knew him, as a family man, struggling to support his wife and children.” The idea of the play is that Marx comes back to life to defend the ideals of communism (and separate them from the dehumanized version practiced in the former Soviet Union) and to expose the cruel inequities of capitalism. I was particularly moved by Marx’s description of the Paris commune of 1871, a successful worker’s revolution that established progressive laws and inspired lofty political dreams. It reminded me of the model community that was built in Zuccotti Park. “The people of Paris formed not a government, but something more glorious, something governments everywhere fear, a commune, the collective energy of the people.” Zinn’s one-man play ends with these wonderful lines: “Do you resent my coming back and irritating you? Look at it this way. It is the second coming. Christ couldn’t make it, so Marx came…”
Two days earlier, on September 24th, I attended “Connecting the Dots: Ferguson to Palestine” a lecture by Rev Graylan Hagler, a veteran social and economic justice activist and outspoken supporter of Palestinian human rights, whose credentials include the fight against South African apartheid and now, deep involvement in the Black Lives Matter movement. After a mendacious campaign directed at Rev Hagler’s character and work, and topped off by death threats, he was disinvited from the venue where he was slated to speak. However, Christians Witnessing for Palestine and the local chapter of the Jewish Voice for Peace joined forces to make sure that the event was a huge success in Rochester. Not only did Rev Hagler speak at an alternative venue where activists of every stripe attended en masse, but he also spoke to students at the U of R. This was a heartening experience for me. Not only did it confirm that free speech (free political speech) actually means something in America, it also highlighted how the exercise of this constitutional right is not enforced by politicians (making grandiose statements or marching for the press in Paris) but by grassroots activist organizations that can come together with incredible power. It was one of the most diverse and vibrant events I’ve ever been to in Rochester and I was honored to partake of such inspiring solidarity.
On October 8th I was invited to speak about cultural competence at the Diversity Conference at SUNY Brockport. This was my third year as a presenter and once again I loved the brilliant energy at this lively conference. The international food tasting was great as usual: my favorites were Kenyan matoke (a delicious plantain stew), Namibian kapana (beef grilled on an open fire) and Spanish orange-flavored flan. The food tasting was accompanied by terrific dance and music, all performed by students. The panel discussion was extremely well-attended. When one of my co-panelists, Shauna O’Toole, found out that I am Muslim, her immediate reaction was to apologize for everything that’s said about Islam and is done to Muslims in America and in the world. I was taken aback. We had just met. I thanked her profusely. This is the kind of astonishing and heartwarming support I have always received from LGBTQ compadres. It means the world to me. It gives me hope.
This last weekend, I attended a beautiful memorial service for my friend’s husband. It was filled with music (Scottish bagpipes but also gospel and blues music by the Campbell Brothers) as well as reminiscences and endless love and admiration. It wasn’t just how many people came to the service but also their wonderful diversity. There was something solemn and deeply moving about the impact that one person can have on so many. It reminded me of Steinbeck’s East of Eden. I read it when I was quite young and one of the things that stayed with me was how he assessed the measure of a person’s life:
Humans are caught in a “net of good and evil.” There is no other real story in the entire world, and there never will be. It is how we live our simple lives while caught in that trap of good and evil that determines our success as individuals and our impact on the world. A person’s life can be measured by the feelings of those left behind.
Tasveer’s 10th film festival brings South Asian geopolitics home
Wonderful review of A THIN WALL by Nabeeha Chaudhary in the Seattle Globalist: Thanks to the Seattle South Asian Film Festival, Seattleites have the chance to watch and meet the filmmaker of “A Thin Wall,” a documentary that captures a range of memories from both sides of the border. From the recollection of a then 26-year-old man imprisoned for non-violent political activism with the Muslim League, to a then 5-year-old girl’s reminiscence of what life was like on “the other side” in India, memories of the partition are deeply alive in the minds of the multiple generations shaped by it. More here.
kindertotenlieder at the eastman school of music
so powerful to come across this piece in post magazine when i just saw mahler’s “kindertotenlieder” at the eastman school of music last night. mahler’s song cycle is based on poems by friedrich rückert. rückert wrote the 428 poems known collectively as “kindertotenlieder” in 1833-34 as an outpouring of grief following the death of two of his children. in this sobering audio-visual presentation, directed by dr emil homerin, mahler’s music and rückert’s hearbreaking words are interspersed with facts about child mortality in rochester both in the 1900s and now. it’s shocking (and shameful) that 50% of rochester’s children live below the poverty line. only three other american cities have higher child poverty rates than rochester: detroit, cleveland and dayton, ohio. of course, the affluent live as well as in any other wealthy city of the world. such inequity and injustice. we are all responsible. more about the fringe festival’s presentation of kindertotenlieder here.
Rochester Fringe Festival: Vivien Leigh: The Last Press Conference
Sept 20, 2015: just saw this at the eastman house. good performance by marcy savastano, whom i had seen in “edge” some 6 years ago, a play about sylvia plath’s last day on earth. she has mastered the art of the one woman show: so much energy, emotion and dialogue compressed into time and space, with the eyes of the audience fixed on her intently throughout the performance. probably what vivien leigh herself must have felt like many times during her life. more here.
The Man Who Turned Life Into Magic
Oliver Sacks (1933-2015)
Marcelo Gleiser: We are a story, each of us. And a story with no listener is the same as silence, as oblivion. Some stories are harder to listen to, or can’t be listened to in ordinary ways, and, so, take a very special kind of listener. We are blessed to have Oliver as a listener, at once scribe and bard of the human condition. More here.
petals of blood by ngugi wa thiongo
ngugi wa thiongo’s “petals of blood” reminds me of “the grapes of wrath” on account of its breathtaking scope, its poetry, and its impassioned love of humanity. the sheer magnitude of the book is mind-blowing. when i started reading it i thought that it embodied the story of africa, of an entire continent, but by the time i reached the end of the book, i could say with certitude that it tells the story of all colonized people, of the oppressed all over the world. the idea of creating a “new world” because the old world is simply inadequate and can never be fixed, is a kind of epiphany which precipitates the book’s inexorable end.
“The true lesson of history was this: that the so-called victims, the poor, the downtrodden, the masses, had always struggled with spears and arrows, with their hands and songs of courage and hope, to end their oppression and exploitation: that they would continue struggling until a human kingdom came: a world in which goodness and beauty and strength and courage would be seen not in how cunning one can be, not in how much power to oppress one possessed, but only in one’s contribution in creating a more humane world in which the inherited inventive genius of man in culture and science from all ages and climes would be not the monopoly of a few, but for the use of all, so that all flowers in all their different colours would ripen and bear fruits and seeds. And the seeds would be put into the ground and they would once again sprout and flower in rain and sunshine.”
Photography by Christy Lee Rogers
Christy Lee Rogers is a self-taught photographer from Kailua, Hawaii. Her obsession with water as a medium for breaking the conventions of contemporary photography has led to her work being compared to Baroque painting masters like Caravaggio. With an eye for the chiaroscuro qualities of light, her subjects bend and distort; bathing in darkness, isolated by light, and are brought to life by ones own imagination. Without the use of post-production manipulation, her works are made in-camera, on the spot, in water and at night.