culture, please

A Talk on Cultural Corporate Sponsorship at the Times Center

2010-10-26T18:08:00.000-07:00

Corporate sponsorship and branding were the topics of a panel discussion held yesterday at the Times Center. Organized by the Alliance for the Arts and hosted by The New York Times, the event brought together three experts on corporate philanthropy: Arthur Cohen (LaPlaca Cohen consulting), Glyn Northington (Target), and Andrew Hamingson (The Public Theater), and was moderated by Times’ culture reporter Patricia Cohen. While each speaker brought a unique perspective to the table – that of corporate community relations, nonprofit performing arts organizations, and nonprofit marketing – they seemed generally to share a common stance with regard to the panel’s theme. That stance was that corporate sponsorship, when done right, works great, so get on board. The consonance of their opinions and experience made for a coherent and informative panel, if not a particularly challenging one.

All three presenters emphasized that corporate sponsorship and philanthropy (terms they used more or less interchangeably) was about building a mutually beneficial partnership. Cohen used the metaphor of finding the right dance partner, showing a clip of Fred and Ginger and sharing Katharine Hepburn’s (in)famous quote: “He gave her class, and she gave him sex.” In the nonprofit-corporate relationship, typically the nonprofit provides visibility and the corporation supplies money. (I recommend taking a look at Cohen’s very accessible power point, "Corporate Sponsorship Now", available here.)

Northington spoke frankly about Target’s priorities in partnering with arts organizations—they want to reach a wide audience and build the Target brand through affiliations with education and family programming. Target, which commits a noteworthy 5% of its income to corporate social responsibility, tries to coordinate its branding across the organizations it supports, for example, through supporting nationwide family days and making publicity materials visually consistent.

The Public Theater has been able to keep tickets to its famed Shakespeare in the Park free, despite the economic crisis, thanks to the support of Bank of America. Not surprisingly, the strong reputation and visibility of the decades-old festival was an alluring platform for corporate sponsors.

Were there downsides to corporate sponsorship? There was the risk of putting all ones eggs in one basket, one that put some performing arts venues out of business when their corporate sponsors folded, but Northington made clear that a good corporate funder would not want its support to make up too large a percentage of an organization’s income precisely for that reason. There was also mention of how corporate sponsors have become more high-maintenance—demanding results in the form of metrics from their nonprofit partners. Though this could present a burden at times, Hamingson and Cohen felt it was understandable and served overall accountability.

Finally, Northington was asked if Target worried that avant-garde programming could hurt its reputation, but this concern, too was brushed off. Corporations can opt to sponsor just those programs that meet their branding needs, and, at the Public Theater, sponsors are made fully aware of all potential controversy in plays they may be supporting. For the panelists, the benefits of corporate-nonprofit partnerships far outweighed the cost so long as each party's expectations were clearly understood at the outset.

During the Q&A, a young man from NYU asked about how corporate sponsorship for the arks might let elected officials off the hook when it comes to supporting the arts in our communities. His question drew attention to an assumption (one of many) behind the panel: the talk was not about whether or not to have corporate sponsorship but about how this support mechanism works today. That corporate support is a good thing for arts organization and audiences, especially in these financial times was a given. His question, though outside the realm of the discussion, raised an important point to keep in mind before we all send letters of inquiry to Target instead of Albany.

The question I wanted to ask (but didn’t—too many sets of knees between me and the microphone): How do arts organizations (many of which present work that challenges the status quo) respond when their corporate friends find themselves receiving bad press for their politics or business practices? How do such situations estrange the arts organization’s members or other supporters? I imagine these panelists would have answered that again the benefit outweighs the cost, and, as Northington pointed out earlier, audiences have short memories.

TED honors artist that brings awareness to urban injustice

2010-10-20T07:51:00.000-07:00

Some of JR's urban interventions

I heard a lot of buzz about French artist JR when I was living in Brazil last year. The photo-graffiti artist, with the help of volunteers, had covered building façades in Rio's favelas with colossal portraits of favela residents--asserting a human face on some of the city's poorest neighborhood and forcing outsiders to actually take a look. It's nice to see that TED is recognizing the power of artistic practice -one that is grassroots, independent, and even, at times, illegal- to raise awareness of social justice issues. The award comes with $100,000 along with the opportunity for the winner to make a wish to change the world that the TED helps to support.

See JR's work on the TED website or read about the award in today's NY Times. JR's work calls to mind the more localized work of São Paulo graffiti artists and activists Jonato, Everaldo, and Paula whose work, Morro da Macumba, I featured on this blog.

Make Music New York 2010

2010-06-24T10:40:00.000-07:00

The Yale Percussion Group at the Naumburg Bandshell

There were over 1,000 free musical happenings today in New York for the city’s fourth annual Make Music New York festival. I’m proud to say I made it to three. Make Music New York (MMNY) is a day-long music fest open to anyone that wants to make music or enjoy music being made in the city’s public spaces. New York is one of over 300 cities worldwide to hold free music festivals on the longest day of the year after France's Fête de la Musique.

Though I’ve sung the praises of France’s Fête, I must admit to have being totally ignorant of Make Music New York’s existence until I was handed a program for it at last Sunday at Summer Stage. At first glimpse (1000 musical acts!!) I felt a bit overwhelmed. A full day dedicated to music in the midst of the city’s abundant free summer concert series? It felt like second dessert. But when I read deeper into the program, I realized that this was different from those series curated for the large stages at Central or Prospect Parks—this was about making music, and you didn’t have to be a vetted act, or even a professional musician, to take part. The other main difference was that the shows were happening in community spaces--on sidewalks, in small parks, around the city’s monuments--and that I didn't have to leave my neighborhood to attend.

The first show I attended was the Yale Percussion Group playing a selection of three pieces by Iannis Xenakis at the Naumburg Bandshell in Central Park. I did have to leave my neighborhood to catch this one, but it was worth the 15 minute subway ride.

The concert, one of three performances dedicated to the Greek composer happening throughout Central Park during MMNY, appeared to be in poor attendance as I made my way through the shaded Mall and towards the band shell. The expanse before the stage was empty save a lone cameraman documenting the performance. As it turned out, the audience was there, but had taken refuge from the sun beneath the treecover of the Mall and were listening intently.

I had never heard Xenakis before and was duly impressed by his compositions and the six Yale percussionists that interpreted three of his pieces. The first thing I noticed about the music was Xenakis use of space—long rests playing out between explosive beats (he was not afraid to get loud!). The percussionist clearly heard a rhythm in the space between the notes and the listener was invited to do likewise. In the second selection, played by a single percussionist, Xenakis used quick repeated beats on the marimba or on some clanging bells to create a textured canvass on which big syncopated bass drum beats exploded--a dramatic landscape. The last piece they played involved all six members of the ensemble, each behind his or her elaborate station of tympani, bass drum, tom toms, bongos, and other surfaces to hit. The drums talked back and forth, listened to one another, chanted in unison, boomed and whispered. The crowd was transfixed. Some audience members even braved the relentless sun to face the musicians. (If you want to get a taste of Xenakis and the Yale ensemble, I found this segment of another Xenakis piece on YouTube.)

NYChoro outside La Pregunta

I could have stopped after the Xenakis show and been completely satisfied with my first MMNY experience. But, despite the heat, I pushed on, this time uptown to La Pregunta Arts Café, a Latin-flavored café and music venue near City College, to hear NYChoro, a group of CUNY music students who would be playing Brazilian music. When I arrived, however, the only thing playing was the Spain-Honduras game on a TV over the bar. I asked the barman about the music and he gestured at a couple of guys sitting outside and said it would start at 4:00 (it was already 4:20). I ordered a pineapple and mint smoothie and waited while the trio set up—soprano saxophone, guitar, and upright bass. There was no seating outside, so I asked if I could do what the domino players at the bodega next door we’re doing—take a chair out to the curb. The young musicians seemed pleased to have an audience member and even offered me an egg shaker to play along (their percussionist was in Brazil).

Between songs (choro, bossa nova, samba jazz for the most part), I learned that the group plays every Wednesday at La Pregunta. I also learned that the two Brazilian players hoped to stay in New York after graduating from CUNY where they thought there were more opportunities and less competition for Brazilian musicians. Check out their MySpace page.

Apart from me, NYChoro attracted few listeners. Three children stopped and relieved me of my egg shaking duties for a while, and a few other children desperately wanted to stop, but were pulled on by busy parents. The handful of bar patrons were too absorbed in the game to come outside. Not to mention the heat. But I enjoyed the NYChoro’s playing and it gave the hot, still June afternoon a cool soundtrack.

Second line musicians in Marcus Garvey Park

On my way from La Pregunta to the subway, I passed a DJ and his son setting up a laptop and turntables in Convent Park and a R&B singer crooning away in the 125th St. station. With the sun at my back, I walked along 124^th Street in search of the tail end of a New Orleans “second line” jazz procession, which was to terminate in Marcus Garvey Park. I finally found the second liners on the east side of the park (the sousaphone gave them away) and got to hear a deep, rumbling rendition of Herbie Hancock’s Cameleon before the musicians started to pack up their instruments and mingle with the audience.

I ended the day nursing a dripping popsicle and feeling glad to have taken part in Make Music New York. Though certainly it took careful planning months in advance, the concerts I heard felt refreshingly informal and accessible, as though impromptu musical community was still something commonplace in New York City's neighborhoods.

Creativity and policy reform

2010-04-19T12:06:00.000-07:00

The fact that Arts+Culture is listed as one of the key initiatives of the The Opportunity Agenda, a New York-based organization committed to "building the national will to expand opportunity in America," is very exciting to me. This rights-based leadership, research, and advocacy organization has recognized the important role of arts and media to "create a window into the possible" when it comes to changing public opinion about immigration.

Favianna Rodriguez, David Henry Hwan, and Chung-Wha Hong
Photo courtesy of The Opportunity Agenda

It was this notion that framed last Wednesday's dialogue and multimedia presentation, Immigration: Arts, Culture & Media held at Florence Gould Hall in Manhattan. As I entered the theater, I was greeted by projected images of multimedia artist Kip Fulbeck, front-on portraits of multiethnic individuals holding white pages in front of them that listed their diverse cultural backgrounds. The images reminded me of happy mug shots, as though the artist was challenging the way American society has come to criminalize immigration.

The lights faded and we were shown clips from popular TV shows, movies, and stand up comedians that challenged negative assumptions about immigrants. Alan Jenkins, The Opportunity Agenda's co-founder and director introduced the even and the night's moderator, the dynamic Maria Hinojoso. Acclaimed filmmaker Mira Nair started the evening on a surprising note by indicating during her keynote address that she doesn't consider herself an immigrant per se but as someone who is strongly rooted in three places, on three continents (New York, Uganda, and India). She spoke about confronting ethnic stereotypes in her early work with humor and talent. For Nair, the artist's first responsibility is to her craft, and good work could take an important social justice stand. She also spoke about empowerment as the ability to tell one's own story, this the motto of her East African film training organization, Maisha.

Following Nair's comments, the other participants had the opportunity to share their stories, prompted by Hinojosa's questioning. As this diverse sampling of artists and activists spoke about their work and personal experiences, I began to hear two distinct, but often intertwined, narratives emerge. On the one hand, artists spoke about how their creative impulse enabled them to express, question, and celebrate their multicultural and immigrant identities. Radical printmaker Favianna Rodriguez told the story of how early exposure to political poster art in an anti-immigrant California showed her an outlet for her own growing political concerns, while Tony Award-winning playwright David Henry Hwang spoke of how tapping into his subconscious in play writing workshops unlocked a long-suppressed connection to his immigrant roots.

The other narrative I heard was one promoted by The Opportunity Agenda about the role of the arts and culture to change hearts and minds by confronting negative stereotypes with new, authentic stories and images. The arts are able to push the limits of reductionism and offer complex and provoking ideas that can ultimately set the stage for policy reforms. Here the conversation turned briefly to popular culture such as sitcoms, reality TV, and children's programming as a powerful means of reaching wide swaths of the American public. But as was emphasized on numerous occasions during the dialogue, not all artists are comfortable engaging popular culture and there are many diverse modes of artistic political engagement. I liked what Chung-Wha Hong, director of the New York Immigration Coalition (and a self proclaimed non-artist) said about looking to the creative process for inspiration for activist work, especially when it comes to bringing authenticity and personal stories into the work of immigration reform.

I enjoyed seeing a project Martín Perna (Ocote Soul Sounds/Antibalas) has been working on to creatively address immigration issues. He has used video technology to show a concert with the DC-based band Thievery Corporation during which immigrants from the band are "disappeared." The effect is haunting and challenges the audience to think about what it would mean to get rid of the immigrant contribution to American culture.

Maria Hinojosa participating in Kip Fulbeck's art project
Photo Courtesy of The Opportunity Agenda

There were some good, sticky moments in the conversation and subsequent Q&A, which affirmed some of my hesitations (expressed previously in this blog) about over-emphasizing the utility of arts and culture. One audience member voiced concern about the co-opting of artist work in more traditional forms of activism and advocacy. At another moment, there was a comment about artist resistance to mainstream media and pop culture as a medium for expression and advocacy. It seemed that before getting too deep into the proposal to engage artists to promote immigration reform (and other policy reform), more dialogue was needed about the agency of artists themselves in such political processes and their frequent marginalization in American society.

I had a chance to discuss this topic at the reception following the event (DJ'd by Martín Perna!) with a self-identifying artivista, Kayhan Irani whose book, “Telling Stories to Change the World: Global Voices on the Power of Stories to Build Community and make Social Justice Claims,” presents some examples from the field of arts as social change.

Overall, I thought Wednesday's event was an important forum for artists-activists and non-artist activists to share examples of work that addresses immigrant issues and to propose some areas where partnerships could strengthen social activism. I look forward to seeing where The Opportunity Agenda will go with the momentum generated during the forum.

Who Protects Antiquity? Three Models

2010-04-10T07:35:00.000-07:00

Who protects antiquity? Apparently, highly-educated, middle-aged white men in dark suits, I couldn't help thinking as I entered the Proshansky Auditorium at the CUNY Graduate Center last Wednesday evening. The suits, James Cuno, Lawrence Rothfield, and Lawrence Coben, moderated by Joel Allen, were gathered on the stage to debate just who is responsible for protecting our ancient heritage and, an even more problematic question, how to go about doing so. As a newcomer to questions surrounding antiquity and its preservation, I learned a lot.

Each panelist had a different take on the crisis facing antiquity today and a different proposal to solve it. Cuno passionately decried the ascription of national boundaries to the archaeological remains of peoples or civilizations, which knew no state lines. The artificial nationalization of artifacts, he argued, keeps nation states from understanding their role as stewards of antiquity, with an obligation to act in their best interest, even when it means relinquishing objects and sites to foreign museums, universities or teams of archaeologists. For Cuno, something like the bygone practice of partage, whereby foreigners were allowed to excavate sites in return for sharing the spoils with the source country, would be a way to save and study the world's treasures.

Rothfield focused on the problem of looters who are pillaging important heritage sites. He led us through an economic analysis of the looting process, blaming the prevalence of looting on the incentives created by collectors (individual and institutional) who put a premium on particular objects. The result was a negative externality: the destruction of the sites of ancient heritage at the hands of profit-seeking thieves. Taking his economic logic one step forward, Rothfield proposed that the demand side should bare the cost of the externality in a tax that would feed into a global antiquity protection fund. This fund would then be used to cover the cost of securing sites in source countries with low capacity to do so on their own.

Lawrence Coben, an archaeologist who directs the Sustainable Preservation Institute (SPI), took the responsibility of protecting antiquity to the community level. For him, the biggest problem facing antiquity was not looting, it was poverty. If the poor communities living near or on archaeological sites have an economic incentive to protect them (instead of, say, growing crops on them or selling the land to developers), they would be more inclined to own the preservation of these sites. This is the foundation of SPI's "new preservation paradigm" which sees investment at the community level as the most effective and sustainable way to preserve world heritage, while often driving economic development where it is sorely needed. William Easterly would approve.

My personal perspective led me to favor Coben's bottom-up approach over Cuno and Rothfield's, but all three got me thinking. Cuno's premise that antiquity belongs to us all and we must all preserve it rang true to me, yet he seemed to use this notion to defend an outdated (and often asymmetrical) preservation model instead of thinking about new, and more politically viable, ways of partnering with source countries. Even if consensus were built around antiquities as a global commons (like, say, clean water) it would face the same hurdles as environmental preservation.

Rothfield's tax idea was highly innovative and placed the financial burden for preservation on those with financial privilege in the antiquities market, relieving source countries or other players. Yet, as Cuno pointed out during the Q&A, taxing collectors could create adverse incentives along the way, and Coben argued that in many impoverished source countries foreign aid money is often squandered by corrupt officials. Personally, I questioned the political feasibility of paying to arm antiquities sites while many of these countries lack police forces to protect everyday citizens. It also seemed an incredibly difficult task to coordinate efficiently.

Finally, Coben's method, while most convincing (for me), had several flaws--by appealing to a community's economic needs, what happens if sites cease to provide revenues? Also, what is the opportunity cost (to communities) of preserving these sites and who gets to decide where to draw the line? Is Coben's model, in which a Northern NGO sets the agenda for poor communities in the developing world by providing technical assistance and grants to meet it as paradigm-shifting as it would appears?

I left Wednesday's panel feeling unsettled and unsure of the future of antiquities and ancient world heritage sites--not because these three experts didn't have some compelling and passionately-defended ideas (they did), but because I sincerely doubted that the political will needed to embark on any of their strategies on a global scale exists. Rothfield did mention that the World Bank was moving towards taking the preservation of ancient sites into account on its the large-scale development projects. Getting such a powerful entity to institute policies to protect antiquity seemed like a big step for proponents of preserving heritage sites. Yet, Coben was pessimistic about any large-scale attempts at preservation and criticized a (in his opinion) failed Inter-American Development Bank effort to transform a an archaeological site into a cultural heritage tourism destination.

The fact that IADB had messed up seemed all the more reason for preservation advocates to push for new, more effective policies at the level of development banks and other multilateral institutions. Otherwise, the debates risked staying in academia, or, in the case of SPI, risked exerting enormous effort only to be undermined by larger powers.

Photo: Etched-in graffiti at the site of the pyramids at Giza that I observed during my visit to Egypt in 2009.

Legitimizing (and questioning) culture’s utility

2010-03-30T12:29:00.000-07:00

Early last Thursday morning I joined other students of cultural policy and international relations to hear a panel discussion on the topic of cultural diplomacy. The panel, entitled “Culture as a tool: Diplomacy and International Exchange in the 21^st Century” was co-presented by NYU’s John Brademas Center for the Study of Congress and the Wagner School’s Student Network Exploring Arts and Culture (SNEAC). Moderated by Frank Hodsoll, CEO of the Resource Center for Cultural Engagement and former chairmen of the NEA, the panel brought together representatives from UNESCO, The Asia Society, and the Instituto Cervantes in New York. The result was a series of interesting presentations that addressed some of the ways in which culture is being understood and engaged as a vehicle for larger objectives: fighting terrorism worldwide, promoting the foreign policy agendas, building grassroots understanding and dialogue among different cultures; and strengthening cultural identities and social cohesion.

I learned a great deal about how culture is being framed and funded in service of diplomacy or cultural understanding in different settings. Hodsell reminded us of America’s dismal record of supporting cultural on any front. In terms of “cultural engagement” (this seems to be the new catchphrase for cultural diplomacy) in foreign policy, he said, the Department of State is doing very little and what it is doing relies mostly on projecting the American image outward. Interestingly (and frighteningly for some) the Department of Defense has invested heavily in public diplomacy and is using culture as a way to build a better understanding of “other” cultures’ views. Towards the end of his talk, Hodsell alluded to the important ways in which culture leads to social change, citing Hugh Masekela’s music in Apartheid South Africa. In my experience, however, government support when culture workers use creativity to challenge injustice, is insufficient.

Rochelle Roca Hachem, a cultural officer at UNESCO, spoke about UNESCO’s involvement in the world Counter-Terrorism Implementation Task Force, in one of its five pillars: “addressing the conditions conducive to the spread of terrorism.” Though Ms. Roca Hachem didn’t specifically outline the programs at work to fight terrorism through culture, she did speak at length about culture’s role in building mutual understanding through intercultural dialogue and promoting social cohesion.

Asia Society’s Rachel Cooper discussed some of the “people-to-people” artist exchanges happening between the U.S. and Indonesia that serve to build a more grass roots mutual understanding between the two nations. In this context she alluded to many entrepreneurial efforts for cultural exchange and artist engagement that she had observed in Asia. She suggested larger institutions could learn from these. (It would be interesting to see how artists themselves take on “cultural engagement” outside of institutional support structures.) Cooper also spoke briefly about “Creative Voices of Islam,” an interdisciplinary education initiative that aims to use “the arts as a springboard to understand the diversity of Islam as a creative inspiration.” This seems like a direction many arts organizations in the U.S. are taking in order to respond to misinterpretations and reductionism of Islamic culture, such as the Kennedy Center’s Arabesque. These are examples where civil society-led initiatives create their own policy agendas in developing programs that use the arts to change minds.

Eduardo Lago, director of the Cervantes Institute in New York spoke about the role of his institution in responding to the many identities included in the Spanish-speaking world, namely Spanish, Latin Americans, and U.S.-based Latinos. He saw the Spanish cultural institute of having a duty to reflect these hybrid identities as well as offering education in the language that bond them together. His comments underscored the importance of diverse cultural institutions in destination countries for immigrants who may seek to maintain a connection to their homelands and build connections to their new homes, through culture.

The above presentations were directed at making the case for culture so that it will be recognized and valued more frequently as a strategic tool. In my professional life, I often find myself making some of the same arguments. As I left Thursday’s panel, however, I found myself questioning my eagerness to promote 'culture as a tool'. The relegation of ‘culture’ to the toolkit as an instrument to be wielded by those in power to affect particular sorts of social change seems to threaten some of cultures’ unique qualities. The power of culture lies in its insistence to evolve, experiment, react, and sometimes, to push back. Culture, however you want to define it, may not fit so comfortably in its toolkit slot. At the same time, if culture is not nurtured and valued outside of its instrumental use (like culture-based interventions in service of development goals) it may prove to be an empty tool without cultural practitioners to wield it and cultural contexts to receive it.

Photos: The Asia Society in New York at 725 Park Ave. and a view of the Jorge Luis Borges Library at the Instituto Cervantes at 211 E. 49th St.

Culture, Policy, and Social Change

2010-03-30T11:37:00.000-07:00

Over the next two months, I am going to be blogging about some of the intersection of arts and culture and social change efforts, some grassroots and others top-down. These blog entries are part of some research on international cultural policy that I'm conducting with the guidance of Professor Ruth Ann Stewart at NYU's Wagner School of Public Service.

For the most part, I will commenting on panel discussions and lectures on this theme taking place here in New York City. If you want to check out any these events (the first has already passed), you can click on the links below to find out more information. And if you hear of other events I should attend, please let me know.

Culture as a Tool: Diplomacy and International Exchange in the 21st Century

Thursday, March 25

8:00 AM

The Puck Building

Who Protects Antiquity?

Wednesday, April 7

6:30 PM

Proshansky Auditorium

Romanticide: Love, Art and Codependency in Art and Cultural Politics

Wednesday, April 7

6:30 PM

19 Washington Square North

Immigration: Arts, Culture and Media 2010

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Florence Gould Hall

The Role of Art and Culture in Bridging the Divide Between the United States and the Muslim World

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

6:00-8:30 PM

[I still have so much to share with you from my time in Uganda, but it will unfortunately have to wait until after graduation in May. Below is a Uganda teaser: a troop of young performers from two orphanages who have mastered Uganda's diverse forms of music and dance and were in residence at Uganda's National Theatre the weeks I was working there. I got to sneak into a rehearsal and was blown away by their talent and professionalism. The youths below are playing traditional cowhide drums called ngoma that wobbled and spun around as they were energetically pounded.]

Reporting from Kampala

2010-01-02T01:18:00.000-08:00

After two blog-less months I am back to share my experiences in Kampala, Uganda where I will be spending the next two weeks to carry out a program evaluation for Maisha Film Lab. (The evaluation project is part of my Master's degree program and takes the place of a thesis.) Maisha is a training institute for East African filmmakers and has been running month-long screenwriting and technical labs since 2005.

During the next two weeks myself and my partner will be interviewing over a hundred past Maisha lab participants to get an idea of the impact the labs are having on thesefilmmakers' careers and on the East African film industry more broadly.

When I'm not working, I'm hoping to get a taste of Kampala cultural life. Stay tuned...

Writers and artists bear witness to torture victims

2009-10-19T11:47:00.000-07:00

Last Tuesday I attended “Reckoning with Torture: Memos and Testimonies from the War on Terror,” co-presented by PEN American Center and the ACLU. The event brought together 17 well-known writers and human rights workers to read from the War on Terror’s chilling record.

I attended this event not long after screening Steve York’s Confronting the Truth, a documentary about the use of truth commissions to respond to the needs of victims of mass atrocities. The film focused on examples from South Africa, Peru, Morocco, and Indonesia, which, while varying in methodology, all aimed to create a space for victims’ voices to be heard and become part of the public record. This documentary helped me frame “Reckoning with Torture” as an attempt at public truth telling.

When I walked into Cooper Union’s Great Hall I was greeted by two floor-to-ceiling screens showing images of Iraqi detainee's handprints taken while in U.S. custody. The images had been manipulated by artist Jenny Holzer who had carefully scribbled out or outlined with black permanent marker as though censoring the unique trace of each detainee's identity. On the armrests of our seats were sheets of paper marked with the handprints of those who had died in U.S.-run prisons. All of the images, which also included censored memoranda and reports, had been made available by way of the Freedom of Information Act, used since 2003 by NGOs and others to petition for these prisoners' release.

With these images as backdrop, I listened as participating authors read testimonies from the War on Terror. Some segments were outrageous, like a statement by GW Bush reaffirming the United States’ adherence to the Geneva Convention in the aftermath of the Abu Graib scandal. Other parts were devastating, like watching video footage of Guantánamo detainees divulging the treatment they received in detention. Particularly poignant was hearing a very visceral account of one detainee's experience being water boarded interspersed with a reading of the Department of Defense's praise of the brutal technique.

The readers of these testimonies (which included the likes of Art Spiegelman, Eve Ensler, and Paul Auster) were themselves moved and hence left a powerful impression on me. It also wasn’t about them. They were there to draw an audience to bear witness to and create a public record of the atrocities committed during the War on Terror, whose victims are dispersed around the world, some still in prison. The likelihood that a formal truth commission will emerge to recognize and record these stories is slim. I therefore urge you to take the time to see and hear what took place last week in the Great Hall. Seeing and hearing, as truth commissioners will tell you, are qualitatively different from simply reading, and chances are you will learn of some new, atrocious, truth.

The full hour and a half-long event is available to watch PEN’s website here. For the ACLU's critique of the Obama administration's handling of our torture legacy, go here.

PHOTOS: Far above, Holzer's version of a hand print of Iraqi accused of crimes by the U.S. military. Above, Ismael Beah reads from a sworn statement of Lt. Col. Darrel Vandeveld, former lead prosecuter in the military commission case of detainee Mohammed Jawad. (Both images) Copyright © Beowulf Sheehan/PEN American Center for non-profit editorial use only.

No monkey business

2009-09-27T20:42:00.000-07:00

Yes, this is the first sports-related post on my culture blog. That's if you consider remote-controlled robot monkeys zooming after whiffle balls to "Chariots of Fire" to be athletic. It got my heart rate up!

Saturday night K. and I headed out to Greenpoint, Brooklyn to witness what is sure to go down as one of the best-fought "chimpionships" in the history of monkey sports.

Monkey robot sports tournaments are the brain-child of artist Dan Walker (the explosive lamp-sculpture below is his work. Dan's in the background, in character, donning Panama hat and pencil mustache as he arbitrates the game). We started hearing about the chimpionships last year and since then they have taken off, moving to larger venues (Saturday's game was held at Greenpoint's hip t.b.d. bar), crossing state lines (this summer Miami held its first chimpionship), and acquiring sponsors (like Amp energy drink).

So this is how it works: there are two, three-monkey teams, red and blue. There are three different sizes of monkey on each team, and each has different strengths (and weaknesses). The monkeys are controlled by humans, which is a big part of the fun. The teams are trying to score by corralling three balls (each a different size) into the opposite team's goal. Like soccer, though goal tending was against the rules.

I took a turn and, while I only scored once, and completely by accident, I had a lot of fun making my monkey disco dance in the center of the ring. The fans (hundreds of small plastic toys arranged on stadium seating around the field) loved it.

Another big part of the fun were the announcers, who called every play and made plenty of monkey wisecracks. In fact the theater of it all, the careful attention to each detail, was what made this event so much fun. That and the beer.

Everybody Loves Governors Island

2009-09-22T19:09:00.000-07:00

It is rare in New York, where our endlessly diverse tastes are satisfied by a seemingly endless array of activities, to find so many people I know buzzing about the a single event. Yet since returning from Brazil, everyone I ask has either already ventured to Governors Island or really wants to go there. Apparently this quirky patch of land between Manhattan and Brooklyn is where it's at.

Right: A dragon sculpture made from found furniture by Benjamin Jones and Anna Hecker

A few weeks back, the New Yorker profiled this Island's storied history and uncertain future in comprehensive profile, details of which I won't repeat here (it would make a great urban policy case study). I will tell you that it was one of the cheapest and easiest city-exit-strategies I've found. Hop on a free ferry at South Ferry, watch as the island approaches for about 10 minutes, disembark, and wander.

It's a hard space to get a sense of and, were it not for the views of the financial district, Red Hook, and the Statue of Liberty as constant reminders of place, it could be quite disorienting. In one section I felt like I was on a New England college campus, complete with deans' houses, another section looked like abandoned housing projects, and one side of the island has a maritime feel with a series of decaying piers. Yet this spacial and temporal disjuncture lends the island a certain mystique while also leaving each visitor to discover the island as she wants, without a prescribed itinerary or agenda.

Part of the Wind Nomad exhibit of 400 "flapping" paintings set up all around the island.

We never figured out how they flapped

And this is just what we did. Our visit coincided with the New Island Festival (created by Dutch artists), so there was funky art around every corner and many performances including a jumping cow (we saw the cow twice, but never a jump). We wandered into a gallery space that had been created in one of the island's many empty buildings and enjoyed the pencil portraits of Flemish-New Yorkers by Ellen Depoorter. We took a ride to one tip of the island called picnic point and lunched in the shadow of our lady of liberty, watching families flying kites and throngs of bikers pedal by. We played mini golf on a course made entirely out of recycled materials. There was no one telling us where to go or what to see and therefore no pressure to do anything beyond what struck our fancy. In short, it was a beautiful way to spend an early fall day at no cost. If you haven't been to Governors Island already, you should go. But chances are you were already planning to!

This oversized table maze is actually a hole on the recycled mini golf course. It was really hard!

Carnaval, West Indian-American Style

2009-09-16T20:01:00.000-07:00

Two weekends ago I attended what I'm told is the largest parade in the U.S., and yes, we're too early for Thanksgiving. This parade was in Brooklyn and featured no inflated cartoon characters, though I did see a devil, a snake man, butterflies, and many other fantastic creatures. I also saw a lot of bodies, barely dressed in the most ornately decorated bikinis, and a lot of sensual dancing. This was the West Indian-American Day Parade (also known as West Indian Carnaval), held every year on Labor Day Monday in the neighborhood of Crown Heights, Brooklyn. It draws somewhere between 1 and 3 million spectators. On this balmy early September day, my boyfriend and I took the subway down to Brooklyn and met up with a high school friend, Will (also the creator of sublime sculptures), who was in town for a visit.

We wandered around for a while along the parade route as the opening acts filed past--political candidates, unions, and professional associations (our favorite were the New York City corrections officers which rolled by in two nearly empty school buses). Eventually we swam upstream and found a spot that offered good views as the different Masses (as the parade troops are called, like in New Orleans Mardi Gras I'm told) prepared to pass the judges booth. Each Mas had a semi truck filled with speakers and a crew of organizers, DJs, and dancers perched atop a wooden frame dancing, sunning, and yelling to the crowd and their throngs of dancers below.

Though I was a shade disappointed that none of the Masses we saw had any live musicians, the costumes made up for it. Bright plumage, bejeweled bodices, glittering leggings, headresses--we were all mesmerized (especially my male companions). Personally, I most enjoyed the dancers' footware, from sneakers to slouchy boots, that each dancer had decorated with spray paint, glitter, jewels, or dye. I also enjoyed the inventive larger than life puppets, mounted on rolling frames pulled by key paraders and representing that Mas's theme.

Snake/scorpion man in frame costume

Unfortunately we didn't get to see any of the Masses in formation, catching them right before they were to head past the judges. We did get to see hundreds of young people, who, though restless and overheated, were clearly excited and proud of their elaborate costumes and having a lot of fun. Still, after nearly two hours of watching all that flesh shake and gyrate down Eastern Parkway to the pulse of highly amplified soca music on a sea of fuschia and gold features, I had had enough. For this year.

Last minute bead attachment en route to judges booth

[Since you've probably noticed that food is a big part of how I experience the world, I won't leave you hanging: I ate well at the West Indies Day Parade. Surprisingly, though, it wasn't the pricey styrofoam dish of spicy jerk chicken, dirty rice, and fried plantains that most tantalized my palette but instead the $2 plastic sack of small fruits that looked like key limes but behaved like lychees. Parade spectators in the know (those sporting flags of West Indian nations) were snacking on them, so I followed suit, buying mine from an older man who had dozens of bags hanging off his fingers. I thank my friend E. for later revealing the identity of my mystery fruit. She told me: "It sounds like you had what is the genipa, quenepa, quenette, genip, mamoncillo, or Spanish lime, depending upon which tropical land you're in. It is in the same family as lychee, that is the Sapindaceae. And yes, it is a pain to eat." Try one. You'll see why.]

Tagging through the grime

2009-09-08T19:09:00.000-07:00

I understand that some graffiti is about adding (applying paint, paper, light, knitting to surfaces) and some about taking it away (scraping into subway windows, etching into paint, peeling a message into paper).

Today I saw a very satisfying example of the latter variety: Someone had tagged the 7th Avenue subway stop walls by cleaning their name into the grime. The New York City subway is notoriously filthy--most every visitor I've spoken to concurs. So seeing how the signature layer of sooty grease had been cleaned away to reveal, in the bright white tile, someone's stylized signature, struck me as genius, not to mention free. And, at the rate those walls get cleaned, this "wash me" approach is probably more permanent than many spray-painted tags in public places. Go Semz.

La Reunion, TX

2009-08-31T22:25:00.000-07:00

I've decided to continue my blog stateside, where there is no shortage of interesting cultural happenings to write about. First stop: Texas.

Today I had the opportunity to take a tour of an emerging artist residency in Dallas. La Reunion, TX (LRTX) was founded three years ago with the support of an active community of artists and architects in the Dallas area who wanted "to create an arts residency that inspires, sustains, and renews artists and community through education and outreach."

La Reunion (located in present-day Oak Cliff) has a fascinating back story: it was founded as a utopian socialist community in the mid-19th century by Victor Considerant who traveled to Texas with a following of artisans, philosophers, musicians, and lots of good ideas. Unfortunately, ideas and art weren't enough to get the settlers through a drought and the colony was disbanded. Many of the Considerant's enlightened compatriots filtered into Dallas and infused this growing city with their ideals and talent.

On this surprisingly cool August day, I met with LRTX's founding director, Sarah Jane Semrad, for a tour of the site. In addition to some incredible tree sculptures (like this sweater-donning tree above), I got to see a beautiful coral snake, hand-sized yellow and black butterflies, and exuberant birds all making their ways through the dappled afternoon light. The 35-acre site has a huge amount of potential to support the creative process and engage the Dallas community. Already kids from the Student Conservation Association have worked on various restoration and clean up programs on the site. LRTX also engages local artists in diverse social change initiatives in the Dallas area. One such program is Art Chicas Unidas which pairs high school-aged girls from under-served communities with professional female artists, selected by jury, to work on a site-specific artwork.

Defunct train tressle on the LRTX site

As one of Dallas's first artist residencies, I was excited to see such innovative programming in action and its attention to the preservation of this gorgeous greenspace so close to the city center. It's not an easy moment to be launching an artist residency, but this is exactly the sort of community-minded artspace we need more of.

A saideira

2009-08-13T16:31:00.000-07:00

Last night was my last in São Paulo so I rounded up my friends for a saideira (one for the road). It ended up being one of my best nights here. We met up at Drosophyla, a laid back bar near Consolação for caipirinhas. Drosophyla has perhaps the coolest light fixtures I've ever seen--made from large copper colanders that let pass just enough golden light to find the straw to your caipirinha. By midnight, most people had headed home to bed but a valiant three chose to stick it out and continue on to Bar do Cidão for some choro (a bit like samba de mesa but with a slightly different rhythm and more wind instruments).

Cidão is the owner of this Vila Madalena bar (and bartender and chef). He runs a unpretentious establishment known for its nightly live samba de mesa and chorinho. When we arrived the musicians were on break so we chatted with them outside and then found a table. Samba de mesa and choro are typically placed around a table or simply in a circle. This time, for the first time, I was invited to join the circle and try out some of my newly acquired percussion skills. The hour I sat in the roda playing pandeiro, tamborim, and even a cuica (or was that a tan-tan?) with this group of talented young musicians was one of my all-time musical highlights. Granted I faked some of the rhythms and most of the technique, but I managed to keep up.

That is totally me playing a pandeiro

We lost another two after Cidão, but luckily there were more friends waiting for us at a bar near Rua Augusta. I can't remember the name and wouldn't recommend it if I did, but it was the perfect last venue to listen to a DJ spin reggae and Brazilian soul before exhaustion overcame us. As we left the last balada (club), the first birds were beginning to sing and my stomach was starting to grumble. Our last destination was the famous Estadão, known for its delicious roasted pork sandwiches. Here it's not uncommon to see prostitutes eating next to taxi drivers next to journalists from the newspaper headquartered across the street. I devoured by pernil and washed it down with a suco de abacaxi e hortelã juice (pineapple juice with fresh mint) and was even feeling pretty awake as I said good-bye to the last friend standing and hailed a cab.

Lanche de pernil com suco de abacaxi com hortalã--the best way to end any night on the town

The day's produce lined up outside Estadão

The cabbie drove me through the Centro and down into Santa Cecilia and I watched the city stream by--people waking up and heading to work, stopping at the lanchonete for a morning coffee and coxinha, cuing up outside the public hospital, returning from a night out. Beneath the minhocão (meaning giant earthworm and SP's longest elevated highway) the endless graffiti and pichação was swathed in the morning light. Even at 6 am the traffic was thick as we turned onto Cardoso de Almeida and up to Turiassu. I got out on my corner, already bustling and entered Edificio Elza. On the stairs I said good morning to a neighbor who was starting her day just as I was ending mine. It was a good last night in Sao Paulo.

Some of my favorite under-minhocão wall art

The corner of Turiassu and Cardoso de Almeida--my home in São Paulo

Festa de Nossa Senhora de Achiropita = Good eating

2009-08-11T13:50:00.000-07:00

Bixiga (officially known as Bela Vista) is Sao Paulo's Little Italy. It got its pejorative nickname of Bixiga (bladder) during the late 19th-century when residents suffered from bladder infections. Today Bixiga is much-loved by Paulistanos, over half of whom claim Italian heritage.

At once quaint and seedy, beloved Bixiga is still home to a large Italian population along with other immigrant groups and features some of SP's best Italian restaurants. For three weekends in August, the neighborhood celebrates the festival of Our Lady of Achiropita with a street fair, which, as far as I could tell, was dedicated solely to Italian food.

My friends and I arrived late Saturday afternoon, while it was still possible to circulate through the neighborhood without knocking over someone's plate of pasta or sticking an elbow in someone's tiramisu. We scoped out all the food stands, as Italian classics blasted through a mega sound system. The music was interrupted by an announcer indicating where the shortest lines for fogazza (a fried dough stuffed with tomatoes, cheese, and herbs) were and reminding us that mass for the Achiropita would be starting at 6:00. Every half block there was a private security guard standing on a platform three feet above the crowd (I guess the pasta-eaters can get pretty rowdy).

After great deliberations, I opted to try the stuffed eggplant and the polenta with bolognese sauce. The eggplant was a little cold, but well flavored with garlic, basil, and olives. The polenta was divine. We walked around a bit more, marveling at the 100 kg provolone cheese that was being raffled to benefit the Achiropita parish. It was as tall as me.

I finished my Bixiga culinary experience with a thick wedge of ricotta tart. A bit sweet for my taste, as are most desserts here in Brazil, but I had no problem eating it.

Sunday morning at the Teatro Municipal

2009-08-04T16:44:00.000-07:00

After 10 days of garoa (drizzle--Sao Paulo's choice in weather), last Sunday dawned bright and sunny. I met a friend and we took the Metro downtown to the Teatro Municipal which offers affordable classical music every Sunday at 11 am.

The Teatro Municipal sits like a well-used jewelry box in the heart of downtown São Paulo. Completed in 1911, its design and decor borrow liberally from a range of European styles. Today, the Teatro's facade is being restored and hence covered by a series of grafittied wooden panels that add yet another style to this eclectic building.

In honor of the Year of France in Brazil, Sunday's program featured pieces by Ravel and Debussy played by the Orquestra Experimental de Repertório. It was the first time I heard one of my favorites, Pavane pour une Infante Defunte, played live and I was not disappointed (even if one of the violin players did leave the stage mid-performance). The Sunday morning crowd was small, but enthusiastic as the music surged beneath the benevolent gaze of Aphrodite (left).

Prego Batido, hit that nail!

2009-07-31T20:17:00.000-07:00

After weeks of absorbing Brazilian rhythms, I finally got my chance at creating some of my own at Prego Batido percussion school. On the recommendation of a friend, I enrolled in a three-day intensive class to learn basic samba rhythms and instrumentation. I barely scratched the surface, but I had one hell of a time.

The hole in the wall school is located off the Avenida Pompeia on a road appropriately named Morro Agudo (Steep Hill). When you walk through the front door you may think you've wandered into someone's home, and you may be right (I never figured out if the school's owner also lived there). The atmosphere is familial, with children running around and friends chatting between classes. The school has an ample collection of books and CDs available to copy.

Some surdos, a repinique, and a tantan

My class was taught by Gabriel de Toledo (you want to see what this kid is all about, check him out here) a young percussion master who was reared on samba. I think he was a bit frustrated at the slow pace we struggled through the rhythms. We spent the first day working on samba de escola (think big Carnaval samba) and then moved to samba de mesa (the samba you hear at bars and in homes). The instrumentation is different--samba de mesa uses pandeiros (tambourines) instead of caixa (snare drums), for example--but the basic rhythm is the same. I think my favorite instrument was the repinique (the drum Gabriel is playing in the video), kind of like a high pitched tom tom.

By the end of the three days I still didn't know what Gabriel was talking about when he referred to the different signature openings and closings of the major Rio samba schools and I still had a hard time starting the agogo pattern on the right beat, but when the five of us found our groove, even if for just a few measures, it felt great.

Da Farofa ao Caviar

2009-07-31T18:13:00.000-07:00

Naughty fashion with a heart of gold...

On Monday night I joined some friends for a very special fashion show. "Da Farofa ao Caviar" (means something like "from rags to riches" - farofa is toasted manioc, a humble food) was the latest collection from Daspu* the line of clothing that raises funds for the Brazilian NGO, Davida which works for prostitutes' civil rights. The unveiling of their new line was hosted at the Vai-Vai samba school in the neighborhood of Bixiga and featured members of the percussion section backing up the models as they strutted down the runway.

I had no idea what to expect at a prostitute fashion show. As it turns out, like most things I've experience here in São Paulo, they're a lot of fun. The first thing I saw when I walked into Vai-Vai's large central performance space was a press area packed with cameras and journalists there to record the event. This was apparently a bigger deal than I realized. We waited around for a while, sipping cheap beer and talking to some of the volunteers that helped produce the event.

Then the lights dimmed, and the show began.... Inspired by prostitute-wear the fashion was pretty exciting: tango-flavored bustiers, a sort of Borat-esque short suit, multicolored strappy platform sandals, hot pants--you get the picture. There was also some menswear--all pajamas. Instead of merely parading across the catwalk, the performers, which included prostitutes, professional models, and university students, danced and acted out in short, sultry vignettes to much applause and catcalling from the audience.

After the show a DJ appeared and a dance party began. My friends got their pictures taken with some TV personalities that had appeared to support the event and we danced our booties off alongside the models to everything from samba classics to the Cure. Not bad for a Monday night.

*Daspu is a clever play on the name of Brazil's poshest department store, Daslu.

Comidinha Baiana

2009-07-24T16:19:00.000-07:00

Rota do acarajé

On Wednesday I was initiated into the cult of Bahian cuisine at Rota do Acarajé, a restaurant in the neighborhood of Santa Cecília. Since I arrived in Brazil, comida baiana has been described to me as spicy, heavy, delicious, African-influenced, flavorful, greasy, and strange. I have only one word to describe it: delicious.

Rota do Acarajé (recommended by the evening's convener, M.) reminded me of some soul food restaurants in Harlem. Eclectically decorated with mismatched chairs and vintage Bahia memorabilia, it was easy to get comfortable, especially when the ice cold Bohemia started flowing. I took a look at the menu and quickly realized there were more words I didn't know than words I did. I deferred to my Brazilian friends who selected an appetizer of acarajé, and two main dishes, moqueca de cação e camarão and escondidinho de carne seca.

Acarajé (featured to the right with all its fixins') is one of Bahia's signature dishes. It's kind of like a bready hush puppy fried in azeite de dende, the bright orange palm oil applied generously to all Bahian cooking. For me, the best part of the acarajé were its accoutrements: camarão (little dried shrimp), caruru (sauteed okra, ground nuts, and onions ), and, my favorite, vatapá (a mush of ground shrimp, manioc flour, and cashews). I also helped myself to the pimenta, a salsa made from the devilish malegueta chile, which challenged even my chile-raised, New Mexican palette.

The main dishes were served family style and one order of each was enough to feed all six of us. Escondidinho (direct translation would be little tiny hidden one, I think) was a bit like a shepherd's pie, except the meat was shredded dried beef (typical of the hot Northeast region) and the topping was mashed aipim (manioc). I liked the escondidinho, but the moqueca, a seafood stew made with coconut milk, vegetables, garlic, cilantro, and tomato, won my heart. The cação (shark) was unbelievably tender and gently perfumed by the coconut milk and herbs. There were a was a tasty side dish, like a manioc polenta, called pirão, and fluffy white rice to soak up the moqueca.

Bahian food was nurtured into being by the West Africans forced to Brazil as slaves over 300 years ago, who incorporated both New World ingredients and Portuguese and Indian preparations into their traditional cuisine. Today, Bahian cuisine is the most distinctive and reputed in Brazil. Compared to the traditional Brazilian fare I've sampled in São Paulo--lots of beans, rice, manioc, beef and pork, and flavored mostly with garlic, parsley, lime, and salt--this meal was downright revolutionary. So many different spices and textures! Add to that lively conversation with new friends (in Portuguese, no less), and a table-side samba trio (trombone, bass drum, and snare) and I was one happy girl. And let's not forget the sobremesa of homemade tapioca ice cream flavored with honey and specked with fresh coconut. Adorei!

Dani Gurgel and Mão de Oito

2009-07-18T08:07:00.000-07:00

And so my week of music continues...

On Thursday I attended two performances. The first was part of a new concert series in Casa das Caldeiras, Caldeira Acoustica. They open up the space's cavernous basement up for intimate performances of Musica Popular Brasileira (bossa nova and the like). The venue is well-suited for this sort of concert--low lights, warm brick walls, and gently vaulted ceilings. Thursday's act was Dani Gurgel, a singer/songwriter from Sao Paulo, joined by her 5-piece ensemble and numerous special guests. I enjoyed the show and the very relaxing vibe. My only complaint was the sound mixing, which left me wanting to hear her voice a bit more. That and the keyboard setting, which was a bit too synthetic for my taste.

At Caldeiras I met up with a few friends--a young singer from Argentina, two French artist/producers, and a Brazilian NGO administrator. After the show, we decided to pile into a taxi and make our way up to Rua Augusta (SP's party central) to Studio SP, where our Brazilian friend had a lead on a good concert.

Studio SP, as best as I can tell, is one of Sao Paulo's hottest concert venues and Thursday night's show was proof of this. The band was Mão de Oito, a local pop rock band made up of six talented young musicians. I can't think of how to describe their sound so perhaps it's best if you check out their MySpace page. Their music was easy to listen to, easy to dance to, and well-executed.

The show lasted until maybe 3 am and was followed by a DJ. By the time my entourage and I stumbled out, it was time to think about breakfast. We walked up Augusta towards the Avenida Paulista and stopped off at an already-bustling diner. Lanches (in this context, hot sandwiches) were eaten by all. Mine had perfectly grilled steak, carrots, lettuce, cheese and cream cheese. Uma delicia!

Feijoada on Wednesday

2009-07-15T14:53:00.000-07:00

In my recent postings I realize I've been neglecting one of my preferred cultural manifestations: food. Rest assured that this isn't for lack of eating! Today, for example, was my second encounter with feijoada, Brazil's signature dish. Though varying by region, this meal centers around a stew of black beans and meat (usually salt pork ribs and sausage), and is accompanied by rice and other side dishes like couve (collard greens), farofa (toasted and seasoned manioc flour), fried pork fat, and even fried banana. Feijoada is serious eating.

I learned today that feijoada is typically served in restaurants on Wednesday (at least in the Sao Paulo region) and that no self-respecting Brazilian restaurant would dream of excluding it from the menu. Which is how today, after Portuguese class, I found myself ordering a "feijoada medio" (half portion) and a lime juice. When it arrived I wondered what on earth I had committed myself to. The earthenware pot of beans was still boiling, chalk full of pork. The couve was perfectly sauteed with garlic. I ate and ate, but barely made it through half of it. Lucky for me, two of my classmates had joined me and generously offered to help me finish the dish. I'm not sure how anyone makes it back to work after a meal like that, but it sure was tasty.

Music on a Sunday

2009-07-13T17:54:00.000-07:00

When I left my apartment this past Sunday afternoon I couldn’t have known that I would enjoy not one, not two, but FOUR distinctive musical happenings before I cabbed it back home at midnight. These are the things that happen when you allow yourself the luxury of an unplanned afternoon in a culturally generous city.

My first stop was Parque de Agua Branca, just a few blocks from my house. When I entered the park (this fowl-filled park will have its own entry) I saw a sign announcing Dia da Franca em Sao Paulo (the day of France in Sao Paulo) and heard distant music and applause. Wandering through the park I came across various events: an acrobat hoolahooping atop a swaying pole three stories above the crowd, a parkour exposition and training ground, a puppet show, a troop of clowns miming a raucous busride, and, my favorite, a French brass funk band all of whose members were dressed in trench coats and fedoras. It looked like there would be many good (free) performances to come, but I chose to wander on down Avenida Francisco Mattarrazzo to Casa das Caldeiras, my usual Sunday stomping ground.

This Sunday’s program included three different experimental music workshops and a roundtable discussion on the future of instrumental music in Brazil. One of the workshops performed a few numbers using found-object instruments made from an old metal sink, cardboard tubes, and used computer keyboards.

After Caldeiras I went from low tech to high, meeting some friends for a free concert at the Centro Cultural Itaú, part of the current exhibition, Game Play. I arrived too late to see video games on display in the exhibit, but enjoyed the show. A VJ manipulated old Nintendo and Sega images on a screen behind the DJ who used a laptop, a cymbal, a small key board, and I'm not sure what else to create electronic music out of bits of video game music. It was awesome. And half an hour of it was the perfect amount.

The night ended with beers at small bar on Rua Wisard in Vila Madalena listening to a woman with a Jobimesque voice croon bossa nova and samba classics. Tudo tranquilo, beleza.

Back to Brazil

2009-07-11T19:21:00.001-07:00

I was away. But now I'm back in Brazil and ready to catch you up on my cultural explorations in Sao Paulo. It seems the more I'm doing and seeing, the less time I have to write about it. In the next few posts I'll try to back up to describe some of the things I did and saw in June.

Here's some eye candy from the three days I spent in Rio de Janeiro with my friend Aline en route to Sao Paulo. That place is like nowhere else.

MomentoMonumento

2009-07-11T18:27:00.000-07:00

A week after my trip out to Morro da Macumba, I had the opportunity to visit a very different sort of urban revitalization project. MomentoMonumento
was conceived by two French art and architecture collectives, Coloco and Exyzt, to transform an abandoned 22-story glass office building in Sao Paulo’s decayed downtown into a multi-use, multidisciplinary “event building and cultural laboratory” where artists, social organizations, and the public would collaborate.

By chance, one of my Portuguese classmates was here in Brazil as one of the producers of the project and invited me for a visit. Since the site is not yet open to the public, this was quite a treat. I was shocked to hear that about 30% of usable building space in Sao Paulo's downtown is empty. Walking to the MomentoMonumento building, Edificio Wilton Paes de Almeida, through downtown Sao Paulo, this emptiness was evident. So many beautiful buildings boarded up or falling down. And despite the many pedestrian streets and plazas and parks, there were few places to sit and take it in.

The Wilton Paes de Almeida building stood out amongst its early-20th century neighbors for its modernity. The idea of MomentoMonumento was to "activate" this abandoned space, once headquarters for a glass company, then property of the federal police. My friend and I were joined by French photographer Franck Gerard who was in Sao Paulo for the exhibition Arte Fragil, Resistencias. The three of us explored each of the building's 22 floors. Some were empty, others contained forgotten office furniture, dust and smog-encrusted type writers, boxes of archives (including some interesting contraband!), even an old dentist chair. It all felt very post-apocalyptic. MomentoMonumento hasn't yet begun to occupy the space, but it will be interesting once they do.

The best part of the climb up was the view from the roof--a panorama of Sao Paulo's never-ending cityscape.

Morro da Macumba: Art and Community Development

2009-07-11T17:04:00.000-07:00

One Friday in June, I took a bus an hour outside of the city to the residential park of Cocaia, one of many low-income communities clustered to the south of Sao Paulo. I was invited by Jonato and Paula, who grew up in the area, to visit their graffiti mural project, Morro da Macumba. The objective of Morro da Macumba was to “tell the history of the neighborhood’s construction” through a multimedia mural while beautifying the run-down neighborhood.

The visit to the exterior communities was eye opening for me. Though Cocaia has infrastructure like public transportation, electricity, and public schools, the trash collection is all but non-existent and makeshift houses are stacked up one atop the other.

The Morro da Macumba mural took about a year to complete and involved collecting oral histories from residents, new and old, and involving the community in the creation of the mural and sculptures, relying heavily on found objects in the neighborhood (the tree pictured below is made from leaves cut from plastic bottles). The result is a colorful mural that parades along the facades of residences and businesses, and depicts the history of Cocaia from its undeveloped natural state, to the arrivals of immigrants from the northeast of Brazil, to the growth and evolution of the community and its residents. Opposite the main mural are written the oral testimonies they recorded from the local residents, many of whom were founders of the community.

Paula and Jonato told me about the community’s reaction to the project. Many residents who didn’t live on the mural route decided to paint their own homes or try their hands at graffiti. Teenagers who helped the artists on the project have been given their own walls to design elsewhere in the neighborhood. The residents have gotten used to outsiders, including foreigners like myself, visiting their neighborhood. The mural has become a source of local pride and identity.

The artists of Morro da Macumba will soon be headed to Santa Fe, New Mexico, where they will be in residence at the Santa Fe Art Institute. They hope to realize a related project within the immigrant community there.

Fofinho

2009-06-07T10:06:00.000-07:00

Forget Bossa Nova, Tropicália, Samba, and Afoxé, my first two musical experiences here have defied my stereotypes about Brazilian culture. Last Sunday I witnessed Brazilian hip hop at Casa das Caldeiras, last night I experienced old school Brazilian rock n' roll at Fofinho.

My Brazilian friend G. invited me to join her and her boyfriend at Fofinho Rock Club, headquarters of the Sao Paulo rock scene of the 1970s and 1980s, to hear Made in Brazil, one of Brazil’s first rock bands.

The concert was scheduled to start at 10 pm, but at 10:30, when we arrived, people had just started to form a line outside the door. We found most of the fans at the bar next door, singing along to the Led Zeplin playing on the juke box. The median age: 45. The look: lots of leather and lots of hair. Nostalgia ran thick. Made in Brazil was releasing their first album since 2001, “Rock de Verdade” (True Rock), and people were excited.

Sadly, I didn’t get to rock out to Made in Brazil. We only made it through three of the four opening acts by 1:30 am. But I got a good introduction to Brazilian rock classics and enjoyed a few lively renditions of American and British rock anthems (“I like smoke and lighting, heavy metal tunder!”). Hair flew, air guitars wailed, and good times were had by all, even if I did catch a few yawns from the old rockers, struggling to keep up with memories of their younger selves.

Feira livre

2009-06-06T06:22:00.000-07:00

My first week's adventures involved a trip to the neighborhood open air market or feira livre. Every Thursday, until about 2 in the afternoon, vendors of just about everything you could imagine eating line three blocks here in Jardims.

My first stop at the market was at the pastel stand. Pastels are rectangular pockets of fried dough filled with an item of your choosing. I chose meet per the young salesgirl's recommendation and did not regret it. Each stand was surrounded by business people on their lunch breaks munching these savory tarts. My host here told me they were the descendants of Sao Paulo's first Asian immigrants and I the dough did bear a resemblance to an egg roll wrapper.

Without any grocery list, I took my piping hot pastel and strolled down the market aisles. Right and left the vendors called out, "buy these limes," "over here little pretty one," "mangos!," "do I have a deal for you little white girl!" I stopped at a fruit stand and was immediately surrounded by two scheming vendors, quick to realize my foreignness. I told them I wanted to try some fruit. Right and left they cut me pieces of the strangest and most delicious sorts of tropical fruit--fuschia-hued pitaya, tart, seedy maracuja, which I ate with a spoon fashioned from a piece of the fruit's own peel, red-organge caqui, and the most bizarre specimen of fruit, dark maroon shell on the outside with white, garlic-clove shaped flesh on the inside.

This last fruit, whose name I immediately forgot, was pushed on me by the box-full by my attentive salesmen (it was the most expensive, of course). The men had a nice a good cop/bad cop routine going where the gruffer of the pair pushed fruit on me and the younger, cuter one assured me seductively that he'd give me a real deal. I had to stretch my Portuguese to its limits to walk away from with just the two bags of fruit I could afford and not the entire stand!

The fruits were by far the highlight of my visit. I also bought literally an armful of broccoli rabe for about a dollar, two bundles of fresh herbs, a bag of fragrant limes, and some plain old tomatoes. Unfortunately, I had neglected to bring along a wheeled, metal basket to transport my goods back home--another clear indicator of my tourist status. Next time, I'll be ready.

(image shows pitaya, also known as dragon fruit)

Beleza!

2009-06-02T10:04:00.000-07:00

Beleza is Portuguese for beauty. It's also, as I've learned in class, an expression for all things good:

You correctly utilize an impersonal pronoun in Portuguese class--Beleza!

You cut into a perfectly ripe papaya--Beleza!

You cross the intersection without being run over by a speeding motorbike--Beleza!

You successfully order lunch at the lanchonete--Beleza!

These were today's triumphs. Beleza!

Pixacao

2009-05-31T08:00:00.000-07:00

The first thing I noticed during the cab ride into Sao Paulo from the airport yesterday was the graffiti. Not only was it everywhere I looked, adorning the facades of public housing and warehouses and corporate offices, but it was like nothing I had seen before. I'm no scholar of graffiti, but the spindly, angled lettering of consistent height and width, seemed something of another world.

Lucky for me, I spent most of the rest of the day surrounded by urban artists--hip hop and break dancers, Djs, and taggers who had come out to the art space where I'm based for a day of free music and art making--who were all too pleased to tell me about pixacao (pee-sha-sao), Sao Paulo's signature graffiti script. Pixadores are their own breed of taggers and mostly work within a large crew to tag whole building fronts. The taller the building facades, the taller the building, more prestigious the tag. The form of the script was influenced by heavy metal album coversof the 80s (though someone told me its roots extended prior to the the 60s and 70s).

I found a good video clip explaining pixacao in English on Youtube. You can see some of the fate-tempting acrobatics these pixadores go through to make their mark. It stands in stark contrast to some of the more "traditional" graffiti art I saw on walls and building sides, which is making its way into the mainstream art market. I hope to post some pictures of this as I spot it in the city.

Good-bye, Harlem

2009-05-30T12:14:00.000-07:00

New York doesn't make it easy to leave, especially in early summer. I took one last walk through my neighborhood, up to the circus of 125th St., where the crowds strolled along, pausing to look at the street vendors' wares from incense to commemorative Obama T-shirts, over to Morningside Park, filled with lazy birthday parties and family barbecues under the plush green canopy, and back to Frederick Douglass Blvd. where the high afternoon sunlight glistened off a parade of unhurried gypsy cabs. For me, this is my neighborhood at its finest. I'll miss it.

Expectations

2009-05-29T04:30:00.000-07:00

Last night as I was starting to think about packing, I received a call from a German artist friend, O., wishing me a good trip. I told him that despite my excitement for my trip, I'd had no time to really think about where I was going or what I was getting myself into.

"But this is the best way to travel," my friend, who has spent the past few years traveling traveling the world to make art, insisted. "The fewer expectations you have about a place, the less time it will take you to reconcile them with the realities you find when you arrive at your destination."

Beyond justifying my lack of preparations, this seemed like sage advise from a seasoned traveler.

But I'll still have to pack.

São Paulo bound

2009-05-28T14:08:00.000-07:00

In two days time I'll take the train from Manhattan to Newark and board a plane to São Paulo, my home for most of the summer. My intent is to experience the culture of São Paulo, to the best of my ability. To do this, I'll need to learn the language, Portuguese. With the help of a foreign language study grant from the U.S. federal government, I will spend my mornings at the Fast Forward language school. (I'm not sure I like the idea of fast forwarding through any part of my stay in Brazil, even the learning of verb tenses.)

I hope to keep this blog as a repository and reflecting pool for my experiences with culture and a way to keep in touch with all of you.

Ate breve (see you soon)!

(The photo is from Tony de Marco and accompanied an article on São Paulo's move to ban all advertising in the cityscape. Read more from Business Week)