BOMB 113/Fall 2010
Mexican artist Vargas-Suarez Universal is often mistaken for a collective, and indeed his practice—which uses sound, science and the archives of organizations ranging from the Queens Museum to NASA—is as varied as any many-authored project.
Born in Haiti and raised in the U.S., Vladimir Cybil juxtaposes culturally specific symbols and techniques to carve out an interstitial space. Scholar Jerry Philogene talks with Cybil about the visual bilingualism in her paintings and installations.
Carlos Eire, a professor of history and religion at Yale, won a National Book Award for his first nonhistorical effort, Waiting for Snow in Havana, his memoir of a privileged childhood in Cuba disrupted by the revolution.
Confronting the condition of anti-colonial utopias that have “withered into postcolonial nightmares,” David Scott proposes in Conscripts of Modernity not that we give better answers to old questions, but that we radically refashion the questions.
Novelist and poet Evelyne Trouillot comes from a prominent Port-au-Prince family of writers and intellectuals. Novelist Edwidge Danticat queried the writer on Haiti’s past and its future.
In her book Modernity Disavowed, theorist Sibylle Fisher calls the Haitian Revolution a non-event, precisely because it is the main event of 19th century Caribbean history that has been systematically left out of many analyses of that period.
In his latest film, Ama: The Memory of Time, Salvadoran poet and filmmaker Daniel Flores y Ascencio records the oral history of shaman Don Juan Ama, who witnessed the murder of his uncle, the leader of a 1932 indigenous revolt in El Salvador.
Damas “Fanfan” Louis is both master drummer and houngan asogwe, high priest of Vodou. The painter Michael Zwack, caught up with him in New York to discuss Haitian rhythms and Fanfan’s involvement in a cultural center for dance, drums and Vodou.
Haitian choreographer and drummer Peniel Guerrier was trained in traditional Haitian and African movement, and his choreographies acknowledge each tradition’s rhythms and rituals while fusing them in unexpected ways.
Madison Smartt Bell on the paintings of Guidel Présumé and the importance Haitian painters place on staying “outside one’s own thoughts.”
Nancy Josephson on how sequin art plays an important role in Haitian history, culture and spiritualism.
Christopher Cozier on the many kinds of multi-leveled juxtapositions found in the works of multimedia artist Maxence Denis. This article is only available in print.
This First Proof contains the poems “Discovery of the Strange,” “Wild Desire,” “Ink Place,” “Ethics” and “Litigation.” Translated by Cole Swenson. For copyright reasons this content is available in print only.
This First Proof contains an excerpt from the poem “J’ai un arbre dans ma pirogue.” Translated by Sarah Riggs. For copyright reasons this content is available in print only.
This First Proof contains an excerpt from Kasale which Mars self-published in Haiti in 2003. Translated by Jeanine Herman. For copyright reasons this content is available in print only.
This First Proof contains the excerpt “Initial Invitation” from La cresta de ílíón. Translated by Jen Hofer. For copyright reasons this content is available in print only.
This First Proof contains the contains the short story “The Guest.” Translated by Patricia Laurent and Lorin Loverde. For copyright reasons this content is available in print only.
This First Proof contains the excerpt “Djab-Là” from The Stone the Builder Refused, the third novel in Bell’s Haitian revolution trilogy. For copyright reasons this content is available in print only.
This First Proof contains the poems “Small Testament,” “There Are Words,” and “On a Roof of Wind.” Translated by Rosemary Manno and Jack Hirschman. For copyright reasons this content is available in print only.
This First Proof contains the poems “Song of Two Lands,” and “The Stink Generation.” For copyright reasons this content is available in print only.
This First Proof contains the poems “Fire” and “Language.” Translated by Kristin Prevallet. For copyright reasons this content is available in print only.
This First Proof contains the poem “When Writing Becomes Smoke.” Translated by Eleni Sikelianos and Laird Hunt. For copyright reasons this content is available in print only.
