Diaspora Dialogs [.com]

Last week saw the launch of Kingston On The Edge (KOTE), an arts festival where the capital's artists take over the city. For the third year running, activities have been planned across the city in a programme with exhibitions, musical events, theatre and dance performaces and social community projects, and film, that has kept followers enthralled. Each year the events program has grown and it's clear that KOTE is set to become an annual event.

This year, Jamaica hosted the Caribbean Studies Association's 34th Annual Conference held at the Hilton hotel in Kiingston recently. Even though I am not formally a member, I couldn't miss the opportunity of a week of lectures by some the region's best scholars. It was a hectic week but I made space on Friday for the session with Locksley Edmondson and Ayele Bekerie, colleagues from Cornell. They shared the panel with Rupert Lewis and Dorith Grant WIsdom discussing Race and Africanicity: Caribbean Perspectives. The room was full (even so early in the morning) and their papers that discussed Afro-Caribbeans in Columbia, Rastas in Africa, Aime Cesaire in Martinique and Peter Abrahams in South Africa demonstrated that 'blackness' as a concept is still being studied seriously in this region despite a new era of post racial theory.

Last week, I examined final year painting displays at Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts. Without breaching confidentiality, I can say that it was a mixed bag offering images and installations that speak of the social and personal issues that artists are grappling with today. Issues range from intimate anxieties expressed with unique dreamworld imagery influenced by the psychanalysis of Freud and Jung, to contentious portraits referencing dance hall, exploitation and the black female body.

On Tuesday, Cornell's store hosted a special book event featuring the Radical History Review's latest issue, "Reconceptualizations of the African Diaspora" edited by Erica Ball, Melina Pappademos and Michelle Ann Stephens. I attended virtually by presenting a podcast that reviewed this new publication. Watch the video.

On the book's cover the portrait of a Mexican (or is she African?) solderia poses confidently with her revolver, medals and de-sexed uniform for a camera that was the equivalent of today's Blackberry. This thought provoking image that deconstructs ideas related to race and gender, marks the journal's place in the vanguard of post-modern thinking, preoccupied with the subject of Diaspora.

Joy's Proposal Sketch Let's keep fingers crossed for Joy Gregory this month. She has been shortlisted in the prestigous Mary Seacole Statue Memorial competition that will pay tribute to the 19th century Jamaican heroine. Joy's proposal will be on display at Coutts Bank in the Strand this month prior to the judging.

Diaspora Dialogs welcomes two artists as new members; Ebony G. Patterson whose exhibition Gangstas, Disciplez + Doiley Boyz was recently discussed in our DD blog (watch the interview) and photographer Roshini Kempadoo who is based in London and exhibits internationally. Both artists explore notions of identity, shifting to accommodate new environs. Ebony’s current work focuses on Jamaica’s dance hall youth culture and is very much based in the ‘now’ while Roshini considers memory and the alienation experienced by colonial and post-colonial communities as a consequence of voluntary and forced migration. It’s a privilege to have them join us because together their works speak to local and global, past and present aspects of our Diaspora existence. Diaspora Dialogs invited artists regularly contribute to blogs and classroom exchanges, in return we update readers on their future events and exhibitions.Visit Roshini's Kempadoo's new website.

Ebony G. Patterson was in Kingston last week for the opening of her exhibition Gangstas, Disciplez + Doiley Boyz at the CAGe. Diaspora Dialogs went to preview her show and to interview her about her continued interest in Jamaican dance hall culture. Her interview is great material for teaching about what's new in contemporary Caribbean art. She's articulate, inspiring and enthusiastic.

After much deliberation, I have created a page on Facebook to support my course Caribbean Dialogs 09. What took me so long? I suppose Facebook has always represented a kind of overload that I have been wary of, but it's unsupportable that I want to teach distance courses and not participate in social networking... so I've taken the plunge. The course begins again in the summer and between now and then I'll be gathering material for teaching. Take a look at the new course poster featuring Moko Jumbie stilt walkers in this year's carnival. We caught them sheltering from the rain. But by far the most stunning 'mas' this year was Bryan McFarlane's Africa: Her people, Her Glory, Her Tears. His well researched costumes brought Africa and its culture to life.

Here I am in London with Joy Gregory outside the TATE where I had planned to teach a class from the cafe. I made it into the virtual classroom, but who would have known that the service provider, British Telecom could block access for other servers like skype and acrobat? I was really excited at the prospect of broadcasting from the TATE (yes, the same sugar/slavery/museum TATE) and I had set up in the cafe with a cup of Earl Grey tea and my mike and camera ready to go. I paid £6 for the connection.