Candice Breitz: Re-animations Candice Breitz’s installation, ‘Double Karen’ consists of two televisions facing each other in a stairway, one in front of you, the other behind as you rise. The former TV loops those moments in the Carpenters’ ‘Close to You’ in which Karen Carpenter sings “me”; the latter loops Karen singing “you” from the same song. Similarly, ‘Double Olivia’ is two TVs facing each other, in which loops of Olivia Newton–John singing “I”, “my”, “mine” and “you” from ‘Hopelessly Devoted to You’ are played. Such use of personal pronouns lends the installations a stange potency. While the viewer stands within hearing of both “I” and “you”, it is impossible to view both screens simultaneously, and yet both screens continue to call to the viewer in the middle, unsure which way to turn. The rest of Breitz’s five installations do not work as well. ‘Diorama’ is a reconstruction of a sitting room with nine screens arranged about the room, with each screen looping one of nine characters from the TV series Dallas saying a phrase, for example, “But what about love…?”. It is undoubtedly sensational; the arrangement of the sets again leaves the viewer disorientated while the volume is also disorientatingly loud, but the intimacy and the involvement of the ‘Double Karen’ and ‘Double Olivia’ installations is lacking. In an essay on Breitz’s work, Jennifer Allen compares her work to the “experiments” of Arnulf Rainer. Breitz’s work is indeed experimental as a scientific study might be experimental. Though visually striking, the impression as a whole left me questioning what exactly we can classify as art.ARCHIVE: 1st Week MT2003 

In a recently published essay, Theroux states that he eschews cameras and travel snaps. A bold claim, but his descriptive prose in Dark Star Safari is effective, creating countless pen portraits of conmen, friends, and landscapes as he makes his way from Cairo to Cape Town. Observations combine with a well researched (and personally felt) sense of history in unsentimental and provoking pictures of countries despoiled by corruption, widespread poverty, and mismanaged donations: the Malawi government that spent millions of dollars of aid on twelve new Mercedes; the impractical dogmatism of an old teaching colleague, now the president of Uganda. Theroux writes as a man who spent his early twenties in Southern Africa as a Peace Corps volunteer; it was in Southern Africa that he settled on the writer’s life. While there he saw several countries on the cusp of independence, the first step from African servitude to African prowess – exciting and hopeful times for a young man. Yet it has never quite happened, and in Dark Star Safari he sets out to discover why. Theroux’s argument against NGOs and aid agencies is both reasoned and uncomfortable reading: African countries will not improve while responsibility and motivation for growth and investment remain in Western hands. But his repetitiveness soon wears, as well does his own dogma. His “real Africa” is his own ideal; he sneers at tourists and revels in his belief in his virtue as a traveller (hence, the ultimate ‘Gappy’); his hints of platitudes (“the best of [Africans] are bare-assed”) and clunky literary references seem rather artificial, if not the products of afterthought. It’s a shame. While Dark Star Safari would benefit from some trimming to make it more cohesive, his humour, curiosity and liveliness make this a very readable book, and the background he provides fits in nicely to give a reader some grasp of the history of the continent. If you’re interested in the atmosphere of modern Africa, in all its gaudy colours, or want to relive fond memories, read this book.ARCHIVE: 1st Week MT2003 

NATALIE TOMS visits the lefty student haven of cigars, Che and communist charm The silence is getting quite embarrassing. I don’t realise at first – I’ve been distracted by the man at work on the No. 1 Bolivars, who seems to be able to roll together the four types of leaves in under half a minute – so I only hear the question when Miguel, the guide, repeats it, accusingly.“Do any of you actually smoke cigars?” His eyes travel around everyone in the group, one by one, until we eventually look down, ashamed. In the end a Canadian kid tries to help him out, “Er, yeah, I smoked one once.” He then catches the eye of his mother and starts to splutter, “In Paris. It was when I was in Paris. You know, in France.”The protruding eyeballs of the baseball-becapped woman are able to retract again and the whole group heaves a sigh of relief. That clearly explains it all. But then we are left with the silence again. Someone else tries to break the deadlock by saying that their best friend is a big fan of Romeo y Julietas and they’re going to take some home. I consider joining in, explaining that I also know some people who smoke cigars. But on second thoughts I decide that our Miguel’s life is probably strange enough, what with having to listen to the Cuban state newspaper being read out all day while avoiding earnest Canadian questions about politics, without also having to listen to an explanation of the weirder side of Oxford hackery. So, the silence seems conclusive. It is clear that no-one on this tour of the Habanos Cigar Company factory, in Havana, Cuba, actually likes cigars at all. While Miguel seems to consider this quite shocking, I’m not really sure why. I mean, surely the kind of people who go to Cuba aren’t that likely to be going home to gentleman’s clubs in the Strand. We clearly all consider ourselves to be superior left-wing adventurers, after all. Not that this stops anyone from piling into the souvenir shop at the end of the tour. It’s as if there’s been an implicit unspoken agreement – we can muse about the up-side of Castro’s policies when we return home, but here, we’re just going to search for souvenirs and top up our tans.This is the problem with travelling to Cuba. You go assuming that because the country is such a politically exotic one-off, Havana will be gloriously difficult, a place in which only the most hardcore of hardened backpackers will excel. A big step up from those oh-so-passe trips to Delhi, Cuzco and Ko Samui. It ought to be a lefty student haven – Che Guevara’s face isn’t just seen here on t-shirts for god’s sake, but on billboards and statues (though also on a great deal of t-shirts, which for some reason I find weirder). But Cuba is anything but a typical backpacker destination, perversely for the same reason that gives it the student allure: the peculiar nature of Castro’s revolution. Havana may be dirt-poor, but it isn’t dirty. There’s less litter than in London. There are no street-children, no touts and no drugs. For some strange reason, this provides more of a culture shock than the reverse would have done. The most annoying thing is a general lack of touts (well, apart from the prostitutes – the one unrestricted capitalist market in Havana). For anyone who wants to do some superior political analysis whilst on holiday, there are very few people to ask patronising questions about whether everyone really likes Castro… But the real nail in the coffin of Che obsessives is that Havana is really very expensive. The reason is simple – one of Castro’s methods of escaping the economic “special period” following the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe was to initiate a parallel dollar economy for tourists. Cuba maintains the peso as a currency for its own citizens, but all foreign visitors exchange only US dollars in the course of their trip. And everything costs only marginally less than it does in dollars. While Castro and contemporary history dominate the air in Havana, Cuba still holds on to its more ancient past. Faces on the streets bear the stamp of cultural intermixture and migration, and next to the dark spires of imposing cathedrals, wafting incense and camelias, are shrines to Ogun and Chango, gods brought to the new world by African slaves. The striking cross-fertilisation of faiths is apparent in whatever religious establishment you step into in Cuba. In certain neighborhoods of Havana and the villages skirting the city, cherubic black Marys and Christs are worshipped. While Cubans Catholics are in the majority, Voo Doo and Indian rites are never very far from their day to day lives. In the face of such cultural fusion, it might be easy to forget the violence with which it was achieved. Three main native groups inhabited Cuba when Columbus reached it in 1492 – the Ciboney, the Guanahatabey and the Taino. When slavery and the establishment of large plantations began with the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors the indigenous population was quickly decimated by disease, fighting and maltreatment. But despite its turbulent past, the result today is that the vibrancy and variety of Cuban culture is notorious and not, as I found throughout the trip, without good reason. As Castro’s hair grows whiter, there is more and more speculation about his likely successor and whether the Communism that has characterized the country for decades will develop and ultimately endure. So all in all, Cuba isn’t simply a backpacker haven or place where hairy leftys (even the hairiest may get pissed off at the lack of shops after a while) can hang out and chill. But the beaches are bloody nice.ARCHIVE: 1st Week MT2003 

Wyclef Jean talks to WILLEM MARX about the music, the money and the messages behind his new album Wyclef was on stage, running through some tracks at an industry showcase for his new album, The Preacher’s Son. Mixing in some seamless free-styling in 6 different languages (including Japanese) and playing his guitar riffs with his teeth, as if kissing the strings, the idea of interviewing the man was slightly daunting. Despite his astounding virtuosity, he remains in many ways an enigma. Catching up with him after the show, it was difficult to reconcile the man sporting an enormous platinum and diamond dollar-sign chain round his neck and mobbed by an incessant stream of adoring female fans, with the god-fearing, family-loving son a Haitian preacher, who moved to Brooklyn’s projects before his son had reached his teens. The title of his new album is far from irrelevant; many of the songs carry a message. ‘Industry’ is about the violent perception of the hip-hop world; Wyclef hopes to change the “higher authority’s thinking” on the subject. ‘Next Generation’ contains a powerfully simple message in lyrics such as “We are the next generation, not afraid to die / All we fear is what’s waiting in the Afterlife / Coz I don’t know what is there on the other side.” Explaining the thinking behind the lines, Wyclef talks of trying to “document” a “generation who are merely a reflection of their own environment,” when I quiz him on the references to guns and crack throughout his songs. Another example of Wyclef’s “preaching” comes in a track entitled ‘Party to Damascus’, an awesome fusion of oriental melody and hip-hop rhythm. The song suggests that the best solution to the many current problems in the Middle East is, as Wyclef succinctly puts it, “rather than fighting they should be having one big party.” He “understands the streets” and believes that artists such as himself are “poets expressing what they are.” I ask about his incredibly diverse range of influences which spans Latin to gangsta rap as well as his collaborations with and sampling of stars from Pink Floyd and U2’s The Edge to Missy Elliot and Mick Jagger. His response is typically straightforward, “I’m just taking these sounds from all around the world and taking the music to another level – going back to the culture and the idea of song-writing.” His desire to return to basics, using the Compra rhythm of his birthplace Haiti as part of the hip-hop framework which he grew up alongside in New York has led, he claims, “to a greater focus on melody”. He no longer “just concentrates on the rhyming, but the music.” Wyclef is very proud of his roots, and believes that a tolerant attitude to diversity, a sense of multiculturalism, is typically dependent upon your own upbringing. “Coming from Brooklyn, everybody to me had to look like this certain group of people, but as I grew and learnt, I realised that wasn’t the case.” Looking relaxed in his baggy jeans and red sweatshirt, he advises that we all “learn to appreciate human beings, actually all types of people from around the world.” But it’s difficult to connect such statements with his current existence: the suite at the Metropolitan Hotel on Park Lane, the fancy cars (he claims he has “over 50 very fine motor vehicles”), and the constant references to vast sums of money which hint at a slightly less balanced perspective. Such observations, however, fade into insignificance when he performs. His presence is electric, and he obviously enjoys himself immensely when up on stage. Not rated as an MC in the same class as say, 50 Cent, whom he places in his top ten “most respected artists,” it is nevertheless mesmerising to see him crafting words out of nothing, improvising on a theme, indeed reacting to what is going on around him as he lyricises. Wyclef’s linguistic diversity is equally fascinating; he was brought up speaking Haitian creole, which despite persisting popular opinion, is not a form of pidgin English, but a totally separate language. Bearing this in mind when experiencing the fluency of his English rhyming, and also witnessing the ease with which he switches to Spanish, and the enjoyment he takes from changing again into French or German, while still keeping time, making sense, and fully rhyming, his “ear,” both musical and linguistic, is highly impressive. Santana also makes it into his top ten, in fact in the top spot, and ‘Clef’s skills on the guitar, while perhaps not quite good enough to rival his hero, (who he claims demonstrates that “if you stick to your own act, you are bound to break through”), are definitely a large part of his self-defined position as a “musician and now a song -writer”. As he states in an earlier album, Masqueradeˆ, protesting against critics who had claimed he had forgotten his hip-hop roots, his “mistress is a guitar, classical like Mozart”. One of the most significant aspects of this album is its producer, Clive Davis. After the move from Sony to BMG, he was a pillar of support following the death of Wyclef’s father two years ago, and a strong influence on the vocal aspect of his music. Davis says that the album is a “watershed.” To see such a fine artist, “raising his game” as Wyclef would have it, intending to improve the world’s lot, while considerably enriching himself in the process, should be applauded, even if the message is preached. Wyclef would like to extend his sincerest apologise to Oxford students for postponing his visit to the Oxford Union. However he will be addressing students in November. He will also be playing a live acoustic set, so keep an eye out for the event by checking the website (www.oxford-union.org).ARCHIVE: 1st Week MT2003 

Rowena Mason meets up with Clare Short before her Union address to discuss her views on Tony’s war
Clare Short has always been audaciously ambitious. Her main aim since resigning from the Cabinet over Blair’s stance on Iraq: only the total global eradication of abject poverty, which, she claims, is “completely feasible given today’s technological advances.” But Short’s overall message is a bleak one. She foresees “extremely troubling times for the post-Iraq War world ahead,” yet her commitment to challenging past mistakes and working towards their correction is indomitable.
This dark, untidy, earnest woman apologises several times for her despondent subject matter, but she is determined to convey to me her fears that a chaotic, disordered Iraq in a bitterly divided Middle East is not receiving the reconstructive help that it deserves. Short is adamant that not only was the West shockingly unprepared for the rebuilding of war-torn Iraq, but that its current state of disarray would have been avoidable if the UN had been permitted to play a greater role. “The tragedy is, for the Middle East, for all of us,” she adds personally, “that Tony Blair could have dealt with the war properly, through the right channels, and he chose not to.” Only with a UN resolution would Short have supported the war, and she maintains that an adequate argument for regime change would have convinced the Security Council of the need for removing Saddam and averted the current climate of international division.
Ms Short is clearly eager to rouse public opinion into condemnation of Blair’s persistent deceptions over Iraq with her intermittent calls for his resignation. However, she is nevertheless willing to excuse his “economies with accuracy” as naivety and misjudgement of his own persuasive powers. I press her on whether she thinks he can win the next election on the proviso that spin died with Alistair Campbell’s political career and she looks at me sceptically, as if I share her party leader’s spurious optimism. “Tony Blair has recalled Peter Mandelson, the inventor of spin, since Alistair left,” she says indicatively. “They’ve said it before and they’ll say it again, but to be honest, I’m not sure Tony Blair knows how to give up spin. He’s never been without it.” Short even damningly compares the manufactured, orchestrated performances of Conservative and Labour leaders at the party conferences in recent weeks, demonstrating that Blair need not worry about having to resurrect spin when it is so clearly alive and performing.
At her own admission, Clare Short never quite fitted into Blair’s cautious and restrained Cabinet. An anomalous fiery proponent of conviction politics in the self-disciplined camp of the New Labour Army, she has courted controversy at every turn, but won respect for her allegiance to ideology rather than electability. Repeatedly asked whether these principles were compromised by her decision to stay in government during a war she classified as illegal, Short’s answer is always the same: she remained in order to make as much difference as possible to the humanitarian reconstruction of the post-war country. Devoted to her old Labour values, she is sure to propagate those views at the expense of her party and its leader if necessary.
As Minister for International Development, Short made great headway in raising Blair’s awareness of the need for “stabilising and uniting the global economy;” it was her influence which led the Prime Minister to describe Africa as “a scar on the conscience of the world.” Settling world debt and eliminating poverty are undoubtedly elusive long-term pursuits, but Short deems that there is one political situation which must be resolved before other world tensions may be alleviated. She passionately believes that the “overwhelming, glaring” priority on the foreign front is the separation of Israel and Palestine into independent states. She dismisses arguments that the situation has reached impasse with emotive calls to “stop the young from turning their buddies into bombs.” I ask her how she would best assuage the anger of Moslems who believe that their faithis being victimised by the US She hesitates a moment before clarifying, “The question is not one of religion, but injustice. Islamic and Christian teachings alike oppose war. The way to appease such accusations is to settle the Israel-Palestine dispute.”
Such straightforward judgments come naturally to Clare Short, whose tendency to speak frankly has led to a history of resignations: in 1988, over the renewal of the Prevention of Terrorism Act and in 1991 over the first Gulf War. Now she is serious about Tony Blair taking her cue and bowing down with the same dignity that she managed to retain for herself. “Tony loves adulation,” she says, as at last a glimmer of wry humour crosses her face. “He will find scrutiny unpleasant and if he hangs on, he will face a cynical and unhappy election.” In fact, she tells me that “it is the only way for Labour to correct its errors,” a fundamentally necessary sacrifice for the good of the party. Short is convinced that the public climate is ripe for rebellion. “The people are disgruntled, it is a time of change,” she says hopefully. With the same motivating force she used to detail her grand visions for a fairer world, she reiterates that the collective power of the people is the best way in which to achieve such political movement. Clare wants public dissention to make Blair go gracefully, but although she is not a woman to be gainsaid, her aspirations may again prove too ambitious for the actuality.ARCHIVE: 1st Week MT2003 

KHURUM BUKHARI examines Oxford’s diasporas and questions of identity within the UniversityIn the 12th century, the Hebrew poet Yehuda Halevi wrote “While I in western lands do pine, My heart is in the East.” For the “diaspora”, the Jewish communities outside Palestine, those lines poignantly reflected the anxious yearning for one’s homeland and encompassed the difficulties of living in one culture while belonging to another. In an increasingly globalised world, where mass immigration and travel allow people of different cultures to settle in those of others, diasporas of diverse nationalities and ethnicities are created every single minute and accompanying them are those potential anxieties about the loss or subordination of native culture to the host. Often the central question to these communities and their offspring is that of identity. Britain has played host, and still does, to countless numbers of communities from across the globe. Bringing their own customs, lifestyles and beliefs intertwined within the social and economic fabric of their respective homelands, the notion of a cultural identity seems to be enduringly potent within such groups. But what of the children of immigrants born in the host country? As someone born and brought up in Britain, in a Pakistani Shia Muslim household, I was bound to be aware of my background. I had always felt a sense of “otherness”, something engendered mainly by the language of my household and the religious and cultural activities particular to my community. In addition, my exposure to other, different communities was severely lacking, only having had significant contact with members of my own. Coming to Oxford was a revelation; I was confronted not only by people of different class, ethnic and cultural backgrounds but also by a growing realisation and anxiety, that I belonged not only to one culture but to another, the “British”. It was “bi-cultural anxiety syndrome” such as that found in books such as Hanif Kureshi’s Buddha of Surburbia and Zadie Smith’s White Teeth. For those in a similar situation, Oxford’s many student societies offer direction. Societies from Turkish Soc to Majlis Asian Society, to Jewish Soc and the Islamic society aim primarily to promote and publicise their respective cultures, be they ethnic, national or religious. But they are also places for people of a certain background to mix with other members of their communities who experience the difficulties of trying to reconcile one culture with another. For Jewish Soc President, Roni Tabick, who has lived and was educated in predominantly Jewish areas, Oxford life proved to be somewhat unusual. “Fridays nights were difficult because of Sabbath” and everyday conversation became a humorous affair, “I was using Yiddish words with non-Jewish people.” The Jewish Soc provided him with a forum to meet other student members of the Jewish community who faced similar difficulties. But many question the “ghetto” effect that such societies have on what is intended to be a “multicultural“ environment. Members of a similar community often cluster together, their interaction indirectly exclusive to members of their own university community. A student at St Peters comments “it’s obvious when people of one community hang around together, especially if they are of a different colour. They are very cliquey – they seem to be segregating themselves and are ruining things”. Roni Tabick disagrees, “Of course when people of one particular community who do solely hang about together it’s a shame as it ruins their experience of the wider world”. But for many attached to their culture, the joy of mixing with members of their own community is both inevitable and a matter of pure circumstance rather than an active and discriminating effort to find people of similar backgrounds, ethnicity or religion. Cee at Worcester says, “I think people make a mountain out of a molehill. It’s a commonality thing, an interest matter, its not a racial, ethnic or political issue. Sure the society I’m part of is where I met most of my friends, though I’m not friends with all of its members am I? It’s purely coincidental that most of the people I know are from the same background. I have a mixture of friends, White, Black and Asian but my close friends happen to be of a similar culture. I’m learning more about my identity that way, so what?” So what indeed is the problem? The quest for an identity is an important search and one often overlooked. It is one that has long existed not only as a cultural dimension for ethnic, national and religious communities but for other groups too; feminists find their identity in their womanhood and the Welsh in their language. A multi-cultural society can only work if the search for an individual’s identity is respected despite it appearing to be discriminatory or exclusive. A heart can indeed be in the East, but over time it can be in the West too.ARCHIVE: 1st Week MT2003 

Europe Playhouse Tuesday 21 – Saturday 25 October Ilan Goodman’s production of David Greig’s Europe asks the question “What is politics?”. At the same time it posits a bicentric world-view in which we see traditional nation-politics offset by Thirlwellian bedroom power-play. The continent that this play deals with is not just the cosmopolitan world of Berlin, Athens, and Salzburg, but a war-ravaged, refugee-ridden place of treachery and insecurity. Set in a unspecified European village, two contrasting arrivals cause characters to reconsider the nature of their locality. Morocco, a well-travelled entrepreneur, pines for the comfort of home, while economic migrants Sava and Katia are forced to sleep on the train platform. Greig’s fans will tell you of his speciality in presenting subjects such as immigration, nationalism, patriotism and identity, through tight personal relationships. It is certainly an absolute triumph of Goodman’s direction that in such a large play – big themes, big stage, big set – Europe is sincere and personally involving. The interplay of the tired and pained Katia (Kate Fowler), looking after her doting father, Sava (Colin Burnie), is particularly affecting; the consequences of their flight grow in front of your eyes. Some of the most entertaining scenes are between three youths, Berlin (Gethin Anthony), Billy (Tai Shan Ling) and Horse (Andy King). They fizzle with a melancholic humour as the hopeless discuss their hopes. The scenes between the lovers Berlin and Adele (Polly Findlay) are also brilliantly staged and harrowing. This is also a play about escaping, about journeying, but for a journey to make sense it has to be going somewhere. Throughout, there is a feeling that ideas are floating about in the same way that the characters do. In order to flourish they need to be pinned down. Greig seems willing to raise the issues of media presentation, immigration, and the rise of the right-wing. He seems more evasive in answering them. There are moments when the play feels distinctly didactic, “remember that we are, in our own way, Europe” and yet when we look for the lesson there is nothing to be learnt. But hardly in a version as brilliantly staged and compelling as this can there be no point. We are reminded that humanity is to be found only in the relationships in our world.ARCHIVE: 1st Week MT2003