"We are the imagined possibility of those who surmised freedom. The evidence of their journey is right here dotted across my freckled face, like a constellation. We are mineralized monuments, shaped from salted tears and crushed bones, whose shadow extends beyond the limits that history has stationed. We are the monuments that won't fall."
LA VAUGHN BELLE:
"The departure?
What is our pre-colonial history
and
which part of that history has survived colonization?
Which part is de-colonial?"
. . . READ THE REST OF DIS BODY: POETICS OF SELF-AESTHETICS
BY SALL LAM TORO IN THE ECHO ZINE
"Statue of Leopold II, Belgian King Who Brutalized Congo, Is Removed in Antwerp." Video rights: ATV/via Reuters / New York Times
Black Lives Matter Protest, Bristol, UK. Taken from June 6th to June 7th. Photo: Flickr / Keir Gravil under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
Empty pedestal of Edward Colston statue in Bristol, June 7th. Photo: Caitlin Hobbs under Creative Commons.
"Political and media elites focus on the moral attitude of people and not on the stratified social and political order. They too easily portray those looking at the root causes as irrational extremists. This is demonstrated by their opting to use of the word “vandalism” to describe the insurgent removal of the statute of Edward Colston in Bristol – the first of a series of heritage interventions that has been unfolding in recent days."
Cristiano Gianolla & Pedro Almeida: Heritage “vandalism” and the echoes of silenced memories
"Since the murder of George Floyd on Monday 25 May 2020 by a police officer, the whole world has been reacting to the immeasurable drama which added another death to the list of hundreds, thousands, millions of people killed by violence in the United States from the Genocide of Native Americans and the arrival of the first Africans transported by slavers. Supporting the Black Lives Matter movement, activists and artists who have spoken since then have incessantly repeated that these four hundred years of history have branded the whole social, economic and political African-American reality."
8 MINUTES 46 SECONDS, #JusticeForGeorgeFloyd – the Response of American Artists [IN FRENCH]
"Decolonial Equation" Biennale di Venezia 2019 " Personal Structures ", European Cultural Centre, Palazzo Mora, 1er Pavillon "Iles de Guadeloupe"
"We are the imagined possibility of those who surmised freedom. The evidence of their journey is right here dotted across my freckled face, like a constellation. We are mineralized monuments, shaped from salted tears and crushed bones, whose shadow extends beyond the limits that history has stationed. We are the monuments that won't fall."
LA VAUGHN BELLE:
"Statue of Leopold II, Belgian King Who Brutalized Congo, Is Removed in Antwerp." Video rights: ATV/via Reuters / New York Times
Black Lives Matter Protest, Bristol, UK. Taken from June 6th to June 7th. Photo: Flickr / Keir Gravil under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
Empty pedestal of Edward Colston statue in Bristol, June 7th. Photo: Caitlin Hobbs under Creative Commons.
"Political and media elites focus on the moral attitude of people and not on the stratified social and political order. They too easily portray those looking at the root causes as irrational extremists. This is demonstrated by their opting to use of the word “vandalism” to describe the insurgent removal of the statute of Edward Colston in Bristol – the first of a series of heritage interventions that has been unfolding in recent days."
Cristiano Gianolla & Pedro Almeida: Heritage “vandalism” and the echoes of silenced memories