Arts forum to be exciting element of UNWTO

By Andrew Mulenga

Organisers of Zambia’s very own international festival, the Shungu Namutitima International Film Festival (SHUNAFFoZ) have reported that 2013 may turn out to be the biggest year for the event so far as it is officially endorsed as one of the UNWTO General Conference sideline entertainment events.

An annual event now in its 8th year, SHUNAFFoZ  a not-for-profit project of Vilole Images Productions (VIP) will run between Friday, 23rd to Saturday, 31st August, with a vision focused on: “promoting the use of film as a tool to highlight issues on women, youth, girls and women-with-disabilities, capacity building, development and trade in film/television products in Zambia and around Africa, and the promoting of Livingstone as a preferred location for filming and as a tourism destination of choice,” states a press release made available by festival coordinator Mumbi Mwape, a Kabwe-based  Independent Documentary Film Maker and cultural activist.



Shungu Namutitima International Film Festival

Executive Director Musola Kaseketi

According to the release, currently, film submissions have been received from regional and international filmmakers and SHUNAFFoZ is part and parcel of an even broader national initiative to market and expose Zambian filmmakers and their products.

“It is also a base for non-credentialed training of producers, directors, cinematographers, distributors, promoters and other creative and cultural industry stakeholders. This, it is hoped, will enhance the development of the film making industry in Zambia in the medium to long term, evolving into a source of employment for the many talented aspirant and upcoming filmmakers working as a cog in a machine in empowering a people and creating a self-sustaining creative and cultural industry with excellent opportunities for further backward and forward, as well as horizontal and vertical investments for an integrated synergetic national economy.”

 Zambia being a country whose film industry is still in its infancy with no formal film training school save for short courses in video production at institutions such as ZAMCOM, the organisers, headed by award winning film maker Musola Kaseketi the Festival Executive Director and CEO at Vilole Images Productions have continued, to use the film festival as a platform for “networking and the assertive sharing and acquiring of critical professional film industry skills for the discerning cineaste.”

 This year, as part of its training and discussions programme, SHUNAFFoZ have included what may turn out to be quite an interesting “Arts Discussion Forum” that will critically examine the current worldwide phenomenon of reality television.

 Themed “Are Reality Talent Shows a bonus or a minus for the budding creative and cultural industry in Zambia and Africa as a whole?” the forum is expected to be an intensive yet interactive informal arts education and cultural management practice experience-sharing with the festival audience and the local, regional and international arts and cultural fraternity at large. Through their website and other media, the organisers have invited participation by all interested academic, creative, cultural, tourism and business.

 “Lately, Zambia’s public television channel ZNBC, like most cable programming, has been deluged with locally produced “Talent Search/Shows” in the increasingly popular “Reality Shows” genre, with today’s and tomorrow’s wannabe big-stars across the predominantly performance art discipline vying for that ultimate stardom tag, Hollywood-style, with all the usual trappings: winner-takes-all windfall cash award, studio and/or recording contract, the all alluring promise of almost guaranteed commercial success up for the grabs as staked by the often well-resourced sponsoring corporate and service businesses, a permanent dangle,” state the organizers concerning the forthcoming arts forum.

 They further declare that most of these participants have had little formal arts education and arts production, or arts management training and it is against such a background of next-to-none creative arts and culture management or arts development education in Zambia and around most of Africa - private or public that the discussion forum invites papers or presentations that will bridge the divide or will seek to compare and contrast the business and often product-marketing and so profit-inspired ethos in creative arts production and cultural practices rather than a nurturing contemporary arts education development systems.

 “Discussion papers or presentations may reflect on, but not be limited to, the fundamental nature and motivations of artistic creative productions or activities of indigenous cultural groups, as to how some of their time-honoured traditional methods have helped sustain some of now UNESCO-recognised cultural communities and their practices like the Makishi Masquerade/Likumbi lya Mize and Nyau Mask/Gule wam’Kulu in Zambia,”

 “Or a range of other creativity in the fields of film, other new media, literary arts, fashion and design, performance or visual arts. Can contention be raised that cultural communities are more transparent with better deliverables and resulting in measureable more objective outcomes in the molding of individual performing and creative artists?”

 The forum question also probes whether an argument is to be made that contemporary corporate tailored and television-based programmes in Zambia, past and present, loosely modeled around the brand events like “Idols”, “[America’s] Got Talent”, “EuroVision Song Contest” and the ever so popular  “Big Brother Africa”, etc., at the regional and continental levels is just such the antidote needed by Africa’s fledgling creative and cultural industries to bringing about new audiences, increased re-investment, and infrastructural improvements – in arts education and the economic potential of the creative and cultural tourism sector, in Zambia as elsewhere?

 SHUNAFFoZ interrogates risks posed by apparent imitation and mimicry of western talent shows only to produce arts and culture industry parodies at best.

 It suggests those gravely concerned are worried saying, there is a systematic and unconscious perhaps even over-commercialization of authentic artistic, cultural and heritage production, or are these perceptions just being imagined by a section of contemporary society lacking inventiveness?

 “What suggestions of some of the proven traditional methods, if any, of nurturing and mentoring, can make for adoption and incorporation, to sustain and engender originality in contemporary artistic and cultural creative practices with benefits for the local industry and making a meaningful impactful global presence even?”

The SHUNAFFoZ Arts Discussion Forum is to take place at the Livingstone Museum on Monday, 26 August 2013 and should provide for some interesting discourse depending on the participants as well as the quality of papers, presentations and arguments raised in response to the call.

It is exciting however that the organizers have broadened the forum beyond the phenomenon of reality television but have also allowed room for the discussion of the perceived “over-commercialization of authentic artistic, cultural and heritage” events and activities” of which much can be said.

Anyone who has attended a cultural ceremony in Zambia over the past few years can attest to the fact that, ceremony participants, fairgrounds and in certain instances chiefs and headmen can be seen clad in the brightest corporate merchandising paraphernalia such as t-shirts and caps. Traditional ceremonies, as we call them have become battlegrounds for ferocious corporate crusades particularly between the mobile telecommunication companies and banking houses some of whom are rumored to pay as little as K1,000 to have their large colours splashed around to be documented and therefore immortalized in photographs for eternity.

Nevertheless, as much as the arts forum will be an exciting component of SHUNAFFoZ during the UNWTO, there are  quite a number of things lined up for the film festival. Other activities are a “Grand Opening Night under a warm African summer sky”, public and outreach film screenings, non-credentialed filmmaking skills workshops, a special Kids Day for children,  and an Awards and Humanitarian Recognition closing night, each at Livingstone’s creative and tourist partner-venues.

Art and prize winning tins of faeces

By Andrew Mulenga

It might be a few years old, and may be concerned with art from a primarily western perspective, but English philosopher and author of over 30 books, Roger Scruton’s BBC documentary, “Why Beauty Matters,” an enquiry into contemporary art and its perceived fall from grace is a compelling self-examination  for artists, art lovers and humanity in general to meditate  on.

Artist's shit (1961) by Piero Manzoni

“At any time between 1750 and 1930 if you asked educated people to describe the aim of poetry, art or music, they would have replied ‘beauty’”, he says, declaring that beauty is a value like truth and goodness, and that it has stopped being important in the 20^th century.

“Art (in the 20^th century) increasingly aimed to disturb and break moral taboos. I think we are losing beauty and my fear is that with it we shall lose the meaning of life” he narrates as images of old European master pieces such as Sandro Botticelli’s 1482 painting The Birth of Venus, slowly switch to a series of images that include Italian artist Piero Manzoni’s 1961 artwork, Artist's Shit which consists of 90 small tin cans, filled with feces, each with a label stating:  “Artist's Shit, Contents 30 gr net, Freshly preserved, Produced and tinned,  in May 1961”. Ironically, a single tin from this artwork, if you can describe it as such, was sold for 124,000 Euros at Sotheby's in 2007.

Obviously it is works such as Artist's Shit that may have even prompted Scrutiny to record the documentary in the first place, because surely there can be no beauty in a tin of excrement.

“I want to persuade you that beauty matters. It’s not a subjective thing but a universal need of human beings. The great artists of the past were aware that human life was full of chaos and suffering but they had a remedy for this, and the name of that remedy was beauty,” he continues a few comments and moments later, probably bringing out the main thrust of his concern.

“A beautiful work of art brings consolation in sorrow and affirmation in joy; it shows human life to be worthwhile. Many modern artists are weary of this sacred task, the randomness of modern art they think, cannot be redeemed by art, instead it should be displayed”.

Displayed just as Fountain was, an outrageous 1917 work by a French artist whom Strut on blames for being the forerunner of contemptible contemporary art.

“The pattern was set about a century ago by the French artist Marcel Duchamp who signed a urinal with a fictitious signature and entered it in an exhibition designed to mock the world of art and the snobberies that go with it” he says “His gesture was satirical, but it has been interpreted in another way, that anything can be art, like a light going on and off, a can of excrement, even a pile of bricks. No longer does art have a sacred status, no longer does it raises us to a higher moral plane, and it is just one human gesture, no more than a laugh”.

Norwegian artist Jon Eirik Kopperud
with a conceptual piece that he
displayed at a gallery in Oslo in 2007

One is lured to sympathize with Scrutiny’s lamentation and concur with a good deal of what he says and brings to the fore. Of course art is not always about drawing and painting; sometimes it is about a hidden message within a picture or sculpture. But surely the work that is brought to mention in the documentary should never be treated as art in the first place. It is an enigma in itself why a tin of feces can be sold for over 100,000 euros, or how a video clip of people vomiting, like Martin Creed’s Sick Film which won the prestigious Turner Prize in 2001 should be allowed in an art gallery. How is such a thing even acceptable? This also provokes the thought of how difficult it is for African’s to show their finest works in the academically elite and financially lucrative galleries in on the European grid, but Europeans themselves are free to display their own excrement.

Anyway, this peculiar strand of expression, referred to as conceptual art, has not spared Zambia either. Although it has not really taken to the galleries that much and has been mild in comparison to the ones Scruton highlights. In recent times a few Zambian artists have dabbled in conceptual art, particularly a group of young artists who have lived and studied in Norway with the exception of Lawrence Chikwa who trained in Switzerland. Returning from Europe for a brief visit, whilst holding Links & Translations, a solo exhibition at the Swedish School in Lusaka in 2011, Chikwa told this author: “art is there to provide aesthetic beauty as well as tackle society’s matters. If you keep the public dancing to the tune of beauty, they will look at it as the only purpose of art. But art should also engage them to think”.  

In 2008, Norway-based artist Victor Mutelekesha decided to put up an exhibition upon returning for a holiday after being away for seven years. Entitled Dagali Meltdown, the idea-driven show featured video footage and photographs. But owing to its unfamiliar context, the exhibition met sharp criticism among the Zambian audience. The videos and photos depicted the snow-covered Nordic woodlands and mountaintops of Dagali, alien to the audience the work labored to find relevance.

In one video clip, Mutelekesha himself wore the mask of an ape and was scouring around the woodlands in the summer.

Viewers Discretion, (2007)
by Chanda Mwenya

“I wear the mask of an ape not necessarily to drum up the prejudice that has existed towards people from Africa, but I wear the mask of an animal that is synonymous to Africa, trying to adapt in a different forest environment” he explained in an interview during the exhibition.

One of the visitors to the exhibition, a fellow artist was recorded as saying: “Kaya ma pictures aya, niziba chabe ndiye kwamene bankala ku vyalo” (I don’t know what he is trying to say but I think he is just showing us where he lives abroad).

Weeks later and while studying at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts in Norway, Chanda Mwenya who is now a photojournalist and art columnist with the Zambia Daily Mail,  responded in support of his colleague.

“I felt obliged to respond to the reaction of the young Zambian artists and many other patrons who saw and did not seem to understand the work of Victor Mutelekesha… I would generally like to comment on the issue of the Zambian audience as regards to conceptual art. Understandably, this art form is said to be very theoretical and quite abstract in context. It is also perceived as a western ideal.”

At the time, Mwenya suggested that the paradox lies in what was generally defined or seen as art in Zambia or what the west describes as art. He also seemed baffled by the fact that conceptual art was not getting the admiration he thought it deserved. To strengthen his argument on how sober Mutelekesha’s conceptual piece was as opposed to what is shown in Europe, Mwenya introduced us to his Norwegian friend, artist Jon Eirik Kopperud whom in an exhibition in Norway displayed a white canvas, empty except for the words “This Painting Will Be Sold for a Blowjob” on it.

Another Oslo trained Zambian, Kate Naluyele, a promising young female artist who mysteriously fell off the grid following a somewhat stealthy return home a few years ago also delved into conceptual art and her piece Defeatism, basically a bucket of broken bottles, a light bulb, an empty chair and accompanying text was well received when it was shown at the Historical Museum in Oslo City Centre, 2007.

Nevertheless, apart from a little European influence here and there, maybe here in Zambia we should not worry too much that we are on the brink of losing our appreciation of beauty, fortunately here, no matter how thought provoking a work of art might be, our artists always make an effort to make it something nice to look at, something that in Scruton’s words is“…brings consolation in sorrow and affirmation in joy” something that “Shows human life to be worthwhile”. In Zambia and pretty much in many places on the African continent, a work of art is still something beautiful and not a tin of faeces.

Red Dot Gallery presents charming Belinda Ross landscapes

By Andrew Mulenga

In case you missed the opening of Under A Zambian Sky a solo exhibition by landscape artist Belinda Ross, or just have not yet found time to view the on-going show organised by Red Dot Gallery at the P’zazz restaurant, Zebra Crossings/Ababa House in Lusaka, the paintings are still on display until 26 June and are certainly worth a look.

Under A Zambian Sky, (oil on canvas)
by Belinda Ross

Even at first glance Ross’ paintings reflect the work of an artist who is truly passionate about painting as a process, someone who is obviously engrossed in it for intense long hours, and probably musically changing her paint brush sizes as rigorously as she applies her brush strokes to the canvas.

But maybe her process is best reflected in her own words as stated in her short artist’s statement for the exhibition.

“Painting, to me, represents total abandonment. Painting affords me the opportunity to illustrate my interpretation and appreciation of landscapes. Through manipulation of paint texture, colour and application I am continually exploring and discovering new techniques,” testifies the painter who grew up on a coastal farm in South Africa’s Eastern Cape just outside Port Alfred which instilled in her a “love and deep connection to the earth”.

“I set out to try and recreate on canvas the rich earthly tones that usually lie unseen on the surface of the earth and what I sense from my creative instinct.”



Aloe In The Wild, (oil on Canvas) by Belinda Ross

And indeed recreate “rich earthly tones” she does. Not only does she replicate natural earthly colours, but she brings to life what would be almost barren, yet picturesque landscapes that appear animated despite the fact that she does not place any wildlife or human figures in any of the paintings showing in Under A Zambian Sky. Probably the best of such specimens is the painting that carries the exhibition title itself Under A Zambian Sky that shows a typical rocky outcrop with parching, yellow shrubs and golden savannahs such as can be found in many parts of Zambia in October, just before the rains begin.

As a subject, she also appears to be in love with Aloe Vera, the plant famous for its rejuvenating and medicinal qualities which grows so abundantly in most parts of the country. This plant, always appearing in its wild, natural habitat is a recurring theme in her work carrying such romantic titles as Aloe In The Wild.

But it is not just the pictorial vitality of her paintings that is an entertaining element of the exhibition. Ross has quite an assortment of canvas sizes ranging from tiny 15cm by 15cm miniatures to some unusually formatted, wide-view paintings that would be almost impractical to frame and are best kept frameless owing to their slender horizontal proportions.

For a small exhibition, the show is neatly curated and the hand of Red Dot Gallery’s Serena Ansley is evident as she knows the display space which also serves as the main restaurant area ever so well, placing the paintings in clusters according to canvas size.

All the paintings in the show are done in oil on canvas, but this has not always been Ross’ medium of choice. Until 2007, she had preferred to use watercolour, painting detailed botanical illustrations; which is no surprise as she does have a Higher Diploma (1994) in Botanical Illustration.

Tranquil Water Lillies, (oil on canvas)

Nevertheless, although she is not an abstract painter and bears the characteristics of a post-impressionist which almost makes her a realistic painter who mimics real life, her artist’s statement further reveals that while it may not be visible in her work, the process of creating provides her a liberty that she would not otherwise have, an opportunity for escapism, one might presume.

“Whilst painting I experience a sense of unrestricted freedom that I as a woman am not able to demonstrate in other areas of my life. I am of the belief that exposure to art, and associated creative influences give my life a deeper meaning and a sense of humility,” declares Ross who is also a wife and proud mother of three daughters.

“What do I want to express with my work? Nothing else but that which every artist seeks: to achieve harmony through the balance of the relationships between lines, colours and places. But only in the cleanest and strongest way”.

Between 2007 and 2009 Ross has exhibited in over ten exhibitions in South Africa’s Eastern Cape. In 2011 she exhibited in at the Sugarbush Farm in Lusaka and at the American International School a year later.

When Under a Zambian Sky comes down, it makes way for Two points of View, an exhibition of wildlife and nature paintings by Katerina Ring and Lynne Taylor at the same venue opening on Thursday 27^th June at 17:30hrs.