LA CUARTA CUBANA EN CLAUS (PERO SIN CLAUSTROFOBIA)

Report from the 2010 Prince Claus Awards Committee

June 2010

www.princeclausfund.org/en/what_we_do/awards/documents/20...

 

The Prince Claus Awards

The Prince Claus Fund’s Awards Programme celebrates and brings to

public attention outstanding achievements in the field of culture and

development. Awards are given annually to individuals, groups,

organisations or institutions in recognition of their contribution

within the Prince Claus Fund’s areas of interest.

Each year in December, the Principal Prince Claus Award of EUR 100,000

is presented to the Principal Laureate at a prestigious venue in

Amsterdam in the presence of members of the Royal family and an

audience of 600 international guests. The Prince Claus Awards of EUR

25,000 are presented to the recipients in their respective countries

by the Netherlands Ambassadors.

 

Procedures

Participants in the Fund’s expanding network of colleagues, partners

and experts in relevant fields are invited to nominate candidates for

the annual Prince Claus Awards, and are requested to provide insights

and give second opinions on potential laureates.

A total of 98 nominations were received for the 2010 Prince Claus

Awards. Research and documentation on these nominations was

considered at a first meeting of the 2010 Prince Claus Awards

Committee on 17 and 18 December 2009. A short list was established and

the staff of the Fund’s Bureau then carried out further research and

gathered extensive second opinions from advisors in the Fund’s

network. On 20-21 May 2010, the Awards Committee met again for

in-depth assessment of the short-listed candidates and the selection

of 11 recommended recipients of the 2010 Prince Claus Awards.

 

2010 Prince Claus Awards Committee

Peter Geschiere (Chair), Professor of Anthropology, Amsterdam, the Netherlands

N’Goné Fall, Curator, Architect, Cultural Consultant, Dakar, Senegal /

Paris, France

Rahul Mehrotra, Architect, Urban Designer, Professor of Architecture,

Mumbai, India / Cambridge, USA

Laksmi Pamuntjak, Poet, Writer, Jakarta, Indonesia

José Roca, Curator, Bogota, Colombia

Fariba de Bruin-Derakhshani is Secretary to the Committee.

 

Criteria and considerations

The Prince Claus Awards are presented to artists, intellectuals and

cultural operators in recognition of their outstanding achievements

and contributions in the field of culture and development. The awards

are given to individuals, groups and organisations around the globe,

but primarily in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean.

Quality is a sine qua non for a Prince Claus Award. The quality of a

laureate’s work is assessed in professional and personal contexts and

for its positive impact on wider cultural and social fields. The

creation of interactions and links between different cultures, the

fostering of commonalities and the initiation of shared cultural

currents are highly valued. The Prince Claus Awards recognise artistic

and intellectual qualities that are relevant in the contemporary

context. They legitimise experimentation and innovation, recognise

audacity and tenacity, support inspirational developments and seek to

enhance their beneficial impact on societies.

 

Policy

The Prince Claus Fund maintains a broad view of culture that

accommodates all types of artistic and intellectual disciplines. This

open approach encompasses the transmission of culture and achievements

in education, media and the applied arts. It includes fields such as

science and technology that interact with and impact on the domain of

culture and development. Proposals from every cultural field and area

of potential are welcomed. The Fund seeks originality, experimentation

and groundbreaking initiatives. Mutual exchange, interculturality and

the transcending of borders are high on the Fund’s agenda, and it has

a keen interest in vocabularies and vernaculars that develop into

universal languages linking people in different cultures.

The Prince Claus Fund aims to provide protection to culture in places

where it is threatened and to explore ‘zones of silence’. The Fund

continues its interest in previous themes, such as Humour and Satire,

Culture and Nature, the Positive Results of Asylum and Migration, and

Creating Spaces of Freedom.

 

2010 Theme: Frontiers of Reality

Frontiers of Reality is a crucial theme for contemporary culture and

development. Perceptions of reality vary according to our knowledge

and the cultural, political and social environment in which we live.

In former times, notions of reality were relatively established,

stabilised by fixed conventions and perspectives limited by time and

distance. Information about events and the impact of discoveries

filtered slowly into societies, and the borders and edges of reality

altered gradually. Today, new technologies and media provide increased

and accelerated access, spreading information quickly and bringing

voices from previously isolated or repressed groups. Many new versions

of reality are surfacing. It is the collage of this collective

experience that really makes our world so we need to assimilate and

make sense of these new perspectives.

At the same time, the universal human desire for security and

stability tends to resist knowledge that challenges established

definitions of reality. Communities and societies develop diverse

ways, both subtle and overt, of restricting and limiting alternative

views. The drive for dominance and power leads to aggressive and life

threatening control of the frontiers of reality. Discrimination,

censorship, criminalisation of expression, media distortion,

propaganda, border controls, travel restrictions and militarisation

are forms of reality control.

People who work at the frontiers, often in difficult or dangerous

contexts, are instrumental in bringing attention to different

experiences and cultural ideas. Their explorations and practices break

through current limits. In selecting the theme of Frontiers of

Reality, the Prince Claus Fund aims to honour those who open up

different perceptions and make significant contributions to the

construction of new knowledge, better understanding, empowerment and

greater equity – essential factors for local and global development

and stability.

 

Recommendations for the 2010 Prince Claus Awards

 

The 2010 Principal Prince Claus Award

 

Barzakh Editions

Algeria

 

Barzakh Editions is a remarkable independent publishing house that has

created a platform for a new generation of Algerian writers ¬and

opened a door for the flow of ideas between Algeria and the world.

Founded in 2000, in the aftermath of crisis and a context of cultural

isolation, economic crises and political violence, its name refers to

an intermediate zone where souls are in transit, where personal

realities are confronted and assessed against other realities. Many

Algerian writers had emigrated during the conflicts of the past

decades and the remaining writers had few possibilities. Connections

with neighbouring countries were limited. Most Algerian literature was

published in France, Lebanon or Egypt, expensive to import and thus

beyond the reach of the majority in Algeria. During this particularly

harsh period when it seemed that the country would become increasingly

isolated, Barzakh Editions succeeded in creating a space between an

authoritarian state and a powerful Islamist movement that seemed to

hold the country in a deadlock. Driven by a passion for books and a

conviction that freedom of thought and expression are essential for

development, co-founding editors Sofiane Hadjadj and Selma Hellal

began to make the work of local and exiled authors accessible and

affordable, to encourage creativity and experimentation, and to

provide publishing opportunities for local authors, both the

established and new voices.

Barzakh Editions has published more than 110 books of consistently

high quality in both content and presentation. Novels and poetry are

primary fields, alongside a range of genres and subjects such as

philosophy, urbanism, photography, theatre, social history, biography,

political essays and artists’ catalogues. Barzakh has succeeded in

breaking through restrictive frontiers that seemed to close up the

country and limit the space for cultural exchange in various ways.

Through its collaborations with French publishers, works by

Algeria-based authors are translated into French and Italian for wide

distribution. Barzakh publishes authors from francophone sub-Saharan

Africa and Arabic translations of French literature. It has developed

networks and exchanges with Arab, African and European countries, and

fosters the local audience through discussions, poetry readings and

art exhibitions.

The Principal Prince Claus Award honours Barzakh Editions for giving

concrete form to Algeria’s voices, for opening up a much needed space

for critical reflection on Algerian realities, for building a bridge

connecting different languages and cultures, and for creatively

breaking through the threatening cultural isolation of the country.

 

Ten 2010 Prince Claus Awards

 

Decolonizing Architecture institute (DAi)

Palestine

 

Decolonizing Architecture institute’s unique practice is dedicated to

the identification of architecture’s role as a central tool in spatial

power relations and in the making of conflict. It seeks to subvert and

propose new ways for the re-use of architecture’s dominating

potential. The work has significant implications for citizens,

strategists and policymakers in diverse regions and contexts around

the world, and is contributing to a new perspective on urban planning

and innovative methodologies for the processes of reclaiming spaces.

Founded in 2007, DAi is run by scholars, activists and architects

Sandi Hilal, Eyal Weizman and Alessandro Petti, as a residency

involving local and international practitioners. Looking forward to

the future evacuation of colonising forces from Palestinian

territories, Decolonizing Architecture offers practical possibilities

for their re-appropriation. Its materials document various methods of

dismantling and re-formulating Israeli settlements and military bases.

Drawings and projections show how spaces can be transformed, and

models also provide evidence in legal process. People can relate to

these visual representations and are empowered to imagine the

reconfiguration of their devastated environment. DAi’s plans reflect

both the place of refuge and site of origin, and offer visions for the

restoration of historical sites. Spreading their ideas through

exhibitions, lectures, videos and publications, DAi challenges

individuals and communities to think and plan for an unthreatening

built environment.

Decolonizing Architecture is honoured for introducing a

non-traditional approach to development in conflict and post-conflict

situations, for providing valuable speculation on the future realities

of disputed territories, for its critical challenge to outdated urban

planning theories based on a more peaceful world, and for highlighting

the role of architecture and visualisation in creating and altering

the frontiers of reality.

 

Maya Goded

Mexico

 

Photographer Maya Goded (Mexico City, 1967) creates subtle images of

hidden or shunned communities. Her first project, Tierra Negra (1994),

is a collection of moments from her three-year sojourn with Mexicans

of African descent, a group whose contribution to Mexican identity is

seldom acknowledged. Goded was then drawn to investigate female

sexuality, prostitution, tenderness and gender violence in a society

that defines women’s roles strictly and maintains notions of womanhood

wreathed in myths of purity, fragility and motherhood. Her five years

of intense interaction and work with prostitutes and pimps in Mexico

City are published in Plaza de Soledad (2006) and Good Girls (2007).

Her nine books to date include sensitive studies of the grief of

relatives of murdered and sexually abused women, the conditions of

traditional healers, and the endurance needed to attain socially

defined beauty.

Goded’s images are imbued with unusual intimacy and genuine presence

that spring from mutual trust established over a long period of time.

This bond is evident in the body language she captures, creating

empathy in the viewer. She explores people living in harsh situations

constructed around notions of power and control – both the strong,

whose refusal to conform threatens established norms, and the

vulnerable, whose lives are distorted by social prescription. Each

image is accompanied by the name of the person portrayed and a few

telling details that foster a sense of connection.

Maya Goded is honoured for her profound and intimate photography, for

challenging preconceptions and giving unique insight into little-known

realities, and for celebrating otherness and human commonalities that

transcend socially constructed barriers.

 

Jia Zhang-Ke

China

 

Filmmaker Jia Zhang-Ke (1970, Fenyang) breaks away from previous

generations’ historical dramas and political idealisations to convey

other kinds of realities. He depicts episodes in the life and

loyalties of a teenage pickpocket (Xiao Wu, 1997); working conditions

and workers facing unemployment, aging and broken state promises (24

City, 2008); the displaced and soon-to-be displaced figuring out how

to proceed as public buildings are demolished, houses submerge under

the rising waters of the Three Gorges Dam and human ties are stretched

to the limit (Still Life, 2006). The realities of home, belonging and

security for ordinary people in China unfold in parallel narratives

amid the demolition of social fabric and the erasure of memory and

connection in the name of economic progress.

Jia combines humanistic realism with striking aesthetics and rich

cultural texture. He uses local people and professional actors,

dialects, on-site sounds, improvisation and interpretive imagination

to express individual experiences as realistically as possible. A

master of the long shot that gradually fills with subtle gestures and

details, Jia makes time palpable and delights in ironies and

allusions: a spaceship lift-off, a tightrope-walker between

high-rises. He captures universal human experiences that exist

regardless of context, and shows Chinese ways of coping, maintaining

deeply held values, surviving with the quiet dignity, restraint and

resourcefulness of the ‘still living’.

Jia Zhang-Ke is honoured for the outstanding aesthetic and

intellectual qualities of his work, for his committed social

engagement in focusing on the realities of ordinary contemporary

lives, for his significant contribution to local cultural identity and

confidence, and for creatively transcending and altering the frontiers

of reality.

 

Gulnara Kasmalieva & Muratbek Djumaliev

Kyrgyzstan

 

Gulnara Kasmalieva (1960, Bishek) and Muratbek Djumaliev (1965,

Bishek) are cultural catalysts in the Central Asian region, which is

in many respects a Zone of Silence. Their practice embodies the

transition from a deeply rooted tradition of art making towards the

use of contemporary languages. Graduates of Kyrgyz State College of

Fine Art, they accessed international ideas when studying in Russia

during the period of perestroika. Returning to Bishek they

experimented with new technologies and developed documentary-style

videos and photography that provide unprecedented representations of

Kyrgyzstan’s passage to independence and the impact of Soviet-era

legacies on life and identity.

Their extensive practice includes the seminal video installation A New

Silk Road: Algorithm of Survival and Hope (2006), documenting

contemporary experiences along the historical trade route as it

encounters rapid globalisation. They weave different perspectives

together, picking up on popular visual culture, showing local

reinvention and adaptations, and bringing the new nation-states

together in an innovative exposé of intersecting frontiers of reality.

At ArtEast, the cultural centre they run in Bishek, Kasmalieva and

Djumaliev are active as curators and leaders with a mission to

stimulate the next generation. They provide gallery space for regional

and international exhibitions, courses in contemporary theory,

practice and art management, access to media equipment, workshops,

networking and collaborations, enabling young artists to get in touch

with artists, curators and critics in other contexts.

Gulnara Kasmalieva and Muratbek Djumaliev are awarded for their

groundbreaking art practices, for their significant contribution to

contemporary culture in Central Asia, for establishing a space of

freedom and opportunity for young artists, and for creating original

representations of the intersections of different realities.

 

Kwani Trust

Kenya

 

Kwani Trust is revolutionising creative literary production in Kenya

and across Anglophone Africa. Starting in 2003, it launched an

independent literary journal, Kwani? (Swahili for ‘So what?’), to

challenge the institutionalised academic control of authorship and

entrenched literary conventions of an older generation. Kwani’s

editors, Binyavanga Wainaina and Billy Kahura, actively encourage new

talent, original sensibilities and creative use of language. Poetry

has a strong presence, alongside humour and slang. The wide range of

stories, personal narratives and commentaries reflect day-to-day

realities, exploring topics such as urbanisation, relationships,

ethnicity, injustice and politics. The pool of contributors is

constantly expanding and includes writers from many African countries.

Positive response to the journal led to a variety of popular

activities: Poetry Open Mic, a monthly performance event; Sunday Salon

Nairobi, a prose reading series; writers’ forums, public debates,

workshops and competitions; and the annual Kwani? Literary Festival,

which features continental and global cultural figures.

Kwani Trust publishes short-story collections and books such as The

Life and Times of Richard Onyango (a Kenyan artist) and Kenya Burning

(a visual narrative of 2007 post-election violence). Recognising the

economic constraints of local readers, it also produces affordable

pocket-sized editions and distributes literature from other African

countries. It uses new technologies to reach wider audiences, has

built a global network and facilitates local participation in

international events.

Kwani Trust is honoured for establishing a dynamic platform for new

African voices and perspectives, for its progressive influence and

energetic dedication to developing a supportive environment for

literary expression, and for crossing social and cultural frontiers to

expose new facets of reality.

 

Dinh Q. Lê

Vietnam

 

Visual artist Dinh Q. Lê (1968, Ha-Tien) is the co-founder of two

transformative institutions that are opening up possibilities for

Vietnamese artists. The Vietnam Foundation for the Arts is a Los

Angeles-based centre that counteracts isolation through exchanges and

collaboration. And Sàn Art, the first independent not-for-profit art

space in Ho Chi Minh City, runs local and international exhibitions,

residencies, projects, a reading room, discussions, lectures and

networking opportunities.

Brought up in Vietnam during the American war, Dinh Q. Lê moved to

the USA aged 10. Surrounded by Hollywood and western media

interpretations of his homeland, he studied and began his art

practice. He devised an innovative technique based on Vietnamese craft

heritage, literally and metaphorically weaving images and fragments

into complex combinations of different traditions, histories and

modernities. These ‘surreal memory landscapes’ dramatically portray

the schizophrenic realities of exiles and migrants.

Returning to Vietnam, aged 25, he continues his explorations of

contradictory realities. The Farmers and the Helicopter (2006), a

documentary video on passionate local desire to recreate the iconic

destroyer of Vietnam’s traumatic past, contrasts with South China Sea

Pishkun (2009), a 3D animation of the mass crashing of helicopters

into the South China Sea during America’s panicked retreat from Saigon

– the Vietnamese view still widely unknown. Other works examine

genocide, consumerist glitz in disadvantaged places, and the promotion

of Vietnam as idyllic paradise for tourists.

The Prince Claus Award honours Dinh Q. Lê for his strong creative work

exploring different constructions of reality, for providing

inspiration and practical opportunities for young artists, and for

advancing free thought and contemporary visual expression in a context

of indifference and hostility.

 

Ana Maria Machado

Brazil

 

Ana Maria Machado (1941, Rio de Janeiro) creates compelling children’s

stories that deal with prejudices and human rights. She developed a

passion for storytelling during her traditional rural upbringing,

studied humanities, became a visual artist and curator, was arrested

and exiled during the dictatorship, completed a PhD in linguistics and

semiotics, lectured and worked as journalist. The author of more than

100 books, translated into 11 languages, she opened the first

children’s literature bookshop in Brazil.

Machado shares a way of looking at the world that is original, funny

and poetic. She has a mother’s faith in the child’s imagination, an

ear for natural patterns of everyday spoken language and a painter’s

eye for colour, composition and detail. Her experiments with narrative

structure, symbolic language and combinations of the real and the

fantastic are evidence of her consummate mastery of the writer’s

craft. Above all, Machado is able to express complex concepts with

skilful simplicity and subtle passion. Edged with excitement, tension

and humour, the intriguing scenarios she creates become personal

encounters with difficult subjects such as racism, gender

discrimination, poverty and identity. Machado interrogates Brazil’s

historical memory, bringing past experiences alive as part of everyday

life in a way that appeals to children. In From Another World (2005),

her characters and the readers confront the realities of slavery

through the unquiet ghost of a slave girl who seeks their help.

Presenting distilled wisdom in an unpretentious style, her stories

encompass understanding of difference, courage in the face of tyranny

and respect for others, and insist on delight and the joy of living.

Ana Maria Machado is awarded for her outstanding children’s

literature, for opening frontiers of reality for young people and

communicating essential human values to impressionable minds and

hearts, and for her significant contribution to recognition of the

importance of children’s literature in the formation of worldviews.

 

Mehrdad Oskouei

Iran

 

Independent filmmaker Mehrdad Oskouei (Tehran, 1969) penetrates

subaltern segments of Iranian society to give voice to unknown

perspectives, challenge preconceptions and offer unique readings of

people’s lives and experiences. Graduating from Tehran’s University of

Arts, he started in theatre and short fiction films before turning

towards realistic reporting. He has developed a hybrid cinematic

language that combines documentary, poetic and dramatic sensibilities,

enabling him to convey the multiple layers of reality.

Oskouei’s personal concern and commitment to the people he films

creates trust, which is the vital spark in his works. In The Other

Side of the Burka (2004), an investigation of high female suicide

rates in a patriarchal enclave in southern Iran, he achieves an

unprecedented degree of openness. The women tell their own stories,

describe their suffering and discuss their situation with honesty and

clarity in close-up face-to-face interviews; documentary facts ¬of the

women’s rooms, work, routines and the community rituals enacted to

deal with symptoms are interwoven with evocative metaphors and moments

of psychological pain, the glimpse of a shoulder, the corpse beneath

the burial cloth.

His 24 films offer in-depth encounters with orphans, widowers and

juvenile delinquents, and examine Iranian experience of broken homes,

rhinoplasty and urban youth cultures. Passionate about the role of

film in social development, Oskouei founded the Short Film Society and

runs workshops to stimulate young filmmakers.

Mehrdad Oskouei is honoured for his moving, informative and evocative

films, for his honest engagement with his subjects and his commitment

to accurately representing their concerns, and for working in

difficult contexts to break down prejudice and generate social

justice.

 

Yoani Sánchez

Cuba

 

Yoani Sánchez (1975, Havana) is a leading figure in the use of social

networking technologies to breach imposed frontiers. A graduate in

philology, she is now dedicated to computer sciences and their

capacity to alter perceptions and generate social change. She works as

a webmaster, columnist and editor for Desde Cuba, an online news

portal. Determined to promote freedom of information and to speak out

regardless of danger, in 2007, Yoani Sánchez set up a blog, Generation

Y.

Her regular posts offer punchy accounts of the day-to-day environment.

Avoiding direct criticism and global politics, her blog provides

subjective insights into the practical difficulties people face.

Emphasising the vital importance of material autonomy for any form of

active citizenship, her subjects include unaffordable food, shortage

of proteins and vegetables, the turgid proceedings of parliament and

the lack of meaningful reforms.

Sánchez operates in a context of strict control and censorship,

working clandestinely, under threat of arrest. Local access to

internet is limited and filters set up by the authorities slow and

block connection to Generation Y. Local supporters circulate her

writings in emails and USB memories, and volunteers translate her

Spanish reports into 22 languages. Generation Y’s growth has been

exponential. It is now one of the most-followed blogs in cyberspace,

and a compilation has been published as Cuba Libre.

Yoani Sánchez is awarded for raising global awareness of daily Cuban

realities through her blog, for her inspiring and courageous example

in giving a voice to the silenced, and for demonstrating the immense

impact internet communications technologies can have as tools for

social change and development.

 

Aung Zaw

Burma/Thailand

 

Aung Zaw (1968) is the founder and director of The Irrawaddy, the most

reliable source of information on realities in Burma. A committed

pro-democracy activist, he started in student politics, setting up an

underground network to organise resistance to authoritarian rule in

1987. He was arrested and released several times, tortured during

interrogation and, following the military coup in 1988, went into

exile in Thailand.

Recognising the urgency of keeping channels of communication open

between Burma and the world, Aung Zaw founded the Burma Information

Group to document human rights violations, lobby for democracy and

provide information to international newspapers and human rights

organisations. In 1993 he launched The Irrawaddy, the first

independent publication on Burma and the most significant resource for

up-to-date news on the situation. As editor and contributor he has

built up an extraordinary network of trusted sources on the ground,

inside one of the world’s most repressive states. In 2000, he set up

the website to increase access. Published in Burmese and English, The

Irrawaddy is officially banned and the website is largely blocked in a

context of almost total control and surveillance of media and

information. Dedicated to democracy for all, and to objective

journalism, Aung Zaw remains unaffiliated to any political group and

he has recently expanded coverage to related regional developments.

Aung Zaw is honoured for his active dedication to achieving democratic

government in Burma, for building such a valuable resource for

exposing realities that those in power want to hide, for maintaining

the flow of ideas and upholding freedom of information, and for his

inspiring role in transgressing the containment of violently enforced

political boundaries.

Done