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acts
> Martin Baer
& Is-Haka Mkwawa - Walid Ra’ad,
The Atlas Group <
documentary maker
19 years old, Martin Baer got fed up with his German life and left for the Central African Republic. Soon he got a nice job, big money and several people working for him. 'It was so unfair, I got the job just cause I was white, whilst people like my cook were much better qualified to do it.'
Perhaps it was this feeling of unfairness that made Martin make a film called 'Free Africa' many years later. In 'Free Africa' Baer takes a look into what Germans imagine Africa to be. To do so he looks at how it is represented in the German media, hence reading many books dealing with the continent.
One of the curiosities the director came along was the mysterious skull of the great chief Mkwawa that the Germans took back home after his defeat in 1898. After all, this was the skull of the man who had been fighting and defeating the German troups in Tanzania for so long. At the time the European anthropologists used to have competitions to see who had the best 'samples'. 'This is headhunting the other way round', Baer realized.
When researching the history of Mkwawa, the skull grew more curious. It appeared in a Dutch comicbook and turned out to be enclosed in the Versailles treaty. Baer wanted to use the skulls story, but refused to be one of the 'Germans going to Africa' he met when making 'Free Africa'. Instead he wanted to make a project with Tanzanians and for Tanzanians.
... & Is-Haka Mkwawa
On the internet Baer met the great-grandson of Mkwawa, Is-Haka Mkwawa, a Tanzanian student in Japan. They decided to start a project for which Baer would make a video and Mkwawa would make a website. The result was the film 'Headhunting' and the website 'www.mkwawa.com' reflecting the experiences of a German and a Tanzanian digging into their common history.
'Headhunting' was the only film dubbed into Kiswahili at the latest Zanzibar International Filmfestival (Stonetown 2002). Many non-Kiswahili speakers left, but Baer was happy - unlike most Western films on Africa, his film was seen and understood by a Tanzanian audience.
An interview with the director at the 5th Zanzibar International Filmfestival in July 2002, can be requested via klaartjejaspers@gmail.com. The interview can be edited in Dutch or English.
'Now I've given
you some basic facts of the history and society of Lebanon...' a
serious professor concludes his traditional-styled lecture on the
backgrounds of the civil wars in his country of origin. We've
heard the facts, seen the maps and understood the diagrams. We
nod, agreeing.
Our lecturer takes a breath. '.... What's lacking is the
imagination. This is where The Atlas Group steps in.'
Walid Ra'ad was born in 1967 in Chbanieh, Lebanon, but went to live United States when his time came to go and serve the Lebanese army. Instead, he obtained a PhD in Visual and Cultural Studies from the University of Rochester, and became a lecturer of Media and Cultural Studies at the City University of New York. In 1999 he founded of The Atlas Group, 'an imaginary foundation to research and document the contemporary history of Lebanon'.
The Atlas Group is meant to add what most tradional lectures lack: participation, experience. Though it can't, nor wants to, physically take its audience back to the Lebanon of those times, it uses fantasy and emphatic ability as a vehicle for non-theoretical understanding. It creates human interfaces - faces and stories the audience can recognise, faces and stories that could have been the faces and stories of Lebanon at war. Details of human observation. Pictures of young boys on a school trip, big crowds going through towncenter, the dairy of a gambling doctor studying horses and his fellow upperclassmates, parts an engine blown up, the colour of its former car, a watchman's secret love for sunsets on terrorist boulevard.
Unlike so many off his partners in arts, Ra'ad insists his works should be accompanied with an explanation of what they are about. If possible, by the artist himself. A means to interact. Indeed: a lecture. Ra'ad in a collegeroom, a laptop and a beamer. The lecture starts, Ra'ad behind a desk - a glass of water in front of him. Inviting his pupils to react. This is not a pose, this is a sincere effort of a teacher to enlight his audience.
Ra'ad is not criticising the educational ways, he is giving art a new forum. He takes it by its function.
In June 2002 the archive could be seen at Documenta (www.documenta.de) in Kassel.
In 2001 & 2003 the World Wide Video Festival (www.wwvf.nl) displayed some of his works in Amsterdam.
A review off Ra'ad's work can be requested via klaartjejaspers@gmail.com. It can be edited in Dutch or English.