The Sama Gazette

Art in France: Photographer Claude Iverné

Sama Team — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 16:32:08 +0000

Back in November last year, we posted an article dedicated to Sudanese photographer Rashid Mahdi, one of Africa’s most celebrated portrait photographers. We also mentioned the exhibition that took place in Paris: “Photographies soudanaises” (Sudanese photographs) at the gallery Clémentine de la Féronnière, brought by the Elnour collective founded by Claude Iverné in 2003.

Today we want to introduce you (if you don’t know him already) to this great French photographer, Claude Iverné. He is known for his beautiful photos of Sudan and Darfur as well as for his knowledge of Sudan’s history. His photographs show what is the life of the tribes, the situation of the country and there is no need to explain, each photo is self-explanatory; they are real document more than simple ‘images’.

We had the chance to see some of those photographs at the show last November in Paris, but if you missed it and if you live in Brussels, then reserve your day: Claude Iverné will be at the Recyclart Art Center next Wednesday (February at 8:30pm (free admission). Photographs, videos will be shown, and a discussion is also scheduled:

Recyclart
Gare Bruxelles-Chapelle
25, Rue des Ursulines
1000 Brussel /Belgium
T +32 2 502 57 34

More information on Recyclart website.

Illustration : Prière de Dohr / Wadi Misteri’ha / West Darfur / February 2000.
Click on thumbnail to show larger image.

Friday Digest: Korea, Fukushima, Afghanistan

Sama Team — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 16:48:32 +0000

This is our new Friday Digest! Every Friday, this weekly news round-up gives us the occasion to share with you news from various topics: politics to arts, entertainment, media, science, sports, fun and less fun news…

This digest is a list of news published this week on the Internet (Friday to Friday), selected by the Sama Team, and it is by no means exhaustive. If you want to suggest a news to be added in the next Friday Digest, contact us.

Turkey’s Erdogan attacks France on genocide law
Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan attacked the French parliament on Tuesday for passing a “discriminatory and racist” bill which makes it illegal to deny that the mass killing of Armenians by Ottoman Turks nearly a century ago was genocide. However, Erdogan said there was still hope that NATO ally France “would correct its mistake” and that any retaliatory measures would be held back…

U.S., South Korea plan first joint drills since Kim Jong Il’s death
Ready to test the diplomacy waters of North Korea’s new regime, the militaries of the U.S. and South Korea will hold their annual joint exercise next month, a drill that Pyongyang has previously called a provocative act, the South Korean press reported Wednesday. The Key Resolve exercise will begin Feb. 27 and last two weeks, according to Seoul’s JoonAng Ilbo newspaper, quoting unnamed South Korean…

Fukushima’s animals abandoned and left to die
When you stand in the center of Japan’s exclusion zone, there is absolute silence. The exclusion zone is the 20-kilometer (12-mile) radius around the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant, an area of high radiation contamination. On March 12, the day after the quake and tsunami hit, 78,000 people were evacuated out of this area, believing they would return within a few days. As such, thousands of people left with…

France to Speed Troops’ Withdrawal from Afghanistan
President Nicolas Sarkozy of France announced Friday a significant acceleration of France’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, saying combat troops would leave a year early, by the end of 2013. He increased this year’s withdrawal of troops from 600 to 1,000, and said that French troops would hand over security responsibility in one of its main areas of responsibility in Afghanistan, Kapisa Province, northeast of Kabul…

Kiir-Bashir Meeting Produces No Deal, Parties Commit to More Talks
No deal on the current oil crisis between Sudan and South Sudan emerged from the highly anticipated meeting today between Presidents Salva Kiir and Omar al-Bashir. Following the meeting, it was announced that the two parties would continue negotiations. Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, and former presidents Thabo Mbeki of South Africa and Pierre Buyoya of Burundi…

Jon Burgerman’s ‘Fast food’ show in Paris

Sama Team — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 13:02:31 +0000

‘Fast food’ is Jon Burgerman‘s new exhibition at Sergeant Paper artstore in Paris. The show runs from January 28th until February 25th and we will be at the opening on Saturday for the signing session (3pm).

Jon Burgerman is one of our favorite artists and we are very excited to see his new art works . He is going to release some awesome new screen prints at the show, we can’t wait to be there and maybe meet with him!

Note that the great Felt Mistress (read our post about her), who have worked with Jon Burgerman a lot in the past, has done a piece for his show. You can watch a video clip showing the making of the piece on this page.

If you are in Paris, go check out the show and come to the exhibition opening on Saturday. The event will start at 6pm at Sergeant Paper – Galerie Issue, 38, rue Quincampoix, 75004 Paris. See you there!

10 Academy Award nominations for The Artist

Sama Team — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 17:11:13 +0000

French movie The Artist is the leading contender (with ‘Hugo’) in this year’s Oscar nominations and we are very proud it is.

Back in November we mentioned in Hollywood’s Golden Age is back with The Artist that the film had become the frontrunner to win Best Picture at the 2012 Oscars, and there is a really good chance it will win!

But let’s not put the cart before the horse here, other Oscar competition for best picture includes:

“The Descendants,” Jim Burke, Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor, producers
“Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close,” Scott Rudin, producer
“The Help,” Brunson Green, Chris Columbus and Michael Barnathan, producers
“Hugo,” Graham King and Martin Scorsese, producers
“Midnight in Paris,” Letty Aronson and Stephen Tenenbaum, producers
“Moneyball,” Michael De Luca, Rachael Horovitz and Brad Pitt, producers
“The Tree of Life,” Nominees to be determined
“War Horse,” Steven Spielberg and Kathleen Kennedy, producers

Needless to say The Artist will be competing hard with all these great movies…

Bonne chance les amis !

First CMH Global Arts After School program

Sama Team — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 15:35:50 +0000

We first mentioned Children Mending Hearts 3 years ago in our post: RAISE Hope for Congo: Activism you can wear. Then a year after, we posted about the Gala Fundraiser organized by CMH on April 16, 2010 in Hollywood.

Now we have some fresh news: the organization just launched the Global Arts After School pilot program at the Boys and Girls Club in Watts/Willowbrook, Los Angeles.

About the brand new after school program:

CMH After School is a program for middle and high school students designed to foster empathy and cultural understanding through a unique curriculum that integrates hands-on arts learning with social skills training and cultural awareness. Studies show that creativity and empathy are key attributes of successful learners and leaders. It is our goal with this program to work towards developing these characteristics as well as cultural understanding in each and every student we have the opportunity to serve.

CMH After School will offer four concurrent nine-week sessions in fine arts, photography, theatre arts and comic book creation. Students will have the opportunity to choose which artistic modality they would like to study. Each class and class project will incorporate an artistic exchange or “pay it forward” component where the students are required to use their newly acquired skills to improve their community or that of their brothers and sisters in other countries experiencing conflict or the aftermath of a natural disaster.

The CMH 2012 program will be photography and will place a special emphasis on creative outreach to Haitian youth. Just like Max Dana does with her kids workshops and coloring classes, we think an organization aimed to ‘empowering disadvantaged youth through educational and arts programs that build empathy and global citizenry‘ is worth our support. And yours as well, you can donate here!

Update: you can vote for Children Mending Hearts at Rush49 – Best of LA Charity on this page.

Art in Ivory Coast: Abdoulaye Diarrassouba

Sama Team — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 13:05:22 +0000

Abdoulaye Diarrassouba, who goes by the name Aboudia, was born in 1983 in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, where the artist still lives and works. If you take a quick look at the pictures, you will immediately notice that Aboudia’s work is influenced by the late Jean-Michel Basquiat.

But another country, another time. His recent grafitti-style paintings are depicting the conflict which broke out in March and April 2011 in Abidjan, in response to the contested 2010 election. His work was showed last year, at the Jack Bell Gallery in London.

Aboudia is one of the many painters of the new African generation of artists emerging for the last decade. We really like what he does and we hope he will be able to keep painting in a peaceful country.

Picture below: Aboudia Abdoulaye Diarrassouba, Untitled (The God) 2011.
Illustration: Aboudia Abdoulaye Diarrassouba, photo by REUTERS.

Friday Digest: Iraq, Martin Luther King, Jr

Sama Team — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 14:34:52 +0000

Bomb kills at least 53 pilgrims in south Iraq
A bomb killed at least 53 Shiite pilgrims near the southern port city of Basra on Saturday, an Iraqi official said. It was the latest in a series of attacks during Shiite religious commemorations that have killed scores of people and threaten to further increase sectarian tensions just weeks after the U.S. withdrawal. The attack happened on the last of the 40 days of Arbaeen, when hundreds of thousands…

Cruise Ship Runs Aground Off Italy
The first course had just been served in the Costa Concordia’s dining room when the wine glasses, forks and plates of cuttlefish and mushrooms smashed to the ground. At the magic show in the theater, the trash cans tipped over and the theater curtains turned on their side. Then the hallways turned upside down, and passengers crawled on bruised knees through the dark. Others jumped alone into the cold Mediterranean…

For King, the right to vote was sacred
Every third Monday in January we gather as Americans to commemorate the values and beliefs — as well as the ultimate sacrifice — of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. His tireless advocacy for civil rights, equal protection under the law, labor rights, and for the ultimate realization of our essential creed that we are “one nation, endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty…

Wikipedia, other websites go dark in anti-piracy bill protest
Wikipedia was one of several websites that shut down at midnight in protest of anti-piracy bills that critics say could amount to censorship. Instead of the usual encyclopedia articles, visitors to Wikipedia were greeted by a message about the decision to black out its English-language Web page for an entire day. “Imagine a World Without Free Knowledge,” a stark message in white letters on a black and gray…

MDC activists tortured in prison
The State has been ordered to investigate the inhumane and degrading conditions that the eight MDC activists who are in remand prison facing false charges murdering a police officer are living under at the Harare Remand and Chikurubi Maximum prisons. The order was made today at the Harare Magistrates’ Courts where the activists were appearing for their routine remand together with 20 other activists…

Friday Digest: Iran, Libya, Gilles Jacquier

Sama Team — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 17:46:30 +0000

Iran’s president looks to Latin America as global sanctions grow
Beef from Brazil is on Iranian dinner tables. An Iranian-built hospital treats patients near Bolivia’s capital. Iranian-funded factories dot the Venezuelan countryside. Iran has forged hundreds of agreements with Latin American nations and pledged billions of dollars to fund them. More deals could be in store this week as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad embarks on a trip that starts in Venezuela on…

Libya’s nasty new friend
Memo to the new leaders of Libya: If you’re trying to establish a democratic, internationally recognized state founded on the rule of law, it’s a very bad idea to seek governance advice from the modern successor to Idi Amin. In one of the more incongruous diplomatic visits in recent memory, Libyan officials over the weekend rolled out the red carpet for none other than Sudanese President Omar Hassan…

Syria opposition denies killing French journalist
Syrian security forces fired the shells that killed French journalist Gilles Jacquier on Wednesday, a Syrian opposition group said, rejecting claims that the France 2 TV journalist was killed by “armed terrorist” fire. Jacquier, the first Western journalist to die in the 10-month-old uprising in Syria, was killed when a mortar shell struck the pro-government rally he was attending as part of a…

European Union Gives Hungary an Ultimatum
Faced with what critics say is an alarming drift away from democracy by one of its members, the European Union gave the Hungarian government a final warning Wednesday that it would face the start of formal legal action by next Tuesday unless it modified a series of measures that threaten the balance of power in the country. The unprecedented warning by the European Commission, the E.U.’s executive arm…

Friday Digest: Israel, Mars, South Sudan

Sama Team — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 13:05:46 +0000

Myanmar cuts sentences for many prisoners
Myanmar’s government announced Monday that it is reducing the sentences of many prisoners in a clemency that fell short of the general amnesty many people were expecting. State television and radio said President Thein Sein signed a clemency order to mark the country’s 64th anniversary of independence. They said death sentences will be commuted to life imprisonment and some prisoners serving more…

Israeli Protest’s Invocation of Holocaust Is Condemned
With public fury over some ultra-Orthodox groups mounting, Israeli leaders on Sunday denounced ultra-Orthodox protesters who took to the streets of Jerusalem on Saturday night and put young boys on display wearing yellow stars and striped prison camp uniforms reminiscent of the Holocaust. Organizers of the demonstration said they had been protesting what they called growing incitement against their community…

Presidential Proclamation, National Slavery, Human Trafficking Prevention Month
The United States was founded on the principle that all people are born with an unalienable right to freedom — an ideal that has driven the engine of American progress throughout our history. As a Nation, we have known moments of great darkness and greater light; and dim years of chattel slavery illuminated and brought to an end by President Lincoln’s actions and a painful Civil War…

Phobos-Ground, Russia’s Mars Probe, Falling To Earth In January
Fragments of a failed Russian space probe are now expected to fall to Earth on Jan. 15, officials said Wednesday. The unmanned Phobos-Ground probe was launched Nov. 9 on what was supposed to have been a 2 1/2-year mission to the Mars moon of Phobus to take soil samples and fly them back to Earth, but it became stuck in Earth’s orbit and attempts to send commands that could propel it toward the Mars moon…

Myanmar approves Suu Kyi’s party for election
Opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi said Myanmar’s government on Thursday approved her National League for Democracy to run in upcoming by-elections. Suu Kyi declined to say yet if she herself will stand in the election when pressed on the issue, but party spokesman Nyan Win said Suu Kyi intends to run. The highly anticipated by-election set for April 1 will return Suu Kyi’s party to mainstream politics…

Accounts Emerge in South Sudan of 3,000 Deaths in Ethnic Violence
More than 3,000 villagers were massacred in the recent burst of communal violence in South Sudan, local officials said Thursday, with the fledging South Sudanese government, which just won its independence six months ago, seemingly unable to stem the bloodshed. If the death toll is confirmed — United Nations officials and South Sudanese Army officers have yet to do that, saying they were still collecting…

Haiti faces mix of problems 2 years after quake
Almost two years after a massive earthquake rocked Haiti, about half of the rubble has been cleared, aid groups are giving 1.1 million children daily midday meals and the number of Haitians in camps for displaced people is a third of what it was after the quake. But cholera is endemic, nearly half the population can’t count on eating regularly and the country still relies on non-governmental organizations (NGOs)…

French reporters say expelled from Sudan
A French freelance reporter who wrote that eastern Sudan is “a volcano waiting to erupt” says he was ordered expelled by the Khartoum government but that his departure was blocked because he had no exit visa. Mathieu Galtier, 29, said his colleague Maryline Dumas, 25, also a freelance correspondent, must also leave Sudan. “The official reason is because our visa is finishing,” Galtier told AFP…

Friday Digest: Nigeria, Iran, Syria, China

Sama Team — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 16:27:05 +0000

Thousands take to Moscow streets, calling for fair elections
Thousands of people took to the streets Saturday in Moscow, braving bitterly cold weather to demand for fair elections after what they claim were rigged results earlier this month that returned Vladimir Putin’s party to power. The protest, organized primarily through social media and word of mouth, comes on the heels of an announcement by President Dmitry Medvedev of sweeping political reforms…

Two new Earths and the search for life
Americans were enthralled by fake reports of an alien invasion in the Orson Welles “War of the Worlds” radio broadcast on Halloween Eve in 1938. Hundreds of science fiction movies from the 1902 silent epic “A Trip to the Moon” (featured in the current film “Hugo”) to “Star Wars” to this year’s “Cowboys and Aliens” have fed a deep curiosity about intelligent beings elsewhere in the universe. Hang on to your hats…

Shell: Nigeria Oil Spill Contained
The worst Nigeria offshore oil spill in more than a decade has been contained before reaching the West African nation’s coast, officials with Royal Dutch Shell PLC said Monday, less than a week after one of its lines bled crude into the Atlantic Ocean. An investigation into how the spill of less than 40,000 barrels — or 1.68 million gallons — happened remains ongoing, though company officials acknowledged…

Iranian woman sentenced to be stoned to death may be hanged instead
A court sentenced Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani to be stoned in 2006 but the sentence was suspended last year after an international outcry. However, under a judicial review being carried out she still could be hanged. “There is no rush … our Islamic experts are reviewing Ashtiani’s sentence to see whether we can carry out the execution of a person sentenced to stoning by hanging,” said Malek Ajdar Sharifi…

China jails dissident Chen Xi for 10 years
A Chinese court has handed down a 10-year jail sentence to Chen Xi, the second dissident in four days to be convicted of inciting subversion through online essays. Another democracy campaigner, Chen Wei, was sentenced to nine years on 23 December. The two men are not related. It is one of the heaviest sentences for inciting subversion since the Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo was jailed for 11 years on Christmas…

Syria pulls tanks from streets of restive city
After days of punishing assaults, Syria’s army began withdrawing tanks from the restive city of Homs on Tuesday just as a team of Arab League observers was on its way to the central city, according to activists and an Arab official. Opposition activist Mohammed Saleh said the heavy bombardment of Homs stopped Tuesday morning and tanks were seen pulling out of the streets. Another Homs-based activist said he…

Kim Jong Un Declared ‘Supreme Leader’ Of North Korea
North Korea’s power brokers declared Kim Jong Un the supreme leader at a massive public memorial for his father Kim Jong Il, cementing the Kim family’s hold on power for another generation. The son, dubbed North Korea’s Great Successor, stood with his head bowed and somber in a dark overcoat on a balcony at the Grand People’s Study House overlooking Kim Il Sung Square and watched the memorial…

Deaths in Somalia underscore risks MSF endures
A second foreigner working with Doctors Without Borders died of his wounds in an attack in Somalia that also killed the group’s country director, though the aid organization declared Friday that despite the risks it would still provide medical care in one of the world’s most dangerous countries. The deaths in Mogadishu of Philippe Havet, 53, from Belgium; and Andrias Karel Keiluhu, 44, from Indonesia…