Author: JOYCE MAN
In the face of disaster, or rather because of the necessities it poses, people enterprise. We've all seen them - news of hurricanes, reports on riots and photographs of devastating tsunamis and earthquakes. Death tolls in Indonesia and Pakistan, curfews in France, arrests in Iraq and Jordan are the stuff of news today. But thankfully, out from the rubble comes a surge of creativity. While it may not overpower that of a tsunami wave or measure higher than 7.6 on the Richter scale, it is indeed a force to be reckoned with.
From Iraq, the country whose headlines have now lost their shock value, comes a pleasant surprise - September's First Iraqi Short Film Festival. Since the 1970s, cinema in the country has been dominated by Western, Indian and Egyptian films, but the festival, created by Contemporary Visual Arts Society Nizar al-Rawi, brought local short films to the screen - all 58 of them, selected from a pool of 140.
Take also the past few artists who were introduced to campus in these recent months. They include the Refugee All-Star Band, a group of Sierra-Leone refugees that celebrate life through song, the Yuval Ron Ensemble, which fused languages and ethnicities together and Rahim AlHaj, who brought "Iraqi Music in a Time of War" onstage with his oud.
The Thai government launched its Tsunami Memorial Design Competition earlier this year. Much like the World Trade Center Site Memorial Competition in intent, the Tsunami Competition urges the 300-plus registered designers to impress upon visitors the magnitude of the disaster and inspire marvel at the spirit of those who survived.
While Paris is alight with riots, a gallery is exhibiting a retrospective of France's past master photographers, Willy Ronis, at the Hôtel de Ville. Looking at this former Life Magazine veteran's idyllic images of, for example, children playing in an empty barge in "La Péniche des Enfants" (1959) or lovers kissing against a background of the Eiffel Tower in "Amoreaux de la Colonne Bastille" (1957), one would be hard-pressed to imagine today's images of cars ablaze and rioters running.
Ansel Adams once said, "You don't take a photograph, you make it." Many photographers would disagree. There are too many variables - light, movement and most importantly, chance - that the only way to ensure a good shot is to take many shots. Like capturing a solid picture, life in perilous circumstances is hard to govern. Disaster moulds its victims into participants of that fine art known as survival. It's good news, then, that there are still plenty of artists in our midst.
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