Episodes
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This week, we hear from artists who’ve been making a difference in their local communities.
Sudanese filmmaker Hajooj Kuka first spoke to The Cultural Frontline in 2019 when he was filming the protests taking place after Sudanese President Al Bashir had been deposed following 30 years of authoritarian rule. Anu Anand catches up with Hajooj to hear about the community filmmaking projects he’s been undertaking through his local neighborhood committee.
The Russian Tajik musician and campaigner Manizha moved with her family to Russia aged four to escape the civil war in Tajikistan. A successful singer songwriter, she was the last person to represent Russia at the Eurovision Song Contest. She explains how many of her concerts have been cancelled due to her opposition to the war in Ukraine and how her music supports the work of her SILSILA foundation which helps those who have experienced domestic violence, along with championing the rights of refugees and migrants.
Shine Tani is a successful Kenyan artist with his art gallery at the centre of the Banana Hill community just north of Nairobi. Shine came from a poor background, surviving by begging and performing as an acrobat on the streets with his brothers. Self-taught, he now represents over 100 artists from across the continent and his work has helped change the status of local art in the country.
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The myriad of indigenous communities in Canada share a painful history. But today, Canada’s indigenous artists are using music, from rock to round dance, to interrogate still-felt horrors, to heal, and to share stories, culture and languages that were violently suppressed for decades.
In Toronto, the traditional territory of the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and many other nations, we meet Jeremy Dutcher. His debut album Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa, is sung entirely in the language of his Wolastoq community, and is a mix of opera, pop melodies and piano.
In the city of London, the traditional territory of peoples such as the Attawandaron and Anishinaabeg, Anishinaabe musician Adam Sturgeon puts healing at the forefront of his bands Status/Non-Status and Ombiigizi's artistic vision.
Further west, in Winnipeg, lives composer Melody McKiver. They are an assistant professor of Indigenous Music at the University of Manitoba, where they are putting together courses to educate students on indigenous history, through the lens of music. They are a member of the Obishikokaang First Nation.Even further west, in the Treaty 6 territory of Alberta, lives Fawn Wood. A Plains Cree and Salish Tribes traditional singer, Fawn is one of the first female indigenous musicians to use a hand drum in her music.
Producer: Sasha Edye-LindnerA Just Radio production for BBC World Service
(Photo: GasS. Credit: Matthew Wiewel)
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What resources do artists around the world need to express themselves fully? Where should the money come from? And what, if any role should governments play?
This week we’re exploring the question of who should pay for the arts and how. It’s one with broad implications for the type of culture being made, and the type of people who get to make it.
Brazilian writer, illustrator and Cultural Manager Mauricio Negro tells Tina Daheley about a tumultuous time for Brazilian artists, brought about by former President Jair Bolsonaro’s cultural reforms, which included the dissolution of Brazil’s Ministry of Culture and significant cuts in government funding available the culture sector.
Marcel Pardo Ariza is a contemporary Colombian artist working in photography and installation who uses ‘they/them’ pronouns. In October 2021 they were offered a place on San Francisco’s new Artists Minimum income scheme, receiving $1,000 per month to sustain their career as an artist. They tell us about the impact the money had on them and their work. Americans for the Arts Executive Director Nina Ozlu Tunceli then debates the broader implications of such a scheme with US writer and commentator Alexander Zubatov. Plus US artist Natasha Bouchillonn talks about combining her skills in marketing and art to create a very successful business, an example of how an entrepreneurial approach can help artists who may not think they can afford it to sustain a career free of government support.
And South African playwright Mike Van Graan reflects on his career campaigning for broader access to culture in the country for artists and audiences. Van Graan, who was a cultural advisor to the country’s first post-apartheid government, recently took part in a review of the theatre and dance sectors in the country that led to a set of proposals including the issuing of special vouchers to enable poorer households to attend the theatre.
(Photo credit: Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
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On this week’s programme we’re looking at the explosion of interest in the role of artificial intelligence, particularly since the arrival of a new generation of AI powered chatbots like Google Bard, DALL-E 2 and Open Al’s ChatGPT, which is reportedly the fastest growing consumer app of all time.
Tina Daheley talks to two visual artists using AI in their work; Dr Melisa Achoko Allela and Jeremiah Ikongio. Melisa’s virtual reality storytelling project uses ChatGPT to help retell and digitise traditional African stories. Jeremiah uses an AI algorithm to generate new artworks based on the style of the late Nigerian modernist painter Uche Okeke. Jeremiah has since developed his own AI web application AfroDreams to create a mix of contemporary and traditional images.
The Swedish drama director, Jenny Elfving and Polish science researcher Piotr Mirowski are two members of the creative team behind the AI experimental theatre company Improbotics. The company have developed an onstage chatbot called A.L.Ex, which can generate lines for actors to respond to during spontaneous improvised performances. We hear A.L.Ex and the actors in action in the programme.
US artist Holly Herndon works with computer software and AI to create innovative music, songs and sounds. She told the BBC’s Andrea Kidd how she has developed a digital computer twin called Holly + that can sing melodies in a number of languages and styles using Holly’s original voice.
Producers: Anna Bailey, Andrea Kidd and Hannah Dean.
(Photo: Improbotics perform on stage. Credit: Eleanora Briscoe/Edinburgh International Improv Festival 2020)
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To mark the first anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Tina Daheley talks to documentary film directors Alisa Kovalenko and Yelizaveta Smith about their experiences over the past year and how that has shaped their work. Alisa’s feature We Will Not Fade Away tells the story of teenagers growing up in eastern Ukraine against the background of war and was selected for the Berlin Film Festival. Yelizaveta’s feature School Number Three is about a school in the Donbas, which was destroyed during the war.
Andrey Kurkov is one of Ukraine’s most famous and prolific writers. His novel Death And The Penguin is a worldwide best seller and his books are full of black humour and intrigue. He is also a diarist who has been sharing his thoughts and experiences on life in Ukraine for the BBC. To mark this first anniversary he has written a piece especially for The Cultural Frontline.
Ukrainian comedian Hanna Kochegura is currently taking her stand-up across Ukraine in a countrywide tour visiting 19 cities. She tells us why humour can be powerful in a time of war.
Over the past decade, the club scene in Kyiv has been growing, with thousands of people attending raves known for their raw energy and vibe. One of the people at the centre of this scene is Pavlo Derhachov, co-founder and manager of the experimental club Otel’. He told The Cultural Frontline about the impact of the invasion on the club.
(Image: A drawing of a bird on a wall in Kyiv. Credit: Roman Pilipey/Getty Images)
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Rap is huge in India and Desi hip-hop, the music and culture which combines the influences of hip-hop and the Indian subcontinent, is about to go global.
Fan and champion Bobby Friction meets the leading artists on the scene as US rap legend Nas, begins a new hip-hop label in Mumbai. Nas has no doubt that the next global rap superstar will come from India but hip-hop culture is about more than shifting records. Rap is giving India's lower caste, religious minorities and women a space to speak truth to power and change the narrative around who can be a music star.
Bobby speaks with Raja Kumari who was signed by Nas but is now stepping out on her own label Godmother Records with the intention of pushing female rappers in a male dominated scene. Prabh Deep is the Sikh class warrior and poet taking rap to new artistic levels from the grimiest parts of Delhi but also scoring hits with his take on life in India today. Prabh's label mate Ahmer is the politically conscious Muslim rapper from Kashmir who uses music to process the violence he has witnessed in the disputed territory.
These rising stars alongside artists like KRSNA, Raftaar, Naezy and Divine are inspiring a new generation of hip-hop heads in Delhi, Mumbai and across India.
(Photo: Bobby Friction at a hip-hop event in Mumbai)
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Authors from around the world tell us why and how they reflect on our global climate crisis in their stories. Tina Daheley talks to three authors about the challenges and opportunities in putting climate change in their books - how to be realistic but encourage the reader to take action rather than despair.
Bestselling thriller writer Peter May joins us from France. His new book, A Winter Grave, uses crime fiction to get a climate message across to readers who might not expect it.
Bijal Vachharajani in India writes and commissions books for children. Her books include A Cloud Called Bhura, So You Want to Know About the Environment, and Savi and the Memory Keeper.
And Pitchaya Sudbanthad was born in Thailand in the city which lends its name to his book, Bangkok Wakes To Rain.
Producer: Paul Waters
(Image: Concept illustration of an open book and tree with one side burning. Credit: SIphotography)
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Erica Gillingham is joined by a panel of leading international LGBTQ+ writers to discuss the growing popularity of queer fiction and the challenges posed by book bans. At a time when sales are increasing and LGBTQ+ authors are winning awards, in countries including the United States, Russia and Hungary, movements to remove books portraying queer characters are on the rise.
The panel also explore the ways social media is influencing the kinds of LGBTQ+ stories being written, for example the way younger readers like to find books by certain story tropes, and also the importance of showing LGBTQ+ characters leading happy, fulfilled lives.
Malinda Lo is the bestselling author of seven novels, including most recently A Scatter of Light. Her novel Last Night at the Telegraph Club won the United States’ National Book Award, yet her work is banned in 25 school districts in half a dozen states. She explains how award-winning books can sometimes attract unwanted attention.
Danny Ramadan is a Syrian-Canadian author and adovate for LGBTQ+ refugees. His debut novel, The Clothesline Swing, was shortlisted for the Lambda Literary Award, longlisted for Canada Reads, and named a Best Book of the Year by the Globe and Mail and Toronto Star. Danny explains the need for young people from minorities to access spaces where they can see themselves represented.
Adiba Jaigirdar is the author of The Henna Wars, Hani & Ishu’s Guide to Fake Dating and A Million to One. A Bangladeshi/Irish writer and former teacher, she has an MA in Postcolonial Studies from the University of Kent. She tells us about the important role older writers, particularly lesbian storytellers including Malinda Lo, played in inspiring her desire to write.
Erica Gillingham is a a poet, writer and bookseller with a PhD in queer young adult literature. Her debut poetry pamphlet, The Human Body is a Hive, was published in March 2022.
Produced by Simon Richardson.
(Photo: Adiba Jaigirdar, Erica Gillingham, Danny Ramadan and Malinda Lo. Credit: Tricia Yourkevich)
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Tina Daheley talks to two film-makers who are highlighting Indigenous communities across North America. Blackfoot and Sámi actor and producer Elle Maija Tailfeathers is the director of the documentary Kímmapiiyipitssini - The Meaning of Empathy, which explores the opioid crisis in her community. Navajo Diné director and writer Ivey Camille Manybeads Tso’s film Powerlands, documents the impact of chemical companies on Indigenous land. Daniel Riley is the artistic director and choreographer of the Australian Dance Theatre. His latest piece, Tracker, has just had its world premiere at the Sydney Festival. It is based on the personal story of his great-great uncle who was a Wiradjuri Elder and tracker in the police force in Australia. Reporter Regina Botros spoke to Daniel, along with some of the other First Nations creatives, about the importance of putting stories like this on stage.
The veteran left wing politician Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, known widely as Lula, was recently sworn in as president of Brazil, having beaten the right-wing incumbent Jair Bolsonaro in a tense election contest. In a change of policy from the Bolsonaro administration, Lula has pledged "zero deforestation" in the Amazon by 2030, which is home to many Indigenous communities, and he has also announced a new Ministry of Indigenous Peoples. Edson Krenak is part of the flourishing Indigenous literature scene, and along with other writers, he has been at the forefront of storytelling across the country in order to bring about a dialogue between all cultures.
(Photo: A still from Tracker. Credit: Australian Dance Theatre)
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On this week’s The Cultural Frontline we explore the power of music and how artists have been using it to highlight issues including politics and the #MeToo movement.
Prakash Neupane is a Nepali rapper and writer who mixes hip hop and R&B with social and political messages. His songs address the issues facing Nepal and his thoughts on the political situation in the country and its complex recent history. Prakash talks to Tina Daheley about why he feels rap is a good way of getting his message across and his role in a flourishing new wave of the Nepali hip hop scene.
The Australian actor Cate Blanchett has just won a Golden Globe for her portrayal of a fictitious classical music conductor and composer in Todd Field’s new film Tár. It follows the downfall of Lydia Tár who is at the pinnacle of her career when she is accused of bullying and sexual misconduct towards her fellow musicians. Cate speaks to reporter Anna Bailey about why she wanted to take on this role and shares her response to the criticisms the film has faced. They are also joined by the creative force behind Tár’s score, the award-winning Icelandic composer Hildur Guðnadóttir. Hildur discusses her own experiences of being a woman creating music.
Plus Syrian clarinettist and composer, Kinan Azmeh. He’s recently performed his own works with the London Philharmonic Orchestra as part of their A place to call home series, which explores issues of displacement and exile. Kinan speaks to The Cultural Frontline’s Andrea Kidd about how his works, including his Clarinet Concerto, have been influenced by the Syrian civil war and the importance of home.
(Photo: Cate Blanchett in Tár. Credit: Universal)
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In the UK and Ireland a new music phenomenon is growing - bands that are speaking over their songs instead of singing. Is a new guitar music movement being born?
Fontaines D.C., Dry Cleaning and Yard Act, as well as solo artists including Billy Nomates and Sinead O’Brien are just some of the acts using speech prominently in their music. It is not just vocal performance that has been commented on - many emerging bands have been described as having a ‘post-punk’ guitar music style and lyrics rich in social commentary.
Musician and broadcaster Gemma Bradley meets bands and vocalists to find out more about this exciting music trend and why.
James Smith, songwriter and vocalist of English band Yard Act explains why he was attracted to what he describes as ‘spoken word, politically forward’ guitar music. He reflects on the power of vocal performance and how the Covid pandemic affected his song writing.
Irish vocalist Sinead O’Brien performs on stage with a guitarist and drummer and works in poetry as well as music. She meets Gemma backstage before a gig to discuss how versatile and impactful speech in music can be.
Fionn Reilly from Belfast band Enola Gay explains to Gemma what inspires his energetic performance style, vocal delivery and the band’s song lyrics.
Gemma also visits the prolific and much sought-after producer Dan Carey at his London studio. He has worked with many guitar bands that use speech in their music including Fontaines D.C., Squid, Wet Leg and black midi, and describes the freedom available for artists unconstrained by the parameters of singing.
(Photo: Yard Act (James Smith: vocals, Ryan Needham: Bass, Sam Shipstone: Guitar, Jay Russell: Drums and Christopher Duffin: Keys/Sax) perform live on 6 Music's Steve Lamacq show in Maida Vale studio, Nov. 2022. Credit: Mark Allan/BBC)
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As Brazil enters a challenging and uncertain era under the new president, British-Brazilian writer Yara Rodrigues Fowler talks to its artists about the small utopias they are creating.
Writer Natalia Borges Polesso centres the non-romantic relationships of queer characters to forge precious connections in a country that is increasingly polarised. In her short story collection, Amora, she wanted readers to feel understood, while her latest novel The Extinction of Bees, urges readers to see the collapse happening all around them, and reimagine their present in order to create a better future.
In 2018, the sacred Indigenous cave of Kamakuwaká was vandalised. Photographer Piratá Waujá is helping his community to create a virtual reality experience in order to preserve their culture for future generations, and challenge fake news about Indigenous people.
Keyna Eleison, the co-artistic director of the Modern Art Museum in Rio de Janeiro, takes us around Nakoada, the centenary exhibition of the birth of Brazilian Modernism. She discusses how humour can slowly shift the Eurocentric definition of art, and the importance of diverse collaborations in leaving an ‘intelligent’ legacy.
Elisa Larkin Nascimento, activist and collaborator of the late polymath Abdias Nascimento, is thrilled to have a two-year exhibition of the Black Art Museum in rural Brazil. She opens it with an ancient Afro-Brazilian procession in order to strengthen links with the surrounding quilombos, or communities of runaway enslaved people.
As the new president, Lula, makes ambitious commitments to diverse communities and the arts, what do they hope might change for them and their work?
Producer: Eloise Stevens An Overcoat Media production for BBC World Service
Image: Dramatist Leda Maria Martins with Congado Mineiro at Inhotim (Credit: Zezzyinho Andraddy)
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This week we hear from some of the women who’ve been making their mark in 2022. Danupha Khanatheerakul, known by her stage name Milli, is a 20-year-old Thai rapper. Last year she criticised the Thai government’s response to COVID 19 and was charged with defamation, which led to the hashtag #SaveMilli trending on social media. She’s been chosen as one of the BBC’s 100 Women, which is a celebration of inspiring and influential women who’ve contributed to our world in incredible ways. Milli told the BBC’s Valeria Perasso why she felt compelled to challenge Thai stereotypes and the government, and the impact of eating the Thai dessert of mango sticky rice onstage. The Taliban retook control of Afghanistan in 2021 and since their return many aspects of women’s lives have been curtailed, including the ability to study. Music and the arts have also been banned across the country. To mark the first anniversary of the Taliban takeover, singer songwriter Elaha Soroor, along with other Afghan diaspora creatives, launched ‘Fly with Me,’ a festival of music and kite flying that took place across Europe. In a conversation that was recorded before the Taliban ordered an indefinite ban on female higher education, Elaha spoke to the BBC Afghan journalist Sana Safi about the festival, and also about being a female singer in Afghanistan and her time on the TV talent show Afghan Star. The US poet Maggie Wang has won a number of awards this year including The Young Poets Network’s Poems to Solve the Climate Crisis Challenge and Our Whole Lives, We Are Protest: A Poetry Challenge Inspired by the People of 1381. She’s recently published her debut collection of poetry called The Sun on the Tip of a Snail’s Shell. She told the BBC’s Tina Daheley why she was drawn to creating poems highlighting the extinction of animals and plants.
(Photo: Milli)
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This week, as people around the world gather with family, Chibundu Onuzo presents a series of conversations between artists across the generations exploring what unites and divides them. In the USA it’s estimated that nearly a quarter of the population will be 65 or older by the year 2060 with more and more of the country’s resources needed to care for them. In Nigeria, a young population of average age 18 is questioning the ability of older politicians to understand their needs. In light of these debates, we listen in on conversations between artists from different generations.
Jewish American novelist Daniel Torday, 43, meets African American writer Monica Brashears, 25. Daniel is the author of Boomer1, a novel exploring intergenerational strife in the Baltimore suburbs and Monica is about to release her debut novel, House of Cotton, a gothic story set in the American South. They talk about their shared anxiety over climate change and the tensions between Gen Z and Baby Boomers.
Two musicians from India, Suhail Yusuf Khan, in his 30s, and Sarvar Sabri who’s in his 60s discuss the way their musical tradition is handed down and different approaches to the student teacher relationship.
Plus Australian Aboriginal artists, Mother and daughter Lauren Jarrett, 65, and Melissa Greenwood, 38, talk about their shared artistic practice and how making work helps them address intergenerational trauma within their community. Producer: Simon Richardson
(Photo: Lauren Jarrett and Melissa Greenwood)
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Soudade Kaadan’s speks to Sana Safi about her new film Nezouh, which tells the story of a young girl and her family caught in the centre of the Syrian conflict as they remain in their besieged hometown of Damascus. It is a story that has personal resonance for Soudade as Damascus was a place that she also once called home. Inspired by a photo of a bomb-damaged house, she began writing the script in 2013. It’s a allegorical tale told through the eyes of a young girl, with magical realism, female emancipation and finding hope in chaos at its heart.
Both Sana Safi and Atia Abawi’s lives were shaped by the war between Afghanistan and the Soviet Union in the 1980s and the 2001 invasion by the United States and NATO as part of what became known as the War on Terror. Both Sana and Atia have dedicated their careers to telling the story of Afghans. Afghanistan's story is not just one of conflict but also family, tradition, and a rich cultural history. The two writers discuss how they tell these stories in both journalism and in fiction.
Andrey Kurkov is an author of critically acclaimed and best-selling novels. He has become a de facto voice of Ukraine as he shares his diaries and despatches from Kyiv spread the news of daily life in a warzone. Meanwhile, fellow Ukrainian writer Artem Chapeye has left behind the writer’s desk after signing up to become a private in the Ukrainian army. Andrey and Artem explain to Sana Safi what it is like to be a writer in conflict, whether war is shaping their writing, and what impact they think the war will have on the future of Ukrainian storytelling. Producer: Sofie Vilcins
(Photo: Still from Nezouh by Soudade Kaadan. Credit: Nezouh ltd/BFI/Film4)
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This week we discuss how art can help reconnect us to those who are missing or have been disappeared.
It’s estimated that around 20,000 people go missing in Poland every year. Artist Zuzanna Pieczynska explores the impact of this in her work, with her paintings often focusing on the lives of the people left behind. She tells Tina Daheley more about her project ‘Each year in Poland a small town disappears.’
Thousands of people were disappeared during the dictatorships in countries across South America. A new play, called REWIND, by physical theatre company Ephemeral Ensemble, has been inspired by testimonies of South American political refugees who fled the dictatorships, as well as the more recent stories from young migrants caught up in violent repression following demonstrations in the region. Performers Andrés Velásquez and Eyglo Belafonte along with director Ramon Ayres talk to reporter Constanza Hola about the show. Loss and disappearance have been topics across much of Hisham Matar’s work. The Pulitzer prize winning writer has been inspired by his own life experiences, after his father was kidnapped in Egypt by Colonel Gaddafi’s regime, taken back to Libya and never seen again. Hisham shares a piece of art that changed him, a film from a director who has influenced his thinking as an author, the French filmmaker Robert Bresson, and in particular Bresson’s 1959 film ‘Pickpocket’.
In the 1994 Rwandan genocide, an estimated 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed by dominant Hutu forces in 100 days. For her piece, The Book of Life, Rwandan playwright and director Odile Gakire Katese, known as Kiki Katese, tells the story of that conflict and the remembrance of those who died, through the letters of ordinary Rwandans.
(Picture: Julia by Zuzanna Pieczyńska. Credit: Zuzanna Pieczyńska)
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The film Joyland is set in Lahore and tells the story of Haider, a married man who falls in love with the transgender dancer Biba. It’s the first Pakistani film to premiere at the Cannes Film Festival and it won the Jury Prize as well as the Queer Palm prize. It has also been selected as the Pakistani entry for Best International Feature Film at the Academy Awards. Despite having a standing ovation at Cannes, the film has had a more controversial reaction in Pakistan itself. Originally cleared for release, that decision was then overturned. However the film is now out in cinemas in Pakistan, although remains banned in the Punjab. Tina Daheley speaks to Joyland’s writer and director Saim Sadiq and film critic Kamran Jawaid.
Brazilian director and screenwriter Gabriel Martins took inspiration from his own childhood experience when he made his new film Mars One. It tells the story of a working-class Black Brazilian family adjusting to life after the election of President Jair Bolsanaro. Like Joyland, it has also been selected as its country’s submission for Best International Feature Film at the next Academy Awards.
Lone Scherfig is a Danish film-maker best known for her romantic comedies including An Education and One Day. She talks about the film that changed her - Austrian director Michael Haneke's 2009 German-language film The White Ribbon. It is a movie with a troubling message about the history of Europe and one that inspires her to ask big, important questions in her own work.
(Photo: A still from Joyland. Credit: Studio Soho)
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Cultural restitution is an issue that creates fierce debate in response to the work of campaigners, curators and nation states, who argue that collections in some of the world’s great cultural institutions contain objects that may have been acquired illegitimately, often during the colonial period.
Over the last two years an unprecedented number of restitution claims have been approved by museums and governments. This week two former UK culture ministers teamed up to call for the return of the Parthenon Sculptures removed from Athens in Greece by Lord Elgin, currently on display in the British Museum and last month Benin Bronzes which had been displayed in the USA were returned to the Kingdom of Benin in modern day Nigeria. Some commentators argue that a new way of operating for museums is unfolding before our eyes. It is a global conversation that has huge implications for the future of these institutions. Tina Daheley is joined by Herman Parzinger, President of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation who oversees the work of 27 museums and cultural organisations in Germany; Annelize Kotze, curator at the national Iziko Museums of South Africa; Alexander Herman, director of the UK based Institute of Art and Law and author of Restitution: The Return of Cultural Artefacts; Deadria Farmer-Paellmann, a human rights activist who runs the US based Restitution Study Group and Victor Ehikhamenor, a leading Nigerian artist who has been inspired to make work about restitution, including at the Venice Biennale.
Producer: Simon Richardson
(Photo: The Benin Bronzes on display in a museum. Credit: David Cliff/SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty Images)
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Across Ukraine photographers who used to shoot landscapes, fashion shows and weddings are focusing instead on bomb damaged buildings, soldiers in trenches and civilians caught up in the war. Pictures that they hope in future, may provide crucial evidence in war crimes trials. Reporter Lucy Ash talks to Mykhaylo Palinchak, who was the official photographer of Ukraine’s former president and now captures the horrors of the Russian invasion. She also speaks to Olexiy Sai, a graphic designer and artist who’s created a new work using the images taken by Ukraine’s army of war photographers.
Despite having some of the world’s largest oil reserves, according to new UN data more than seven million Venezuelans have left their homeland since 2015, amid an ongoing economic and political crisis. Most have moved to neighbouring Colombia and one of them is Fabiola Ferrero. She’s now won the 12th Carmignac Photojournalism award, which is a grant of 50,000 euros to carry out a 6-month field report, the results of which have become her latest project, ‘Venezuela, the Wells Run Dry’. She tells Tina Daheley about her work which chronicles the disappearance of the Venezuelan middle class and capturing the country of today.
Photojournalist Nelly Ating has been documenting events across Nigeria since 2014, including the rise of Boko Haram and its impact on the young women and girls they captured in her series ‘This war has found a home.’ She’s currently studying for her PhD in Wales looking at the role of photography and human rights. Nelly told The Cultural Frontline’s Andrea Kidd about her work and the people whose stories she’s been telling.
Please be warned there are descriptions of images which some listeners may find distressing in this programme.
(Photo: A destroyed book. Credit: Fabiola Ferrero for Fondation Carmignac)
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Some of the world’s most famous paintings have become the central focus of the global debate on climate action. Climate activists have thrown tomato soup on Vincent van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” and mashed potatoes at Monet’s famous “Haystacks”. Tina Daheley speaks to Nigerian climate activist Gloria Kasang Bulus and British art critic Louisa Buck about the role that the art world can play addressing climate change.
Bolivian director, Alejandro Loayza Grisi talks to Beatriz de la Pava about his new film Utama. He explains how making the film, which reflects the real life experiences of Bolivian communities facing drought and crop failure caused by a changing climate, transformed the way he saw his country.
Indonesia is a nation made up of over seventeen thousand islands making it highly vulnerable to rising sea levels and extreme weather conditions. The musician Rara Sekar reflects on her relationship with nature in her country and her feelings of eco-grief in sound and in song.
(Photo: Climate activists staging a protest. Credit: Just Stop Oil/Handout/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
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