Nina: Artistic Activism

Birds flying high, you know how I feel. River running free, you know how I feel. Butterflies all havin' fun you know what I mean. Freedom. Nina Simone sang about it in more than three quarters of her songs. She'd make you revolt, make you stand up to unjustified treatment, make your blood flow effortlessly inside your streams all while listening to a song. A tune, nothing more. 

Her lyrics don't include expressions such as: stand up, revolt, say no, civil rights, unfair. No. Her lyrics could be (foolishly) taken as metaphors. She makes you sing along and more without knowing what you are singing about. Amazing. She transforms you to an activist, artistically. One of my favorite songs for Nina Simone, "I Shall Be Released":

"Yonder stands a man in this lonely crowd,

Man who swears he's not to blame,

All day long I hear him hollering so loud

just crying out that he's not to blame."

Other than a soulful musician she was a brilliant human being. Some thought of her as 'wacky and uncommon'. I believe, she gave her best to music and never really cared about what people said or did. She didn't even care that much about money. Simone "missed out on more than $1 million in royalties and never benefited financially from the album, because she had sold her rights to it for $3,000." 

Because of the horror she saw and ravish treatment of African Americans, Nina Simone called for a violent approach, unlike King. She believed that African Americans could build their own nation apart from the 'whites'. She didn't pay taxes (which was why warrants were issued against her), she was a strong woman with strong thoughts. Nina also had a lengthy affair with the Prime Minister of Barbados. In 2012, Mary J. Blige will be starring in a movie about her life. 

You would sing with Nina about Mr. Bojangles, the dancer in the prison cell. 

"I knew a man Bojangles

And he danced for you

In worn out shoes

With silver hair, a ragged shirt

And baggy pants, the old soft shoe

He jumped so high, he jumped so high

Then he lightly touched down

[...]

I met him in a cell in New Orleans

I was down and out

He looked at me to be the eyes of age

As he spoke right out

He talked of life, he talked of life

He laughed, and slapped his leg a step

[...]

He said I dance now

At every chance in honky tonks

For drinks and tips

But most of the time

I spend behind these county bars

He said I drinks a bit

He shook his head

And as he shook his head

I heard someone respectfully ask 

Please

Mr. Bojangles, Mr. Bojangles

Mr. Bojangles, dance."

Sing about Lilac Wine, made from the lilac tree. Sing about how much you love Porgy, how much "I Need A Little Sugar in My Bowl'. About how 'Black is the Color of My True Love's Hair'. Her songs are what you need anytime you need anything. Nina Simone is jazz. Nina is a blues. Nina Simon is active artistically and is an artistic activist. 

A free mind, imprisoned

Our minds are limitless. Our thinking sees no limit. We can imagine perfection, we can see it crystal clear in our head. We are perfect in our thinking. I can easily imagine now, if I close my eyelids, a perfect world, a perfect human being, a perfect - anything. That is how our minds were crafted; to be boarder-less. However, our minds are incubated in our enemy - our body. Our body on the other hand is limited. With our body, we can't get to half the places we go to in our minds. 

Marina Abramovic is the self-proclaimed grandmother of performance art. She has been indulging in fearless performances since the 1970s. Although she deals with many themes, one her most popular themes is the human body and its limits. I came to study about Marina Abramovic after taking a spectacular Performance Art class with Cornelia Krafft (German performance and installation artist, at the American University of Beirut). After researching Marina's works, I became obsessed with her works which depict the body limit. 

After performing Rhythm 5, (photo above, 1974) in which Abramovic lost consciousness she said: "I was very angry because I understood there is a physical limit: when you lose consciousness you can’t be present; you can’t perform." -Marina, Daneri. Read more about this and many other performances here.

In one her most talked-about performances, Rhythm 0 (photos above, 1974) Marina lays on long table 72 objects, some of which give the human body pain while the other give pleasure. You would find grapes, cake, rope, knives, a locked gun, chains, glass...etc. The audience was allowed to apply those objects, in any way, on Marina, while she laid down. At first people felt intimidated, however with time people started to go rough on the artist. She said she felt that she created this aggressive atmosphere. You wouldn't think human being would go that far - but they did. Give human beings a reason to hurt one another and they'll go all the way. 

In a recent interview for Lady Gaga, Marina Abramovic asked the pop icon "Who creates limits?" Lady Gaga went on explaining that we create our own limits, although she somehow seemed to not have understood or misinterpreted Marina's works, Gaga explained that we create our own limits and that's it. She didn't explain how and went on talking about how Marina Abramovic is limitless and incredible and wonderful. If anything, Marina has been trying to explain how limited our body is. Check out the interview here.

Our body imposes an 'unfair' siege on our mind. Take for example flying. I dream of flying every now and in my mind I see myself doing it. I even experience the most intense euphoric rush whilst only imaging it. But my body fails me, a four-meter leap doesn't give you any rush. It'll give you a broken hip and a couple of bruises. Our minds, thoughts and soul are free, our body is not. 

To my children

I'd like to take a moment now to write to you, because I know that on the day I meet you, I won't be able to neither write nor talk to you. I want you to know that I've been waiting for you. And it’s the good wait, the one you plan. The ‘all-in-good-time-wait’. Am I anxious to meet you? No. But I do know that the moment I do – everything will change. I've heard about you or at least ‘your kind’ and the conclusion I reached was that children (that’s you guys) will always be much harder, more trouble than expected and more wonderful.


I want you to be a part of my life; I don’t want to simply watch you grow. I don't want to watch you grow, I don't want to teach you how to grow and I don't want to carry your hand through the way. No. I want to watch you fail. I want to see you fall down. It is only then that I watch you grow. I don’t promise you a fairytale and I can’t provide you one; not that it exists. I want you to grow and leave me. I want to be the person (don’t call me father) that made you whoever you will be. I will teach you things about life by actually showing you life. Letting you live the way you were born to live it, and not by how everyone wants you to. When you’re with me, you forget about everyone. I really don’t want you to host me a perfect dinner and put a smile on, when you’re dead inside. I don’t want you to give speeches and have perfect social manners when your heart is made of stone and your way of thinking is molded by society. I don’t expect that from you. And I don’t want you to. Never. I want you to be real. Have an open heart, an open mind and open arms. I want you to be powerful, fearless, independent and passionate. I don’t expect you to make me proud, that is too much to ask from you, because what makes me proud doesn’t have to make you proud. It is then when you are not real. I only expect you to have free souls. Don’t let life imprison you. You are truly a child of this world. Not mine. I was only the messenger. You belong to this world and not to me. So I only ask of you to have free souls. If I ever have a message to send to this world and to the generations that will come after me, you guys are the only way.


I get goose bumps when I think that you are now inside me. I am forming you. And as I grow you grow with me. But the more ‘I form you’the more I know that your father and I are only a transit. I am only waiting for your father. Will he understand? Or will he expect to have you under his wings forever? He won’t. Anyone with a free soul understands that as Gibran K. Gibran says “your children live with you but do not belong to you, you may give them your love, but not your thoughts, for they have their own thoughts, you may house their bodies but not their souls.”


I do wait for you. And the more I think about it the more exuberant I get. Yet I know that there is a time for everything and the moment we meet, rivers will flow and flowers will blossom. I will be waiting for the day to come to hold you for the first time, watch your first steps, bring you back from school and set you free to the world. But what if I never get the chance to?

-Maya Mansour and Ameer Daou

Mario Testino: Bring on the drama

The fashion photographer everyone wants. The simple, yet complex, creativity in photography that celebrities desire. The man has shot for Gucci, Vogue, Burberry,Vanity Fair, Dolce and Gabbana and Versace. The photographer of the British Royal Family. He is the man sought-after. What's his secret? You can't really explain. You have to go through his photographs and then you'll go like: "Oh, now I see it." 

But what is it you see? It's the dramatic affect. The drama that he brings out in everyone he has ever shot is brilliant. The eyes project drama. The eyes do tell this dramatic story without having to write chapters. He is not the typical strike-a-pose photographer, yet his a world icon. He also adds the element of elegance. Bring elegance and drama together and you've got good photography people pause to admire. 

Ameer Daou