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Month: March 2022

The privat live of a cat

The privat live of a cat

By U5

Maya Deren kept cats and named them after vodou gods and many of these cats hated each other. Ghede and Erzulie had the run of the house and the others had to be locked up in rooms and behind fences. (from: The Legend of Maya Deren, A Documentary Biography and Collected Works, Volume + Part Two, Chambers (1942-47), Veve Clark, Millicent Hudson, Anthology Film Archives (Eds.), 1988)

The Private Life Of A Cat is a film by Alexander Hammid and Maya Deren. It shows a day in the life of a cat, filmed from a cat’s-eye view. This film was circulated in two versions: a silent version without narration and a longer sound version with a narration read by Maya Deren (1949) this version has the following prolog:

„This film is dedicated to cats. Not in grateful recognition of services rendered, for they neither lend themselves to our sport, nor provide us with material benefits, nor (..) master, they live in friendly, independent equitable peace with man. For this rare talent, which man himself labors to achieve, we pay them homage.“

Why Haiti Needs New Narratives. A Post-Quake Chronicle

Why Haiti Needs New Narratives. A Post-Quake Chronicle

By Dora Imhof

On my desk: Gina Athena Ulysse, Why Haiti Needs New Narratives. A Post-Quake Chronicle (Wesleyan University Press, 2015). An inside view on the repercussions of the devastating earthquake in 2010 and many more issues of Haitian history, culture and every-day experience.

African Vodun. Art, Psychology, and Power

African Vodun. Art, Psychology, and Power

By Niklas Wolf

Doing some critical re-reading of Suzanne Preston Blier: African Vodun. Art, Psychology, and Power (1995). The book (re)introduces western terminologies of art (like assemblage) to matter of Vodun (geographically and content wise not as broadly as its title might suggest though, focussing on the Fon, using bocio — figurative containers of power — as an example to follow some global traces of Vodun) by connecting certain pictorial practices to social phenomena, body politics and dynamics, discussing their aesthetics, modes of representation, materiality and meaning (including a stylistic analysis). 

Suzanne Preston Blier: African Vodun. Art, Psychology, and Power. Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press. 1995. Print. 

Diálogo Entre Filhos De Xangô: Correspondência 1947-1974.

Diálogo Entre Filhos De Xangô: Correspondência 1947-1974.

By Zainabu Jallo

Currently working between two seminal books:

LEFT: Image from  Diálogo Entre Filhos De Xangô of Fieldwork  carried out in Ouidah, Benin by Pierre Verger in 1949. The book comprises letters between Pierre Verger and Roger Bastide (with References to Alfred Métreux`s field findings during the same period). It gives insights into the nascent academic formulation of Afro Atlantic religions.

Bastide, Roger and Pierre Verger. Diálogo Entre Filhos De Xangô: Correspondência 1947-1974. Edited by Françoise Morin and Regina Salgado Campos. EDUSP, 2017.

RIGHT: Returning to Robert Farris Thompson for the differentiation within Haitian Vodun. Chapter III, “The Rara of the Universe. Vodun Religion and Art Haiti”, explains Vodun practices in Haiti based on their origin:

“Both Rada and Petro partake of these sources of African influence; neither is traceable to just one source. Both are at once African-inspired and indigenously created. Rada, predominantly Dahomean and  Yoruba, is the “cool” side of vodun, being associated with the achievement of peace and reconciliation. Petro, predominantly Kongo, is the hot side, being associated with the spiritual fire of charms for healing and for attacking evil forces” (p.164).

Thompson, Robert Farris. Flash of the Spirit: African and Afro-American Art and Philosophy. New York: Random House, 1983.