Keyword : Histoire (History)

Ornement is not a crime

Jean Loup Pivin

Words of reason do not suffice to fully translate an intuition of the mind.

All cities have become international. All production, be it artistic, architectural, literary, industrial or economic, is instantly registered within the world, even though the images of objects and architecture don't always cross the borders of their city or country. Yet the place, the cultural land and heritage of the production and those who inspire it, turn one message into another and can create misunderstandings. The great misunderstanding of a world in creation and transformation giving people a vision that they can each interpret according to their culture and background. Of all these misunderstandings, one of the seemingly most derisory is the question of embellishment.

Gary Cooper and the russian novelist

Simon Njami

The lights slowly go out. The screen lights up. Some throats are cleared, some seats creak and the show begins. Panorama : a landscape in the distance. A desert. The blurred silhouette of a rider moves forward. Sequence shot : the rider moves towards us until we can distinguish his features, then he stops. He takes off his hat and wipes his face with a dirty handkerchief. He puts his hat back on and continues to come forward towards us, staring at a spot we cannot see. Reverse shot : a small village with its church steeple...

Caribbean- Poetics of schizophrenia

Jean-Claude Fignolé

Poetics of schizophrenia

Unreal time ! Projection of words with afflicted tones already electing the sadness of history. Fixed time! A mascarade of nouns scanning the imposition of hands and sacralizing the perverse if not odious look of the other. Murdered time! The slow march of oneself towards oneself, in the quartering and in the frenzy (tamed terror) when the earth rumbles, quakes and cracks, and above its gaping, like an unnamed wound, jubilant winds beset the naked sleep of the hills. Then the cry : CARIBBEAN !

Anthropometric visions

Simon Njami

The current approach to contemporary African art is on the same order as the anthropometric studies of the first African explorers; it's still at the stage of trying to establish a sort of typology of race and genre.