Friday, 30
as a result of being misunderstood and its consequence of feeling absolutely alone the idea of suicide comes to my mind frequently. however, i am old enough to deal with solitude successfully. the accessible tools to overcome depression and desperation should be available. anyway, some years ago i made a work, which i hid and never showed to anyone exactly because of that very reason: i felt too old to give in to such uncontrolled emotions and additionally i was afraid people would categorise me as insane (actually it was me who pathologized). nevertheless, at this moment i decided to display it here. as a matter of fact the words are tricky to decipher and mean:
it ain't make no difference - suicide isn't an option - i hope you agree with me

Thursday, 22
i've had that inner fight this morning - like often - daily struggles, in conversation with my tormented self. who am i that i am not able to loosen these bonds? doctrines are relentlessly chiming in my ears - you do wrong, you do right. their sarcasms manifested through deliberate inflections, which colour their voices, interrupt my steady pace towards an insightful perception. out of lust for strength they conquer, not able to let me design a life of my own will. on the contrary, they tenaciously force me down in favour of their secret. they always deceive, but too late to change points and be honest.

from Freeman's Arrival, 2015
SAPPHO DRIVES UPSTATE
(Fr. 2)
ANNE CARSON

I saw two old white horses in a field,
in the corner of a field,
in the shade,
who had sought the shade,
thoughtfully.
glancing not quite at each other but past,
holding their heads close, their heads aligned,
standing
as they had stood many times,
a thousand times,
standing so,
weak moments, strong moments,
shivering slightly,
a cool breeze sliding down the apple branches or
All this -
you tore a hole, pushed your arm through, hit the switch.

Think Tank Tintinto - Sukuta, The Gambia (August 2016)

Wednesday 14
Rotimi Fani-Kayode
was a photographer born in Nigeria in 1955. He escaped the Nigerian Civil War 1966 and had lived in England since then. He moved to USA in 1976 where he graduated MFA in Fine Arts & Photography at the Pratt Institute New York City. He returned to UK in 1983 where he furthered his career as an artist till his death in 1989.
In respect to his work (and the law of copyrights) i'd like to pass on several paragraphs of Rotimi Fani-Kayode's essay Traces of Ecstasy with my intention to transcend his thoughts to a subsequent audience. Of course and fortunately many things have changed since then (1987) and African contemporary art is now taking part in the global discourse nearly equally released as to the extend it wishes to do so.

Traces of Ecstasy
(...) On three counts I am an outsider: in matters of sexuality, in terms of geographical and cultural dislocation, and in the sense of not having become the sort of respectably married professional my parents might have hoped for. Such a position gives me a feeling of having very little to lose. It produces a sense of personal freedom from the hegemony of convention. For one who has managed to hang on his own creativity through the crisis of adolescence, and in spite of the pressures to conform, it has a liberating effect. It opens up areas of creative enquiry that might otherwise have remained forbidden. At the same time, traces of the former values remain, making it possible to take new readings on them from an unusual vantage point. The results are bound to be disorienting.
(...)
An awareness of history has been of fundamental importance in the development of my creativity. The history of Africa and of the Black race has been constantly distorted. Even in Africa, my education was given in English and Christian schools, as though the language and culture of my own people, Yoruba, where inadequate or in some ways unsustainable for the health development of young minds. In exploring Yoruba history and civilisation, I have rediscovered and revalidated areas of my experience in understanding of the world. I see parallels now between my own work and that of the Osogbo artists in Yorubaland, who themselves have resisted the cultural supervision of neo-colonialism and who celebrate the rich secret world of our ancestors.
It remains true, however, that Yoruba civilisation of the past, like so many other non-European cultures are still consigned by the West to museums of 'primitive' art and culture.
The Yoruba cosmology, comparable in its complexities and subtleties to Greek and Oriental philosophical myth, is treated no more than bizarre superstition which, as if by miracle, happened to inspire the creation of some of the most sensitive and delicate artifacts in the history of art.
Modern new Yoruba art (amongst which I situate my own contributions) may now sometimes fetch high prices in the galleries in New York and Paris. It is prized for its exotic appeal. Similarly, the modern versions of Yoruba beliefs, carried by the slaves to the New World have become, in their carnival form, tourist attractions. In Brazil, Haiti and other parts of the Caribbean, the earth reverberates with old Yoruba rhythms, which are now much appreciated by those jaded Western ears that are still sensitive enough to catch the spirit of the old rites. In other words, the Europeans, faced with the dogged survival of alien cultures, and as mercantile as ever they were in the days of the Trade, are now trying to sell our culture as a consumer product. I am inevitably caught up in this.
Another aspect of history - that of sexuality - has also affected me deeply. Official history has always denied the validity of erotic relationships and experiences between members of the same sex. As in the field of politics and economics, the historians of social and sexual relations have been readily assisted in their fabrications by the Church. But in spite of all attempts by Church and State to suppress homosexuality, it is clear that enriching sexual relationships between members of the same sex have always existed. They are part of the human condition, even if the concept of sexual identity is a more recent notion.
There is a grim chapter of European history that was not drummed into me at school. I only discovered much later that the Nazis had developed the most extreme form of homophobia to have existed in modern times, and attempted to exterminate homosexuals in the concentration camps. It came not so much as a surprise but as yet another example of the longstanding European tradition of the violent suppression of otherness. It touches me just as closely as the knowledge that millions of my ancestors were killed or enslaved in order to ensure European political, enconomic and cultural hegemony of the world. (...)

TEN 8: VOL. 2, NO. 3: Critical Decade - BlacK British Photography in the 80s, 1992

Humankind is my obsession
The movement of their bodies
The expression of their faces
The complexity of their minds
Their ability to construct and destroy their world, their lives.
Their cruelty, the way they interact, the way they handle loneliness
Their environments, their backgrounds
Their fears to die and the searching of the dead
Their ability to start over
Their sometimes revolting and shameful behaviour
But despite it all, it is their vulnerability that makes me believe again in my identity