6:16 AM
Chandra Brooks
I montaged photos of Francesca Pellanda by Ger Ger with light cuttings from my German & Arabic adaptations to create these:
Saturday, December 3, 2011
Francesca Pellanda
I montaged photos of Francesca Pellanda by Ger Ger with light cuttings from my German & Arabic adaptations to create these:
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Scene 1: The sins of the father revisited upon the son
O Daedalus, Fly Away Home by Robert Hayden
Drifting night in the Georgia pines,
coonskin drum and jubilee banjo.
Pretty Malinda, dance with me.
Night is juba, night is congo.
Pretty Malinda, dance with me.
Night is an African juju man
weaving a wish and a weariness together
to make two wings.
O fly away home fly away
Do you remember Africa?
O cleave the air fly away home
My gran, he flew back to Africa,
just spread his arms and
flew away home.
Drifting night in the windy pines;
night is laughing, night is a longing.
Pretty Malinda, come to me.
Night is a mourning juju man
weaving a wish and a weariness together
to make two wings.
O fly away home fly away
The opening of The White Rat takes place in a cave/labyrinth which is full of hidden personal truths for me which is why the narrator speech includes this poem, video from the 10 days spent shooting at The Mushroom Cave Plantation
l'Espace du Belvédère
in Naveil France with ZODIAC
Jean-Marc Bihan-Faou, Chandra Brooks and Sacha Hladiy on Collegium TV Berlin, Germany
and is accompanied by Fredo Viola's Robinson Crusoe.
http://youtu.be/D4Oq1Vmd8aY
I once read in a Renaissance treatise on color theory I found at the Openbare Bibliotheek Amsterdam, that "Artists use color to hide their secrets" which is how I feel about my use of symbols and art that reflects my unique history and sensibilities. All of these cannot and should not be illuminated although one aspect of the task of the artist is to share and interpret the personal significance of enough of these to develop the audiences empathy and capacity for "stepping into one anothers' shoes" which means that I have to share some of why I use what I use to tell you a compelling story unique to me. Throughout history, artists have been outcasts on many social levels while society, the same society that was often calling us the worst sinners, was having us create it's masterpieces of illumination, religious chronicles and monuments as well as using our voices and bodies to give glory and praise to the Gods these same societies used to scorn us. This is the underlying motivation behind my use of illuminated manuscripts, shadows and light as the basis for my storytelling. It's a healing process for me that I want to remain mystical to the audience. I myself have had innumerable experiences of chastisement by religions beginning with being called "satanic" at church as a child for expressing, researching and finding it fascinating that Lucifer, was an angel and naively voicing that as this is biblical fact it must be true that we are all light and darkness so what harm is he or me? These pains have faded for me but they are still enough a part of my being to be an integral part of who I am and therefore a necessary inclusion.
Fredo Viola is for my sister Angel who has always looked for me, loved me, seen the light in me and cried for me. My Ariadne.
Drifting night in the Georgia pines,
coonskin drum and jubilee banjo.
Pretty Malinda, dance with me.
Night is juba, night is congo.
Pretty Malinda, dance with me.
Night is an African juju man
weaving a wish and a weariness together
to make two wings.
O fly away home fly away
Do you remember Africa?
O cleave the air fly away home
My gran, he flew back to Africa,
just spread his arms and
flew away home.
Drifting night in the windy pines;
night is laughing, night is a longing.
Pretty Malinda, come to me.
Night is a mourning juju man
weaving a wish and a weariness together
to make two wings.
O fly away home fly away
The opening of The White Rat takes place in a cave/labyrinth which is full of hidden personal truths for me which is why the narrator speech includes this poem, video from the 10 days spent shooting at The Mushroom Cave Plantation
l'Espace du Belvédère
in Naveil France with ZODIAC
Jean-Marc Bihan-Faou, Chandra Brooks and Sacha Hladiy on Collegium TV Berlin, Germany
and is accompanied by Fredo Viola's Robinson Crusoe.
http://youtu.be/D4Oq1Vmd8aY
I once read in a Renaissance treatise on color theory I found at the Openbare Bibliotheek Amsterdam, that "Artists use color to hide their secrets" which is how I feel about my use of symbols and art that reflects my unique history and sensibilities. All of these cannot and should not be illuminated although one aspect of the task of the artist is to share and interpret the personal significance of enough of these to develop the audiences empathy and capacity for "stepping into one anothers' shoes" which means that I have to share some of why I use what I use to tell you a compelling story unique to me. Throughout history, artists have been outcasts on many social levels while society, the same society that was often calling us the worst sinners, was having us create it's masterpieces of illumination, religious chronicles and monuments as well as using our voices and bodies to give glory and praise to the Gods these same societies used to scorn us. This is the underlying motivation behind my use of illuminated manuscripts, shadows and light as the basis for my storytelling. It's a healing process for me that I want to remain mystical to the audience. I myself have had innumerable experiences of chastisement by religions beginning with being called "satanic" at church as a child for expressing, researching and finding it fascinating that Lucifer, was an angel and naively voicing that as this is biblical fact it must be true that we are all light and darkness so what harm is he or me? These pains have faded for me but they are still enough a part of my being to be an integral part of who I am and therefore a necessary inclusion.
Fredo Viola is for my sister Angel who has always looked for me, loved me, seen the light in me and cried for me. My Ariadne.
Monday, March 7, 2011
My willingness to keep trying.....
can easily be conceived as "never getting things done" but it's neither true nor fair. In my life, there's been nothing worth doing that hasn't been worth doing well. Sometimes this means that something simple in your eyes is complicated and a decades labor in mine. It's taken me awhile but I have finally recognized that the reason my site's never done isn't the host of Pandora's evils one could throw on my character but a vision and sometimes vision takes awhile to be seen. Few along the way can see it building up gradually over time while others only notice when it's become a skyscraper.
Friday, October 1, 2010
Herbstferien Beyaz Fare Production (Die Weiße Ratte from Henri Pourrat's La Rate Blanche)
BEYAZ FARE
(Die Weiße Ratte)
Ein Türkisches Märchen
"Help create a multi-media stage production of a traditional fairytale.
Explore film/video, papercraft and drama in this community-based project"
Helfen Sie dabei, ein traditionelles Märchen als multimediale Bühnenproduktion zu gestalten. Erleben Sie Einblicke in die Welt von Film, Video, Papierkunst und Theater in einem gemeinsamen Projekt.
Theaterproduktion: Kostenlose Workshops im Kiez
Herbstferien 11.10.2010-11.23.2010
Production Overview
This theatre project (mid-October 2010) is headed by American artist Chandra Brooks and is an interpretation of a medieval French fairytale, La Rate Blanche from the collection of Henri Pourrat. It forms part of her long-term project “The Universal Fairytale”, which involves 42 various language versions and handcrafted art in a range of different formats all for the purpose of creating intercultural dialogue through storytelling and media art. Beyaz Fare: Ein Türkisches Märchen is an opportunity for families of migrational backgrounds in the Oranienkiez & Mariannenkiez to look at their neighborhood through the eyes of the camera, theatre and book-arts and to give voice to that on stage and through the internet for an audience of their peers and neighbors. The process involves the use of paper-craft to create unique tapestries based on The Lady and the Unicorn (La Dame à la licorne) Tapestries.
Some further information is available online here: http://chandrabrooks.blogspot.com/2010/09/visit-from-berlin-mayor-klaus-wowereit.html or http://www.mediamatic.net/person/21994/en.
Herbstferien 11.10.2010-11.23.2010
The Beyaz Fare Turkish Theatre Production will take place this Herbstferien break in Berlin from October 11-23, 2010. This is a Turkish language production which will:
-be narrated alternately in Turkish and in German with the French book as a moving onscreen projection
-use digitally created book as the "sets" from my La Rate Blanche "medieval illuminated manuscript"
Illumination, lettering and mis-en-page by Chandra Brooks
-video material they create within the kiez to supplement the action on stage.
-the play brings the kiez into a new perspective with the participants as the observers of themselves as storybook beings in familiar places.
Based on The Lady and the Unicorn (La Dame à la licorne) Tapestries
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lady_and_the_Unicorn
Note: don't take these combination too literally because how each of the five senses is attached to the elements of our faerie tale depends on how the participants plan to create them. I've simply arranged some examples.
click on the image to see a larger version
COSTUME & TEXTILE DESIGN WORKSHOP
Participants will create an ornamental medieval style textile by working with complex paper-cut motifs. The process involves the use of beeswax crayons, watercolor paint and ink (courtesy of http://www.stockmar.de/). These textiles will be used in our play as the cloth we will use to construct our set and costumes. The paper-cut motifs have been recreated as plexi-stencils for usability.
Kostüm- & Textildesign
Die Teilnehmer werden ornamentale, mittelalterliche Kostüme und Textilien herstellen, indem sie mit komplexen Scherenschnittmotiven arbeiten. Dabei kommen Bienenwachsmalstifte, Wasserfarben und Tinte zum Einsatz. Die Textilien werden im Theaterstück für das Bühnenbild verwendet.
Note: Please use your imagination along with these examples to get a feeling of what our textiles could possibly look like.
VIDEO & EDITING WORKSHOP
This group will be working with professional cameramen/women from http://www.filmarche.de/ to shoot video footage that represents the key elements of the fairytale from: the architecture, people and landscapes of the two participating kiez: Oranienkiez & Mariennenkiez. This group is also responsible for editing this local material into a digital book which will play as a projection during the performance.
Diese Teilnehmergruppe wird mit professionellen Kameraleuten Videosequenzen filmen, die die wesentlichen Elemente des Märchen widerspiegeln: Architektur, Menschen und Landschaften aus zwei Kiezen – Oranienkiez & Mariannenkiez Diese Gruppe wird zudem das Drehmaterial mitschneiden und daraus ein digitales Buch herstellen, das als Teil der Theaterproduktion gezeigt wird.
These are some examples from another productions which have brought certain castle interiors from Auvergne in France to the Frascati stage in Amsterdam....
DRAMA & PERFORMANCE WORKSHOPS
This group is the actors and performers who will be wearing the costumes and masks in your video and theatre play. Whatever your skill or talent for self-expression, please join us and create your part in The Universal Fairytale.
Die Darsteller dieser Teilnehmergruppe werden die Kostüme und Masken im Video und während der Bühnenaufführung tragen. Wo auch immer Ihre Talente liegen mögen, unterstützen sie die Produktion und kreieren Sie ihren persönlichen Beitrag.
FAERIES, RATS & MASKS WORKSHOP
No mythical kingdom would be complete without lots of faeries and masked creatures so to this effect please join us to create some faerie wings, masks and tails!
Zu einem mythischen Königreich gehören natürlich auch Feen und fabelhafte Wesen. Nehmen Sie teil an der Produktion und helfen Sie uns, Feenflügel, Masken und Rattenschwänze herzustellen.
(Die Weiße Ratte)
Ein Türkisches Märchen
"Help create a multi-media stage production of a traditional fairytale.
Explore film/video, papercraft and drama in this community-based project"
Helfen Sie dabei, ein traditionelles Märchen als multimediale Bühnenproduktion zu gestalten. Erleben Sie Einblicke in die Welt von Film, Video, Papierkunst und Theater in einem gemeinsamen Projekt.
Theaterproduktion: Kostenlose Workshops im Kiez
Herbstferien 11.10.2010-11.23.2010
Production Overview
This theatre project (mid-October 2010) is headed by American artist Chandra Brooks and is an interpretation of a medieval French fairytale, La Rate Blanche from the collection of Henri Pourrat. It forms part of her long-term project “The Universal Fairytale”, which involves 42 various language versions and handcrafted art in a range of different formats all for the purpose of creating intercultural dialogue through storytelling and media art. Beyaz Fare: Ein Türkisches Märchen is an opportunity for families of migrational backgrounds in the Oranienkiez & Mariannenkiez to look at their neighborhood through the eyes of the camera, theatre and book-arts and to give voice to that on stage and through the internet for an audience of their peers and neighbors. The process involves the use of paper-craft to create unique tapestries based on The Lady and the Unicorn (La Dame à la licorne) Tapestries.
Some further information is available online here: http://chandrabrooks.blogspot.com/2010/09/visit-from-berlin-mayor-klaus-wowereit.html or http://www.mediamatic.net/person/21994/en.
Herbstferien 11.10.2010-11.23.2010
The Beyaz Fare Turkish Theatre Production will take place this Herbstferien break in Berlin from October 11-23, 2010. This is a Turkish language production which will:
-be narrated alternately in Turkish and in German with the French book as a moving onscreen projection
-use digitally created book as the "sets" from my La Rate Blanche "medieval illuminated manuscript"
Illumination, lettering and mis-en-page by Chandra Brooks
-video material they create within the kiez to supplement the action on stage.
-the play brings the kiez into a new perspective with the participants as the observers of themselves as storybook beings in familiar places.
Based on The Lady and the Unicorn (La Dame à la licorne) Tapestries
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lady_and_the_Unicorn
Note: don't take these combination too literally because how each of the five senses is attached to the elements of our faerie tale depends on how the participants plan to create them. I've simply arranged some examples.
click on the image to see a larger version
COSTUME & TEXTILE DESIGN WORKSHOP
Participants will create an ornamental medieval style textile by working with complex paper-cut motifs. The process involves the use of beeswax crayons, watercolor paint and ink (courtesy of http://www.stockmar.de/). These textiles will be used in our play as the cloth we will use to construct our set and costumes. The paper-cut motifs have been recreated as plexi-stencils for usability.
Kostüm- & Textildesign
Die Teilnehmer werden ornamentale, mittelalterliche Kostüme und Textilien herstellen, indem sie mit komplexen Scherenschnittmotiven arbeiten. Dabei kommen Bienenwachsmalstifte, Wasserfarben und Tinte zum Einsatz. Die Textilien werden im Theaterstück für das Bühnenbild verwendet.
Note: Please use your imagination along with these examples to get a feeling of what our textiles could possibly look like.
VIDEO & EDITING WORKSHOP
This group will be working with professional cameramen/women from http://www.filmarche.de/ to shoot video footage that represents the key elements of the fairytale from: the architecture, people and landscapes of the two participating kiez: Oranienkiez & Mariennenkiez. This group is also responsible for editing this local material into a digital book which will play as a projection during the performance.
Diese Teilnehmergruppe wird mit professionellen Kameraleuten Videosequenzen filmen, die die wesentlichen Elemente des Märchen widerspiegeln: Architektur, Menschen und Landschaften aus zwei Kiezen – Oranienkiez & Mariannenkiez Diese Gruppe wird zudem das Drehmaterial mitschneiden und daraus ein digitales Buch herstellen, das als Teil der Theaterproduktion gezeigt wird.
These are some examples from another productions which have brought certain castle interiors from Auvergne in France to the Frascati stage in Amsterdam....
DRAMA & PERFORMANCE WORKSHOPS
This group is the actors and performers who will be wearing the costumes and masks in your video and theatre play. Whatever your skill or talent for self-expression, please join us and create your part in The Universal Fairytale.
Die Darsteller dieser Teilnehmergruppe werden die Kostüme und Masken im Video und während der Bühnenaufführung tragen. Wo auch immer Ihre Talente liegen mögen, unterstützen sie die Produktion und kreieren Sie ihren persönlichen Beitrag.
FAERIES, RATS & MASKS WORKSHOP
No mythical kingdom would be complete without lots of faeries and masked creatures so to this effect please join us to create some faerie wings, masks and tails!
Zu einem mythischen Königreich gehören natürlich auch Feen und fabelhafte Wesen. Nehmen Sie teil an der Produktion und helfen Sie uns, Feenflügel, Masken und Rattenschwänze herzustellen.
Thursday, September 30, 2010
A visit from Berlin Mayor Klaus Wowereit
Türkischer Elternverein Summer 2010 Reception with Mayor Wowereit
The finale of the making of Beyaz Fare during the summer of 2010 was a visit by Mayor Wolverite. The kids were really excited and it made them feel really important to have him take the time to let Mehmet explain what we were doing and how. Photographer Miriam May documented the event and here are some of her images.
The Elements of Book Production
Throughout the summer we worked on the basics of book production. To give the kids a basic understanding of what happens when a book is made we started with the basics: the Turkish alphabet and drawing letters to create fonts. For The Universal Fairytale, I have created a theme on alphabets which combines to great moments in European manuscript history: when Charlemagne brought Alcuin of York to his court to create Carolingian Miniscule which effectively ended the church and state's hold on the dissemination of knowledge by creating an alphabet than any literate person can read. Our alphabets today owe a great deal to Carolingian Miniscule. The other area which influenced my creating fonts from hand-drawn alphabets was the work of legendary calligraphers at the moment in history when the printing press wiped out the making of hand-made manuscripts. I combine alphabets by Croatian calligrapher Georg Bocskay from Mira Calligraphiae Monumenta with Carolingian miniscule to create 3 fonts. I walk the children through this process by introducing real geometry through game play with tangrams and origami.
Visual Geometry, Fibonacci, Origami and The Art of Abstraction
By thinking about the geometry of organic forms such as plants and animals the path opens up to the idea of the geometry of a letter. This is all a part of understanding the basics of how abstractions are created.
What I love most about Fibonacci and golden section geometry is that it taught me how to see. One of the obstacles that I am enjoying chipping away at is that the kids I worked with this summer didn't have the internal dialogue necessary to apply geometry to objects to reason about what they were seeing. For example, one day Lioba asked a child to pass her "der Berg" (The Mountain) from Die Weiße Ratte to her and although the girl was working on a rubbing with der Berg's stencil she had no idea what Lioba was talking about.
That kind of misunderstanding is one of the things that I look forward to working on with the kids in the Turkish community because it's a total inconsistency. At the same moment, without instruction they managed to create some of the most complicated origami creations straight from the book. Most couldn't read/comprehend the instructions so they just went on the pictures. These kids come from a complicated, disciplined culture with lots of intricate nuances attached to sensory perception how else could "marbling" and a host of other advances in the field of aesthetics have come out of Turkish culture? The kids lack of abstract visual language is not a fault of their own.
The Universal Fairytale and Applied Bauhaus Technique for the 21st century
A few years ago I began developing storytelling kits on the premise of using technology to foster the development of handicraft. My work with calligraphy, bookmaking and handicraft is very complicated and skilled but to share the love of books and visual arts this all has to be simplified so that anyone can participate without the need of my skill level. I became a part of The FabLab, an MIT based project pilot through Mediamatic (in the basement of the Stedelijk Museum) where I used the laser-cutter and vinyl cutter (you may know it as a sticker-making machine) to create modified versions of my work that could be cut-out to make toy theatre boxes (diorama), silhouettes, rubbings, etc for the purpose of making books, theatre and to encourage storytelling. I think that it's better to offer the most beautiful and complicated material when encouraging lost art forms because anybody can make something with Photoshop and templates but a medieval French illuminated manuscript like the one I spent 2 years making is a bit more exciting and encouraging!
Rubbings
With only 6 weeks to create a book and experience some nice cultural events throughout Kreuzberg it was possible to create a simple variation on Die Weiße Ratte by using the stencils to create rubbings.
Fights & Major Disagreements amongst the kids
From the start of this project I had meant to go visit some mosques and get a better idea about Islam because growing up in a Christian household didn't teach me much about the other Abrahamic faiths so I am ignorant. I wish I had gone from the start but it was only after a major fight happened between the kids.
.jpg)
The women of the Khadija Mosque in Heimersdorf, Berlin took me in and explained some things about the different sects of Islam and that there are more than 70 sects so there are many disagreements. Some children are raised that you can't touch a pig,not even in a petting zoo and others are raised that prohibitions against alcohol and wearing headscarves are not Qur'anic. I'll go back, it was a lovely, peaceful place and they all speak English! I can even accept the children laughing at me as a fumbled through washing my feet in all my layers of clothing:-)
The anger and frustration at being insulted in and outside of the Turkish community is valid-no one likes being disrespected or having their feelings hurt but it' s double blow when a girl of 20 is beating up a boy of 16 outside the Gorlitzer Park for insulting her mother and a Black-American with dred-locks and painted covered clothes after a workshop at Schlesisches 27.
BEYAZ FARE the final book
We tried to translate the text from German into Turkish with a group of retired women who meet at Mosaik-Jugendkulturetage e.V.because there is a group of retired women who meet there twice a week to drink tea, sew and gossip. The first time we met with them the kids loved it, the second time one of the girls wanted to leave quickly although she had wanted to go there more than the others. It didn't make sense. After a bit, someone translated that although the old ladies were totally hanging out and none wore headscarves, they were gossiping viciously about how she at 12 wasn't properly dressed. It sooooo reminds me of my own experiences growing up in the Black community in Missouri. At school I was brutally amused and maimed and called everything but the name on my passport and in the solace of church I was ridiculed for being different or because people had nothing better to do. We left and managed it through people at the TEV.
After the kids finished their rubbings I integrated them into the light cutting that they had done rubbings from my Die Weiße Ratte German adaptation of Henri Pourrat's La Rate Blanche.
The aesthetic of the final book has elements in common with the work of Lotte Reiniger and Eric Carle.
Enjoy the book!
The finale of the making of Beyaz Fare during the summer of 2010 was a visit by Mayor Wolverite. The kids were really excited and it made them feel really important to have him take the time to let Mehmet explain what we were doing and how. Photographer Miriam May documented the event and here are some of her images.
The Elements of Book Production
Throughout the summer we worked on the basics of book production. To give the kids a basic understanding of what happens when a book is made we started with the basics: the Turkish alphabet and drawing letters to create fonts. For The Universal Fairytale, I have created a theme on alphabets which combines to great moments in European manuscript history: when Charlemagne brought Alcuin of York to his court to create Carolingian Miniscule which effectively ended the church and state's hold on the dissemination of knowledge by creating an alphabet than any literate person can read. Our alphabets today owe a great deal to Carolingian Miniscule. The other area which influenced my creating fonts from hand-drawn alphabets was the work of legendary calligraphers at the moment in history when the printing press wiped out the making of hand-made manuscripts. I combine alphabets by Croatian calligrapher Georg Bocskay from Mira Calligraphiae Monumenta with Carolingian miniscule to create 3 fonts. I walk the children through this process by introducing real geometry through game play with tangrams and origami.
Visual Geometry, Fibonacci, Origami and The Art of Abstraction
By thinking about the geometry of organic forms such as plants and animals the path opens up to the idea of the geometry of a letter. This is all a part of understanding the basics of how abstractions are created.
What I love most about Fibonacci and golden section geometry is that it taught me how to see. One of the obstacles that I am enjoying chipping away at is that the kids I worked with this summer didn't have the internal dialogue necessary to apply geometry to objects to reason about what they were seeing. For example, one day Lioba asked a child to pass her "der Berg" (The Mountain) from Die Weiße Ratte to her and although the girl was working on a rubbing with der Berg's stencil she had no idea what Lioba was talking about.
That kind of misunderstanding is one of the things that I look forward to working on with the kids in the Turkish community because it's a total inconsistency. At the same moment, without instruction they managed to create some of the most complicated origami creations straight from the book. Most couldn't read/comprehend the instructions so they just went on the pictures. These kids come from a complicated, disciplined culture with lots of intricate nuances attached to sensory perception how else could "marbling" and a host of other advances in the field of aesthetics have come out of Turkish culture? The kids lack of abstract visual language is not a fault of their own.
The Universal Fairytale and Applied Bauhaus Technique for the 21st century
A few years ago I began developing storytelling kits on the premise of using technology to foster the development of handicraft. My work with calligraphy, bookmaking and handicraft is very complicated and skilled but to share the love of books and visual arts this all has to be simplified so that anyone can participate without the need of my skill level. I became a part of The FabLab, an MIT based project pilot through Mediamatic (in the basement of the Stedelijk Museum) where I used the laser-cutter and vinyl cutter (you may know it as a sticker-making machine) to create modified versions of my work that could be cut-out to make toy theatre boxes (diorama), silhouettes, rubbings, etc for the purpose of making books, theatre and to encourage storytelling. I think that it's better to offer the most beautiful and complicated material when encouraging lost art forms because anybody can make something with Photoshop and templates but a medieval French illuminated manuscript like the one I spent 2 years making is a bit more exciting and encouraging!
Rubbings
With only 6 weeks to create a book and experience some nice cultural events throughout Kreuzberg it was possible to create a simple variation on Die Weiße Ratte by using the stencils to create rubbings.
Fights & Major Disagreements amongst the kids
From the start of this project I had meant to go visit some mosques and get a better idea about Islam because growing up in a Christian household didn't teach me much about the other Abrahamic faiths so I am ignorant. I wish I had gone from the start but it was only after a major fight happened between the kids.
.jpg)
The women of the Khadija Mosque in Heimersdorf, Berlin took me in and explained some things about the different sects of Islam and that there are more than 70 sects so there are many disagreements. Some children are raised that you can't touch a pig,not even in a petting zoo and others are raised that prohibitions against alcohol and wearing headscarves are not Qur'anic. I'll go back, it was a lovely, peaceful place and they all speak English! I can even accept the children laughing at me as a fumbled through washing my feet in all my layers of clothing:-)
The anger and frustration at being insulted in and outside of the Turkish community is valid-no one likes being disrespected or having their feelings hurt but it' s double blow when a girl of 20 is beating up a boy of 16 outside the Gorlitzer Park for insulting her mother and a Black-American with dred-locks and painted covered clothes after a workshop at Schlesisches 27.
BEYAZ FARE the final book
We tried to translate the text from German into Turkish with a group of retired women who meet at Mosaik-Jugendkulturetage e.V.because there is a group of retired women who meet there twice a week to drink tea, sew and gossip. The first time we met with them the kids loved it, the second time one of the girls wanted to leave quickly although she had wanted to go there more than the others. It didn't make sense. After a bit, someone translated that although the old ladies were totally hanging out and none wore headscarves, they were gossiping viciously about how she at 12 wasn't properly dressed. It sooooo reminds me of my own experiences growing up in the Black community in Missouri. At school I was brutally amused and maimed and called everything but the name on my passport and in the solace of church I was ridiculed for being different or because people had nothing better to do. We left and managed it through people at the TEV.
After the kids finished their rubbings I integrated them into the light cutting that they had done rubbings from my Die Weiße Ratte German adaptation of Henri Pourrat's La Rate Blanche.
The aesthetic of the final book has elements in common with the work of Lotte Reiniger and Eric Carle.
Enjoy the book!
