What happens if an algorithm arbitrarily decides whether a loan is approved, or an individual is labeled as a “risk” for society? It is a fair decision? After all, the algorithm is exercising its function of control through logic (Fuller, 2008, p. 15). It is taking objective decisions based on the data it gathered on categories of people like the one under scrutiny at any given moment. One could argue that the data that is gathered is flawed or, more simply, that human beings do not always fit...
It almost comes naturally to shake your head as a sign of disappointment, disapproval, and disbelief when someone in your friends’ list shares some kind of false news on social media platforms. What seems to be more challenging is to make them understand how and why the information they are spreading does not resonate with reliable sources and truth. Even harder, is doing so without sounding patronizing.
Fake news is a widely used term to label the spread of false information, but often that...
In predominantly western cultures selfies are an exhibition and performance of oneself. Selfies are everywhere (Senft & Baym, 2015, p. 1588) and they have become the core component of many social media platforms, specially one such as Instagram. While the phenomenon of taking selfies is widely common across the globe, the intention and meaning behind the click on the phone camera can be completely different depending on your location. In the West, often times selfies are paired with filters...
Cameo is a platform on which celebrities can sign up and decide for which price they are willing to record personalized messages, zoom meetings, or chat with their fans. The platform retains 25% of that price, and if the videos are not recorded within seven days of booking the fan is refunded. Celebrities can also decide to not record the message, if the content is offensive, or if fans ask to promote brands or specific products. Cameo managed to extract value from something that was already...
Francois Knoetze shot and edited together four short fragments of the film Core Dump, each exploring the different phases of production, consumption and discharge of digital media technologies. To me, it was interesting to watch how each segment was set and shot in the place where the step in the process of mass production of digital media technologies takes place. Part one is in Dakar, part two in Kinshasa, part three in Shenzhen, and part four in New York. The latter is pretty self-explanatory:...
Fatima Al Qadiri – War Games | From: Fade to Mind
As I watched the short but significant works of Sophia Al Maria, Fatima Al Qadiri, and Larissa Sansour – The future was desert, Desert strike ghost raid, and Nation estate respectively – I couldn’t help but feel both confusion and clarity at the same time. While Sansour’s was a short film, it offered a lenght that gave room to a richer and more formal narrative that helped the viewer in understanding the elements...
Both Space is the place (1974) and The last angel of history (1996) are works, by John Coney and John Akomfrah respectively, that focus on elements of afro-futurism in order to convey feelings of dislocation and alienation felt by African-American communities. In order to do so effectively, both directors got inspiration from music genres, NASA and one particular figure from the avantgarde film Meshes of the afternoon (1943).
In and out of reality as in Meshes of the Afternoon
In Space...
Elia Suleiman’s It must be heaven and Emily Jacir’s Letter to a friend, both from 2019, concentrate on the ongoing Palestinian occupation while using similar themes, but very different style choices in filming. Suleiman prefers a more linear narrative style, though full of symbolism, whereas Jacir presents her work in the form of a documentary/video essay. Though different in style, they seem to be after the same thing: a platform to share their story. I believe that the two pieces...
A good laugh helps to get through hard times. It is often perceived and used as a coping mechanism to make the weight of reality feel just a bit lighter. [Today, one of the ways through which we witness irony and satire is memes, especially while the Covid-19 pandemic spreads across the world (refer to Image 1 for an example made by me on the current situation in order to get through it).]
However, when irony and satire is found in films and books, such as Elia Suleiman’s The time hat...
Chocolat is a 1988 film directed by Claire Denise. At a first glance, it might seem a coming-of-age film about a girl, France, and her childhood memories in Africa. However, the view of the film offers many more layers to the audience, especially in relation with Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks. Indeed, set in Cameroon around the late ’50s, Chocolat explores a story around a French family (governor Marc, wife Aimée, and daughter France), their black house boy Protée and the...
Both director Isaac Julien’s docu-drama Black Skin, White Mask and Frantz Fanon’s work Black Skin, White Masks make room for reflection on the issue of identity of the colonized, taken away by the colonizer. The way in which this identity erasure happens is via the power of language, as Fanon discusses in one of his book’s chapters.
The Negro and Language: a Matter of Power
The issue of language is indeed a matter that Fanon felt very close to him, having experienced...
In her film Atlantique, Mati Diop – Djibril Diop Mambéty’s niece – takes the opportunity to show viewers the other side of the coin in regards to the travels of young men who leave their homeland looking for a better life. However, they often perish in the waters of the ocean. As NYT author A.O. Scott points out, the film is a bit mysterious about its genre at least until its first half. Later on it reveals to be a mix of genres, reflecting the mix of realities that coexist...
The film Touki Bouki, on a first viewing experience, is about a couple (Anta, a university student and Mory, a cowherd) living in Dakar, Senegal, who make plans to leave their current lives behind and sail to France.
In reality, as scholar Sada Niang mentions throughout her chapter on Touki Bouki in Nationalist African cinema: Legacy and transformations, it goes much deeper than that. Indeed, the film conveys a: “Transition between a critique of postcolonial power strategies and the postcolonial...
As lyrics from the song “Ultralight Beam” by Kanye West play in the background, African American video artist and cinematographer Arthur Jafa edited a montage of remixed clips from African American popular culture. The piece, titled Love is the Message. The Message is Death, features a series of videos that depict moments of cultural celebration alternated with moments of social struggle of African American communities in the United States.
It is a short piece, lasting a bit over...
While both reading Orientalism by Edward Said and watching Soleil O by Med Hondo, it was clear to me that the works do a great job in explaining in words and visuals the struggles of the colonized. The film, shot over a four year time span with little to no budget, embraces a more ironical tone and approach, offering a radical critique of racism and (neo/post)colonialism. The text considers a more historical and political background in order to better convey the issues at stake. I believe it...