…Something of an over-determined character, Giles Coren is a man with fingers in numerous pies, and is unashamed to admit that writing fiction (and perhaps watching cricket) are the only passions in his life – the rest, the journalism, the television presenting – they pay the bills. ‘That’s the only reason for doing TV. With the exception of that bird with the fat tits who got sacked from the Big Breakfast, one can just turn up and read the autocue. They couldn’t put words of more than two syllables on the autocue for her. Whereas I can read. So long as I keep my beard reasonably trimmed and do my hair nicely, I’m fine.’

You can read the full version of this article in The LIP Magazine Media Issue. Order Your Copy Online!

With ten years worth of releases in the record bag, Stones Throw has forged a reputation for itself as a label which is happy to take risks in order to put out records regardless of their commercial potential. ‘I don’t think I ever thought hard about the Stones Throw sound or anything like that’, Wolf comments, ‘I put out what I like.’

The result is a roster of artists which includes, to name a few, Oh No, MED, Gary Wilson, the late, great, beat tape genius J Dilla, and of course Madlib – in any number of his guises. Indeed, it’s Madlib’s helium-breathing alter ego Quasimoto’s first album, The Unseen that Peanut Butter Wolf rates as one of his favourites from the last decade. ‘I really like that record’, he reflects. ‘It was an exciting time for me. There was all this stuff that Madlib recorded in his bedroom and then we mixed it down in my bedroom and neither of us knew what we were doing from a technical standpoint. I think that the passion for the music is what made that sound different to an extent’, he adds.

You can read the full version of this article in The LIP Magazine Media Issue. Order Your Copy Online!

Riz tells the LIP of his unwelcome treatment on arriving back in the UK.

“When our flight landed at Luton Airport from Berlin, Shafiq Rasul was stopped at the Immigration Desk. Soon after, I was detained and questioned. I was not told the reason for this.

The officer had initially questioned me extensively by the baggage claim, taking notes from my answers and from my passport. When I asked what all these questions were for, and whether this was an interview, she led me to a small interview room and said that it was “if I want it to be”.

I gave my basic details, explained about the festival, and the film being the reason for our visit to Berlin, which she said she believed. She said they need to stop us and the Tipton boys as anyone with “terror links” must be questioned – not that I had any necessarily, she said. I added that the Tipton Three didn’t either, as is widely documented. She then asked to go through the contents of my wallet. I felt uncomfortable about the ambiguities in the purpose of the detention and this proposed search, and so asked to speak to a lawyer.

I was denied access to legal advice, supposedly officially, under powers used to detain me. However the specific powers under which I was being held were deliberately made unclear by the detaining Special Branch officer. She gave me a blank copy of a “Section 7 of the Terrorism Act Detention Form” to explain why I couldn’t contact anyone. The form stated that someone detained under its powers can be prevented from contacting anyone, including legal advisors, for up to 48 hours, by a superintendent officer. I asked her whether she was a superintendent. Her reply was that I was not in fact being held under the powers outlined in this form. I was only being denied legal advice for the first hour of questioning, rather than 48hours. The reason why I had been given this form was now unclear.

She left the room, and said she was bringing in a male colleague to enforce the wallet search, since “a lot of Muslims don’t like dealing with women do they.” As she left I quickly called an academic lawyer, Ravinder Thukral, on my mobile.

He called back as she re-entered and spoke directly to the her on my phone. It was unclear now whether I was officially not allowed to call anyone, or whether she simply wouldn’t help me to do so but had no power to stop me. I took another two calls from lawyers during the interview. Each lawyer was unclear about the powers she was using to detain me, prevent me from getting full legal advice, and search my wallet. Her explanations were often unclear and seem to contradict her earlier explanations about the form and its relevance.

Under the threat of “prolonging” my detention, I cooperated in allowing her to go through my wallet. She took detailed notes on all its contents. All of my bankcard details were noted down, as were the details on other people’s business cards I had in my wallet. I was searched for objects that I might use to “hurt” the officers. However this took place about halfway through the interview after I had been with the interviewer alone for some time.

While searching through my wallet she asked me whether I intended to do more documentary films, specifically more political ones like The Road to Guantanamo. She asked “Did you become an actor mainly to do films like this, you know, to publicise the struggles of Muslims?”.

She also asked me what my political views were, what I thought about “the Iraq war and everything else that was going on”, whether the Iraq war was “right” in my view.

She then asked me whether I would mind officers contacting me regularly in the future, “in case, for example, you might be in a café, and you overhear someone discussing illegal activities”.

I then took a call from Clive Stafford Smith who had been contacted by Ravinder Thukral, the first Lawyer I had contacted. He told me to wait a moment as he was on his way to Gareth Peirce’s (Human Rights Lawyer who helped secure the Tipton Three’s release) office, and she would call me in a moment. When I told the interviewer I’d have to take a call from Gareth Peirce’s office shortly, she said she wouldn’t allow me to. She started raising her voice, and behaving in a more urgent and aggressive way. She called in a male colleague who threateningly told me to give him the phone before gripping my hands and wrestling it from me. He then sat on a table in the room, grinned at me, winked and went through my phone. I protested, but he ignored me and continued to go through my phone. Then a third officer entered, and all three adopted very aggressive stances, threatening to take me to a police station, calling me a “fucker”, moving in very close to my face, pointing and shouting at me to “shut up and listen”. I complained at being called a fucker. The officer who still had my phone, and who had sworn at me, smiled at me and then said “now you’re making things up, no one called you that”.

I finally convinced the original officer to allow me to call Ms. Peirce’s office simply to ascertain the validity of the detention and the denial of full access to lawyers. She agreed on condition that if I tried to ask any further questions of the lawyer my phone would be taken away. As soon as I got through to the lawyer, she suddenly said “we’re done with you, you can go, whats the point in calling lawyers”. The lawyer on the phone told the officer (again, speaking directly to her on my phone) that he hadn’t heard of such powers existing in Section 7 of the TACT. She changed the subject and said that I was free to go now anyway and that I was now prolonging my detention by my own insistence on calling lawyers.

I took the opportunity, took the lawyer’s advice, and left the room. She advised me to go home and read up on anti terror legislation. I advised the officers in the room to learn some people skills.

I asked for any notes from the interview, and for names/ranks of the officers. I was denied both, and given a small, pink, police search record sheet – specifying that the purpose of the search was for “intelligence” and that I had been examined under the “TACT 2000”. The reverse of the sheet, “Sheet 2 “which as stated on the form itself “officers must also complete” was missing.”

Set against the background of the violence in occupied Palestine, the film sketches the lives of two young men who find themselves on the front line of the Palestinian resistance movement, for very different reasons, and with very different consequences. For Khaled, the allure of martyrdom lies in religion and infamy, for Said, his darkly brooding best friend, the motivation is personal and historical – to atone for his father’s collaboration with the settlers which resulted in his execution. The suicide mission they are sent on by local teacher and family friend Jamal promises to make the two men all that they perceive they are not – heroes, winners, and the rightful inhabitants of a peaceful kingdom in which they can live in the present, free from the violence which has formed the past and the uncertainty which haunts the future; a paradise – now. But all does not go according to plan and the two men find themselves separated on the way to Tel Aviv. Whether to go ahead with their mission after their initial effort is jeopardised is the question with which the two wrestle, a question which forces them to reassess their most fundamental beliefs.

The voice of common sense comes from Suha, the daughter of a famed Palestinian activist whose life was claimed in the conflict some years previously. The influence of her father has the obverse effect to that played on Said – she detests violence and is horrifed when she learns of his devastating intention to commit mass murder in the name of the Palestinian cause, especially given their developing romance.

Khaled, like his best friend, sees life in the Occupied Territories as ‘a life sentence’. He is unmoved by the pleas of Suha to shake off his delusions, ‘I’d rather have paradise in my head than live in this hell’, he exclaims. His almost infantile excitement at the prospect of his fate gives way to doubt just as Said’s initial reticence is galvanised into an unshaking commitment to right the wrongs of history, and of his father.

Yet Said and Khaled are not presented as fanatical monsters. Abu-Assad employs some wonderfully deft human touches- Khaled forgetting his sandwiches on the day of the mission and being pursued by his mother, the camera malfunctioning as the men make video statements for broadcast after their deaths. It is the avuncular Jamal who is chilling in his conviction and callousness, sending two of his friends to their deaths with a smile on his face. Khaled is comforted by the detailed organisation of the mission. ‘What will happen afterwards?’, he asks on the way to Tel Aviv. ‘You will be met by two angels’, Jamal replies, hesitating momentarily and drumming his fingers on the dashboard of the car. For Khaled, it is the reassurance he needs. Said’s mind is already made up.

Inevitable criticisms have been levelled at Abu-Assad for humanising suicide bombers, portraying them in a sympathetic light. The effect of Paradise Now is to bring to the forefront the human drama of the most inhuman of situations. We see in Said a normal young man driven to abnormal action by the conjunction of events beyond his control and a life that offers him nothing. His dedication is not to Islam, nor primarily to the liberation of the Occupied Territories, but to correcting mistakes from the past. Unlike Suha (and to an extent Khaled) he is unable to see the metaphor represented by the bomb belt –that of a restrictive force from which it is only possible to free oneself with the co-operation and cautious action of others, like the cycle of historical violence which calls him to arms. This film movingly illustrates the hopelessness of the situation in the Middle East and shows that whilst paradise may not be completely lost, it will take a long time to get there.

Caché tells the story of the kind of the bourgeois nuclear family that Haneke is so frequently drawn to – professional parents (in this case Anne, a publisher, played by Juliette Binoche and Georges, a TV cultural commentator played by Daniel Auteuil), and their 12 year old son, Pierrot. Their middle class life is derailed by the arrival on their doormat of video tapes showing their daily lives – someone is watching. Binoche as Anne is wonderfully sympathetic and frustrated, fearing for the safety of her family, whilst her husband Georges becomes increasingly angry, and increasingly certain that he knows the culprit. The drama which unfolds reveals both an ugly latent racism traceable back to the Algerian conflict of the 60s and a disruptive distrust between Anne and Georges which threatens to destroy their domestic bliss.

Haneke plays down the inspiration of a surveillance culture and instead concerns himself with addressing our trust in the truth as presented through the media, ‘there’s a pervasive delusion that we know more than we really do, we’re open to manipulation and I want to reflect that danger.’ The thrilling and disturbing drama which is set in motion by the arrival of the videos makes that danger a haunting central conceit, and one which provokes more questions than it provides answers; ‘when a film answers the questions that it raises, well, the work ends there’, says Haneke. Whilst the answers to his questions may remain hidden, they are certainly still worth pursuing.

Balance is something that Sway has almost mastered. He has marked his territory at the cross-roads between seemingly disparate cultural forces: Islam and Christianity, ‘trapped in between the imam and the priest’, American hip hop supremacy and British talent, ‘The Pound is stronger than the Dollar – holla!’, commercial success and critical acclaim. Yet these apparently incompatible elements have set Sway apart from the populous pack of emcees clamouring to get their 21 seconds on the mic. Quick to acknowledge his numerous influences, ‘Busta Rhymes, Eminem, Ludacris, Madness…’ Sway also knows that there’s a good reason that he can proudly proclaim to be ‘the rapper that people take to’, namely that ‘no one’s had that same combination of influences in one man, mixed with being someone who’s Christian-Muslim, Ghanaian-British…all of these things.’

Draped in the Union Jack and the Ghanaian tricolor flag, Sway is a model of British multiculturalism, proud of both his African and British heritage, with one eye trained on the States. ‘One thing Africans love’, he says with a wry grin, ‘is to see somebody come from nothing and become something. It’s usually labelled the American Dream, but it’s actually the African Dream.’ He recalls how his upbringing in London ‘was like living in two different countries’, the world outside his familial home in Hornsey, North London, bearing scant resemblance to the little slice of Africa that could be found behind his front door. ‘There’s a lot of time in Africa’, he muses, ‘so there’s a lot of conversation, and through conversation you get a lot of story telling, that’s an element I took within myself.’ The tradition of West African stories is weaved throughout This is My Demo, and not just in the comic appearances of ‘MC Charlie Boy’, Sway’s Ghanaian alter ego, who we hear is planning to swim to London ‘to eat champagne with the Queen.’ ‘He’s actually based on about twenty of my uncles’, he adds. He attributes his razor sharp wit and lyrical dexterity which permeate the record to his African background, skills which landed him ‘in HMV instead of HMP’, bagging a MOBO along the way, and all without a major label claiming a cut of the spoils.

Yet there is a danger that the qualities which have gained Sway a considerable commercial appeal are the same ones that make him unlikely to really make an impact on the die-hard avant-garde hip hop heads. ‘I’ve been described as “the more accessible Dizzee” which is a good thing…I am cutting edge, there’s nothing like me’, he says. Is there not a danger that you could be labelled ‘Hip Hop Lite’ I venture. ‘It’s not about being edgy for the sake of being edgy. I want people to understand where I’m coming from. Everyone has to be true to themselves. I can rap about guns but that’s not “keeping it real” to me.’ His major criticism of his UK contemporaries is exactly that reliance on an image inherited from across the pond – guns, drugs and violence. He would rather plump for honesty and integrity, even if that compromises the preconceived notion of what an emcee should be, ‘everyone’s a killer drug dealer with a 9 milla / That’s not sensible / And I can sense the bull / That’s why these rappers couldn’t see me coming if they were vaginas with spectacles’, he spits on ‘Hype Boys’. But even Sway, the thinking man’s emcee, the voice of hip hop with a sensitive side can’t resist a touch of machismo. ‘Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a rapper someone can talk stupid about. I got a lot of friends, and if you talk recklessly, they’ll come and see you, it’s as simple as that. I’m no wimp.’

Wimp or no wimp (and I’m inclined to agree with the man himself on this one), Sway is a man for whom respect and consideration are important factors. He eschews the attitude of many other British emcees which he comically paraphrases, ‘Well, I can rap about whatever I want, nobody’s gonna hear it anyway, and nobody’s gonna buy it, so fuck everybody!’ This in turn leads him to question whether other rappers would be making records that glorify violence if they thought they’d actually get played, and their mums might be tuned in to 1Xtra: ‘Do you think that if they thought their whole family could hear that they’d be saying those things? When I write my lyrics I think, “that might offend this kind of person”, or “that might take this person out of the picture.” Me, I think for the world.’ That’s not to say that This is My Demo skirts around serious issues, rather that they are dealt with in Sway’s inimitably humorous style – be it unwanted attitude in the pub, ‘If you’re a gangster, then I’m Prince William’, or domestic violence in the tragic-comic ‘Pretty Ugly Husband’.

Given the man’s predilection for in-jokes and diverse tastes, it is with some apprehension that I ask him to imagine that he’s been stranded on a traffic island in Wood Green with only one record on his iPod. I wait to hear his tune of choice. ‘That’s a really, really hard one’, he says after a lengthy pause. ‘Chaka Khan. Ain’t Nobody. It’d have to be that.’ I wonder whether he’s pulling my leg. ‘It was a toss up between that and Heal the World by Michael Jackson. I love that too, it’s the only song that makes me feel like I could jump out the window and not fall down. It’s a tough call, but I’d go for Chaka Khan’, he adds without the slightest hint of irony.

With the album in the shops and the buzz continuing to buzz only time will tell whether Sway manages to tread the most precarious path of all between integrity and success – without swaying too far either way. He is a man with a plan, having set himself the target of five albums to prove to the world that he deserves his ‘name up in bright lights and capitals.’ If progress to date is anything to go by, it’d be brave man who stands in Sway’s way.

Jess is a girl who is struggling to find her own identity in the hyphenated world in which she lives; half Yoruba and half English, she is torn between two cultures and finds herself occupying a world made up of dichotomies. TillyTilly who is at once a comforting friend and a disruptive demon is the embodiment of Jessamy’s struggle to discover her own identity – ‘My name is Jessamy. I am eight years old… She felt she needed to be saying this so that it would be real.’

Jess’ behaviour at home and school is disruptive, smashing her mother’s computer, cutting pictures out of books in the classroom, breaking the mirror in the bathroom – blamed in an eight year old’s plaintive tones on the mysterious, invisible, TillyTilly, ‘You have to believe me. I didn’t do it!’ The help of a psychologist is employed, though it is TillyTilly who reveals to Jessamy the true roots of her disturbance – the death of her baby twin sister, Fern.

Helen’s prose style is varied and vital. A lively spirit, as energetic as TillyTilly herself, weaves its way through the narrative which manages to recall both the naïveté of childhood, and to capture the uncertainty Jess faces as she firms her grip on reality. Her difficulties are compounded by the apparent contradictions between the tradition of her Nigerian roots and the British society in which she lives – in one world a wooden carving or ibeji must be made to lay to rest the soul of the dead twin, in the other world, sensitive if misguided psychologists probe with questions, ‘I know that things can be real in different ways’, offers Dr McKenzie by way of an explanation. Neither solution makes sense to Jess whose vulnerable childishness underscores the novel with tender pathos, ‘I’m tired and you’re confusing me,’ she responds.

The LIP: Do you consider yourself to be an ‘African novelist’? J.M Coetzee has said some interesting things about assuming such a title – does the African novelist have more responsibilities than the European novelist?

HO: Though I’m clearly influenced by a tradition of writers dealing with African consciousness, I think it’s more likely that I’d be placed on a different rung on the post-colonial writing ladder (if indeed I was going to get placed anywhere…) – basically it’s to do with uncertainties of language – I think and dream in English, and any words that I reach for in describing Nigeria are automatically and inextricably loaded with a sense of foreignness – ‘vibrant’, ‘colourful’, ‘hot’ – it’s so close to cliché that it’s embarrassing, and it almost suggests that I don’t even know what I’m describing anymore. A book coming from someone who thought in, say, Yoruba, would take all those adjectives as a given and either get past them and unravel new descriptions or just get right to whatever point they’re making. It’s that hesitancy and circling around the point that stops me from being qualitatively similar to the African greats like Soyinka, Emecheta, Achebe, Ola Rotimi.

I seem to have begun in a halfway niche that maybe writers like Amy Tan and Jhumpa Lahiri, though they handle it better, wouldn’t scoff at. Though social commentary of some form is integral to the dynamic of almost every novel, I don’t think novelists have any responsibilities outside of the honing of their craft; they obviously have responsibilities and concerns as people, but if these come above storytelling, it doesn’t work. ‘Concept’ novels are only interesting up until the point where the concept becomes clear – a major gripe I have with Dostoevsky’s blatant focus on morality and the mechanisms of psychological health in Crime and Punishment is that after Raskolnikov murders the old lady, which fulfils the concept, ‘what if a student entered into the act of murdering an old lady?’, I lose interest and have to struggle to finish. So, mostly I say, ‘If you’re writing about politics or sociology, kindly call it a politics or sociology book and not a novel.’ Arundhati Roy, whom I greatly admire as a writer, has made that distinction and is concentrating on using her writing skill to draw non-fictional attention to issues in India. ‘Concept’ novels really seem to interfere.

The LIP: Has your age been a help or a hindrance in getting published and/or getting people to take your work seriously?

HO: My age did become a somewhat cynical bonus selling point, and with good reason – a crazy number of books are being published every year. Couple this with the fact that readership inevitably decreases when films, plays and video-games are becoming stronger and stronger as industries, and it’s starting to seem like you need some kind of kooky trademark just to keep your head above water. Since there’s nothing else kooky about me, I guess age helped with Alexandra Pringle, my editor at Bloomsbury, who wanted to know what an eighteen year old would have to say. If you’re looking for a new and distinctive writing voice, it must be tempting to try and plumb our generation, who are (if they’re into that sort of thing) growing up with both filmic and literary imaginations in equal effect. In terms of general readership and critics, though, yes, the book is almost guaranteed attention, but people are bound to be more unpleasant about it than gracious. They question quality, (What has she read? How sophisticated is this going to be?) and they are more than likely to get horribly cynical and paint your publishers as monochrome ogres who’ve chained you to your desk and forced you to write like a bitch when you could be getting healthy, real-life material. Someone who interviewed me for a radio show told me that they’d been dreading reading The Icarus Girl because they thought they were going to have to contemplate the musings of a precocious brat. Luckily, they changed their mind a third of the way in, but obviously not everyone coming to the book will.

The LIP: What does multiculturalism mean to you? Jess struggles to get comfortable in a hyphenated world, do you think many ‘half and half’ children (TillyTilly’s words, not mine) feel that same pressure?

HO: Multiculturalism doesn’t really mean anything to me. I guess as a term it means embracing and integrating what was formerly ‘foreign’ into an eclectic framework that can then be identified as national culture, but I think at bottom it is very difficult to truly understand that someone from another culture, who dresses differently, may have a different skin colour and may speak a different language, is the same as you. It’s a big old fallacy.

The LIP: Where is Africa now?

HO: Africa is in a place where, alongside the urgent need for humanitarian aid to be found in Africa as a continent, people are beginning to recognise the immense talent that’s emerging from that intensely prideful, unembarrassed place.

The LIP: Where is Africa Now?

Jasmine: It’s difficult for me to answer the question from a personal perspective. I know the reality of South Africa now and I know the history of South Africa then and tidbits about the rest of the continent from books, television and friends who, like me, were children taking it all in as uncritical observers. I ventured to the Wild Coast region of South Africa once in 2002 on a pilot research trip with a tourist camera and open mind. The trip changed my life.

On one school tour, I walked into a dilapidated classroom and witnessed a group of children, none older than 10, huddled over a self-made fire of broken school desks and chairs. While my research trip took me to South Africa’s most cosmopolitan cities, as Countee Cullen notes in Incident, “Of all the things that happened there / That’s all that I remember.” I could not stop thinking about the rural school.

My experience of Africa was of an unequal and bifurcated place with opulent haves and desperate have nots. When I returned in 2003, I was armed with a research agenda, a professional camera and a discerning eye. Little had changed. Within one week, I was listening to women crying about not having food and two days later I was careening up a mountain side on a motorbike to a million rand mansion in Hout Bay. But when I had my camera, I saw another side, beyond the binary of Black and White, beyond the binaries of colour (ngaphaya kwebala), and beyond the binary of rich and poor. When I aimed at my subjects they shot back with tenacity and uncompromising hope. I can say that my experience of Africa now is one of a people pushing to break free of the chains of history. Through my camera lens, I saw a powerfully hopeful future waiting to happen.

1. The Ilitha Project aims to infuse resources into the under-served rural Ilitha Junior School. The project leaders are looking for partners and new fundraising opprtunities.
2. Jasmine Waddell is currently seeking a publisher for her collection, ‘Explorations and Connections: Reflections of a Black American in Post-Apartheid South Africa.’ If you believe you can help her in any way please contact editor@theLIP.org for more information.

Africa 05 aims to add a cultural component to the political momentum and focus that will be placed on Africa when the UK takes over the presidency and chairmanship of the European Union and the G8 this year. Notable African artists, scholars and thinkers, including Yinka Shonibare, El Anatsui, Baaba Maal, Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka will also be contributing to the programme.

Events will include African contemporary art at the Hayward Gallery, MC Solaar at the Royal Festival Hall, Fashion at the V&A and a display of the oldest humanly made objects in the world at the British Museum (two million year old stone tools from Tanzania). These major institutions of British cultural life are all partners in the initiative, along with the BBC and Arts Council England – each institution doing what they know best, with the theme of showcasing the rich diversity of African culture.

The programme will also involve events from 50 smaller organisations (including the LIP magazine), ranging through film, dance, music, literature, drama, fashion, radio, television and crafts.

The legacy of Africa 05 is intended to be a permanent improvement in the diversity of the museums and galleries sector, both in creating new fellowships for curators of African origin, and developing new audiences amongst the ethnic minority communities of London. The programme could also change the way things are collected and interpreted.

Mark Grimmer talked to Programme Director Dr Augustus Casely-Hayford about the inspiration behind the programme of events and his hopes for the future representation of African culture in the UK…

The LIP: What prompted you to put Africa 05 together?

Augustus Casely-Hayford: It has been a long time since the last big celebration of African culture in 1995 and since then most mainstream venues have done very little to build upon that fantastic platform. Africa O5 will be a long overdue focus on Africa, and will hopefully be the beginning of a more sustained delivery of African programming by cultural institutions.

The LIP: The ‘Tree of Life’ project sounds fascinating – how can art help shift the focus away from Africa’s violent past?

AC-H: The Tree of life – a life size tree made from weapons that were collected after the Civil war in Mozambique – is an arresting image. It is meant to be provocative, to make us think about how Africa can work through the most devastating periods and thrive. The two Mozambique Government and opposition leaders came together under the tree to reflect, yes upon their countries violent history, but also on their hopes for the future. The tree is now in the Great Court of the British Museum.

The LIP: Does the African artist who claims to represent his or her country have added responsibility?

AC-H: I would hope that no artist should have to take on that responsibility unless they wish to. I hope that during Africa 05 we will be able to see the work of hundreds of African artists, most of whom have never been seen in Britain before. I hope we will begin to get a sense of the huge complexity of African arts practise and to emancipate African artists from the responsibility of feeling that they have to represent anyone but themselves.

The LIP: Why has African culture been neglected on the British scene until now?

AC-H: I think that there has been an unfortunate history of collecting African material culture and placing it in an ethnographic context. This has meant that most of the African material in the National collection has been collected by museums who are interested in material culture. The recent move by the galleries to begin to collect African work will begin to change how and where African art is seen. Hopefully if the Nationals take a lead the commercial sector will follow.

The LIP: In the past, large-scale cultural events such as Band Aid have been linked with a negative image of Africa as a starving continent. Is Africa 05 deliberately moving away from that?

AC-H: Africa 05 is all about celebrating Africa. In a year when we may see African debt cancelled, and a sustainable AIDS policy. It is time to be optimistic and celebrate Africa.

The LIP: What was the African input into the curation of the project?

AC-H: Africa 05 is a celebration, not just of Africa, but also its Diaspora. The whole Africa 05 team are of African descent and we have worked with the Arts Council to begin new curatorial development schemes for BME (Black Minority Ethnic) curators.

The LIP: Can we really talk about ‘Africa’ as a homogenous unit? The art and the artists’ Africanness is both a unifying and differentiating factor – how is this manifested in the project?

AC-H: Possibly not – but the problems of under representation have affected the people of the continent as a whole, hence it is easy to market ‘Africa’ to get people through doors, bums on seats, watching TV – then we can explode the myths and stereotypes. All the artists are here as individuals, and the platforms they have been given respect their individual talents.

The LIP: How will the African presence be maintained on the British cultural scene in 2006 and beyond?

AC-H: We have developed a number of programmes with the Arts Council that will make a sustainable change to the way that African art is delivered in Britain.

The LIP: What does multiculturalism mean to you?

AC-H: I think it means respecting and valuing difference, whilst seeking common bonds.

The LIP: There has been talk lately of an African Renaissance – how important is it for these innovative individuals to channel their talents back into Africa?

AC-H: I would encourage anyone to invest their energies in Africa, whoever they might be.

The LIP: What political decisions were involved in putting the scheme together – is Zimbabwe represented in the project?

There are a number of Zimbabwean artists involved in Africa 05 – the programme has attempted to be as inclusive as possible and not make any judgements that are not aesthetic. I think you have to scream political messages louder and louder, as people get bored of hearing the same thing. Art by its very definition is unique and offers a refreshing take on a number of otherwise unpalatable truths.

The LIP: Where is Africa now?

AC-H: Here in London! Come and see it during 2005.

Yael Bartana’s video projection, ‘Trembling Time’, is an eerie film, depicting traffic passing under a flyover in Tel Aviv, periodically slowing to a halt at the sounding of a siren marking the commemoration of Soldier Memorial Day, a state sanctioned ritual in honour of Israel’s war dead. Her focus is on collective experience, her attention drawn to ritualised acts intended to strengthen national identity. ‘Profile’, another video installation, follows an anonymous female soldier repeatedly firing a rifle during target practice, a very different ritual which echoes the memorial for those who fell in battle. Killing and mourning form part of the same, ritualistic, painful cycle. The soldier’s anonymity is crucial for Israeli-born Yael; ‘For me, that soldier becomes a symbol that reflects my own feelings and emotions about the situation.’ Questions are fundamental to her work; ‘In what kind of place did I grow up? How long will this country continue the patterns of ignorance?’

Palestinian artist Emily Jacir has questions of her own. For her, art is a provocation, a force which can be used to ‘pollute’. Her piece ‘Sexy Semite’ hijacks the medium of the printed press to question Israel’s law of return policy. Emily ran personal ads in New York’s Village Voice seeking Israeli mates for displaced Palestinians, ‘so they could return home utilising Israel’s law of return.’ Its humour is one with a bitter aftertaste. Adverts for a ‘Dusky Eyed Beauty …no fatties’ sit uncomfortably next to the overtly political, ‘You stole the land, might as well steal the women. I’m ready to be conquered by your army.’ As well as questioning Israeli policy, Emily is questioning the role of art by challenging a crucial given; that of context. Her newspaper ads are in people’s houses, in their shops, on their subway trains. When we see the adverts framed alongside the speculative news articles which they provoked in the safe-haven of a gallery, the cycle is completed. The lines between humour and pathos, art and life, never appeared so indistinguishable.

Yet it is another of Emily’s pieces which is most striking, ‘Where We Come From’. She asked a number of Palestinians ‘If I could do something for you anywhere in Palestine, what would it be?’ The granting of the exiled Palestinians’ wishes is facilitated by her possession of an American passport allowing freedom of movement. The result is heartbreaking. Faced with the chance of one wish, the simple desires of the people are laid bare. Alongside photographs illustrating the fulfilment of their wishes, are transcripts of what was requested, in English and Arabic. ‘Go to my mother’s grave in Jerusalem on her birthday and put flowers and pray’ requested Munir, born in Jerusalem, now living in Bethlehem, unable to return. When Emily went to fulfil Munir’s wish she was perplexed by the crowds around a neighbouring grave. When they cleared she was able to read the name on the headstone: Oscar Schindler. Jihad’s request could not be more moving, ‘Visit my mother, hug and kiss her and tell her that these are from her son. Visit the sea at sunset and smell it for me and walk a little bit…enough. Am I greedy?’

The parallels between Emily and Yael’s work are clear enough, though it is important not to assume that the two artists are addressing two sides of the same coin. Whilst Emily’s work is filled with a longing for a return to normality, to home, Yael’s representations of supposed normality through tradition and repetition are equally unstable and alien. Less obvious is the relationship with the third artist exhibited alongside the Israeli and the Palestinian, Lee Miller. Lee remains unique in her field. Moving from high fashion photography she found herself on the frontlines in the Second World War covering allied progress for Vogue. The influence of Man Ray, for whom she modelled, leaves a clear surrealist impression on both aspects of her work. The blurring between the glamorous world of haute couture Paris and the terror of wartime Europe is most clearly illustrated in ‘Fire Masks, Hampstead, London 1941’ a surreal image of models wearing protective military equipment. It is through these juxtapositions that the links between her and the other two artists emerge. Lee, like Emily, plays with the audience’s reliance on a familiar context by juxtaposing suffering and beauty, and like Yael, betrays a fascination with individuals and communities caught up in events beyond their control.

For all three artists, art is itself a questioning force. It asks who we are, what we want and how we can achieve it. This exhibition forces us to think about both where art belongs in our society and where society belongs in our art. There might not be a right answer to either question.