position:producer

  • GRAIN | Indian dairy under threat from new trade deals
    https://grain.org/e/6257

    India’s 150 million small dairy farmers, local cooperatives and networks of small-scale vendors have made the country the world’s largest producer of milk and ensured its self-sufficiency. The handful of transnational corporations that dominate the global dairy industry are still only marginal players in India, and only a tiny fraction of dairy products are imported into the country or exported out. But several new trade pacts that cater to transnational corporations, like the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) or the proposed deals pending with Europe, threaten to radically change the map and wipe out India’s small dairy producers. This update from GRAIN assesses what is at stake with current trade talks for India’s dairy farmers and vendors, and the consumers they supply.

  • Chinese Surveillance Complex Advancing in Latin America

    In February, 2019, in a story that went almost unnoticed in Washington, the small South American nation of #Uruguay began installing the first of 2,100 surveillance cameras, donated by the People’s Republic of China to improve control of its borders with neighboring Argentina and Brazil.

    The move highlights the significant deepening of the Uruguay-PRC relationship over the last decade, including their establishment of a “Strategic Partnership” in October 2016, and the signing of a memorandum of understanding in August 2018 for Uruguay to join China’s Belt and Road initiative (despite being about as far from the PRC as is geographically possible).

    Beyond Uruguay, the development also highlights a little-discussed but important dimension of China’s advance: its expanding global sales of surveillance and control technologies. Although the press and U.S. political leadership have given significant attention to the risks of employing Chinese telecommunications companies such as Huawei the equally serious but newer issue of expanding sales of Chinese surveillance systems has been less discussed.

    The installation of Chinese surveillance systems, acquired through PRC government donations or commercial contracts, is a growing phenomenon in Latin America and elsewhere.

    Such systems began to appear in the region more than a decade ago, including in 2007, when then mayor of Mexico City (now Mexican Foreign Minister) Miguel Ebrard returned from a trip to the PRC with a deal to install thousands of Chinese cameras to combat crime in the Mexican capital. More recent examples include ECU-911 in Ecuador, a China-built national system of surveillance and communication initially agreed to by the administration of anti-U.S. populist president Rafael Correa. The system, which has expanded to currently include 4,300 cameras and a command center manned by thousands of Ecuadorans, has been built almost completely from Chinese equipment, designed for a range of otherwise noble purposes from emergency response and combatting crime, to monitoring volcanoes. Bolivia boasts a similar Chinese built system, albeit more limited in scope, BOL-110, in addition to hundreds of surveillance cameras donated by the PRC to at least four of Bolivia’s principal cities.

    In Panama, which abandoned Taiwan to establish relations with the PRC in 2017, the government of Juan Carlos Varela has agreed to allow Huawei to install a system of cameras in the crime-ridden city of Colon and the associated free trade zone. Not by coincidence, in July 2019, Hikivision, China’s largest producer of surveillance cameras, announced plans to set up a major distribution center in Colon to support sales of its products throughout the Americas.

    In northern Argentina, near where the Chinese are developing a lithium mining operation and constructing the hemisphere’s largest array of photovoltaic cells for electricity generation, the Chinese company ZTE is installing another “911” style emergency response system with 1,200 cameras.

    In Venezuela, although not a surveillance system per se, the Chinese company ZTE has helped the regime of Nicholas Maduro implement a “fatherland identity card” linking different kinds of data on individuals through an identity card which allows the state to confer privileges (such as rationing food) as a tool for social control.

    As with sectors such as computers and telecommunications, the PRC arguably wishes to support the global export of such systems by its companies to advance technologies it recognizes as strategic for the Chinese nation, per its own official policy documents such as Made In China 2025.

    The risks arising from spreading use of Chinese surveillance equipment and architectures are multiple and significant, involving: (1) the sensitivity of the data collected on specific persons and activities, particularly when processed through technologies such as facial recognition, integrated with other data, and analyzed through artificial intelligence (AI) and other sophisticated algorithms, (2) the potential ability to surreptitiously obtain access to that data, not only through the collection devices, but at any number of points as it is communicated, stored, and analyzed, and (3) the long-term potential for such systems to contribute to the sustainment of authoritarian regimes (such as those in Venezuela, Bolivia, Cuba, and formerly Ecuador) whose corrupt elites provide strategic access and commercial benefits to the Chinese state.

    The risk posed by such Chinese architectures is underestimated by simply focusing on the cameras and sensors themselves.

    Facial and other recognition technologies, and the ability to integrate data from different sensors and other sources such as smartphones enables those with access to the technology to follow the movement of individual human beings and events, with frightening implications. It includes the ability to potentially track key political and business elites, dissidents, or other persons of interest, flagging possible meetings between two or more, and the associated implications involving political or business meetings and the events that they may produce. Flows of goods or other activities around government buildings, factories, or other sites of interest may provide other types of information for political or commercial advantage, from winning bids to blackmailing compromised persons.

    While some may take assurance that the cameras and other components are safely guarded by benevolent governments or companies, the dispersed nature of the architectures, passing information, instructions, and analysis across great distances, means that the greatest risk is not physical access to the cameras, but the diversion of information throughout the process, particularly by those who built the components, databases and communication systems, and by those who wrote the algorithms (increasingly Chinese across the board).

    With respect to the political impact of such systems, while democratic governments may install them for noble purposes such as crimefighting and emergency response, and with limitations that respect individual privacy, authoritarian regimes who contract the Chinese for such technologies are not so limited, and have every incentive to use the technology to combat dissent and sustain themselves in power.

    The PRC, which continues to perfect it against its own population in places like Xinjiang (against the Uighur Muslims there), not only benefits commercially from selling the technology, but also benefits when allied dictatorships provide a testing ground for product development, and by using it to combat the opposition, keeping friends like Maduro in power, continuing to deliver the goods and access to Beijing.

    As with the debate over Huawei, whether or not Chinese companies are currently exploiting the surveillance and control systems they are deploying across Latin America to benefit the Chinese state, Chinese law (under which they operate) requires them to do so, if the PRC government so demands.

    The PRC record of systematic espionage, forced technology transfer, and other bad behavior should leave no one in Latin America comfortable that the PRC will not, at some point in the future, exploit such an enormous opportunity.

    https://www.newsmax.com/evanellis/china-surveillance-latin-america-cameras/2019/04/12/id/911484

    #Amérique_latine #Chine #surveillance #frontières #contrôles_frontaliers #Argentine #Brésil
    ping @reka

  • Pétition de personnalités britanniques (Vivienne Westwood, Peter Gabriel, Mike Leigh, Julie Christie, Maxine Peake, Wolf Alice, Roger Waters, Caryl Churchill, Al Kennedy) contre la tenue de l’Eurovision en israel et sa diffusion par la BBC.

    (un article en parlait déjà là: https://seenthis.net/messages/756450 )

    The BBC should press for Eurovision to be moved from Israel
    The Guardian, le 29 janvier 2019
    https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/jan/29/the-bbc-should-press-for-eurovision-to-be-moved-from-israel

    Traduction en français:

    La BBC devrait faire pression pour que l’Eurovision n’ait pas lieu en Israël
    The Guardian, le 29 janvier 2019
    http://www.agencemediapalestine.fr/blog/2019/01/31/la-bbc-devrait-faire-pression-pour-que-leurovision-nait-pas-lie

    Peter Ahrends, architect
    Amir Amirani, filmmaker
    Jonathan Arndell, architect, artist
    Roy Battersby, director
    Bloody Knees, band
    brave timbers, band
    Jen Brister, comedian
    Carmen Callil, publisher, writer
    Taghrid Choucair-Vizoso, performer
    Julie Christie, actor
    Ian Christie, film historian, broadcaster
    Chipo Chung, actor
    Caryl Churchill, playwright
    Michael Darlow, tv writer and director
    Paula Darwish, musician
    April De Angelis, playwright
    Tam Dean Burn, actor
    Drones Club, band
    Nancy Elan, violin
    Gareth Evans, producer, curator
    Peter Gabriel, musician, founder WOMAD festival
    Lots Holloway, singer, songwriter
    Rachel Holmes, writer
    Brigid Keenan, author
    Patrick Keiller, artist, filmmaker
    Reem Kelani, musician, broadcaster
    AL Kennedy, writer
    Desmond Lambert, musician
    Mike Leigh, writer, director
    Ken Loach, director
    Sabrina Mahfouz, writer
    Miriam Margolyes, actor
    Yann Martel, writer
    Declan McKenna, singer, songwriter
    JD Meatyard, musician
    Pauline Melville, writer
    Giuliano Modarelli, musician, composer
    Object Blue, DJ
    Maxine Peake, actor
    Jocelyn Pook, composer
    TJ Rehmi, composer, producer
    Reverend & the Makers, band
    Leon Rosselson, songwriter
    Rrose, DJ
    Alexei Sayle, comedian, author
    David Scott, music producer
    Nick Seymour, musician
    Sarah Streatfeild, violin
    Roger Waters, musician
    Vivienne Westwood, fashion designer
    Wolf Alice, band

    #Palestine #Eurovision #BDS #Boycott #BBC #Grande-Bretagne

  • DAVOS-Big Oil is more talk than action on renewables - Iberdrola | Reuters
    https://uk.reuters.com/article/davos-meeting-iberdrola-idUKL3N1ZO3ZT

    The world’s largest wind-power producer, Iberdrola SA, has brushed off Big Oil’s embrace of renewable energy as “more noise” than action.

    Major oil and gas firms have been venturing into renewable power under pressure from climate-change policy, collectively spending around 1 percent of their 2018 budgets on clean energy, according to a recent study by research firm CDP.

    However, Iberdrola Chief Executive Ignacio Galan, who has led the Spanish utility for 17 years, shrugged when asked in a Reuters interview if Big Oil represented a competitive threat.

    It’s good that they have moved in this direction but they make more noise than the reality,” he said on Thursday on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

    Galan said returns on oil investment still far exceeded those typical of wind and solar projects and he doubted major oil companies would make a meaningful shift until that changed.

    They like to be enthusiastic but if they had to make a choice between a wonderful oil well and a good wind farm, I feel their heart will move in the traditional direction.
    […]
    He said U.S. states were more influential than Washington in terms of energy investment, and that several were looking to develop America’s first offshore wind farms, from Massachusetts down to North Carolina and New York across to California.

    The states are more and more committed to moving to renewables and the same is true of the cities and towns,” he said, adding that falling generation costs of renewable energy was a big driver of the U.S. adoption of wind and solar power.

  • Ivy Barkakati
    http://www.radiopanik.org/emissions/mix-delivery/ivy-barkakati-

    Ivy Barkakati is an American DJ, producer and presenter of a monthly show on the Barcelona-based dublab.es radio, Casa da Crega, where she currently resides.

    She released her first solo debut in 2014 on Hospital Productions, followed two years later by another track “Mango Sheen” on Modern Obscure Music. She has since collaborated with Phran (“Impulse”) on Rhythm Control Barcelona in 2017, with whom she released another track “Manipulate Me” under the alias IVAN on the australian label Best Effort .

    Barkakati’s music style is eclectic. Her DJ sets tend more towards the American house and disco that she started out with, and in the studio, she produces more experimental music with synths, ranging from light ambient to dark industrial sounds. In ITHAKA Series_#3, she’ll be gracing us with one (...)

    #future #bass #rap #funk #lounge #down_tempo #ghostly #future,bass,rap,funk,lounge,down_tempo,ghostly
    http://www.radiopanik.org/media/sounds/mix-delivery/ivy-barkakati-_06022__1.mp3

  • Taxi 2.0: The Bumpy Road to the Future of Cabs - Motherboard
    https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/gvy5dy/taxi-20-the-bumpy-road-to-the-future-of-cabs-video

    https://vimeo.com/94803083

    After a typical honeymoon period of unquestioning and often oblivious tech culture praise, Uber and its taxi app brethren are getting some real, overdue scrutiny. Thank cabbies in part, for highlighting the fact that much of Uber’s business model success has to do with bypassing basic taxi regulations, safety checks, and continuous commercial insurance coverage, in a monoplistic bid for all sides of the taxi market. Protests and lawsuits and injunctions now follow close behind these companies into nearly every new city they zoom into, with the requisite lawyers and lobbyists in the backseat.

    At the same time, anyone who’s experienced a city knows that licensed taxi companies are due for an upgrade, and maybe some of these apps’ success has to do with the old industry’s disinterest in adaptation. Shutting out the Uber model—and its rather edgier “rideshare” kin, like Lyft and SideCar and UberX—from the ride-for-hire ecosystem is as poor an answer as allowing it to persist without the institution of new checks and rules.

    In the short documentary “Taxi 2.0,” filmmaker Max Maddox attacks the issue from street-level in San Francisco by talking to taxi and Uber and Lyft drivers and the people that use each. No one comes away looking great. Everyone’s trying to figure out what it all means. (Where, exactly, is the sharing in this sharing economy? And how are these taxis called “rideshares” when there’s no real ride-sharing going on?) Apart from concerns about unfair competition, says Maddox, “taxi proponents say these rideshares are unsafe for the public. In the midst of this drama, drivers on both sides of the playing field struggle just to put bread on the table.”

    Here we see the specter not only of a new labor war in the taxi industry, between established hacks and amateur upstarts armed with GPS maps, but a of a stratified ride-for-hire future, in which taxis are left carrying the unconnected lower classes, while Uber and the like carry the relative big money. Technology has a way of dividing us like that.

    I usually feel half-guilty when I get in a TNC, but the cab system is far from perfect at the same time.

    Maddox, a broadcasting student at San Francisco State University whose interest was piqued after seeing “so many mustached cars drive by,” came away from the months-long project with mixed feelings about the future of cabs.

    “After interviewing all these guys, I’m still on the fence about transportation network companies, or rideshares, whatever you want to call them,” Maddox says. “I usually feel half-guilty when I get in a TNC, but the cab system is far from perfect at the same time. I can’t endorse one platform over the other. I just hope something changes so they can coexist.”

    ’Taxi 2.0’ Credits: Producer: Max Maddox; Editor: Jarod Taber; Photographer: Asger Ladefoged; Writer: Ben Mitchell; Sound: Gabe Romero Associate Producer: Jason Garcia

    #Taxi #Uber #USA #San_Francisco

  • The New American Songbook: The oldies of the future.
    https://slate.com/culture/2018/10/the-new-american-songbook-the-oldies-of-the-future.html

    Oct 18, 2018 - Here are the hits of the past 25 years that we’ll be listening to for the next 100.

    What makes a song last? The history of popular music tells us that many masterpieces of songcraft—and even the most world-conquering smashes—are quickly forgotten.

    Meanwhile, many earworms burrow deep into the collective consciousness, where they take root, whether we like it or not.

    Which of today’s hits will be tomorrow’s classics?

    Who could have predicted that “Don’t Stop Believin’ ”—which was, upon its release in 1981, a commercial disappointment from a critically derided band—would become the 20th century’s best-selling digital download?* Or that it would be a “novelty” dance single, of all song varieties, that would become Billboard’s pick for the greatest single of all time?

    Separating the most durable tunes from the millions of other would-be classics is no easy task. So we asked critics, musicians, and industry professionals to predict which tracks from the past 25 years we’ll still be dancing and singing along to for the next 100 years. Some of these songs our children will belt in sports arenas. Others our grandchildren will dance to at their weddings.

    The New American Songbook is emphatically not a list of the best songs of the past quarter-century, although many of these tracks would make that list, too. As predicted by our panel, tomorrow’s oldies, like tomorrow’s America, will be a lot less male-dominated, and a lot more diverse. Less than a third of the songs on our list are fronted by white men, and no artists are featured more frequently than pop music’s first couple Beyoncé and Jay-Z. Classic rock will soon be rivaled by classic rap, and the Cole Porter of the next American songbook may be Max Martin.

    Below, find the Top 30 songs, in order, all of which were nominated by at least two of our panelists. You can also read the individual ballots of everyone from Chuck Klosterman to NPR’s Ann Powers to Drive-By Truckers’ Patterson Hood. Which of today’s hits will endure as tomorrow’s golden oldies? Here’s our best guess.

    30. Idina Menzel – “Let It Go”

    Producers: Kristen Anderson-Lopez, Robert Lopez
    Songwriters: Kristen Anderson-Lopez, Robert Lopez
    Year: 2013

    29. Liz Phair – “Fuck and Run”

    Producers: Liz Phair, Brad Wood
    Songwriter: Liz Phair
    Year: 1993

    28. Daft Punk ft. Pharrell Williams and Nile Rodgers – “Get Lucky”

    Producers: Thomas Bangalter, Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo
    Songwriters: Thomas Bangalter, Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo, Nile Rodgers, Pharrell Williams
    Year: 2013

    27. Alanis Morissette – “You Oughta Know”

    Producer: Glen Ballard
    Songwriters: Alanis Morissette, Glen Ballard
    Year: 1995

    26. Old Crow Medicine Show – “Wagon Wheel”

    Producer: David Rawlings
    Songwriters: Bob Dylan, Ketch Secor
    Year: 2004

    25. Destiny’s Child – “Say My Name”

    Producer: Darkchild
    Songwriters: LaShawn Daniels, Rodney Jerkins, Fred Jerkins III, Beyoncé, LeToya Luckett, LaTavia Roberson, Kelly Rowland
    Year: 1999

    24. Israel Kamakawiwoʻole – “Somewhere Over the Rainbow/What a Wonderful World”

    Producers: Israel Kamakawiwoʻole, Jon de Mello
    Songwriters: Edgar Yipsel Harburg, Bob Thiele, George David Weiss
    Year: 1993

    23. Beyoncé ft. Jay-Z – “Crazy in Love”

    Producers: Rich Harrison, Beyoncé
    Songwriters: Beyoncé, Rich Harrison, Eugene Record, Shawn Carter
    Year: 2003

    22. Nine Inch Nails – “Hurt”

    Producer: Trent Reznor
    Songwriter: Trent Reznor
    Year: 1994

    Producers: Dr. Dre, Mike Elizondo
    Songwriters: Curtis Jackson, Andre Young, Mike Elizondo
    Year: 2003

    20. Adele – “Rolling in the Deep”

    Producer: Paul Epworth
    Songwriters: Adele Adkins, Paul Epworth
    Year: 2010

    19. Oasis – “Wonderwall”

    Producers: Owen Morris, Noel Gallagher
    Songwriter: Noel Gallagher
    Year: 1995

    18. Backstreet Boys – “I Want It That Way”

    Producers: Kristian Lundin, Max Martin
    Songwriters: Andreas Carlsson, Max Martin
    Year: 1999

    17. Rihanna ft. Calvin Harris – “We Found Love”

    Producer: Calvin Harris
    Songwriter: Calvin Harris
    Year: 2011

    16. The Killers – “Mr. Brightside”

    Producer: The Killers
    Songwriters: Brandon Flowers, Dave Keuning, Mark Stoermer, Ronnie Vannucci Jr.
    Year: 2003

    15. Céline Dion – “My Heart Will Go On”

    Producers: Walter Afanasieff, James Horner, Simon Franglen
    Songwriters: Will Jennings, James Horner
    Year: 1997

    14. Santana ft. Rob Thomas – “Smooth”

    Producer: Matt Serletic
    Songwriters: Itaal Shur, Rob Thomas
    Year: 1999

    13. Lauryn Hill – “Doo Wop (That Thing)”

    Producer: Lauryn Hill
    Songwriter: Lauryn Hill
    Year: 1998

    12. Drake – “Hotline Bling”

    Producer: Nineteen85
    Songwriters: Aubrey Graham, Paul Jefferies, Timmy Thomas
    Year: 2015

    11. Eminem – “Lose Yourself”

    Producers: Eminem, Jeff Bass, Luis Resto
    Songwriter: Marshall Mathers
    Year: 2002

    10. Carly Rae Jepsen – “Call Me Maybe”

    Producer: Josh Ramsay
    Songwriters: Carly Rae Jepsen, Josh Ramsay, Tavish Crowe
    Year: 2012

    9. TLC – “Waterfalls”

    Producer: Organized Noize
    Songwriters: Marqueze Etheridge, Lisa Lopes, Organized Noize
    Year: 1994

    8. The White Stripes – “Seven Nation Army”

    Producer: Jack White
    Songwriter: Jack White
    Year: 2003

    7. Mariah Carey – “All I Want for Christmas Is You”

    Producers: Mariah Carey, Walter Afanasieff
    Songwriters: Mariah Carey, Walter Afanasieff
    Year: 1994

    6. Mark Ronson ft. Bruno Mars – “Uptown Funk”

    Producers: Mark Ronson, Jeff Bhasker, Bruno Mars
    Songwriters: Jeff Bhasker, Philip Lawrence, Peter Hernandez, Mark Ronson, Nicholas Williams, Devon Gallaspy, Lonnie Simmons, Charles Wilson, Ronnie Wilson, Robert Wilson, Rudolph Taylor
    Year: 2014

    5. The Notorious B.I.G. – “Juicy”

    Producers: Poke of Trackmasters, Pete Rock
    Songwriters: Christopher Wallace, Hunter McIntosh, Sean Combs, Pete Rock, Jean-Claude Olivier, Samuel Barnes
    Year: 1994

    4. Kelly Clarkson – “Since U Been Gone”

    Producers: Max Martin, Dr. Luke
    Songwriters: Max Martin, Lukasz Gottwald
    Year: 2004

    3. Beyoncé – “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)”

    Producers: Christopher Stewart, Terius Nash, Beyoncé
    Songwriters: Christopher Stewart, Terius Nash, Thaddis Harrell, Beyoncé
    Year: 2008

    2. Jay-Z ft. Alicia Keys – “Empire State of Mind”

    Producer: Al Shux
    Songwriters: Angela Hunte, Alicia Keys, Alexander Shuckburgh, Bert Keyes, Janet Sewell-Ulepic, Shawn Carter, Sylvia Robinson
    Year: 2009

    1. Outkast – “Hey Ya”

    Producer: André 3000
    Songwriter: André 3000
    Year: 2003

    This future standard has the “best hook in history,” writes Powers. And it’s perhaps the strongest testament to Outkast’s world-conquering, genre-bending hit that you can’t help but mentally scroll through this perennial list-topper’s many catchy bits and respond, “Wait—which one?” Of course there’s the titular chorus, at once triumphant and melancholy. (While some panelists referred to it as “an expression of pure pop joy,” the lyrics find the singer worrying that all love is transient.) But there are also the hand claps putting three exclamation points on each couplet, the call-and-response section that lets the audience deliver the cooler-than-cool punchline, the “shake it like a Polaroid picture” bridge that people will be singing long after they’ve forgotten the purpose of shaking Polaroids, even the repetition of 14 straight “all rights” that embodies this song’s perfect combination of pop universality and André 3000 weirdness. (See also the time signature, which is either a standard 4/4 or a downright bizarre 11/4, depending on whom you ask.)

    And these hooks have already sunk themselves into subsequent generations. As Kois writes, “The first time I played this song for my kids it was as if they’d already heard it 1,000 times.” If what they say is “Nothing is forever,” “Hey Ya” might be the exception.

    #musique

  • Lagos | Black Panther fantasy inspires fantasy literature - ZAM
    https://www.zammagazine.com/perspectives/blog/783-lagos-black-panther-fantasy-inspires-fantasy-literature

    The success of the film Black Panther was a sensation and also made the star of the Nigerian-American science fiction author Nnedi Okorafor rise.

    (…) Roye Okupe: “I once tried to sell a story idea with a black superhero in Hollywood. The first thing the producer said: you have to change the skin colour of your hero.”

    After the success of Black Panther, the blockbuster, it all changed: all of a sudden there is a demand for scripts with black characters, preferably written by black authors, all three panellists say.

    (…) Okorafor: “But not all Afrofuturism is elitist. In my novel Binti, a girl from the Himba, a people in Namibia, plays the main role: how she breaks away from her environment and attends the best university in the universe.”

  • Hardy Fox, cofondateur et compositeur des Residents, longtemps anonyme, est mort
    https://www.lemonde.fr/disparitions/article/2018/11/03/le-cofondateur-et-compositeur-des-residents-longtemps-anonyme-est-mort_53784

    Le musicien américain Hardy Fox, cofondateur du groupe d’avant-garde #The_Residents, est mort mardi à l’âge de 73 ans des suites d’un cancer du cerveau. La nouvelle a été annoncée sur son site internet.

    Celui qui a été pendant plus de quatre décennies le clavier du groupe sous le pseudonyme de Charles Bobuck avait déjà dû renoncer à jouer avec lui en 2015, pour raisons de santé. Il en restait cependant le principal compositeur.

    The Residents fait ses débuts sur scène en 1971, et publie son premier album en 1974. Son nom (Meet the Residents) et sa pochette parodient ceux d’un album des Beatles sorti dix ans plus tôt.

    Plus que pour sa musique, satirique et avant-gardiste, les Residents sont connus du grand public pour leurs costumes sans lesquels ils n’apparaissent jamais. Le plus emblématique : un smoking et un masque en forme de globe oculaire géant, surmonté d’un chapeau haut-de-forme.

    #Fox_is_dead

  • Incarnation flegmatique et presque anachronique d’une certaine vision du cool, #Tony_Joe_White expliquait volontiers que s’il continuait à faire des chansons, c’est simplement parce qu’elles viennent à lui. Le #bluesman, un rien taciturne, de Oak Grove (Louisiane), avait popularisé le #swamp_rock, un cocktail sudiste mêlant rock, country, folklore cajun de Louisiane (zydeco) et boogie. Le songwriter, guitariste et harmoniciste s’est éteint le 25 octobre chez lui à Leiper’s Fork (Tennessee) d’une crise cardiaque à l’âge de 75 ans.

    https://www.fip.fr/actualites/disparition-de-tony-joe-white-34480
    http://www.tonyjoewhite.com
    https://www.youtube.com/user/TonyJoeWhiteOfficial
    https://tonyjoewhite.bandcamp.com/track/bad-mouthin


    #bandcamp

  • The Everyday Consumption of “#Whiteness”: The #Gaikokujin-fū (Foreign-Like) Hair Trend in Japan

    In feminist literature, the beauty and the fashion industries have at times been criticized for being one of the means through which women are objectified.1 Likewise, Critical Race Studies have often pinpointed how the existence of a global beauty industry has the effect of propagating Eurocentric beauty ideals.2 Throughout this article I aim to explore the complicated ways in which beauty and racialized categories intersect in Japan through an analysis of the female-targeted hair trend of the gaikokujin-fū (foreigner-like) hair.

    Essentialism is what prompts us to divide the world into two, “us” versus “them,” negating all that is in between the two categories or even changes within the categories themselves. Although this binary thinking has been subject to criticism by various disciplines, such as Critical Race Studies and Postcolonial Studies, it is still among the dominant ways in which human relations are performed in Japanese society. The essentialistic opposing duality between Foreignness and Japaneseness has been constructed in post-war Japan through widespread discourses known by the name nihonjinron (lit. the theories on the Japanese).3 Even though it could be understood as a powerful reply to American racism towards the Japanese, nihonjinron only confirms stereotypes by reversing their value, from negative to positive. Moreover, these theories have had the effect of emphasizing Japanese racial and cultural purity through the alienation and exoticization of the other, most often represented by the white “Westerner”4 (obeijin, seiyōjin, hakujin).

    The ambivalent exoticism that surrounds the foreigner (gaikokujin) has made it possible for racialised categories and consumerism to intersect in the archipelago. The beauty industry is particularly susceptible to the segmentation between “self” and “other,” and the global white hegemony has a certain influence over it. However, as Miller rightly observes, dominant beauty standards in Japan are equally influenced by local values of “Japaneseness.”5 Torigoe goes even farther: in her essay, she positions whiteness as a power relation and through her analysis she demonstrates how white women are constructed as Others in Japanese media representations, thus creating “a racial ladder that places Japanese people on top.”6 The link between whiteness and widespread beauty practices has been criticized also in studies of the neighbouring country of Korea, with scholars arguing that cosmetic surgeries in the country are successful only if they enhance the body’s natural “Koreanness.”7

    My aim in this paper is to tackle the capitalistic commercialization and fetishization of whiteness in contemporary Japan. As it will become clear throughout the analysis, the Japanese beauty industry is creating a particular image of whiteness that is suitable to the consumers’ needs and desires: this toned-down, less threating way of becoming “foreigner-like” is marketed as an accessory that far from overriding one’s natural features, is instrumental in accentuating and valorizing them. Investigating the peculiar position of this beauty trend, which has been affected by the influence of the two contrasting hegemonic discourses of white supremacy and the purity/superiority of the Japanese race, might be helpful in shedding some light on the increasingly complicated ways the concept of race is being constructed in a setting that has been often considered “other” to the Eurocentric gaze.

    Whiteness and the Global Beauty Industry

    Beauty is an important practice in our daily life, and as such it has been at the center of animated discussions about its social function. Seen as one of the practices through which gender is performed, it has been put into scrutiny by feminist literature. The approach used to analyze beauty has been dualistic. On the one hand, the beauty and fashion industries have been criticized for being among the reasons of women’s subordination, depriving them financially8 and imposing on them male normative standards of beauty.9 On the other, it has been cited as one of the ways in which female consumers could express their individuality in an oppressive world.10

    The increasingly globalized beauty and fashion industries have also been subjects of criticism from the viewpoint of Critical Race Studies. It is not uncommon to hear that these industries are guilty of spreading Eurocentric tastes, thus privileging pale-skinned, thin women with light hair.11 The massive sale of skin-whitening creams in Asia and Africa as well as the creation of new beauty standards that privilege thinness over traditionally preferred plump forms are often cited to defend this argument. At the same time, there have been instances in which this denouncing of Eurocentrism itself has been charged guilty of the same evil. Practices such as plastic surgery in South Korea and Japanese preference for white skin have been often criticized as being born out of the desire to be “Western”: these analyses have been contested as simplistic and ignoring the cultural significance of local standards of beauty in shaping beauty ideals.12

    Answers to these diatribes have not been yet found.13 It is nonetheless clear that beauty practices articulate a series of complex understandings about gender and race, often oscillating between particularisms and universalisms. Throughout this article I would like to contribute to this ongoing discussion analyzing how pre-existing notions of race and gender intersect and are re-shaped in a newly emerging trend aptly called gaikokujin-fū (foreigner-like) hair.

    Us/Others in Japan: The Essentialization of the Foreign
    Japan and the tan’itsu minzoku

    It is not uncommon to hear that Japan is one of the most ethnically homogenous countries in the world. In Japanese, the locution tan’itsu minzoku (single/unique ethnic group, people, nation), was often used as a slogan when comparing the archipelago with significantly multi-ethnic countries such as the USA.14 The notion of Japan as a mono-ethnic country is being starkly criticized in recent years:15 minorities such as the zainichi Koreans and Chinese who have been living in the country since the end of the second world war, the conspicuous populations of foreign immigrants from Asia and Latin America, as well as mixed-race people, who were thought of as a social problem until these last ten years,16 have been making their voices heard. In the following paragraphs, I will trace how the idea of a racially homogeneous Japan was constructed.

    The word minzoku (ethnic group, people, nation) first appeared in the Japanese language in the Taishō Period (1912-1926), as an alternative to the term jinshū (race).17 The concept of race did not exist prior to the Meiji period (1868-1912), when it was introduced by scholars as one of the ideas from the “West” that would have helped Japan become a modernized nation.18 It could be argued that while the opening up of Japan after the sakoku period was not the first time that the Japanese government had to interact with people of different racial features,19 it was the first time that the idea of racial hierarchies were introduced to the country. Japanese scholars recognized themselves to be part of the ōshoku jinshū (“yellow race”), hierarchically subordinate to the “white race.”20 With rising nationalism and the beginning of the colonization project during the Taishō period, the need arose for a concept that could further differentiate the Japanese people from the neighboring Asian countries such as the newly annexed Taiwan and Korea:21 the newly created minzoku fit this purpose well. Scholar Kawai Yuko compared the term to the German concept of Volk, which indicates a group whose identity is defined by shared language and culture. These traits are racialized, as they are defined as being “biological,” a natural component of the member of the ethnic group who acquires them at birth.22 It was the attribution of these intrinsic qualities that allowed the members of the naichi (mainland Japan) to be assigned in a superior position to the gaichi (colonies). Interestingly, the nationalistic discourse of the pre-war and of the war period had the double intent of both establishing Japanese supremacy and legitimizing its role as a “guide” for the colonies grounding it in their racial affinities: unlike the conquerors from Europe, the Japanese were of similar breed.

    These hierarchies were ultimately dissociated from the term minzoku after the end of the Second World War, when it was appropriated by Leftist discourse. Opposing it to ta-minzoku (multiethnic nation or people)23

    that at the time implied divisions and inequalities and was perceived as a characteristic of the Japanese Empire, Left-leaning intellectuals advocated a tan’itsu minzoku nation based on equality. The Leftist discourse emphasized the need of the “Japanese minzoku” to stand up to the American occupation, but the term gradually lost its critical nuance when Japan reached economic prosperity and tan’itsu minzoku came to mean racial homogeneity as a unique characteristic of Japanese society, advocated by the Right.24

    Self-Orientalism

    The term minzoku might have “lost his Volk-ish qualities,”25 but homogeneity in Japan is also perceived to be of a cultural nature. Sociologists Mouer and Sugimoto26 lament that many Japanese people believe to be the carriers of an “unique” and essentialized cultural heritage, that renders them completely alien to foreigners. According to the two scholars, the distinctive qualities that have been usually (self-)ascribed to Japanese people are the following: a weak individuality, the tendency to act in groups, and the tendency to privilege harmony in social situations.27 Essentialized “Japaneseness” is a mixture of these psychological traits with the products of Japanese history and culture. The perception that Japaneseness is ever unchanging and a cultural given of each Japanese individual was further increased by the popularity of the nihonjinron discourse editorial genre, which gained mass-media prominence in the archipelago after the 1970s along with Japan’s economic growth.28 Drawing on Said’s notion of Orientalism,29 Miller states that “in the case of Japan, we have to deal […] with the spectacle of a culture vigorously determined to orientalize itself.”30 According to Roy Miller, Japan has effectively constructed Japaneseness through a process of self-othering, which he refers to as self-Orientalism. The nihonjinron publications were very much influenced by cultural anthropologist Ruth Benedict’s highly influential “The Chrysanthemum and the Sword,” published in 1946. Benedict’s study of the “Japanese people” is based on the assumption that the USA and Japan are polar opposites where the former stands for modernity and individualism whereas the latter is characterized by tradition and groupism.31

    Japanese anthropologists and psychoanalysts, such as Nakane and Doi32 further contributed to the study of Japaneseness, never once challenging the polar opposition between the “Japanese” and the “Westernerners.”

    It would seem contradictory at first for a large number of people in Japan to have this tendency to think and consume their own culture through stereotypes. However, Iwabuchi draws attention to the fact that Japan’s self-Orientalism is not just a passive acceptance of “Western” values but is in fact used to assert the nation’s cultural superiority. It remains nonetheless profoundly complicit with Euro-American Orientalism insofar that it is an essentializing and reifying process: it erases all internal differences and external similarities.33 This essentialization that Japan is capitalizing on proves fundamental for the “West,” as it is the tool through which it maintains its cultural hegemony.

    Images of the Foreigner

    Images of the foreigner are not equal, and they form an important node in the (self-)Orientalistic relations that Japan entertains with the rest of the world. An essentialized view of both the Euro-American and Asian foreigner functions in different ways as a counterweight to the “we-Japanese” (ware ware Nihonjin) rhethoric.

    In the Japanese language, gaikokujin (foreigner) refers to every person who doesn’t have the same nationality as the country she/he lives in.34 The term gaikokujin does not have racial connotations and can be used to effectively describe anyone that is not a Japanese citizen. However, the racially-charged related term gaijin35 refers especially to the “white” foreigner.36 Written very similarly to gaikokujin, the word gaijin actually has a different origin and the double meaning of “foreigner” and “outsider.” The word carries strong implications of “othering,” and refers to the construction of the Europe and America as other to the young nation-state in the Meiji period, during which knowledge was routinely imported from the “West.”37 Thus, gaijin and the representation of foreigners-as-other came to reflect the dominant hierarchies of nineteenth-century “Western” knowledge.38

    Putting every white-skinned individual in the same category functions as a strategy to create the antithetical “West” that is so important as a marker of difference in self-Orientalism: it serves to create an “Other” that makes it possible to recognize the “Self.”39 At the same time, it perpetuates the perception of whiteness as the dominant position in America and Europe. In her analysis on the use of foreigner models in Japanese advertisements, Creighton notes that representation of gaijin positions them both as a source of innovation and style and as a potential moral threat.40

    This splitting is not uncommon when dealing with representations of the Other. What generates it is the fetishistic component that is always present in the stereotype.41 Bhabha argues that this characteristic allows the Other to be understood in a contradictory way as a source of both pleasure and anxiety for the Non-Other. Stuart Hall draws on Bhabha’s theories to state that the stereotype makes it so that this binary description can be the only way in which is possible to think of the Other–they generate essentialized identities.42 In the Japanese context, the gaijin, fulfilling his role as a racially visible minority,43 is thus inscribed in the double definition of source of disruption and person to admire (akogare no taishō).

    Whiteness in the Japanese Context

    Akogare (admiration, longing, desire) is a word that young women44 in Japan often use when talking about the “white, Western” foreigner. Kelsky explains that the word indicates the longing for something that is impossible to obtain and she maintains that “it is a rather precise gloss […] of the term “desire” in Lacanian usage. […] Desire arises from lack and finds expression in the fetish. The fetish substitutes the thing that is desired but impossible to obtain.”45 Fulfilment of this unattainable desire can be realized through activities such as participation in English conversation classes and engaging in conversation with “Western” people.46 The consumption of “Western” images and representations as well as everyday practices associated with the Euro-American foreigner could also be considered a fetish that substitutes the unattainable object of desire. In this sense, the gaikokujin-fū hairstyle trend might be for the producers one such way of catering to young Japanese women’s akogare for the “Western” world.

    Gaikokujin-fū is inextricably connected to gaijin, “white” foreigners. For instance, the Hair Encyclopedia section of the website Hotpepper Beauty reports two entries with the keyword gaikokujin-fū: gaikokujin-fū karā (foreigner-like color) and gaikokujin-fū asshu (foreigner-like ash). The “color” entry states the following:

    Gaikokujin-fū karā means, as the name suggests, a dye that colors the hair in a tint similar to that of foreigners. The word “foreigner” here mostly stands for people with white skin and blond hair that are usually called “American” and “European.”47

    Similarly, the “ash” entry explains the following:

    The coloring that aims for the kind of blond hair with little red pigments that is often found among Americans is called gaikokujin-fū asshu.

    Asshu means “grey” and its characteristic is to give a slightly dull (dark?) impression. It fits well with many hairstyles ranging from short cuts to long hair, and it can be done in a way to make you look like a “western” hāfu (mixed race individual).

    It is clear from these descriptions that the term gaikokujin-fū is racially charged. What hairdresser discourse is trying to reproduce is a kind of hair color associated with America and Europe’s Caucasian population. They are selling “whiteness.”

    Writing from the viewpoint of multicultural England, Dyer writes that the study of the representation of white people is important because “as long as white people are not racially seen and named, they/we function as a human norm.”49 White discourse is ubiquitous, and it is precisely this unmarked invisibility that makes it a position of dominance. The representation of people belonging to minority groups is inevitably marked or tied to their race or skin color, but Caucasians are often “just people.” At the base of white privilege there is this characteristic of universality that is implied in whiteness.

    The marked positioning of the white foreigner in Japanese society would seem an exception to this rule. Torigoe, while acknowledging that the Japanese media “saturated [her] with images of young white females as the standard of beauty,”50 analyzes in her article how white beauty actually embodies values such as overt sexual attractiveness that would be considered deviant or over the top by standard societal norms.51 Likewise, Russell points to the scrutiny that the bodies of the white female woman receive on Japanese mass media, dominated by a male gaze. White females become subject to the sexual curiosity of the Japanese male, and being accompanied by one of them often makes him look more sophisticated and competitive in a globalized world.52 As the most easily, less controversially portrayed Other through which Japanese self-identity is created, the white individual is often subject to stereotyping and essentialization. Russell notes this happening in both advertisement and the portrayal of white local celebrities, that assume even “whiter” characteristics in order to better market their persona in the Japanese television environment.

    However, it is my opinion that we must be careful to not be exceedingly uncritical of the marginality that Caucasians are subject to in Japanese society. I argue that whiteness is in an ambiguous position in the Japanese context: it would be wrong to say that in the archipelago white people do not benefit from the privileges that have accompanied their racialization up to the present times. The othering processes that whites are subject to is more often than not related to them being brought up and representing a different culture than to their racial difference.54 The word hakujin (lit. white person) is barely used in everyday conversation, whereas it is more common to hear the term kokujin (lit. black person): white people are not reduced to their racial characteristics in the same way as black people might be.55 Whiteness might not be the completely hegemonic in the Japanese context, but the country does not exist in a vacuum, and its standards have been influenced by the globally hegemonic white euro-centric values to some extent.

    To reiterate, white people in the Japanese archipelago experience the contradictory position of being a visible minority subject to reifying “othering” processes while at the same time reaping many of the benefits and privileges that are usually associated with the color of their skin. They are socially and politically located at the margins but are a hegemonic presence in the aesthetic consciousness as an ideal to which aspire to. In the following sections, I will expand on gaikokujin’s ambiguous location by looking at the ways in which whiteness is consumed through the gaikokujin-fū hairstyle trend.

    Producing Whiteness: Selling gaikokujin-fū Hair
    Creating the “New”

    In order to understand the meanings shaping the catchphrase gaikokujin-fū, I have used a mixture of different approaches. My research began by applying the methods of Visual Analysis56 to the latest online promotional material. I have tried to semiotically analyze the pictures on the websites in relation to the copywriting. In addition, I have complemented it with fieldwork, interviewing a total of seven hairdressers and four girls aged from 20 to 2457 in the period between April and June 2017. It was while doing fieldwork that I realized how important social networking is for the establishment of contemporary trends: this is frequently acknowledged also in the press by textually referencing hashtags.58 Instagram is a very important part of Japanese girls’ everyday life, and is used both as a tool for self-expression/self-promotion as well as a compass to navigate the ever-growing ocean of lifestyle trends. Japanese internet spaces had been previously analyzed as relatively closed spaces created and accessed by predominantly Japanese people, and this had implications on how online discourses about races were carried on.59 However, being a predominantly visual medium, Instagram also functions as a site where information can, to a large extent, overcome language barriers.

    The gaikokujin-fū hashtag counts 499,103 posts on Instagram, whereas 381,615 pictures have been tagged gaikokujin-fū karā.60 Most of them are published by professional whose aim is to publicize their work, and it is not uncommon to find pricing and information for booking in the description.

    Scrolling down the results of the Instagram search, it is easy to notice the high number of back and profile shots; what the hairdressers are trying to show through these pictures is their hairdressing skills. By cutting out the face they are putting the hair itself at the center of the viewer’s attention and eliminating any possibility of identification. The aim here is to sell “whiteness” as an object. The trendsetters are capitalizing on a term (gaikokujin-fū) that has already an appealing meaning outside the field of hair coloring, and that is usually associated with the wider desire or longing (akogare) for “Western” people, culture and lifestyle.

    To the non-initiated, the term gaikokujin-fū might indicate anything that is not “Japanese like” such as curly hair, or blonde hair. However, it became clear when speaking to my hairdresser informants that they only used the term referring to the ash-like coloring. Professionals in the field are reclaiming it to define a new, emerging niche of products that only started appearing a couple of years ago.61 In doing so, Japanese hairdressers are creating a new kind of “whiteness” that goes beyond the “Western” cultural conception of white as blonde and blue-eyed, in order to make it more acceptable to Japanese societal standards. In fact, fair hair is considered extremely unnatural.62 The advantage that ash brown hair has over blonde is the relatively darker shade that allows consumers to stand out without being completely out of place.63

    However, gaikokujin-fū hair comes at a cost. All of my informants told me during the interviews that the colors usually associated with this trend involve dyes have a blue or green base, and are very difficult to recreate on most people of the East Asia whose naturally black hair has a red base. The difficulty they experienced in reproducing the Ash (asshu) and Matt colors on Japanese hair constituted a fundamental charm point for hair technicians, and precisely because of this being able to produce a neat ash coloring might be considered synonymous with keeping on pace with the last technology in hair dying. The Wella “Illumina Color”64 series came out in September 2015, while Throw,65 a Japanese-produced series of hair dyes that eliminate the reddish undertones of Japanese black hair, went on sale very recently in June 2016.66 Another Japanese maker, Milbon, released its “Addichty Color”67 series as recently as February 2017. The globally dominant but locally peripheral whiteness has been “appropriated” and domesticated by Japanese hairdressers as a propeller of the latest trends, as a vital tool in creating the “new.”

    To summarize, the technological developments in hair dyes certainly gave a big push to the popularizing of the gaikokujin-fū hairstyle trend. Moreover, in a very chicken-and-egg-like fashion, the technological advancing itself was at the same time motivated by the admiration and desire towards Euro-American countries. However, this desire for “Westerness” does not entail adopting whiteness in its essentialized “purest” form,68 as that would have negative implications in the context of Japanese society. Rather, Japanese trendsetters have operated a selection and chosen the variant of whiteness that would be different enough to allow the creation of the “latest” while minimizing its more threatening aspects.
    Branding the “New”

    In the previous section I mentioned the fact that most of pictures posted on the social network Instagram serve to amplify and diffuse existing values for consumption, and constantly refer to a set of meanings that are generated elsewhere reifying them. Throughout this section I will examine the production of these values through the branding of the aforementioned hair dye brands: Wella’s “Illumina Color,” THROW, and Milbon’s “Addichty Color.”

    Wella’s “Illumina Color” offers an interesting case study as it is produced by an American multinational brand. Comparing the Japanese website with the international one, it is clear that we have before our eyes a prime example of “glocalization.”69 While on the international webpage70 the eye-catch is a picture of a white, blue-eyed blonde woman that sports an intricate braided hairstyle with some purplish accents in the braid, the Japanese71 version features a hāfu-like72 young woman with long, flowing straight dark brown hair. The description of the product also contains the suggestive sentence “even the hard and visible hair typical of the Japanese [can become] of a pale, soft color.” The keywords here are the terms hard (katai) and soft (yawaraka). Hardness is defined as being a characteristic typical of the Japanese hair texture (nihonjin tokuyū) and it is opposed to the desired effect, softness. The sentence implies by contrasting the two terms that softness is not a characteristic of Japanese hair, and the assumption could be taken further to understand that it is a quality typical of the “foreign.” Perhaps unsurprisingly, the international webpage contains no such reference and instead vaguely praises the hair dye’s ability to provide a light color. The visuals of the latter are consistent with Dyer’s definition of whiteness.

    Unlike Wella, Milbon and beauty experience are Japanese companies, and their products ORDEVE Addichty and THROW are only geared to the Japanese marketplace. Milbon’s ORDEVE Addichty dye series is the most recent of the two. The product’s promotional webpage is almost entirely composed of pictures: the top half features 14 moving pictures, two for each of the seven colours available. The pictures slide in a way that shows the customer all the four sides of the model’s bust up, and each one of the girls is holding a sign with the name of the product. To the center left, we see a GIF image with the name of the brand in the roman and Japanese alphabet, accompanied by the catchphrase hajimete mitsukaru, atarashii watashirashisa (“I found it for the first time, a new way of being myself”), that slides into another text-filled picture that explains the concepts behind the branding.

    Occidental-like (ōbeijin) voluminous hair with a shine (tsuya) never seen before. This incredible feeling of translucence (tōmeikan) that even shows on your Instagram [pictures], will receive a lot of likes from everybody. Let’s find the charm of a freer myself with Addichty color!

    The red-diminishing dyes are here associated with both physical and ideological characteristics identified as “Western,” like the “feeling of translucence” (tōmeikan)73 and “freedom” (jiyū). The word tōmeikan is a constant of technical descriptions of gaikokujin-fū and it is generally very difficult for the hairdressers to explain what does it mean. My hairdresser informant N. quickly explained to me that having translucent hair means to have a hair color that has a low red component. Informants H. and S., also hair professionals, further explained that translucency is a characteristic typical of hair that seems to be semi-transparent when hit by light. While in the English-speaking world it would certainly be unusual to positively describe somebody’s hair as translucent, tōmeikan is a positive adjective often used as a compliment in other different contexts and it indicates clarity and brightness. In fact, the Japanese Daijisen dictionary lists two definitions for translucent, the second of which reads “clear, without impurities.”74 It is perhaps in relation to this meaning that the melanin-filled black core of the Japanese hair is considered “heavy” (omoi) and strong. Reddish and lighter brown colors are also defined in the same way. What is more, even hair colors at the other end of the spectrum can be “muddy”(nigori no aru): blonde hair is also described as such.75 It is clear that while tōmeikan is a quality of “occidental hair,” it is not a characteristic of all the shades that are usually associated with whiteness.

    In the last sentence, “freedom” is linked to charm (miryoku) and the individual. These three concepts are also very often associated with the foreigner. The freedom of the gaijin is a freedom from social constraints and from the sameness that pervades dominant representations of Japaneseness.76 Individualism is further emphasized by the pronoun “myself,” which in the original Japanese is a possessive pronoun to the word “charm” (miryoku). As a word, miryoku has an openly sexual connotation, and because of this it might be linked to the concept of “foreignness.” As Torigoe found out in her analysis of Japanese advertisements, white women are often represented as a sexualized counterpart to the more innocent Japanese woman.77 Gaikokujin-fū hair offers customers the possibility to become closer to obtaining this sexiness, that distances the self from the monotone standards of society.

    Of the three, THROW is possibly the most interesting to analyze, mostly because of the huge quantity of content they released in order to strengthen the brand image. In addition to the incredibly detailed homepage, they are constantly releasing new media contents related to gaikokujin-fū coloring on their “THROW Journal.”78

    The “story” page of the website serves as an explanation of the brand identity. It is a vertically designed page heavy on images, possibly designed to be optimally visualized in mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. The first image that the viewer encounters is that of a girl whose brown hair is flowing in the wind, which results in some strands covering the features of her pale-white face. This makes it hard to understand her nationality and makes it so that all the attention is focused on the light, airy qualities of the hair. As I said before, “lightness” (karusa) is associated to translucency and is one of the characteristics at the center of the marketing of gaikokujin-fū. This picture very clearly renders those sensations in a way that is very pleasant to the eye and indeed invites consumption.

    Under the picture we find a very short narration that complements it. In bigger characters, the words dare de mo nai, watashi ni naru, that roughly translates as “I’ll become a myself, that is nobody else.” Here again we find an emphasis on individuality and difference. Scrolling down, we find the following paragraph written in a smaller font:

    I leave my body to the blowing wind.

    My hair is enveloped in light, and is filled by the pleasant air.

    What I needed was this [facial] expression.

    I got rid of what I did not need, and refreshingly freed my mind.

    Gracefully, freely.

    I should just enjoy myself more.79

    Unlike the tagline in the Addichty webpage, THROW’s brand identity is here described in ideological terms only. Once again, “freedom” is the central theme, and is associated with a sensation of freshness (kaze, “the wind”; also, the onomatopoeia sutto, here rendered as “refreshingly”). The image of release is further emphasized by the fact that “I” of this text is in close contact with nature: her skin feels the wind, she is shrouded in light and breathes pure air. But what is the subject being released from? The fourth and the last line would suggest that she is being trapped by social constraints, something akin to the Freudian super-ego, that somehow renders her unable to enjoy herself for what she really is. My literal translation of the sixth line makes it hard to understand the hedonistic implications of its meaning: what the original Japanese implies is not simply that she should “have fun,” but she should be finding pleasure in what she is and not what she is expected to be. It is perhaps strange to the eyes of the Euro-American observer accustomed to the discourse of white supremacy that the consumption of whiteness comes with an invitation to spontaneity. The whiteness being sold here is certainly perceived in a radically different way from the Eurocentric “West,” where it is associated with self-constraint.80 It is being marketed to the Japanese public in a way that reminds the portrayal of minorities in the white-dominated world,81 and that makes it particularly appealing to the archipelago’s consumers.

    Listening to the producers’ interviews, it becomes clear for them that the red pigments of the hair, as a symbol of this self-Orientalistically represented “Japaneseness” are represented as a further constraint. Producer Kimura Naoto speaks of a “liberation from redness for the women who hate it”;82 fellow member of the production team Horiuchi brings up the ever-present desire in Japanese women to “become like foreigners,”83 but neither of the two explains the connection between the deletion of red pigments from the hair and the possibility of becoming foreigner-like. It is perhaps this lack of an explicit connection in an explanation from an expert that makes it perceived as an “obvious truth.” In fact, nobody seems to refer to the fact that red undertones are common overseas as well, not to mention the existence of redheads in predominantly Caucasian regions. By hiding these facts, the red pigments are constructed as something that is peculiarly Japanese and juxtaposed to the exclusively foreign blue pigments, further contributing to the essentializing of the gaikokujin that propels self-Orientalism.

    Consuming Whiteness: Gaikokujin-fū and Everyday Life

    To understand the ways that gaikokujin-fū was being interpreted and consumed I conducted fieldwork for two months (April-June 2017) in Tokyo. Engaging in participant observation proved to be relatively easy, since superficial conversation about beauty trends is one of the most common ways that young women around my age use to socialize. Most of my peers were very quick to react every time I lightly introduced the subject. However, due to the perceived “lightness” of the topic, not many people showed to be willing to talk prolongedly about it. This prompted me to supplement the fieldwork with semi-structured interviews I conducted with four people aged 20-22.

    The general reaction to the gaikokujin-fū buzzword was one of recognition–the existence of the trend was acknowledged both by people who were actually familiar with it as well as by others who were not really interested but had seen the phrase and recognized a more general idea behind it. As the reader might expect after having gone through the previous chapter, consumers of gaikokujin-fū hair all brought up the difficulties they had in obtaining the desired results. When I first contacted K., a 23-year-old university student in Tokyo, she told me to wait till the following week for the interview since she had an appointment to dye her hair of an ash-like color. Seven days later, I was surprised to see that her hair had not changed much. Turns out that her virgin hair was a very difficult base to work with: having never bleached it, it proved to be very resistant to blue-green dyes. Dying the hair of an ash-like color would have been impossible as the naturally red pigments of the hair would have completely nullified the effect.

    Whiteness as Empowerment, Whiteness as Difference

    K. was nonetheless very accommodating and answered my questions very enthusiastically. To her, the word gaikokujin had indeed a very positive meaning, and she specifically associated it to difference. My informant used a very harsh word when talking about her fellow Japanese: to her, Japanese style equals mass-production. Her image of Japan was perfectly congruent with those described by Mouer and Sugimoto in their critique of Nihonjinron. “Ordinary” Japanese girls were, in her opinion, the cutesy and quiet girls with straight black hair and bangs covering their foreheads. Why did she feel attracted to gaikokujin-fū in the first place? K. felt that the “traditional” Japanese image was constraining, and she had both very physical and empirical reasons (she does not like face with bangs) as well as a specific ideological background. It is worth nothing here that K. has had since her childhood a very strong akogare towards “Western countries”: she has studied English since she was a small child and is now studying Italian, which led her to spend a year abroad in the University of Venice. Moreover, she attended a very liberal protestant high school in Tokyo, where students were allowed to dye their hair and had no obligation to wear the school uniform. She herself stated that the liberal environment she was brought up in had a huge influence on her view of the world and thus she did not feel the need to “conform.” K. speaks from a privileged position that allowed her to glimpse a “different” world, in which she is promised freedom. In a similar fashion to the representations I analysed in the previous chapter, “Western” foreign becomes a symbol of liberation from the societal constraints of a traditionalistic society.

    The liberating qualities of the akogare towards the essentialized “Western” foreign have been brought up in previous research as a space for young women to astray themselves from the hierarchies of everyday life. The link between freedom and diversity was indeed particularly strong in K., who feels somehow “oppressed” by certain aspects of society. However, this is far from being a universal mode of consumption: in fact, the other three girls never even mentioned anything ideological. To S., a 22-year-old girl I met while studying in Tokyo two years ago, dying her hair of an ash-like hue was an act genuinely finalized to the enhancement of her beauty: she thought the color made her face look brighter. While she too stated during the interview that foreigners are viewed as cool and fashionable, she did not allude to a desire to “become” one nor she mentioned any ideological values associated with them that she emphasized with. In her everyday practice, whiteness is consumed as a tool regardless of its hegemonic signified. Informants A. and H. talked about the trend in a similar way. H. initially dyed her hair because she liked how cute ash hair looked on her favourite model, and had little more to say other than that. Her friend A., who recently graduated from a fashion school, confessed that in her environment standing out was more the rule than a subversive act. Her ash phase was brief and followed by even more explosive hues such as blue and pink. S., A., and H., were very much less conscious of their ways of consumption, but, as French theorist Michel de Certeau argues,84 it is precisely the aimlessness of their wandering that make their practices subvert the hegemony established by the global white supremacy. Having gaikokujin-fū hair is one of the strategies that Japanese women have at their disposition to attain beauty, and while it is trendy, it is far from being superior to different styles. Whiteness becomes an accessory that enhances the natural beauty of the self, and it is not employed to override one’s original racial features but rather to enrich them through the display of individuality. Under this light, it is possible to see the consumption of foreign-like hair as an unconscious tentative of overcoming the racialized barriers that might generate uncanny feelings in the eyes of the “white” spectator.

    Subdued Subversion and the Ambiguities of Consumption

    There are however at least two factors that complicate the consumption of gaikokujin-fū hair, making it a multifaceted and complex process. Firstly, during my interview with K. we discussed the differences between this and other fashion trends that tend to refuse the stereotypical sameness of the constructed Japanese image. K. suggested the existence of an even more individualistic trend–Harajuku–style fashion. The Harajuku district of Tokyo is famous world-wide for hosting a wide range of colourful subcultures,85 which my interviewee described with terms such as dokusouteki (creative) and yancha (mischievous). Harajuku fashion is individuality taken to such a level in which it becomes even more openly contestant of society. S. described these subcultures as referencing the image of “an invented fantasy world, completely out of touch with reality.” The gaikokujin-fū hair colour is indeed a way to break out of the “factory mould,” but it is a relatively tame way of doing it as it is the consumption of a domesticized otherness. As I also pointed out during the analysis of the production processes, the aesthetics of the trend are largely shaped in relation to societal norms and purposely do not excessively break out of them. Especially in its darker tones, foreign-like ash hair is visually closer (albeit chemically harder to obtain) than platinum blonde, and it is precisely in these shades that the hue is being consumed by girls like K. and S.

    Furthermore, one could say that Gaikokujin-fū hues can at times be experimentations instrumental to the formation of one’s identity. H. and S. both explained that they tried out ash dyes as a phase, only then to move on to something that they thought better reflected their own selves. In both cases, that meant going back to their natural black color and to darker tones. H., in particular, after spending her three years of freedom in university experimenting with various hues, finally concluded in her fourth and final year that natural black hair was “what suits Japanese people best.”. After trying out the “Other” and recognizing it as such, her identification acted as what Stuart Hall might have called a suture between her as an acting subject and the discursive practices of “Japaneseness.”86 As “foreignness,” and whiteness as one of its variants, cannot be easily conceived outside the dominant self-Orientalistic discourses, even gaikokujin-fū is inevitably bound to the essentialized “Japaneseness” of the Nihonjinron. This is only worsened by the fact that foreign-like hair colors are a product in the beauty market: they need to be marketed to the consumers, and this necessitates simplification. Essentialization and the reinforcement of self-Orientalism are the high prices that one must pay for the consumption of the other, and constitute a big limitation of its subversive power.

    Conclusion

    I have attempted to analyse the ways in which whiteness is produced and consumed in Japan, a country with significant economic and cultural power that does not have a significant Caucasian population. I have chosen as the topic a feature of the human body that is usually considered peripherical to the construction of racialized categories, and I have attempted to demonstrate how it becomes central in the production of an occidentalistic image of “whiteness” in the Japanese Archipelago.

    What this trend helps us to understand is the complexities and multiplicities of whiteness. By shedding some light on the way that hairdressers in Japan construct and sell the gaikokujin-fū trend we become aware of the fact that an aspect such as hair color that we do not usually pay much attention to in relation to this racialized category can be central when the same is consumed in a different setting. It is significant that what is being marketed here it is a slightly different paradigm from the Eurocentric or conventional idea of “white” people, that sees at its center blonde-haired, fair-skinned people with blue or green eyes: whiteness is mitigated and familiarized in order to make it more desirable to wider audiences. Its localized production and its consumption as a disposable accessory might be taken as challenging to the global dominance of Caucasian aesthetic.

    Acting in the (locally) ambiguous field of racial representations,87 hairdressers in Japan are creating their own whiteness, one that is starkly defined by what is socially acceptable and what is rejected.88 It thus becomes apparent the fact that racialized categories are nothing but discourses, constantly morphing in relation to time and space. The existence of a different whiteness created by and for the use of people who are not considered as belonging to this racialized category creates conflict with the discourse of a global, hegemonic whiteness by demonstrating its artificiality and construction.

    However, the use of the word gaikokujin inevitably generates ambivalent meanings. The trend becomes linked to the discourse of “foreignness” and the desires associated with it. Eventually, it ends up reproducing the essentialist and reifying stereotypes that are creating through the occidentalistic (and self-Orientalistic) practices of nihonjinron. The trend potentially reinforces the “us/them” barriers that are at the basis of essentialistic thought by juxtaposing the desired “foreign hair” as a polar opposite of the more conservative and traditional “Japanese hair.”

    To reiterate, gaikokujin-fū might be subversive on the global scale, but it is nonetheless an expression of the oppressive mainstream on the local level, as it restates notions of difference and exclusivity that form the basis for social exclusion of phenotypically alien foreigners. Unfortunately, the practices of marketing necessitate simplifications, and makes it is hard to achieve what I believe would be the most subversive action: the elimination of these reifying barriers. It is imperative that we start to think about ways to talk about race and culture in a non-essentializing manner while maintaining an anti-white-centric stance.

    Although the problem of essentialization cannot be resolved by looking at representation only, by looking at how the product is effectively consumed in everyday life we might find that these semi-conscious practices already offer some hints on how to overcome the barriers that reification builds around us. It is indeed true that consumers answer to the “call” of the marketers, and that they identify themselves to some extent with the images of racialized whiteness created by the beauty industry. However, what the interviews revealed is that often times the link between image and product is broken in the immediacy of consumption. By using whiteness as an accessory, some of the consumers open up a space in which they contest the seriousness and rigidity of racialized categories–a space that allows hybridity to exist.


    http://zapruderworld.org/journal/archive/volume-4/the-everyday-consumption-of-whiteness-the-gaikokujin-fu-foreign-like-
    #corps #beauté #femmes #géographie_culturelle #japon #cheveux #identité #altérité #orientalisme #blancheur #hakujin #blancs #représentation

  • Qatargas agrees on 22-year LNG supply deal with China | Reuters
    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-qatar-petrochina/qatargas-agrees-on-22-year-lng-supply-deal-with-china-idUSKCN1LQ0DM

    Qatargas said on Monday it had agreed on a 22-year deal with PetroChina International Co, a unit of PetroChina Co, to supply China with around 3.4 million tonnes of liquefied natural gas (LNG) annually, as the nation stepped up efforts to combat air pollution.

    The Qatari state-owned company will supply LNG from the Qatargas 2 project - a venture between Qatar Petroleum, Exxon Mobil Corp and Total - to receiving terminals across China, with the first cargo to be delivered this month.

    The deal allows flexibility in delivering LNG to Chinese terminals including those in Dalian, Jiangsu, Tangshan and Shenzhen, using the Qatargas fleet of 70 conventional, Q-Flex and Q-Max vessels, the company said.

    China requires LNG for its push to replace coal with cleaner burning natural gas, a way to reduce air pollution. After Beijing started the program last year, China has overtaken South Korea as the world’s second-biggest buyer of LNG.

    China’s LNG imports may surge 70 percent to 65 million tonnes by 2020, according to consultancy SIA Energy. Last year, China imported a record 38.1 million tonnes, 46 percent more than the previous year.

    Meanwhile Qatar, the world’s biggest LNG producer, is seeking buyers for a planned expansion of its output.

    C’est pas avec ce genre de contrats que le Qatar va se faire bien voire des É.-U. !

  • L’article d’une DJ israélienne à propos des annulations récentes. Quelques points à noter :
    1) elle n’est pas surprise de l’annulation de Lana del Rey
    2) elle est surprise en revanche de l’annulation de DJs, car ce milieu n’était pas touché par la politique et BDS, et elle se demande si ce n’est pas le début de quelque chose...
    3) elle cite Gaza, la loi sur l’Etat Nation, les arrestations d’activistes à l’aéroport, mais aussi la proximité entre Trump et Netanyahu, qui influence surtout les artistes américains
    4) on apprend que tout le monde sait qu’il y a des artistes, et non des moindres, qui même s’ils ne le disent pas ouvertement, ne viendront jamais en israel : Beyoncé, The Knife, Grizzly Bear, Arcade Fire, Deerhunter, Sonic Youth, Lil Yachty, Tyler the Creator, Kendrick Lamar, Chance the Rapper, Vince Staples, Moodymann, Kyle Hall, the Martinez Brothers, Ben UFO, DJ Ricardo Villalobos, Matthew Herbert, Andrew Weatherall... C’est ce qu’on appelle le boycott silencieux...
    5) il y a aussi le cas de ceux qui ne viennent que si les concerts sont organisés par des Palestiniens : Acid Arab et Nicolas Jaar
    6) même si cela me semble faux, le fait d’accuser certains artistes de boycotter parce que c’est à la mode est un aveu que BDS a le vent en poupe dans le milieu de la musique

    The Day the Music Died : Will BDS Bring Tel Aviv’s Club Scene to a Standstill ?
    Idit Frenkel, Haaretz, le 7 septembre 2018
    https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium.MAGAZINE-the-day-the-music-died-will-bds-halt-tel-aviv-s-club-scen

    Lana Del Rey should have known better. And if not Del Rey herself, then at least her managers, PR people and agents.

    As the highest-profile artist who was scheduled to appear at the Meteor Festival over the weekend in the north, it was clear she’d be the one caught in the crossfire , the one boycott groups would try to convince to ditch an appearance in Israel. That’s the same crossfire with diplomatic, moral and economic implications that confronted Lorde, Lauryn Hill and Tyler, the Creator: musicians who announced performances in Israel and changed their minds because of political pressure.

    Del Rey, however, isn’t the story. Her cancellation , which included some mental gymnastics as far as her positions were concerned, could have been expected. Unfortunately, we’ve been there many times and in many different circumstances.

    Tsunami of cancellations

    The ones who caught us unprepared by drafting an agenda for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict turned out to be DJs like Shanti Celeste, Volvox, DJ Seinfeld, Python and Leon Vynehall, who also dropped out of Meteor. Why was this unexpected? Because Israel’s nightlife and clubbing scene – especially in Tel Aviv – had been an oasis regarding cultural boycotts, an extraterritorial hedonistic space with no room for politics.

    The current tsunami of cancellations, while it might sound trivial if you’re untutored in trance music, could reflect a trend with effects far beyond the Meteor Festival. In the optimistic scenario, this is a one-off event that has cast the spotlight on lesser-known musicians as well. In the pessimistic scenario, this is the end of an era in which the clubbing scene has been an exception.

    Adding credence to the change-in-direction theory are the cancellations by DJs who have spun in Tel Aviv in recent years; Volvox, Shanti Celeste and Leon Vynehall have all had their passports stamped at Ben-Gurion Airport. And those times the situation wasn’t very different: Benjamin Netanyahu was prime minister, the occupation was decades long and there were sporadic exchanges of fire between the sides.

    Moreover, two of the DJs spearheading the struggle on the nightlife scene regarding Mideast politics – the Black Madonna and Anthony Naples – have been here, enjoyed themselves, been honored and promised to return, until they discovered there’s such a thing as the occupation.

    Americans and Brits cancel more

    So what has changed since 2015? First, there has been a change on the Gaza border, with civilians getting shot. These incidents have multiplied in the past three months and don’t exactly photograph well.

    Second, news reports about the nation-state law and the discrimination that comes with it have done their bit. Third, the arrests and detentions of left-wing activists entering Israel haven’t remained in a vacuum.

    Fourth, and most importantly, is Donald Trump’s presidency and his unconditional embrace of Netanyahu, including, of course, the controversial opening of the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem. As in the case of Natalie Portman’s refusal to accept a prize from the state, the closeness between the Trump administration and the Netanyahu government – under the sponsorship of evangelical Christians – has made Israel a country non grata in the liberal community, of which Hollywood is one pole and nightlife the other.

    It’s no coincidence that the DJs canceling are either Americans or Brits on the left; that is, Democrats or Jeremy Corbyn supporters in Labour – people who see cooperation with Israel as collaboration with Trump and Britain’s Conservative government.

    Different from them is Honey Dijon, the black trans DJ from Chicago who in response to the protest against her appearance at the Meteor Festival tweeted: “All of you people criticizing me about playing in Israel, when you come to America and stand up for the murder of black trans women and the prison industrial complex of black men then we can debate. I play for people not governments.” Not many people tried to argue with her. Say what you will, contrarianism is always effective.

    The case of DJ Jackmaster

    Beyond the issue of values, at the image level, alleged collaboration can be a career killer, just as declaring a boycott is the last word in chic for your image nowadays. That’s exactly what has happened with Scotland’s DJ Jackmaster, who has gone viral with his eventual refusal to perform at Tel Aviv’s Block club. He posted a picture of the Palestinian flag with a caption saying you have to exploit a platform in order to stand up for those who need it. The flood of responses included talk about boycotting all Tel Aviv, not just the Block.

    Yaron Trax is the owner of the Block; his club is considered not only the largest and most influential venue in town but also an international brand. Trax didn’t remain silent; on his personal Facebook account he mentioned how a few weeks before Jackmaster’s post his agent was still trying to secure the gig for him at the Block.

    “Not my finest hour, but calling for a boycott of my club at a time when an artist is trying to play there felt to me like crossing a line,” Trax says. “Only after the fact, and especially when I saw how his post was attracting dozens of hurtful, belligerent and racist responses – and generating a violent discourse that I oppose – did I realize how significant it was.”

    Trax talks about the hatred that has welled up in support of Jackmaster’s Israel boycott – just between us, not the sharpest tool in the shed and someone who has recently been accused of sexual harassment. As Trax puts it, “The next day it was important to me to admonish myself, first off, and then all those who chose to respond the way they responded.”

    In a further well-reasoned post, Trax wrote, “I have always thought that people who take a risk and use the platform that is given to them to transmit a message they believe in, especially one that isn’t popular, deserve admiration and not intimidation or silencing.” Unsurprisingly, the reactions to this message were mostly positive.

    Notwithstanding the boycotters who have acceded to the demands of Roger Waters and Brian Eno – the most prominent musicians linked to the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement – there are plenty of superstar musicians like Lady Gaga, Justin Timberlake and the Rolling Stones who have come to Israel as part of their concert tours, even though they suffered the same pressures. The performers most vocal about their decision to appear in Israel have been Radiohead and Nick Cave.

    At a press conference on the eve of his concert, Cave expressed his opinion on the demand to boycott Israel: “It suddenly became very important to make a stand, to me, against those people who are trying to shut down musicians, to bully musicians, to censor musicians and to silence musicians.”

    Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke took the message one step further and tweeted: “Playing in a country isn’t the same as endorsing its government. We’ve played in Israel for over 20 years through a succession of governments, some more liberal than others. As we have in America. We don’t endorse Netanyahu any more than Trump, but we still play in America.” As Yorke put it, music, art and academia are “about crossing borders, not building them.”

    There’s a lot of truth in Yorke’s declaration, but whether or not musicians like it, appearances in Israel tend to acquire a political dimension; any statement becomes a potential international incident. Thus, for example, after Radiohead’s statement, Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan saluted the band, and after Cave’s press conference, Foreign Ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon tweeted “Bravo Nick Cave!”

    The trend continues when we step down a league from the A-listers, like Beyoncé, who doesn’t intend to perform in Israel despite her annual declaration that she’ll come “next year.” There’s the second level, the cream of international alternative rock and pop – refusals to appear in Israel by bands “of good conscience” like the Knife, Grizzly Bear, Arcade Fire and Deerhunter.

    The most prominent voice from this territory is that of former Sonic Youth guitarist and vocalist Thurston Moore. Yes, he appeared with his band in Tel Aviv 23 years ago, but since then he has become an avid supporter of BDS, so much so that he says it’s not okay to eat hummus because it’s a product of the occupation.

    ’Apartheid state’

    At the next level of refusers are the major – and minor – hip-hop stars. In addition to Lil Yachty and Tyler, who canceled appearances, other heroes of the genre like Kendrick Lamar, Chance the Rapper and Vince Staples have refused from the outset to accept invitations to Israel. It’s quite possible that the connection between BDS and Black Lives Matter is influential. As early as 2016, Black Lives Matter published a statement supporting BDS and declaring Israel an “apartheid state.”

    Which brings us to electronic music and the cultural phenomenon that goes with it – the club culture. In numerical terms, club culture is smaller, but the information that flows from it on the ground or online flows much faster.

    Moreover, not only is club culture more sensitive to changes and far more alert to ideas and technological advances, its history is marked by struggles by oppressed groups. It can be said that African-Americans, Hispanics and gay people were the first to adopt the “night” way of life, back in the days of New York’s clubs and underground parties in the ‘70s. Accordingly, these groups have been the ones to nurture this lifestyle into today’s popular culture. Hence also the association with movements like BDS.

    Boiler Room Palestine

    Indeed, the current trend points to a step-up in the discourse; in the past year the top alternative culture magazines – of which the electronic music magazines play a key role – have published articles surveying musical and cultural happenings in Palestinian society.

    The online music magazine Resident Advisor has had two such stories, the first about a workshop for artists with the participation of the Block 9 production team, musicians Brian Eno and Róisín Murphy (formerly of Moloko) and American DJ the Black Madonna. The workshop, which included tours, discussion groups and joint musical work, was held at the Walled Off Hotel in Ramallah, also known as Banksy’s hotel because of the street artist’s involvement in its planning in the shadow of the separation barrier.

    The second article surveyed the Palestinian electronic scene and its leading players – promoters, DJs and producers who are operating despite the restrictive military regime. In addition, the writer accompanied the production of Boiler Room Palestine in Ramallah in June. (The wider Boiler Room franchise has been the world’s most popular pop party for the past five years.)

    Another example includes the style magazine Dazed, which wrote about the cultural boycott movement immediately after the cancellation of Lorde’s concert, and just last month New York Magazine’s culture supplement Vulture set forth its philosophy on the boycott (also in the context of Lana Del Rey). It predicted that the awakening we’re seeing today is only in its infancy.

    This partial list isn’t a clear declaration about “taking a stance” – after all, progressive media outlets in culture laud Israeli artists (for example Red Axes, Moscoman and Guy Gerber) or local venues, like the Block club. But if you add to these the scores of Facebook battles or Twitter discussions (like the one Del Rey found herself in), you’ll get noise. And noise generates questions, which generate more noise and raise consciousness. And from there to change on the ground is a modest distance.

    ’These are people who slept on my sofa’

    Refusals of invitations or cancellations of concerts in Israel by artists didn’t begin with BDS or the increasing volume of the past two years. After all, a visit to Israel all too often requires an intrusive security check. It’s hard to complain about a DJ who isn’t keen to have his underwear probed.

    Also, there’s a stratum of artists who’ve appeared in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem or Haifa and have decided to stop coming – unless there’s a Palestinian production. Two examples are the French band Acid Arab (Parisians Guido Minisky and Hervé Carvalho) and the American producer – and darling of the hipster community – Nicolas Jaar . Jaar appeared in Tel Aviv a bit under a decade ago, just before he became a star, while Acid Arab not only performed in Tel Aviv but was also involved in projects with Israeli musicians – so plenty of people called the duo hypocrites.

    “I have no problem with strong opinions, but in the case of Acid Arab it annoyed me at the personal level – these are people who slept on my sofa, recorded with local musicians, and the day they put up their post announcing they wouldn’t play in Tel Aviv, they also asked me to send them some music,” says Maor Anava, aka DJ Hectik.

    “I have no problem with people changing their minds on the go; it’s clear to me that a visit to the separation fence can do it, but what bothered me is that it’s entirely a PR and image move, apparently at the advice of their agent,” he adds.

    “We’ve reached a situation in which a boycott of Israel is the trendiest thing and situates you in the right place in the scene – as a supporter of the Palestinian freedom fighters against the terrible Zionist occupier, something that can get you to another three big festivals. If you performed in Tel Aviv, apparently they’d do without you.”

    Thus at the end of last year, Acid Arab and Nicolas Jaar appeared in Haifa and Ramallah at parties produced by Jazar Crew, the only electronic collective in Israel that isn’t afraid to mix in politics.. So it surprised no one when Jazar received laudatory – and justified – coverage not only in Bar Peleg’s Haaretz piece but also in Resident Advisor.

    Is the party over?

    So are we seeing the onset of the electronic boycott of Tel Aviv, one of the world’s clubbing capitals? Well, the city is still a flourishing center of parties and club events every week. “ As of today it hasn’t yet happened that we’ve directly encountered an attempt by the cultural boycott to influence artists who are slated to appear at the club,” Trax says.

    “But we’re definitely seeing a change in the surrounding behavior. Nasty responses that people are leaving for a DJ who announced an upcoming gig with us have led to fewer famous DJs announcing appearances at the Block – even those who always promote themselves.”

    He notes a slowdown in the past two years. “A number of DJs who used to appear with us – Moodymann, Kyle Hall, the Martinez Brothers – have announced they won’t be returning, ” Trax says, referring to three American acts. “But there isn’t any set reason why. If the cultural boycott has an influence here I wouldn’t be surprised, because the Detroit junta is very political. And this also applies to UFO,” a successful British DJ and a high-profile voice in the European underground arena.

    Not all DJs who have chosen not to come to Israel have taken their stance amid the strengthening of the BDS movement. Some of the top people in the dance industry – including star Chilean-German DJ Ricardo Villalobos and British DJs and producers like Matthew Herbert and Andrew Weatherall – have for years been refusing to spin in Israel. They’ve made clear that this is their way of opposing Israel’s activities in the territories.

    Another great DJ, Tunisian-born Loco Dice who lives in Germany, is also considered a vocal opponent of Israel. But in December he played at the Block, and Trax doesn’t recall any signs that his guest was hostile to the country. This shows that a change of awareness works both ways.

    There’s a similar story: the decision by DJ Tama Sumo of the Berghain club in Berlin to play in Israel after a long boycott. She and her partner DJ Lakuti, a pillar of the industry, donated the proceeds of her Tel Aviv set to an organization for human rights in the territories.

    “As of now I don’t feel that the names who have decided to stop coming will change anything regarding the Block, because our lineup of VIPs isn’t based on them,” Trax says. “But if the more commercial cream of the clubs – DJs like Dixon, Ame and Damian Lazarus, or the big names in techno like Nina Kraviz, Ben Klock, Jeff Mills or Adam Beyer – change their minds, that will be a real blow to us, and not just us.”

    Amotz Tokatly, who’s responsible for bringing DJs to Tel Aviv’s Beit Maariv club, isn’t feeling much of a change. “The cancellations or refusals by DJs and artists based on a political platform didn’t begin just this year. I’ve been encountering this for many years now. There are even specific countries where we know the prevailing mood is political and tending toward the boycott movement. For example England. The rhetoric there is a priori much stronger,” Tokatly says.

    “But take Ben UFO, who has played in Tel Aviv in the past. When we got back to him about another spinning gig he said explicitly, ‘It simply isn’t worth it for me from a public relations perspective, and it could hurt me later on.’ DJs like him make their own calculations.”

    Tokatly doesn’t believe in a “Meteor effect” that will send the visiting DJ economy to the brink of an abyss. “I’m giving it a few weeks to calm down, and in the worst case we won’t be seeing here the level of minor league DJs who have canceled due to the circumstances,” he says.

    “In any case, they’re names who would have come here – if at all – once a year. Regarding artists who have a long-term and stable relationship with the local scene, we haven’t seen any change in approach yet.”

    Unlike Trax and Tokatly, Doron “Charly” Mastey of the techno duo TV.OUT and content director at Tel Aviv’s Alphabet Club says the recent goings-on haven’t affected him too much; his club is unusual in that doesn’t base itself on names from abroad.

    “I don’t remember any case of a refusal or cancellation because of political leanings,” he says. “But with everything that’s happening now regarding Meteor, and if that affects the scene down the road and the airlift to Tel Aviv stops, I’m not at all sure that’s a bad thing.”

    Mastey has in mind the gap between the size of the audience and the number of events, parties and festivals happening in Israel right now. “The audience is tired, and indifferent,” he says.. “And if this kick in the pants – of cancellations – is what’s going to dismantle the scene in its current format, then it will simply rebuild itself. I hope in a way that’s healthier for everyone.”

    In any case, if the rest of the world has realized that it’s impossible to separate politics from anything, and definitely not from club culture, which started out as a political and social movement, then the best thing we can do is try to hold the discussion in an inclusive a way as possible. An Israeli DJ working in Berlin who requested anonymity thinks that these ideas should be taken one step further.

    “Nowadays, for artists who want to go to Israel, two proposals are on the table,” he says. “Support the boycott or support the occupation. These two things are depicted even if they aren’t accurate, and between the two options there are a thousand more levels.”

    He believes there is scope for taking action. “The local scene must know how to fill the vacuum and craft alternatives to the boycott’s demands,” he says. “For example, by showing artists other ways to take a stand, whether by cooperating with Palestinians or suggesting that they donate the proceeds of their Tel Aviv appearances to a human rights group.”

    The voices calling for a cultural boycott of Israel, whether in sports, concerts or the subfield of electronic music, aren’t going to disappear. If anything, they’re only going to grow louder.

    Moreover, if we take into account the complexity of the conflict, maybe we should seek to communicate these insights in a way that drops the imagery of absolutes like left-right, bad-good, Zionist-anti-Semitic. The club culture exists to connect extremes, not separate people. Our demand to continue a vibrant electronic scene is just as legitimate as that of the boycott supporters’ attempts to create awareness.

    Even if we don’t agree with the idea of the boycott, it’s still possible to accept the realization that there are people who think differently – who want to perform for the other side as much as they want to perform for us. This doesn’t make them an existential danger.

    Moreover, as the Israeli DJ working in Berlin says, the Israeli scene needs an arsenal of proposals for constructive activism; it must provide alternatives to the BDS call to boycott – and not automatically flex an insulted patriotic muscle. This might not be the easiest thing to do, but hey, this is Israel. It’s not going to be easy.

    #Palestine #BDS #Boycott_culturel

  • Plus de 140 artistes (dont une vingtaine de français) de 18 pays, dont des participants à l’Eurovision signent une lettre appelant au boycott de l’Eurovision 2019 si elle a lieu en israel:

    Eurovision, ne blanchissez pas l’occupation militaire et les violations des droits humains par Israël
    The Guardian, le 7 septembre 2018
    https://www.bdsfrance.org/plus-de-140-artistes-signent-une-lettre-appelant-au-boycott-de-leurovisio

    Boycott Eurovision Song Contest hosted by Israel
    The Guardian, le 7 septembre 2018
    https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2018/sep/07/boycott-eurovision-song-contest-hosted-by-israel

    L-FRESH The LION, musician, Eurovision 2018 national judge (Australia)
    Helen Razer, broadcaster, writer (Australia)
    Candy Bowers, actor, writer, theatre director (Australia)
    Blak Douglas, artist (Australia)
    Nick Seymour, musician, producer (Australia)
    DAAN, musician, songwriter (Belgium)
    Daan Hugaert, actor (Belgium)
    Alain Platel, choreographer, theatre director (Belgium)
    Marijke Pinoy, actor (Belgium)
    Code Rouge, band (Belgium)
    DJ Murdock, DJ (Belgium)
    Helmut Lotti, singer (Belgium)
    Raymond Van het Groenewoud, musician (Belgium)
    Stef Kamil Carlens, musician, composer (Belgium)
    Charles Ducal, poet, writer (Belgium)
    Fikry El Azzouzi, novelist, playwright (Belgium)
    Erik Vlaminck, novelist, playwright (Belgium)
    Rachida Lamrabet, writer (Belgium)
    Slongs Dievanongs, musician (Belgium)
    Chokri Ben Chikha, actor, theatre director (Belgium)
    Yann Martel, novelist (Canada)
    Karina Willumsen, musician, composer (Denmark)
    Kirsten Thorup, novelist, poet (Denmark)
    Arne Würgler, musician (Denmark)
    Jesper Christensen, actor (Denmark)
    Tove Bornhoeft, actor, theatre director (Denmark)
    Anne Marie Helger, actor (Denmark)
    Tina Enghoff, visual artist (Denmark)
    Nassim Al Dogom, musician (Denmark)
    Patchanka, band (Denmark)
    Raske Penge, songwriter, singer (Denmark)
    Oktoberkoret, choir (Denmark)
    Nils Vest, film director (Denmark)
    Britta Lillesoe, actor (Denmark)
    Kaija Kärkinen, singer, Eurovision 1991 finalist (Finland)
    Kyösti Laihi, musician, Eurovision 1988 finalist (Finland)
    Kimmo Pohjonen, musician (Finland)
    Paleface, musician (Finland)
    Manuela Bosco, actor, novelist, artist (Finland)
    Noora Dadu, actor (Finland)
    Pirjo Honkasalo, film-maker (Finland)
    Ria Kataja, actor (Finland)
    Tommi Korpela, actor (Finland)
    Krista Kosonen, actor (Finland)
    Elsa Saisio, actor (Finland)
    Martti Suosalo, actor, singer (Finland)
    Virpi Suutari, film director (Finland)
    Aki Kaurismäki, film director, screenwriter (Finland)
    Pekka Strang, actor, artistic director (Finland)
    HK, singer (France)
    Dominique Grange, singer (France)
    Imhotep, DJ, producer (France)
    Francesca Solleville, singer (France)
    Elli Medeiros, singer, actor (France)
    Mouss & Hakim, band (France)
    Alain Guiraudie, film director, screenwriter (France)
    Tardi, comics artist (France)
    Gérard Mordillat, novelist, filmmaker (France)
    Eyal Sivan, film-maker (France)
    Rémo Gary, singer (France)
    Dominique Delahaye, novelist, musician (France)
    Philippe Delaigue, author, theatre director (France)
    Michel Kemper, online newspaper editor-in-chief (France)
    Michèle Bernard, singer-songwriter (France)
    Gérard Morel, theatre actor, director, singer (France)
    Daði Freyr, musician, Eurovision 2017 national selection finalist (Iceland)
    Hildur Kristín Stefánsdóttir, musician, Eurovision 2017 national selection finalist (Iceland)
    Mike Murphy, broadcaster, eight-time Eurovision commentator (Ireland)
    Mary Black, singer (Ireland)
    Christy Moore, singer, musician (Ireland)
    Charlie McGettigan, musician, songwriter, Eurovision 1994 winner (Ireland)
    Mary Coughlan, singer (Ireland)
    Luka Bloom, singer (Ireland)
    Robert Ballagh, artist, Riverdance set designer (Ireland)
    Aviad Albert, musician (Israel)
    Michal Sapir, musician, writer (Israel)
    Ohal Grietzer, musician (Israel)
    Yonatan Shapira, musician (Israel)
    Danielle Ravitzki, musician, visual artist (Israel)
    David Opp, artist (Israel)
    Assalti Frontali, band (Italy)
    Radiodervish, band (Italy)
    Moni Ovadia, actor, singer, playwright (Italy)
    Vauro, journalist, cartoonist (Italy)
    Pinko Tomažič Partisan Choir, choir (Italy)
    Jorit, street artist (Italy)
    Marthe Valle, singer (Norway)
    Mari Boine, musician, composer (Norway)
    Aslak Heika Hætta Bjørn, singer (Norway)
    Nils Petter Molvær, musician, composer (Norway)
    Moddi, singer (Norway)
    Jørn Simen Øverli, singer (Norway)
    Nosizwe, musician, actor (Norway)
    Bugge Wesseltoft, musician, composer (Norway)
    Lars Klevstrand, musician, composer, actor (Norway)
    Trond Ingebretsen, musician (Norway)
    José Mário Branco, musician, composer (Portugal)
    Francisco Fanhais, singer (Portugal)
    Tiago Rodrigues, artistic director, Portuguese national theatre (Portugal)
    Patrícia Portela, playwright, author (Portugal)
    Chullage, musician (Portugal)
    António Pedro Vasconcelos, film director (Portugal)
    José Luis Peixoto, novelist (Portugal)
    N’toko, musician (Slovenia)
    ŽPZ Kombinat, choir (Slovenia)
    Lluís Llach, composer, singer-songwriter (Spanish state)
    Marinah, singer (Spanish state)
    Riot Propaganda, band (Spanish state)
    Fermin Muguruza, musician (Spanish state)
    Kase.O, musician (Spanish state)
    Soweto, band (Spanish state)
    Itaca Band, band (Spanish state)
    Tremenda Jauría, band (Spanish state)
    Teresa Aranguren, journalist (Spanish state)
    Julio Perez del Campo, film director (Spanish state)
    Nicky Triphook, singer (Spanish state)
    Pau Alabajos, singer-songwriter (Spanish state)
    Mafalda, band (Spanish state)
    Zoo, band (Spanish state)
    Smoking Souls, band (Spanish state)
    Olof Dreijer, DJ, producer (Sweden)
    Karin Dreijer, singer, producer (Sweden)
    Dror Feiler, musician, composer (Sweden)
    Michel Bühler, singer, playwright, novelist (Switzerland)
    Wolf Alice, band (UK)
    Carmen Callil, publisher, writer (UK)
    Julie Christie, actor (UK)
    Caryl Churchill, playwright (UK)
    Brian Eno, composer, producer (UK)
    AL Kennedy, writer (UK)
    Peter Kosminsky, writer, film director (UK)
    Paul Laverty, scriptwriter (UK)
    Mike Leigh, writer, film and theatre director (UK)
    Ken Loach, film director (UK)
    Alexei Sayle, writer, comedian (UK)
    Roger Waters, musician (UK)
    Penny Woolcock, film-maker, opera director (UK)
    Leon Rosselson, songwriter (UK)
    Sabrina Mahfouz, writer, poet (UK)
    Eve Ensler, playwright (US)
    Alia Shawkat, actor (US)

    #Palestine #BDS #Boycott_culturel #Eurovision

  • Kelly Moran shares her debut track on Warp, ‘Helix (Edit)’. New album ‘Ultraviolet’ out 2 November.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHLJMlTzTMQ&feature=push-u-sub&attr_tag=lCHVdvEKSJsTRt4d%3A6

    The composer, producer, keyboardist and multi-instrumentalist made an early name for herself in New York collaborating with dance performance and composing for long-term John Cage collaborator Margaret Leng Tan, and, most recently, performing around the world as part of Oneohtrix Point Never’s live ‘MYRIAD’ tour ensemble. ‘Ultraviolet’ plays to a wide, arresting array of stylistic influences, from jazz and dream pop, to classical composition and black metal.

    #Kelly_Moran #Ultraviolet #keyboardist #multi_instrumentalist

  • Opinion | Now Twitter Edits The New Yorker - The New York Times
    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/04/opinion/bannon-new-yorker-festival-remnick.html

    “I have every intention of asking him difficult questions and engaging in a serious and even combative conversation,” Remnick told The Times in an interview conducted before he withdrew the invitation. “The audience itself, by its presence, puts a certain pressure on a conversation that an interview alone doesn’t do. You can’t jump on and off the record.”

    But none of that mattered because — well, Twitter.

    Following news of the invitation, other high-profile festival invitees, including producer Judd Apatow and actor Jim Carrey, tweeted that they would pull out if Bannon remained on the program. That helped start an online wave that crested with Remnick’s abrupt sounding of the retreat, based, he said, on not wanting “well-meaning readers and staff members to think that I’ve ignored their concerns.”

    That’s nice, and possibly sincere. But as a friend recently remarked with respect to another publication that quickly capitulated to online furies, what this really means is that Remnick is no longer the editor of The New Yorker. Twitter is. Social media doesn’t just get a voice. Now it wields a veto. What used to be thought of as adult supervision yields — as it already has in Congress and at universities — to the itch of the crowd.

    And not just the crowd. As Remnick acknowledged, members of his own staff also revolted at the invitation. One of his writers, Kathryn Schulz, took to Twitter to say she was “beyond appalled” and invited readers to write Remnick in order to add their voices to the pressure.

    That’s an astonishing statement coming from any journalist who believes that the vocation should largely be about putting tough questions to influential people, particularly bad people. If speaking truth to power isn’t the ultimate task of publications such as The New Yorker, they’re on the road to their own left-wing version of “Fox & Friends.”

    #Twitter #The_Newyorker #Steve_Bannon #Journalisme

  • Guantanamera, AfroCubism, 2010
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJTpyOENS0U

    AfroCubism - Wikipedia
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AfroCubism

    The idea behind AfroCubism was the original concept for the Buena Vista Social Club album of 1997 which featured many of the same Cuban musicians. This original concept however, was thwarted when the Cuban visas for the Malian musicians were delayed in the post and producer Nick Gold instead called on the services of Ry Cooder whom he had recorded with Ali Farka Touré for the 1994 World Circuit release, Talking Timbuktu. The album captures the rhythmic and melodic patterns which are common to traditional West African and Afro-Cuban music. The musicians involved in AfroCubism already had successful careers through participation in the Buena Vista Social Club or as solo artists. The project has subsequently toured around the world as a successful live show.

  • China Shipowners Stop Hauling Iranian Oil as U.S. Sanctions Near - Bloomberg
    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-21/china-shipowners-stop-hauling-iranian-oil-as-u-s-sanctions-near

    • Only Iranian ships are carrying crude to China since July
    • OPEC producer has sold cargoes on its tankers to India as well

    China’s shipowners are shunning Iran’s oil, while the OPEC producer is using its own tankers to supply top customers as impending U.S. sanctions threaten to disrupt global crude trade.

    All 17 ships used to carry oil from the Islamic Republic to China in July and August are owned by the state-run National Iranian Tanker Co., according to ship-tracking data compiled by Bloomberg. By contrast, almost half the vessels that made the journey in the prior three months were owned by companies in the North Asian nation, the data show.