/2017

Wayne Cochran - Goin Back To Miami (Swingin’ Time - Sep 10, 1966)
▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHbCLLtm-6M

Battling to Save James Baldwin’s Home in the South of France
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/04/arts/battling-to-save-james-baldwins-home-in-the-south-of-france.html

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2017/03/30/arts/00BALDWIN/00BALDWIN-1490797903074-jumbo.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp

L’éternel problème des veuves et autres héritiers sous les régimes capitalistes frappe la mémoire de James Baldwin. La tentative de préservation du domaine de Baldwin par un groupe d’Europénnes rajoute des problèmes.

4.4.2017 by Rachel Donadio - SAINT-PAUL-DE-VENCE, France — From 1970 until his death in 1987, James Baldwin lived and wrote in a house with an idyllic garden in this medieval village on the Côte d’Azur, with the Alps at its back and the Mediterranean visible far below.

But those who arrive today to pay homage to Baldwin won’t find anything commemorating that American novelist, playwright and essayist. No house museum greets them, or even a plaque with his name. The wing where Baldwin lived was torn down a few years ago. The remaining two houses on the property are in disrepair, the once-verdant garden unkempt. And the local real estate developer who now owns the property, after the Baldwin family lost control of it more than a decade ago, plans to build three apartment buildings and a swimming pool.

Heartsick at the prospect, a group started last year by an American novelist in Paris began fund-raising to buy the property, which is nearly 6 acres, and convert it into a writers’ retreat dedicated to Baldwin. But the group does not have the blessing of the Baldwin family, some of whose members question its tactics and even its standing to champion the cause.

“To me the issue is very straightforward: It’s about representation,” said Aisha Karefa-Smart, a niece of Baldwin’s. “Who gets to represent James Baldwin’s legacy and who gets to speak about who he was.”

The interest in the house comes at a time when Baldwin, with his prescient insights into race relations in the United States, is having something of a posthumous revival, fueled by the Black Lives Matter movement and the Oscar-nominated documentary “I Am Not Your Negro.”

Baldwin, who had lived in Paris earlier in his life, first came to Saint-Paul-de-Vence in 1970, at the age of 46, after a breakdown. He had been excoriated by fellow members of the civil rights movement — some called the author, who was gay, Martin Luther Queen — and believed he was under surveillance by the United States government. In France, he found the tranquillity and distance to write.

At the time of his death from cancer, he had been buying the house in installments from his landlady, Jeanne Faure, who grew up in Algeria under French colonial rule. Despite her right-wing politics, she and Baldwin had become the best of friends. (When President François Mitterrand of France made Baldwin a commander of the Legion of Honor in 1986, one of the country’s highest honors, the author brought Ms. Faure to the ceremony.)

Friends of Baldwin in Saint-Paul recall that Ms. Faure was adamant that he have the house after her death. But a complex legal battle ensued among the Baldwin family, relatives of Ms. Faure and a woman who had worked as Ms. Faure’s housekeeper. In 2007, a court ruled in favor of the former housekeeper, Josette Bazzini, who said that Ms. Faure had bequeathed her the house, according to Jules B. Farber’s book “James Baldwin: Escape From America, Exile in Provence.”

Shannon Cain, the American novelist leading the campaign to create the writer’s retreat, said she was inspired to rescue the house after reading an opinion piece in Le Monde last March, “France Must Save James Baldwin’s House,” by Thomas Chatterton Williams, a writer in Paris.

“I cannot believe I have the privilege to be alive at this moment on earth when James Baldwin’s house is in danger and I happen to have the skills and temperament to do this work,” Ms. Cain said.

But her efforts have upset the Baldwin estate and family members.

Ms. Karefa-Smart said that she and her relatives were offended by Ms. Cain’s registration of a website without the family’s permission and offering family members seats on the board of a group aimed at saving the house they had lost. Last year, the Baldwin estate threatened legal action for the group’s registering a website using James Baldwin’s name without permission. Gloria Karefa-Smart, Aisha’s mother, is the sole executor of the writer’s estate, and is known by scholars for her protectiveness over the rights to cite his work. (She did not return requests for comment.)

“We don’t know who she is, and this organization is not legit, it’s not a 501(c)(3),” Aisha Karefa-Smart said, referring to its lack of nonprofit status under the United States tax code. (Ms. Cain, who is white, later sent a letter to the family introducing herself and in an interview said the organization would apply for nonprofit status in the United States this week.)

Ms. Cain’s lack of connection to Baldwin has also played a role. “It’s not whiteness per se, but your experience as a white person does not give you proximity for what you’re trying to represent,” Ms. Karefa-Smart said in the interview. She likened the group’s approach to that of a white artist, Dana Schutz, whose painting of Emmett Till, the black teenager whose lynching by two white men in Mississippi in 1955 helped set off the civil rights movement, drew protests last month from some who said the artist was co-opting black pain.

It’s not only Baldwin family members who are concerned by Ms. Cain’s efforts; several others initially involved with her have distanced themselves. Others were taken aback that Ms. Cain squatted in the house last summer, and intended to draw a salary from the fund-raising.

The Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. backed away after learning that the Baldwin family didn’t support the group, though he says he would love for the house to become a “place of pilgrimage.”

Ms. Cain does not apologize for seeking a salary. “A successful nonprofit needs a professional running this place,” she said.

But she called herself “an imperfect candidate for this job” because of her race. She added that she would leave the organization if her presence hindered efforts to save the house.

In recent months, the group, now called His Place in Provence, has expanded; among the principals are Dereke Clements, an African-American dancer in France, and its advisory board includes the writer Rebecca Walker, daughter of the novelist Alice Walker. Hélène Roux Jeandheur, whose mother was close to Baldwin and whose family still runs the art-filled Colombe d’Or hotel here, where Baldwin used to spend time in the evenings, is helping set up a French nonprofit.

“She cannot change being a white woman,” Mr. Clements said of Ms. Cain, as the two sat beneath a makeshift whiteboard with the names of major African-American cultural figures they hope to enlist. “But this is not an individual effort anymore.”

But even if the revamped group can raise more money, it’s not clear that the house can be reclaimed. In November a local developer, Socri, said it would consider selling the property for 9 million euros (about $9.5 million), according to an email from Socri’s real estate agent provided by Ms. Cain. But in an email last month, Mendi Leclerc, an assistant to the developer, said construction will move ahead “very soon.”

“We are not ready to sell this project, especially not to people who illegally occupied the site for many days,” Ms. Leclerc added, referring to Ms. Cain. Ms. Leclerc said that the company could “envision” putting a commemorative plaque on the site.

The mayor of Saint-Paul-de-Vence, Joseph Le Chapelain, who signed the building permit last year, said the project was out of his hands. “It’s a private company,” he said. “The city has no power over it.”

An employee at the French culture ministry said that the ministry could not intervene to declare the house a historic site unless the private owner requested that.

But for some in France, the lack of recognition shows disrespect for Baldwin in a town that honors other cultural figures who lived here, including Matisse and Chagall.

For others, the family’s loss of the house speaks to the difficulties faced by African-Americans in owning property and their cultural heritage.

The essayist Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah, one of several African-American writers who have recently made pilgrimages here, said a visit raised the painful issue of the “paradoxical and the elusive nature of never being able to declare our work our own, and to say, ‘You can’t take this from me.’”

Aisha Karefa-Smart said that she would consider supporting the effort if donors she trusted tried to buy the house and dedicate it to Baldwin, the way several African-American artists bought Nina Simone’s house in March.

“If it happens, wonderful. If not, it’s not going to impact the power and the scope of his legacy,” she added.

Trevor Baldwin, one of Baldwin’s nephews, who helped get a street in Harlem named for the author, said in an email that he would like something more tangible in Saint-Paul-de-Vence. “I hope there will be a commemorative vestige to honor his dedication to elevating humanity through enlightenment with appreciation for his love of the country that saved his life,” Mr. Baldwin wrote. Saint-Paul-de-Vence, where his uncle “chose to die,” Mr. Baldwin said, was deeply meaningful to the writer.

Baldwin left behind an unfinished play, “The Welcome Table,” about an African-American living in the South of France. Its title refers to the table in his garden here, where friends would talk late into the night. In the developer’s plans, that patch of lawn will become the entrance to an underground garage.

#USA #France #Saint-Paul-de-Vence #activisme #lettres #capitalisme

#migrants #covid-19 #frontières #Pakistan
Closed Afghan-Pakistani Border Is Becoming ‘Humanitarian Crisis’

▻https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/05/world/asia/afghanistan-pakistan-border.html

Gifts Tied to Opioid Sales Invite a Question : Should Museums Vet Donors ? - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/01/arts/design/sackler-museum-donations-oxycontin-purdue-pharma.html

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2017/12/02/arts/02sackler-2/09sackler2-facebookJumbo-v2.jpg

The New York Times surveyed 21 cultural organizations listed on tax forms as having received significant sums from foundations run by two Sackler brothers who led Purdue. Several, including the Guggenheim, declined to comment; others, like the Brooklyn Museum, ignored questions. None indicated that they would return donations or refuse them in the future.

“We regularly assess our funding activities to ensure best practice,” wrote Zoë Franklin, a spokeswoman for the Victoria and Albert Museum, which was listed as receiving about $13.1 million from the Dr. Mortimer and Theresa Sackler Foundation in 2012. “The Sackler family continue to be an important and valuable donor to the V & A and we are grateful for their ongoing support.”

De l’usage de la philanthropie comme écran de fumée

Robert Josephson, a spokesman for the company, pointed to its efforts to stem the opioid epidemic — distributing prescription guidelines, developing abuse-deterrent painkillers and ensuring access to overdose-reversal medication — and noted that OxyContin has never had a large share of total opioid prescriptions. In an email, he added, “Many leading medical, scientific, cultural and educational institutions throughout the world have been beneficiaries of Sackler family philanthropy.”

#Sackler #Philanthropie #Opioides #Musées

The Soviet Propaganda Fabrics We Probably Shouldn’t be Lusting After
▻http://www.messynessychic.com/2015/03/10/the-soviet-propaganda-fabrics-we-probably-shouldnt-be-lusting-after

http://static.messynessychic.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/soviet1.jpg http://static.messynessychic.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/soviet13.jpg http://static.messynessychic.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/soviet22.jpeg

CC @simplicissimus @reka

via : ▻http://www.messynessychic.com/2018/07/19/things-the-soviets-made

Data Firm Says ‘Secret Sauce’ Aided Trump ; Many Scoff
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/06/us/politics/cambridge-analytica.html

Standing before political and business leaders in New York last fall, Alexander Nix promised a revolution. Many companies compete in the market for political microtargeting, using huge data sets and sophisticated software to identify and persuade voters. But Mr. Nix’s little-known firm, Cambridge Analytica, claimed to have developed something unique : “psychographic” profiles that could predict the personality and hidden political leanings of every American adult. “Of the two candidates left (...)

#CambridgeAnalytica #Facebook #algorithme #élections #manipulation #électeurs #BigData (...)

##marketing