Alain Resnais and Chris Marker's: Les Statues meurent aussi
"Les Statues meurent aussi, co-directed with Alain Resnais. This 30 minute short film has a chequered history of censorship that at one time elevated it to a somewhat mythical status (2), and which prevented it from being brought into the wider public eye until some 16 years after it was completed. After its first screening at the Cannes Film Festival in 1953, and in spite of winning the Prix Jean Vigo in 1954, Les Statues meurent aussi was banned in France by the Centre National de la Cinématographie between 1953 and 1963 owing to its controversial anti-colonialist stance (3). While a truncated version was made available in 1963, the unabridged film only became available in 1968.
Les Statues meurent aussi was commissioned by the literary review and publishing house, Présence Africaine, which was set up in 1947 in Paris as a quarterly literary review for emerging and important African writers. Founded by the Senegalese thinker Alioune Diop, it housed the writings of some of the most important francophone thinkers in the latter half of the 20th century, such as Aimé Césaire, Ousmane Sembene, Léopold Sédar Senghor, in addition to French metropolitan writers such as Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus. The journal also translated groundbreaking works by Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka into French for the first time. Having emerged so soon after the new French Constitution of 1946 had declared a 'French Union', Présence Africaine’s publications signalled a new, post-colonial status for French and francophone thought, embracing what was then a key notion: that of négritude (4). It is this notion that the second half of Les Statues meurent aussi engages with most deeply, and perhaps most controversially, especially as it strives to connect the death of the statue with the rise in the commercialisation of African art for the pleasure of the colonial classes. Indeed, it is against the backdrop of a France that had so recently lost its colonial power, but which still retained many of the quasi-Manichean distinctions between white, Western culture and black, African culture, that (and in spite of their claims to the contrary) Resnais and Marker’s film projected its passionately anti-colonial, anti-racist, even anti-capitalist audio-visual collage. It is little wonder then that such a film should have been censored until the late 1960s, by which time it might have lost some of its topicality, but none of its political vigour."
(Jenny Chamarette, 14 September 2009, Senses of Cinema)
[1] Sarah Cooper, Chris Marker, Manchester University Press, Manchester and New York, 2008. As Cooper points out, Les Statues meurent aussi is available as an extra on the French DVD release of Resnais’ Hiroshima mon amour, Arte France and Argos Films, 2004.
[2] See Roy Armes’ entry on Les Statues meurent aussi in his The Cinema of Alain Resnais, A. Zwemmer/A.S. Barnes, London and New York, 1968, p. 34.
[3] This is heavily documented in scholarship on Marker and Resnais. In particular, see Cooper, p. 12; Emma Wilson, Alain Resnais, Manchester University Press, Manchester and New York, 2006, pp. 22-4; Nora M. Alter, Chris Marker, University of Illinois Press, Urbana, Chicago, 2006, pp. 58-9.
[4] For further details see V.Y. Mudimbe (ed.), The Surreptitious Speech: “Présence Africaine” and the Politics of Otherness, 1947-87, Chicago University Press, Chicago, 1992, pp. 3-4.
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
The Feral Diagram: Graffiti and Street Art 2011
"This diagram was meant as a challenge to the prevailing art world hegemony. It was created to prove the argument that graffiti and street art were already at the center of the art world whether they were officially recognized or not.
Utilizing the same graphic vocabulary as Alfred H. Barr, Jr (the first director of MoMA for the cover of the catalog for Cubist and Abstract Art exhibition in 1937) to create an impression of authority equivalent to his diagram. The Feral Diagram picks up chronologically where Barr left off, thereby subverting and redirecting the officially recognized historical trajectory.
Six years after the first draft of this diagram, the acknowledgement of graffiti and street art as important movements within the fine art community, if not the most important movements at the beginning of the new millenium, has come to light with major museum retrospectives, a never ending stream of books on the subject, websites, products, etc."
(Daniel Feral, 2011, Flickr)
Fig.1 revised "Feral Diagram 2.0" version.
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
A social mirror to the prevalence of casual homophobia on Twitter
"This website is designed as a social mirror to show the prevalence of casual homophobia in our society. Words and phrases like 'faggot,' 'dyke,' 'no homo,' and 'so gay' are used casually in everyday language, despite promoting the continued alienation, isolation and - in some tragic cases - suicide of sexual and gender minority (LGBTQ) youth.
We no longer tolerate racist language, we're getting better at dealing with sexist language, but sadly we're still not actively addressing homophobic and transphobic language in our society.
Let's put an end to casual homophobia. Speak out when you see or hear homophobic or transphobic language from friends, at school,
in the locker room, at work or online. Use #NoHomophobes to show your support. And visit one of our resource websites to get more involved."
(NoHomophobes.com)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Annotate That! content commentary and sharing application
"Annotate That! is a free unique annotating service. Share web pages, images or documents with others and add your comments using annotations. Simply click on the web page or medium to make your annotation."
(We Create Digital)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
The Parsons' Masters in Design Studies Programme
"Design studies (like design) is a multifarious enterprise. A branch of the humanities, it comprises a wide range of critical perspectives on the meanings and values embodied in objects and places. It examines the forces that design exerts in, and on, the world - forces design sets in motion but does not control. Parsons' Masters in Design Studies program places particular emphasis on four points: the role of the designer and the design studio in redefining the scope of practice in the 21st century; design as an iteration of aesthetic and intellectual histories that continue to inform the present; the social, political and environmental behaviors and consequences of designing objects, places, situations, and systems today; design as the projection of different futures.
Above all, the MA Design Studies program focuses on the development of articulate, critical voices that can speak to these issues. Students will be prepared to write for the academic context, the design community, and the larger public realm. Working in close proximity to MFA studio programs at Parsons, they also have the opportunity to integrate film, video, and other media into their work."
(Susan Yelavich)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
