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Conflict and Cooperation / Articles posted by U5
Pèlerinage Toussaint Louverture au Fort de Joux

Pèlerinage Toussaint Louverture au Fort de Joux

By U5
On April 7 we joined the pilgrimage to Château de Joux which takes place every year to commemorate the death of Haitian revolutionary leader Toussaint Louverture. The castle where Louverture was imprisioned by Napoleon Bonaparte is located right at the French-Swiss border. The Swiss historian Hans Fässler who co-founded the pilgrimage in 2002 maintains an excellent website where he writes:
“This traditional annual gathering on April 7 is a civic initiative in line with the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Revolution of August 23, 1791 in Saint Domingue, requiring a genuine duty of remembrance, the right to history and the rehabilitation of General Toussaint Louverture who, through his fight for the triumph of the values of Liberty, Citizenship and Fraternity, embodies and universalizes Human Dignity.”

https://louverture.ch/pelerinage-toussaint-louverture/

Vodun jenseits von Hollywood – podcast from Birgit Meyer

By U5

A very interesting podcast about religion and spirituality initiated by the Department of Religious Studies of the University of Zurich features a conversation (in German) with the cultural anthropologist Birgit Meyer (Utrecht University), who moderated a panel in our workshop “Methods and Media of the Absent/Present. Visual Approaches to Vodun and Vodou.” Link to the podcast

Diapositives by Madafi Pierre

Diapositives by Madafi Pierre

By U5

Filmscreening: Diapositives by Madafi Pierre

6:30 pm, December 11, 2023
Studio of U5, Flüelastrasse 6, 8048 Zürich

In her film Diapositives, the artist and filmmaker Madafi Pierre portrays five people of Haitian origin living in Switzerland. Pierre takes a global look at Haiti and Switzerland and asks what the connections between these two counties are and what life in Switzerland is like from a Haitian perspective. Diapositives addresses questions of planned and unplanned mobility, migration as well as of belonging and feelings of home, which cannot (necessarily) be tied to territories.

With KRIK KRAK Pierre uses a mode of storytelling in the form of call-and-response that is rooted in Haitian culture. Since Haiti is the country of the first Black revolution starting in 1791, the film at the same time involves a conversation about the way we think about historiography, colonization, and the possibilities of decolonizing knowledge production.

The screening will be followed by a Q&A. Over drinks, finger food, and music there will be the opportunity to continue the discussion informally.

The screening is organized by Bettina Gräf and Rebecca Sauer (Institute of Asian and Oriental Studies, University of Zurich) and Dora Imhof and U5 (SNSF research project “Conflict and Cooperation”, Institute of Art History, University of Zurich).

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.“