In 2010 Marta Lança set up the BUALA website, of which she is still the editor and the main driving force. To mark the 10th birthday of this unique platform dedicated to “exploring the synergies between art, theory, and activism in order to stimulate public debate about the lasting impact of racism and colonialism across Portuguese-speaking communities”, maat is hosting a special cycle of presentations, talks and screening entitled “and I am sparse in dense fluidity” – Gestures of Freedom”, curated by BUALA’s founder.
So what does being tropical mean? Being less concrete and assertive in our ideas and convictions? There’s certainly an art to filling the arid hours and empty nights here.
The bad news comes, here as everywhere, first thing in the morning. I retreat to the intimacy of my bookshelves and flick through a few tomes, while outside, the day quickly passes from fresh to mild to heat wave. It’s absurd to try and fit the news of someone’s death into the context of whatever story you have at hand, some false, pseudo-writerly notion of anguish. It’s as if a ghost has settled in between the lines and started hopping from noun to pronoun, though verbs would doubtless take it further.
How a photographer, a group of models and a fashion show in Harlem kick-started a cultural and political movement that still inspires today. On 28 January 1962, a large crowd formed outside Purple Manor, a nightclub in the Harlem neighbourhood of New York City. A fashion show was taking place – an event that proved so popular it had to be held for a second time that same night – which sparked a movement that would change the way black people were represented forever. The show, titled Naturally ’62, was organised by the African Jazz-Art Society & Studios (AJASS), a group of creatives, including photographer Kwame Brathwaite.
Throughout the nationwide upheaval set in motion by the police killing of George Floyd, in Minneapolis, on May 25th, Trump has vilified demonstrators as nefarious insurrectionists. Much as adversaries of the civil-rights movement once contended that it had been infiltrated by Communists, he invokes antifascists, or Antifa, to delegitimatize Black Lives Matter. A week after Floyd’s death, as popular uprisings spread from Minneapolis to other cities, the President declared, “Our nation has been gripped by professional anarchists, violent mobs, arsonists, looters, criminals, rioters, Antifa, and others.”
The ASAA condemns the use of the police and military by African states to mete out violence against its citizens. We especially condemn the ongoing brutalities in Nigeria, spurred by the violation of human rights and abuses by the erstwhile Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS). The Anti- Robbery Squad (SARS) was a Nigerian police force unit that was created in late 1992 to deal with crimes associated with robbery, motor vehicle theft, kidnapping, cattle rustling and crimes involving firearms. However, over the years, SARS has been linked to extrajudicial killings, extortion, torture, framing citizens for crimes they didn’t commit, and blackmail.
For Romero, this is one of the points of art: to help us face up to our own part in slavery and its legacy, and a powerful way to reveal, and explore, our past. “With this story, we wanted to tell the British angle – this is British history,” says Romero of The Whip. “We’re in constant dialogue with our past: we have to be.”
“If it hadn’t been for World War II, African countries wouldn’t have been able to liberate themselves from colonial empires”. This observation, made by Mamadou Diouf – a Senegal-born Pole, activist and legend of the Warsaw music scene, during a debate organized in June 2019 as part of the 30th Malta Festival in Poznań seems to be a provocation rather than an objective statement of facts. The average Pole is unable to imagine that this cruel conflict, which began in Poland, could bring anything positive for humanity. In a country so profoundly affected by this war, Diouf’s statement is surprising, almost shocking.
The broad gains have led some in the British media to herald “the end of the ethnicity pay gap”, traducing the data and diminishing the issue to a “white v other” scrap among workers. The MailOnline’s dog-whistling headline – “Young employees from minority groups now earn MORE than white British workers” – is emblematic. This narrative is dangerous and misleading. Whether it is intentional or not, pitting the dominant ethnic group against minorities ignores systemic disadvantages between and within communities.
The cumulative individual tragedies on slave trails to the coast, in the barracoons, and on the beaches: no one can even count. So the four centuries of African enslavement by Europeans remains an abstract story. The need to make it real, to find things that you can see, touch and feel is what most motivated me to participate in the ambitious documentary series Enslaved with Samuel L Jackson, to be broadcast on the BBC starting on Sunday. It’s an attempt to get away from the numbers and statistics and instead focus on the real people who endured this era – their flesh and bone, dreams and legacies.
Compiled from episodes of their show, which has gained millions of listeners over the past 10 years, the book introduces us to mysteries that most of us have never considered. Why are manhole covers round? Why do the Japanese infuse them with elaborate decorations? What do painted yellow symbols on streets tell us? Why are traffic lights red on top and green on bottom? What might we notice about the designs and support systems of buildings and bridges? Why have so-called love locks or love padlocks become a problem around the world? Why are some streets straight and others curvilinear?
In 2010 Marta Lança set up the BUALA website, of which she is still the editor and the main driving force. To mark the 10th birthday of this unique platform dedicated to “exploring the synergies between art, theory, and activism in order to stimulate public debate about the lasting impact of racism and colonialism across Portuguese-speaking communities”, maat is hosting a special cycle of presentations, talks and screening entitled “and I am sparse in dense fluidity” – Gestures of Freedom”, curated by BUALA’s founder. 
So what does being tropical mean? Being less concrete and assertive in our ideas and convictions? There’s certainly an art to filling the arid hours and empty nights here.
The bad news comes, here as everywhere, first thing in the morning. I retreat to the intimacy of my bookshelves and flick through a few tomes, while outside, the day quickly passes from fresh to mild to heat wave. It’s absurd to try and fit the news of someone’s death into the context of whatever story you have at hand, some false, pseudo-writerly notion of anguish. It’s as if a ghost has settled in between the lines and started hopping from noun to pronoun, though verbs would doubtless take it further. 
How a photographer, a group of models and a fashion show in Harlem kick-started a cultural and political movement that still inspires today. On 28 January 1962, a large crowd formed outside Purple Manor, a nightclub in the Harlem neighbourhood of New York City. A fashion show was taking place – an event that proved so popular it had to be held for a second time that same night – which sparked a movement that would change the way black people were represented forever. The show, titled Naturally ’62, was organised by the African Jazz-Art Society & Studios (AJASS), a group of creatives, including photographer Kwame Brathwaite. 
Throughout the nationwide upheaval set in motion by the police killing of George Floyd, in Minneapolis, on May 25th, Trump has vilified demonstrators as nefarious insurrectionists. Much as adversaries of the civil-rights movement once contended that it had been infiltrated by Communists, he invokes antifascists, or Antifa, to delegitimatize Black Lives Matter. A week after Floyd’s death, as popular uprisings spread from Minneapolis to other cities, the President declared, “Our nation has been gripped by professional anarchists, violent mobs, arsonists, looters, criminals, rioters, Antifa, and others.” 
The ASAA condemns the use of the police and military by African states to mete out violence against its citizens. We especially condemn the ongoing brutalities in Nigeria, spurred by the violation of human rights and abuses by the erstwhile Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS). The Anti- Robbery Squad (SARS) was a Nigerian police force unit that was created in late 1992 to deal with crimes associated with robbery, motor vehicle theft, kidnapping, cattle rustling and crimes involving firearms. However, over the years, SARS has been linked to extrajudicial killings, extortion, torture, framing citizens for crimes they didn’t commit, and blackmail. 
For Romero, this is one of the points of art: to help us face up to our own part in slavery and its legacy, and a powerful way to reveal, and explore, our past. “With this story, we wanted to tell the British angle – this is British history,” says Romero of The Whip. “We’re in constant dialogue with our past: we have to be.” 
“If it hadn’t been for World War II, African countries wouldn’t have been able to liberate themselves from colonial empires”. This observation, made by Mamadou Diouf – a Senegal-born Pole, activist and legend of the Warsaw music scene, during a debate organized in June 2019 as part of the 30th Malta Festival in Poznań seems to be a provocation rather than an objective statement of facts. The average Pole is unable to imagine that this cruel conflict, which began in Poland, could bring anything positive for humanity. In a country so profoundly affected by this war, Diouf’s statement is surprising, almost shocking. 
The broad gains have led some in the British media to herald “the end of the ethnicity pay gap”, traducing the data and diminishing the issue to a “white v other” scrap among workers. The MailOnline’s dog-whistling headline – “Young employees from minority groups now earn MORE than white British workers” – is emblematic. This narrative is dangerous and misleading. Whether it is intentional or not, pitting the dominant ethnic group against minorities ignores systemic disadvantages between and within communities. 
The cumulative individual tragedies on slave trails to the coast, in the barracoons, and on the beaches: no one can even count. So the four centuries of African enslavement by Europeans remains an abstract story. The need to make it real, to find things that you can see, touch and feel is what most motivated me to participate in the ambitious documentary series Enslaved with Samuel L Jackson, to be broadcast on the BBC starting on Sunday. It’s an attempt to get away from the numbers and statistics and instead focus on the real people who endured this era – their flesh and bone, dreams and legacies. 
Compiled from episodes of their show, which has gained millions of listeners over the past 10 years, the book introduces us to mysteries that most of us have never considered. Why are manhole covers round? Why do the Japanese infuse them with elaborate decorations? What do painted yellow symbols on streets tell us? Why are traffic lights red on top and green on bottom? What might we notice about the designs and support systems of buildings and bridges? Why have so-called love locks or love padlocks become a problem around the world? Why are some streets straight and others curvilinear? 
