Very Important Visitors

There’s hardly a bigger headache than heads of state and government descending on a city for a summit. In 1997, Amsterdam was sealed off during an EU Conference that just had to be held in the heart of the old town. February 2008, Monrovia went into lockdown during the few hours George W. Bush came to see his friend Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, ruining my planned interview with the Liberian head of state in the process. And now we have Dakar, suffering under the presence of some six dozen Great&Good who all speak French. Yes, it’s La Francophonie, held in a brand new conference centre built by a Turkish firm for the “bagatelle”, as the French so deliciously call it, of €$75m. Truth be told: the jamboree has made my two last full days in Dakar extremely annoying.

Because the Great&Good That Speak French arrive at the airport, then take the Autoroute and the Toll Road to the conference location: Diamniadio, 30 kilometres outside Dakar. This formerly quiet, sleepy village where this nation’s great Northern and Central/Eastern routes meet is now part of a vast new project: a brand new urban development close to the new international airport that will probably open sometime during 2016.

Back to the Transport of the Great&Good. For several days, from 6am to 11pm, the Dakarois are offered the irritating soundtrack of wailing sirens and the endless whistleblowing of gendarmes preventing people from going about their normal routine of crossing the road where and when they please. Feeling on the street, predictably: ‘Francophonie? Horse manure.’ Yep. The sooner you all *BEEP* off back to where you came from, the better. And do hold your next EU, UN, Commonwealth, Francophone, Whichever conference in a remote National Park somewhere with very few people. You’ll be less of a nuisance there.

Back to the Diamniadio Jamboree and here’s an  excellent observation from a Senegalese commentator: is it not remarkable how little attention has been paid to – by far! – the single most important event in West Africa this year: the revolution in Burkina Faso. Even with Burkina’s  interim president Michel Kafando present among them, it was only the French leader Hollande who named the event. Hollande “forgot” to mention, though, that in October he had, de facto, offered the vacant job of Head of La Francophonie to the now deposed “pompier-pyromane” Blaise Compaoré…

With jihadists in its front yard and Dakar an open international space, security is a major concern for the Senegalese authorities. But it has clearly gone completely overboard by banning an anti-Francophonie Summit, a measure that was – rightly – condemned as anti-democratic. The government of president Macky Sall demonstrates regularly that it has a tenuous relationship with the concepts of democracy, freedom of assembly and freedom of speech. Still, in fairness, Senegal remains miles away from that hotbed of media and government-fed paranoia, that mortal enemy of personal Space and Liberty as it ogles the private lives of citizens and visitors alike, that surveillance-obsessed, control-addicted nation that harvests personal data on an industrial scale. I am, of course, referring to the United States; with the CCTV states in northeastern Europe, France included, not far behind.

Masks in a church – 2

De Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam is the temporary home to an exhibition of masks. On display until February 15 next year, so there is plenty of time for you to make up your own mind. This is my take on the event. Second and last part

The curators have found two ways around the essentialism described in the first part. One is the – once again – laudable effort to trace the names of the artists who made the masks and statutes. So we learn that there were at least two master artists among the Dan in the great western forest region: Sra and Tanpiémé, working in the 19^th century. He great 20^th century artist Pablo Picasso got his ideas for cubism from Africa, as we know. In fact, we can home in on the exact encounter that gave Picasso his idea. It was a mask from the Dan. It may even have been one made by either Sra or Tanpiémé. What we can say with certainty is that Picasso’s style would not have existed without the masters from Côte d’Ivoire. (I am not aware that Picasso ever acknowledged as much but perhaps someone can help me out here. Thanks in advance.)

Many of the original artists are not traceable, though, and the way around this has been to attribute a particular style to them and then announce that this work was made by a Master of… And thus we have the Master of Curves or the Master of Essankro, a place in the Baulé region of central Côte d’Ivoire. His mask adorns the flyer about the exhibition, which has not been a random choice. Because, as the Dutch art critic Bianca Stigter very perceptively writes in her review of the exhibition, the choice of objects appears to be informed by European artistic sensibilities. By any (European) standards, the works of art from the Baulé can be described as “refined”, very likely in keeping with the influential aristocracy that their region has produced. And that seems to be the case, Stigter notes, with a lot of the art on display. The curators keep pounding it into her head, she writes, that these are really works of the highest quality. Words like “elegant” abound. Indeed, she counters in her piece, the quality is undeniable but the point of reference still appears to be the great 20^th Century masters, including Picasso…

And this is where a lecture of these pieces from an Ivorian point of view would have been very warmly welcomed. The country has no shortage of thinkers, arts critics, lecturers, historians and arts historians who would have shed a light on these works, much brighter than the Amsterdam autumn air that fell into the church on this November day.

From the exhibition folder: Diaspora, a work by Jems Robert Koko Bi

 

There was, however, another saviour: Jems Robert Koko Bi, a contemporary sculptor whose work provided a radically contemporary context to the other works of offer. His life (born in Côte d’Ivoire, lives in Germany) and his work liberate the exhibition from its frozen-in-time character and launch it straight into the now. His faces, carved from trees with a chainsaw and his piece “Diaspora” from 2013 transcend the whole “Dan”, “Lagoon”, “Lobi”, “Baulé” issues. They entirely cease to matter. Watching the short film about him, I could focus on the individual work by an individual artist with a contemporary – and cosmopolitan – life, even though the interview was done in English, with which he was uncomfortable. Stroke of luck or stroke of genius? In any case, including his work saved the exhibition from being solely about somewhere in “Magical Africa” and gave it meaning beyond its essentially ethnographic nature, in spite of the best intentions behind it.

 

Masks in a Church (part 1)

De Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam is the temporary home to an exhibition of masks, statutes and other works of art. From Ivory Coast. On display until February 15 next year, so there is plenty of time for you to make up your own mind. This is my take on the event. In two parts.

 

The intentions surely were beyond reproach: let’s make a presentation of “African” masks and familiarize the public with their aesthetic value, their creators and their authenticity. The event was sponsored by – among others – KPMG, an accountancy firm, the Amsterdam Fund for the Arts, the Prince Clause Foundation and two largish Dutch public broadcasters, TROS and AVRO, usually on the lighter side of entertainment. (Ironically, these two now occupy the building that was once home to Radio Netherlands Worldwide, the former Dutch international broadcaster.)

Do excellent intentions lead to excellent results? Not always. On the last day of my brief visit to The Netherlands in November I visited De Nieuwe Kerk, an austere Protestant church on Dam Square, in the heart of old Amsterdam. The church forms the backdrop for an exhibition that is entitled: Magical Africa.

That is a bit of an exaggeration. The country in question is not “Africa”, in fact it is, as the folder announces, Côte d’Ivoire, my next station. And then not even all of it: Côte d’Ivoire is the size of France and home to at least 64 languages. The subject matter of the exhibition, masks, statues and a few contemporary works of art, have been taken from four regions: the lagoon area around the largest city of Abidjan on the southern coast, the centre of the country where the second-largest city Bouaké and the capital Yamoussoukro are located, a portion of the Grand West where the Dan and the Wê live and the savannah area of the North, were the Senoufo live and were you find the town of Korhogo. That’s not “Africa”, that’s a few parts of Côte d’Ivoire. I can understand the PR value of the name but it annoys nevertheless.

Even within that limited setting the differences proved to be astonishing. Compare the fear-inspiring masks that came from the forests that straddle Liberia, Guinea and Côte d’Ivoire to the more tranquil poses produced in the centre. The Baulé, who live in that part of the country have been a central presence in Ivorian politics and business for many decades, dominating the plantation economy and delivering the first two heads of state after independence. Aristocracy, if you like, which predates Independence. By contrast, the Dan and the Wê in the forest have been much more marginal to political life and, in fact, have had to live with numerous groups of newcomers, driven there by French colonialists and post-independent governments. It is a political configuration that is reflected, although in different ways, in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone. To my (admittedly, still Marxist) mind, at least, material culture informs artistic expression here. It is tempting to call the forest masks “raw” and the central statues “refined” but that feeds into another issue that I will deal with later. Suffice for now that what is missing from the exhibition, as with so much Africa reporting, is context.

Well, there is some, in the anthropological sense of the word. We see words like “Dan”, Sénoufo”, “Baulé” and “Lobi” hung like neon signs over the various carefully assembled works of art and explanations are offered about their functions and their makers. Fair enough. But what does that do with the viewer? Not unreasonably, the viewer will associate a particular work of art with a particular people from a particular region. And will freeze those in time. Again, it stands to reason that this happens but anyone who has ever been to Côte d’Ivoire knows that, self-declared or ascribed origins apart, these monikers are essentially meaningless. There is probably not a single Ivorian alive who can claim to be a 100% pure and undiluted member of any “tribe”. The French word for this mixed state of affairs is brassage and it is a reality inside the borders and indeed across them.

“Tribe”, “origin” or indeed “Ivorianness” (or Ivoirité, as it was called) only becomes an issue when it is turned into a instrument in the hands of unscrupulous politicians on the prowl for cheap and easy vote winners. Toxification of the political debate is the inevitable result, as anyone witnessing the arrival of the Geert Wilders Dog & Pony Show in The Netherlands can testify. The same happened in Côte d’Ivoire in the 1990s. Suddenly people became the champions of the Wê, the Bété, the Baulé, or indeed The True Ivorians.

So my problem here is the essentialism: this is how the Sénoufo portray people during particular festivities or rites. This is how the People Around The Lagoon do things. Reality is a lot more fluid (what to think, for instance, of the Sénoufo who live in the Grand West, or the giant melting pot known as Abidjan?). It is of course a major challenge to point that out during an exhibition and the curators did find at least one credible way around that problem. More on that in the second and final part.

Arrival (not the ABBA album)

It is 4am. A lone plane descends towards the runway of Madrid’s Barajas International Airport. Origin: Dakar. It taxies to its slot. Doors open and some 150 bleary-eyed passengers walk into the corridor that leads to the main arrivals hall. But it will be a while before they get there.

At the end of the corridor they are held up by two little men, who have their little uniforms on and have been driving to the exit point with their little electric trolley. They proceed to check everyone’s passport with meticulous care. To be more precise: they proceed to check very much in particular the passports of the African passengers, including an elderly man dressed in a traditional boubou and a bonnet, clutching a single plastic bag. Clearly, this man constitutes a clear and present danger to the Continent of Europe, as is the lady who is trying to stay upright because she is tired, walking on high heels and increasingly annoyed.

The little men in their little uniforms with their little lights in their little hands and watching all the travel documents with their little spectacles on their little heads (as if these documents have not already been checked by the Embassy, the Airport Authorities in Dakar and the Airline) have identified four or five men who merit a little extra attention. As the rest of crowd disappears into the bowels of the gigantic arrivals terminal, they are questioned on the spot, a procedure that takes not a lot more than 20 minutes before they, too, are being released.

A pointless, annoying, irritating and counter-productive exercise, at the entrance of a country where I had gone to be part of the annual World Music Expo, an event that highlights some of the best international music from around the world and a focal point for artists, managers, agents, record labels, music distributors, journalists and radio makers. Imagine being one of those and being welcomed to this country by two uniformed jobsworths holding up the normal flow of human traffic into an airport? What image does that project?

Seen at Dakar Biënnale. By Kiluanji Kia Henda.

I’ll tell you what image that projects. It projects the image of a tiny, frightened little continent that is rapidly losing its relevance in the greater scheme of things. Other parts of the world, Asia in front, are surging ahead and in order to keep up, economically and demographically stagnant Europe needs contributions from everywhere. The way not to achieve this is by treating all incoming visitors with a different skin tone as potential criminals.

The idea that this is being done to appease a virulent strain of political populism that looks for scapegoats is suspect. Xenophobia has been built into Europe’s border protection and immigration systems and it stretches all the way to the West African coast where I frequently see Spanish Coast Guard ships on patrol. But here’s the clue, my dear little frightened European continent…

Africans back winners. This is why Chinese, Turks, Brazilians, Indians and even North Americans are doing rather well here. They are turning away from Europe and are taking their business with them. Shopping in Paris? You must be joking when I can get the stuff relatively hassle-free in Istanbul, Dubai or Guangzhou. Having to fill in a boatload of forms just get a visa to some European hellhole or other? Get out of here. I’ll fly Kenya Airways to Beijing, Emirates to the Middle East and Turkish Airlines to pretty much everywhere.

This is the message to this little, frightened, xenophobic European continent, exemplified by those pathetic little passport-checking uniforms and their pathetic little electric trolley, with which they took off after they had done their pathetic little job. You are increasingly being seen as an irrelevance, an unimportant little place led by politicians without an ounce of vision, only frightened of people from the outside world and determined to keep as many of them out as possible. In short: you are, increasingly, being seen as a loser.

You haven’t got much time left, Europe. It’s shape up of ship out. And as things currently stand, it will be the latter and you will not be greatly missed by the rest of the world. Ask those passengers on that flight from Dakar.