Fashion Tips

Thursday, January 31, 2013

DANFO, MOLUE AND THE AFROPOLITAN EXPERIENCE IN EMEKA OGBOH’S SOUNDSCAPES by Massa Lemu
Photograph by Paul Hester, Courtesy of The Menil Collection
Photograph by Paul Hester, Courtesy of The Menil Collection
This is essay is reprinted from the MFAH Core catalogue, Core 2012 Yearbook, © 2012This essay is also featured on www.artandeducation.net.

In his work Nigerian artist Emeka Ogboh records the sounds of Lagos, particularly focusing on the noise of danfo and molue buses, and installs his soundscapes in the milieu of other cities. This essay examines the political implications of this gesture. I argue that Ogboh’s practice doesn’t just celebrate the vibrant urban sounds of Lagos but foregrounds the medium of sound to reflect on the African city as a space historically shaped by and entangled in economic, social, and cultural interrelationships with the rest of the world.1
Ogboh’s sound installations focus on Lagos—the city in which he lives–exploring what the artist describes as its “history and aural infrastructure.”2 In galleries, he usually installs the work in booths where audiences listen to the recordings through earphones. Sometimes he places speakers and megaphones blaring with Lagos sounds in the streets of cities such as Cologne or Helsinki in order to initiate dialogue on globalization, migration, and multi-culturalism. One could read Ogboh’s practice within the context of Camerounian philosopher and critic Achille Mbembe’s Afropolitanism: a cosmopolitan understanding of Africa as a dynamic cultural hybrid, a “world in movement.” Afropolitanism describes Africa as a product of continuous “itinerancy, mobility and movement” of diverse peoples from all corners of the globe into and out of the continent and within its geographical boundaries.3 Present day Africa is a mixture of Asian, European, and indigenous peoples and cultures which have been in political and economic interrelationships for millennia. Mbembe uses the term “afropolis” to refer to major African cities such as Lagos, Cairo, and Johannesburg, cosmopolitan spaces implicated in and shaped by complex, skewed and asymmetrical global flows of ideas, goods, capital, and people.4 Following this framework, the essay examines how Ogboh inserts the sounds of Lagos into the soundscapes of Western cities to highlight the socio-political imbalances and contradictions of globalization, focusing on two sound clips titled Lagos by Bus and the installation Lagos Soundscapes in Cologne: Reception of Strangeness and Consumption of Difference.
The Italian critic and curator Marco Scotini observes that, due to globalization, “the city, and not the state, is the strategic place of economic dynamics, migration, ethnic and cultural change, and the demands of civil society.”5 Lagos, which was once the administrative capital of Nigeria, now its economic and cultural capital, offers Ogboh an appropriate space for understanding the socio-political dynamics between the south and the north in the globalized world. The history of Lagos begins before the
first Portuguese settlement in the fifteenth century, but the city was also shaped by the trans-Atlantic slave trade, colonization, post-colonial and neo-colonial cultural, political and economic factors. For example, in its relatively recent economic history, the Nigerian oil boom of the 1970s–whose tragedy continues today—stimluated migration from rural to urban regions of the country and also attracted migrants from the United States, Germany and Japan to Lagos making it a one of the richest, most populous and culturally diverse metropolises in Africa.6 It is the idea of Lagos as a locus where myriad cultures and variegated subjectivities intersect that underpins Ogboh’s practice.
Lagos is a metropolitan beast whose voice and soul manifest themselves in a cacophony of roars and growls of blaring horns, vehicles, rumbling electric generators, muezzins, street music, and rowdy vendors clamoring to sell their merchandize. Through its sounds, Ogboh manages to capture the Lagosian cityscape in its diversity and complexity. But the work transcends merely recording and celebrating the sounds. From such a diverse range of metropolitan sounds, Ogboh selects danfo and molue noises and situates them at the centre of his poetics as a metaphor for addressing issues of migration and related topics. This practice stems from Ogboh’s recognition that urban sounds are not neutral. Cultural theorist Helmut Draxler points out that, like the tactile and the visual worlds, the audible world is shaped by and politically implicated in capitalist modernity.7 Urban sounds, from rumbling production machines to supermarket muzak, are all products of capitalism. To an extent, therefore, Ogboh does to danfo and molue sounds what artists such as the Beninian Romuald Hazoume and the Ghanaian El Anatsui do to found products of African modernity such as jelly cans and bottle tops.

Danfo and Molue Buses in Lagos, 2010, Copyright Adolphus Opara.
Danfo and molue comprise Lagos’s major mode of transportation. Danfo, which means “hurry” in Yoruba, is the local name given to the yellow Volkswagen minibuses of Lagos. Molue, which has its roots in the English word “maul,” are the locally fabricated 44-seat buses that ply the roads of the city. Danfo and molue are ubiquitous on the streets of Lagos and therefore contribute to the city’s perpetual traffic jams locally referred to as “go slows.” The noise from danfo and molue horns and the verbal “maps”
from their call boys pollute the overcrowded streets of the city. Referring to the verbal route maps chanted by bus conductors as a unique feature of the Lagos sound that particularly drew his attention, Ogboh has stated that, “the verbal maps are the acoustic cartographic mapping of Lagos by its bus routes and destinations, and by bus conductors.”8 In addition to the horns and the route chants, a polyphony of dramas is enacted as Lagosians congregate in these overcrowded buses in their daily journeys to and from work. Ogboh records the voice of Lagos in this cacophony of bus horns, chanted route maps, and brawls. The idea of the fast-paced city and its aggressive mercantilism are embedded in the terms danfo and molue themselves, whose meanings conjure up the polyglot spirit of the metropolitan jungle and its laws of survival, i.e. “Just keep ramming on” to borrow from Lagosian street lingo.
An eight minute and ten second clip entitled Lagos by Bus offers the listener a detailed audio landscape of Lagos. In the clip the Pidgin chatter of travelers intermingles with the clinking of beverage bottles, music from a radio, and above all the pervasive and cacophonous hooting from danfo and molue buses. The most discernible of the conversations in Lagos by Bus is a pre-departure sermon and prayer by a peddler hawking drugs for diabetes and glaucoma to commuters. Vendors in danfo and molue buses are known to coax travelers with prayer to buy their merchandise. As one listens to the sermon, the music in the background becomes discernible as a popular song by the eminent late Nigerian musician Fela Kuti titled “Coffin for Head of State.” The song—which also starts as a desperate prayer to Jesus Christ, Allah, and other deities for mercy—is also an essay on the grim socio-political reality of Kuti’s contemporary Nigeria. “Coffin for Head of State,” which was recorded after the Nigerian military invaded Kuti’s Kalakuta republic in 1977, narrates his personal ordeals with the Nigerian government, and decries the wanton corruption, political oppression, crime, and dehumanizing poverty across Africa.
Danfo and molue embody the cosmopolitanism of Lagosian soundscapes. From the hybrid origins of Pidgin, the language of Lagosian commuters, to the political concerns in Fela Kuti’s song and the pervasive influence of Christianity and Islam, one notes in danfo and molue a confluence of the triple heritage of African cultures described by Ali Mazrui in The Africans; A Triple Heritage.9 They are representative of Mbembe’s afropolis. The whole danfo and molue “ambience,” as featured in Ogboh’s soundscapes, emblematizes the hustle and bustle of modern life not only of Lagos but of many post-colonial cities.
Passenger buses of the danfo and molue class are not unique to Lagos. Most African cities share similar public transportation systems promising similar travel experiences to the commuter. For example, the Tanzanian transport system has the Dala dala; Zimbabweans ride the battered Tshova; Congolese streets are teeming with the noisy Fula fula; Ugandans and Kenyans pack themselves in the claustrophobic Matatu. While in their physicality danfo and molue are unique to Lagos, the multifarious sounds
offer Ogboh a springboard to explore issues of more widespread relevance.
With their peculiar claustrophobic dramas, mishaps, and entertainment, danfo and molue are heterotopias or “non-places” between the home and the destination as Foucault described them. One could compare the buses to Foucault’s ship: “a floating part of space, a placeless space, that lives by itself, closed in on itself and at the same time poised in the infinite of the ocean.”10 In the Foucauldian sense, danfo and molue are poised in the vast metropolitan concrete jungle of Lagos, offering temporary distractions for middle and lower class Lagosians as they shift and drift from destination to destination in their daily struggles, dramas, and misadventures. Danfo and molue are transitory spaces defined by their own relations and experiences but they are also microcosms for understanding the heterogeneous city of Lagos.
It is an essential part of Ogboh’s aesthetic that he presents the found sounds predominantly raw. According to Ogboh, minimal studio manipulation might be needed during the recording process, but he does not significantly alter the original sounds. He selects and presents the sound in a manner that permits him to retain its original form.
Ogboh’s approach can be compared to that of his contemporaries such as the South African artist James Webb and the Egyptian Magdi Mostafa, both of whom tune in and listen attentively to their environments to investigate their sounds.11 However, while these artists edit, refine or even abstract the values and tones of found sound according to particular acoustic investigations, Ogboh’s practice is a re-contextualization of the raw soundscape.12 This recontextualization opens the noise up to its
acoustic re-examination and translation. The American theorist of sound Emily Ann Thompson offers a definition of the term “soundscape,” which is a lucid interpretative framework for Ogboh’s work. According to Thompson, a soundscape is “an auditory aural landscape…which is simultaneously a physical environment and a way of perceiving that environment; it is both a world and a culture constructed to make sense of that world.”13 One can think of almost all of Ogboh’s pieces as detailed sonic vistas, or auditory landscapes that are not only recreations of the physical environment of Lagos but are in themselves a way of understanding that environment.
In Ogboh’s minimal and yet potent sound-clips, one notes the pervasive influence of John Cage’s avant-gardist practices, which re-contextualized raw, everyday sounds. They also recall Romuald Hazoume’s practice of minimally altering found fuel jerry cans to create masks that strongly allude to wanton economic exploitation of the continent. Ogboh’s work, though, differs in its aesthetic from that of Hazoume’s generation, which includes artists like Anatsui. While his predecessors recycle quotidian
objects to create works that refer to traditional African art (masks in the case of Hazoume, or Akan Kente cloth in the case of Anatsui), Ogboh’s soundscapes are contemporary statements on the dramas of present day survival. The work neither stakes claims on identity nor makes nostalgic references to a golden traditional past but rather reflects on the subjective condition in the postcolonial African metropolis.
Ogboh’s work depends on the power of sound to generate images in the mind of listeners, but it should be noted that an appreciation of the soundscapes is incomplete without a spatial account of the environments within which they are exhibited. The three-dimensional booths within which the sounds are encountered enhance the listener’s perception. For example Lagos by Bus (2010), a forty minute soundscape installation, was presented at the Rautenstrauch-Joset Museum in Cologne in a booth
painted in the trademark danfo and molue yellow and black striped colors complete with stickers and labels commonly found on the buses . The totality of sound and the three-dimensional environment of the yellow booth immersed the listener in an experience which further referred to the original danfo and molue ambience

Skin care

Tips for healthy skin.
FACE:
Our face is a soft and one of the most sensitive area of the body.
How to take care of the face.
Before bed:
Clean face with soothing facial cleanser:
Wash face with a mild soap tree times walking upwards with your finger tip avoid the eye area.
Dry with a very clean towel and apply your moisturizer or your night cream. For more info on how to take care of the skin by day and more at night

ACCEPT YOUR FATE


Have you ever heard someone speak and felt compelled to soak up every word? You just want to know them, be around them and learn from. That’s the mark of a remarkable person.
While some people are born with an enigmatic quality, most people become that way willfully. Many highly charismatic, magnetic people didn’t get that way by accident. They didn’t stumble upon greatness; they became great deliberately.
I’ve learned that there are certain traits that can be studied, practiced and learned that will make you remarkable. But before I get into that, I should warn you that the path of the outstanding man is not the smoothest or gentlest. Timidity and shrinking has no place in the path of greatness. If you’re looking for something easy, try your luck on lotto tickets or celebrity impersonation. But if you want to be a real superhero, read on.
So here’s what you have to do…
1. Unabashedly accept your remarkability.
This isn’t about being an ego maniac (see: Kanye West), it’s about being fully grounded in your own unique genius. Everyone has natural-born raw talent in something. (Note: If you’re not sure what your inherent strengths are, get this book: Strength Finder 2.0.) Being remarkable is about unabashedly accepting your one-of-a-kind talents.
The truly great man knows he is great, but doesn’t feel he has to prove it. He doesn’t parade himself around like some beyond-human guru. He is subtle. In a disagreement, he will let you have the upper hand. He will make you feel better about yourself because he doesn’t need to belittle others to inflate his self esteem. But while he is humble, he has a certain air of confidence, what the French describe as “je ne sais quoi” (I don’t know what).
When you’re remarkable, you know it. But you also know you put your pants on the same way as everyone else.
2. Have a natural desire for exceeding the status quo.
It’s been wisely said that “perfection is the enemy of the good.” I personally reject the ambition to attain complete perfection in my personal and professional pursuits. I know that sometimes doing things “good enough” is much smarter. Sometimes the law of diminishing returns proves to be accurate. For example, the impact on productivity of having a fairly organized workspace vs. one that is immaculate is negligible. It’s a much bigger investment to obsess about perfection than to settle for something functional.
While all truly prolific people know this, they also can’t help but want to exceed and push the boundaries of what is considered acceptable. The remarkable man wants more than just average. He wants to excel and master his endeavors.
3. Work while everyone else is sleeping.
I know first hand the value of doing your research and working smart. It’s the difference between doing blind cold calls endlessly and actually taking the time to research how to market and how to sell yourself. Despite the importance of working smart, if you want to be remarkable, you’ll need to go beyond the bar of what’s expected.
You’ll work while other people are sleeping. You’ll work while other people are watching TV and while your friends are playing World of Warcraft. Whatever you seek to master, you’ll think about it when you’re driving. You’ll dream about it at night. And when you’re not working on it, you’re thinking about how you can work at it better and more efficiently.
The path of greatness requires sacrifice.
4. Seek out the unconventional, unnoticed, and untapped.
Being remarkable is largely about being masterful. To become a master, you’ll need to explore the fringes of your craft that often go unnoticed or dismissed by others. As a martial artist, I’ve discovered that this makes a huge difference between the novice and the master. A master will not just go through the techniques and the motions. He will study body mechanics, speed training, elusiveness, feinting, economy of motion and minimizing telegraphing.
Not only that, but a true master of martial arts won’t just immerse them self in the study of martial arts, but in training the whole body and the whole mind. They will research unconventional methods of meditation and becoming more aware of the body. They will study philosophy and cultivate a positive attitude. In exercising the body, they will seek out every method of training they can find. They will delve into training methods that other people might find strange or weird. But they don’t just seek out unconventional methods for the sake of being different; it’s in an attempt to train holistically, not leaving anything untapped or undiscovered or uncharted. Once you’ve tried it, you determine what works and discard what doesn’t.
The remarkable man pays attention when everyone else is distracted. He sees the sleight of hand the magician conceals. He listens when everyone else is speaking. He looks where no one thinks to look and has an intuitive sense for picking up on cues and clues that would often go overlooked.
5. Accept that you will be controversial.
Most people are satisfied with the same boring routine. They go to the same boring job, answer the same boring calls and go to the same boring meetings. They talk to boring people and drink boring coffee. They may complain about their lives, but they don’t care enough to do something about it.
These are the kind of people that would love to hold you down and keep you on the ground. Your fearlessness gives them discomfort. You arouse in them the sleeping giant of potential that they’ve long since silenced. These people will have strong opinions about what you do, but at the same time, will unceasingly defend their mediocrity.
Realize that there will be a lot of people like this. Don’t shun them, but ignore them. When they rebuke, the remarkable man simply smiles.
6. Get a mentor.
If you want to become great, you’ll need to seek out the mentorship of others that have achieved greatness. For example, if you want to be a entrepreneur, you’ll need to seek out the advice of other successful business owners. If you want to be a great athlete, you’ll need to study under other great players.
This doesn’t mean that you need to actually live with Michael Jordan or have an apprenticeship with Stephen King, you just need to study them. With a simple library card, you can get biographies and books that will allow you to carry your teachers with you in your messenger bag. Who knows, your greatest teachers might be dead.
Except having great mentors, one of the fastest ways to excel at your endeavor is to surround yourself with people that have already done what you’re trying to do. If you want to be an entrepreneur, you wouldn’t want to associate only with employees, you’d want to seek out the company of business owners. If you want to be a software developer, you wouldn’t want to talk to the convenient store clerk. You’d want to seek out and surround yourself with other experienced programmers that have already created successful software applications.
A truly remarkable man knows that he is forever a student and can always learn something from even the most unexpected sources.
7. Live on the edges.
This is probably the most important quality of the remarkable man. If you’re going to pay attention to anything, pay attention now. You can’t be remarkable by simply “doing what works,” following a pre-made template for life and keeping your head down and nose to the grindstone.
If you want to be more than just a pawn, you’re going to have to take control of the game. You’ll need to decide how your life is played, instead of living by default.
Remarkability means questioning authority and living on your own terms. You see rules as crutches for those that live their lives unexamined. The extraordinary man knows that often “collective wisdom” is really a big, fat collective assumption.
You see limits as imaginary lines. You understand that most obstacles are not physical, but psychic. You see fears and beliefs as only true in your mind.
If you truly want to live fully, you recognize that you must live on the edges. When other people are afraid to express their feelings, you speak. When others ask “Why me?” you ask “Why not?” When being true to yourself may mean that you’re unpopular, there is no question to you about the choice you’ll make.
Closing thoughts
There is no question that living the prolific life is not for everyone. It should also be noted that it requires a lot of energy to be remarkable all the time. You should spend equal amounts of time recharging and replenishing your sources of energy.
Even if your aim isn’t to become James Dean or Johnny Depp, opting to cultivate these traits in yourself to some degree couldn’t hurt. Maybe a version of “remarkability lite” would serve you better.


CREATIVITY

Sam Fentress photographs The Progress of Love at the Pulitzer
Zina Saro-Wiwa. Mourning Class: Nollywood, 2010.
Video installation on monitors, color, sound, 20 min 42 sec.
Courtesy of the artist. © 2012 Zina Saro-Wiwa.
Photograph by Sam Fentress.
Zina Saro-Wiwa. Mourning Class: Nollywood, 2010. Video installation on monitors, color, sound, 20 min 42 sec. Courtesy of the artist. © 2012 Zina Saro-Wiwa. Photograph by Sam Fentress.
For more information about Sam Fentress and his work, visit samfentress.com.

DO YOU KNOW DANFO OR MOLUE LIKE WE CALL IT HERE IN LAGOS?

DANFO, MOLUE AND THE AFROPOLITAN EXPERIENCE IN EMEKA OGBOH’S SOUNDSCAPES by Massa Lemu
Photograph by Paul Hester, Courtesy of The Menil Collection
Photograph by Paul Hester, Courtesy of The Menil Collection
This is essay is reprinted from the MFAH Core catalogue, Core 2012 Yearbook, © 2012This essay is also featured on www.artandeducation.net.

In his work Nigerian artist Emeka Ogboh records the sounds of Lagos, particularly focusing on the noise of danfo and molue buses, and installs his soundscapes in the milieu of other cities. This essay examines the political implications of this gesture. I argue that Ogboh’s practice doesn’t just celebrate the vibrant urban sounds of Lagos but foregrounds the medium of sound to reflect on the African city as a space historically shaped by and entangled in economic, social, and cultural interrelationships with the rest of the world.1
Ogboh’s sound installations focus on Lagos—the city in which he lives–exploring what the artist describes as its “history and aural infrastructure.”2 In galleries, he usually installs the work in booths where audiences listen to the recordings through earphones. Sometimes he places speakers and megaphones blaring with Lagos sounds in the streets of cities such as Cologne or Helsinki in order to initiate dialogue on globalization, migration, and multi-culturalism. One could read Ogboh’s practice within the context of Camerounian philosopher and critic Achille Mbembe’s Afropolitanism: a cosmopolitan understanding of Africa as a dynamic cultural hybrid, a “world in movement.” Afropolitanism describes Africa as a product of continuous “itinerancy, mobility and movement” of diverse peoples from all corners of the globe into and out of the continent and within its geographical boundaries.3 Present day Africa is a mixture of Asian, European, and indigenous peoples and cultures which have been in political and economic interrelationships for millennia. Mbembe uses the term “afropolis” to refer to major African cities such as Lagos, Cairo, and Johannesburg, cosmopolitan spaces implicated in and shaped by complex, skewed and asymmetrical global flows of ideas, goods, capital, and people.4 Following this framework, the essay examines how Ogboh inserts the sounds of Lagos into the soundscapes of Western cities to highlight the socio-political imbalances and contradictions of globalization, focusing on two sound clips titled Lagos by Bus and the installation Lagos Soundscapes in Cologne: Reception of Strangeness and Consumption of Difference.
The Italian critic and curator Marco Scotini observes that, due to globalization, “the city, and not the state, is the strategic place of economic dynamics, migration, ethnic and cultural change, and the demands of civil society.”5 Lagos, which was once the administrative capital of Nigeria, now its economic and cultural capital, offers Ogboh an appropriate space for understanding the socio-political dynamics between the south and the north in the globalized world. The history of Lagos begins before the
first Portuguese settlement in the fifteenth century, but the city was also shaped by the trans-Atlantic slave trade, colonization, post-colonial and neo-colonial cultural, political and economic factors. For example, in its relatively recent economic history, the Nigerian oil boom of the 1970s–whose tragedy continues today—stimluated migration from rural to urban regions of the country and also attracted migrants from the United States, Germany and Japan to Lagos making it a one of the richest, most populous and culturally diverse metropolises in Africa.6 It is the idea of Lagos as a locus where myriad cultures and variegated subjectivities intersect that underpins Ogboh’s practice.
Lagos is a metropolitan beast whose voice and soul manifest themselves in a cacophony of roars and growls of blaring horns, vehicles, rumbling electric generators, muezzins, street music, and rowdy vendors clamoring to sell their merchandize. Through its sounds, Ogboh manages to capture the Lagosian cityscape in its diversity and complexity. But the work transcends merely recording and celebrating the sounds. From such a diverse range of metropolitan sounds, Ogboh selects danfo and molue noises and situates them at the centre of his poetics as a metaphor for addressing issues of migration and related topics. This practice stems from Ogboh’s recognition that urban sounds are not neutral. Cultural theorist Helmut Draxler points out that, like the tactile and the visual worlds, the audible world is shaped by and politically implicated in capitalist modernity.7 Urban sounds, from rumbling production machines to supermarket muzak, are all products of capitalism. To an extent, therefore, Ogboh does to danfo and molue sounds what artists such as the Beninian Romuald Hazoume and the Ghanaian El Anatsui do to found products of African modernity such as jelly cans and bottle tops.
Danfo and Molue Buses in Lagos, 2010, Copyright Adolphus Opara.
Danfo and molue comprise Lagos’s major mode of transportation. Danfo, which means “hurry” in Yoruba, is the local name given to the yellow Volkswagen minibuses of Lagos. Molue, which has its roots in the English word “maul,” are the locally fabricated 44-seat buses that ply the roads of the city. Danfo and molue are ubiquitous on the streets of Lagos and therefore contribute to the city’s perpetual traffic jams locally referred to as “go slows.” The noise from danfo and molue horns and the verbal “maps”
from their call boys pollute the overcrowded streets of the city. Referring to the verbal route maps chanted by bus conductors as a unique feature of the Lagos sound that particularly drew his attention, Ogboh has stated that, “the verbal maps are the acoustic cartographic mapping of Lagos by its bus routes and destinations, and by bus conductors.”8 In addition to the horns and the route chants, a polyphony of dramas is enacted as Lagosians congregate in these overcrowded buses in their daily journeys to and from work. Ogboh records the voice of Lagos in this cacophony of bus horns, chanted route maps, and brawls. The idea of the fast-paced city and its aggressive mercantilism are embedded in the terms danfo and molue themselves, whose meanings conjure up the polyglot spirit of the metropolitan jungle and its laws of survival, i.e. “Just keep ramming on” to borrow from Lagosian street lingo.
An eight minute and ten second clip entitled Lagos by Bus offers the listener a detailed audio landscape of Lagos. In the clip the Pidgin chatter of travelers intermingles with the clinking of beverage bottles, music from a radio, and above all the pervasive and cacophonous hooting from danfo and molue buses. The most discernible of the conversations in Lagos by Bus is a pre-departure sermon and prayer by a peddler hawking drugs for diabetes and glaucoma to commuters. Vendors in danfo and molue buses are known to coax travelers with prayer to buy their merchandise. As one listens to the sermon, the music in the background becomes discernible as a popular song by the eminent late Nigerian musician Fela Kuti titled “Coffin for Head of State.” The song—which also starts as a desperate prayer to Jesus Christ, Allah, and other deities for mercy—is also an essay on the grim socio-political reality of Kuti’s contemporary Nigeria. “Coffin for Head of State,” which was recorded after the Nigerian military invaded Kuti’s Kalakuta republic in 1977, narrates his personal ordeals with the Nigerian government, and decries the wanton corruption, political oppression, crime, and dehumanizing poverty across Africa.
Danfo and molue embody the cosmopolitanism of Lagosian soundscapes. From the hybrid origins of Pidgin, the language of Lagosian commuters, to the political concerns in Fela Kuti’s song and the pervasive influence of Christianity and Islam, one notes in danfo and molue a confluence of the triple heritage of African cultures described by Ali Mazrui in The Africans; A Triple Heritage.9 They are representative of Mbembe’s afropolis. The whole danfo and molue “ambience,” as featured in Ogboh’s soundscapes, emblematizes the hustle and bustle of modern life not only of Lagos but of many post-colonial cities.
Passenger buses of the danfo and molue class are not unique to Lagos. Most African cities share similar public transportation systems promising similar travel experiences to the commuter. For example, the Tanzanian transport system has the Dala dala; Zimbabweans ride the battered Tshova; Congolese streets are teeming with the noisy Fula fula; Ugandans and Kenyans pack themselves in the claustrophobic Matatu. While in their physicality danfo and molue are unique to Lagos, the multifarious sounds
offer Ogboh a springboard to explore issues of more widespread relevance.
With their peculiar claustrophobic dramas, mishaps, and entertainment, danfo and molue are heterotopias or “non-places” between the home and the destination as Foucault described them. One could compare the buses to Foucault’s ship: “a floating part of space, a placeless space, that lives by itself, closed in on itself and at the same time poised in the infinite of the ocean.”10 In the Foucauldian sense, danfo and molue are poised in the vast metropolitan concrete jungle of Lagos, offering temporary distractions for middle and lower class Lagosians as they shift and drift from destination to destination in their daily struggles, dramas, and misadventures. Danfo and molue are transitory spaces defined by their own relations and experiences but they are also microcosms for understanding the heterogeneous city of Lagos.
It is an essential part of Ogboh’s aesthetic that he presents the found sounds predominantly raw. According to Ogboh, minimal studio manipulation might be needed during the recording process, but he does not significantly alter the original sounds. He selects and presents the sound in a manner that permits him to retain its original form.
Ogboh’s approach can be compared to that of his contemporaries such as the South African artist James Webb and the Egyptian Magdi Mostafa, both of whom tune in and listen attentively to their environments to investigate their sounds.11 However, while these artists edit, refine or even abstract the values and tones of found sound according to particular acoustic investigations, Ogboh’s practice is a re-contextualization of the raw soundscape.12 This recontextualization opens the noise up to its
acoustic re-examination and translation. The American theorist of sound Emily Ann Thompson offers a definition of the term “soundscape,” which is a lucid interpretative framework for Ogboh’s work. According to Thompson, a soundscape is “an auditory aural landscape…which is simultaneously a physical environment and a way of perceiving that environment; it is both a world and a culture constructed to make sense of that world.”13 One can think of almost all of Ogboh’s pieces as detailed sonic vistas, or auditory landscapes that are not only recreations of the physical environment of Lagos but are in themselves a way of understanding that environment.
In Ogboh’s minimal and yet potent sound-clips, one notes the pervasive influence of John Cage’s avant-gardist practices, which re-contextualized raw, everyday sounds. They also recall Romuald Hazoume’s practice of minimally altering found fuel jerry cans to create masks that strongly allude to wanton economic exploitation of the continent. Ogboh’s work, though, differs in its aesthetic from that of Hazoume’s generation, which includes artists like Anatsui. While his predecessors recycle quotidian
objects to create works that refer to traditional African art (masks in the case of Hazoume, or Akan Kente cloth in the case of Anatsui), Ogboh’s soundscapes are contemporary statements on the dramas of present day survival. The work neither stakes claims on identity nor makes nostalgic references to a golden traditional past but rather reflects on the subjective condition in the postcolonial African metropolis.
Ogboh’s work depends on the power of sound to generate images in the mind of listeners, but it should be noted that an appreciation of the soundscapes is incomplete without a spatial account of the environments within which they are exhibited. The three-dimensional booths within which the sounds are encountered enhance the listener’s perception. For example Lagos by Bus (2010), a forty minute soundscape installation, was presented at the Rautenstrauch-Joset Museum in Cologne in a booth
painted in the trademark danfo and molue yellow and black striped colors complete with stickers and labels commonly found on the buses . The totality of sound and the three-dimensional environment of the yellow booth immersed the listener in an experience which further referred to the original danfo and molue ambience

SUSPER MODELs, Kendra Spears and Karlie Kloss

2013

karlie-kloss-vog-spa-1
Below are the fabulous images from the Vogue Spain February issue styled by Ana Tovar.
Photographer – Ben Weller
Model – Kendra Spears
Hair – Chi Won
 Make-up – Hiromi Ueda
American beauty Karlie Kloss also poses for the February issue of Spanish Vogue magazine, captured by Alexi Lubomirski and styled by Belén Antolín.

Alexander McQueen


Alexander McQueen
15

Alexander McQueen

Profile

Birth date: March 17, 1969
Country: United Kingdom
Brand Name: Alexander McQueen
Labels: Alexander McQueen; McQ
Other Product Lines: Eyewear, Fragrances, Handbags, Jeans, Shoes

Overview

Alexander McQueen was an ode to fashion and quintessential designer of the nineties and noughties. He was raised in East London, where he dropped out of school to pursue a career in fashion. Learning from the best, McQueen mastered the art of tailoring on the infamous Savile Row, London, which helped define his signature tailoring, as well as being influenced by French couture.





Top Facts:

  • With over ten years as a solo designer, the Gucci Group bought a 51 per cent stake in his company in 2000, where he remained creative director. Expansion followed the opening of flagship stores in New York, London, Milan, Las Vegas, and Los Angeles.
  • McQueen’s MA collection, at Central Saint Martins, was snapped up and bought in its entirety by influential stylist Isabella Blow, in 1991.
  • McQueen worked as chief designer at Givenchy in 1996 for five years.
  • In 2003, McQueen received the CFDA Award for ‘Best International Designer’ and was honored with a CBE from Queen Elizabeth II for his services to the fashion industry.
  • McQueen was awarded Designer of the Year at the British Fashion Awards four times.
  • McQueen died aged 40, on February 11, 2010. 
  • But still lives on. his brands are every where you go in the world.


 If you love his works and you loved him!
Click on the like key.


Alexander McQueen


Alexander McQueen
15

Alexander McQueen

Profile

Birth date: March 17, 1969
Country: United Kingdom
Brand Name: Alexander McQueen
Labels: Alexander McQueen; McQ
Other Product Lines: Eyewear, Fragrances, Handbags, Jeans, Shoes

Overview

Alexander McQueen was an ode to fashion and quintessential designer of the nineties and noughties. He was raised in East London, where he dropped out of school to pursue a career in fashion. Learning from the best, McQueen mastered the art of tailoring on the infamous Savile Row, London, which helped define his signature tailoring, as well as being influenced by French couture.

DESIGNERS & BRANDS


Bvlgari
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Bvlgari

Profile

Founded: 1884
Country: Italy
Brand Name: Bvlgari
Labels: Bvlgari
Other Product Lines: Fragrances, Watches, Handbags, Accessories, Jewelry, Hotels

Overview

The luxurious Italian brand Bvlgari (or in English -- Bulgari) was founded in 1884 by Sotirios Voulgaris, a jeweller from Cyprus. With the help of his two sons, Costantino and Giorgio, Bulgari stores quickly became a playground for the rich and famous. In 2011, the French luxury group LVMH bought Bulgari SpA for a staggering 6.01 billion dollars -- higher than any amount the group had paid for any deal previously.

DESIGNERS & BRANDS


Andrew Gn
5

Andrew Gn

Profile

Founded: 1966
Country: Singapore
Brand Name: Andrew Gn
Labels: Andrew Gn; Andrew Gn Atelier
Other Product Lines: Handbags

Overview

Andrew Gn is a Singapore-born, Paris-based designer known for his use of luxurious fabrics, artisanal details, and exquisite handiwork. He has become well-known among royals and high-class business women who like to own one-of-a-kind items that noone else has. His Parisian fashion house creates all the buttons and embellishments at the studio, which continues to make his collections luxurious at a standard that not many others can offer.

Wednesday, January 30, 2013

TOP TIP

Tips for a Healthy Beautiful Nail.
Nail needs Calcium which is found in the dairy products..... Like:
Cheese:
Milk:
Yoghurt:
Eggs:
They also need Vitanin B which is found in:
Yeast:
Wheat:
Germ:
Cereal:
Whole meal:
And Vitamin A which is found in:
Carrot:
Mango:
E.t.c.
Want to know more bout ur skin, nail, and hair?;;).

SCEPTER NATIONAL GOSPEL AWARD 2013

Hey fan and friends Catch me on †ђξ red carpet doing wat ȋ̝̊̅̄ knw how to do best wt top Celebs at the scepters big night 7pm, Friday, Feb 15th, 2013 on Club X "ORANGE CARPET EXCLUSIVE" and watch it aired on over 40 TV STATIONS across Africa and on ClubX Diaries OnTV (online)
17th days more, use our dp.

Please get on www.scepters.org
for updates | Special Guest | Special appearances | Red Carpet hosts | sponsors | supporters | command & special performances | etc

To get your organization to support or sponsor, please email: info@scepters.org or call 07085000124 | 08091911911

Use our display picture everyday to show your support \=D/
Hosts:
Holy Mallam | Anjola Ajayi | Ayo Owoduni | Mina Horsefall

Official partners:
Yard 158,
DMB MUSIK
The Prinze energy drink
The New Order
SUGAR Wears, Above & Beyond, Debbie’spalm, Ouch, Sniper Gears.
Black Gold Vision International | Swagcraft | WOMP
BEN TV, LTV, My DOUBLE-DOUBLE, Gospogroove, Praise world radio, DMB Musik, Nu-Age Icons, X2D, GMC news, MORE THAN MUSIC, Gospel Musik NAIJA,TODAYS MUSIC, WAZOBI FM, NAIJA FM, BEAT FM, NTA, IROKING, Inspiration FM, Nigezie, Sound City, Primetime, TVC, Music Africa, Hip on Tv, Silverbird, Quest Tv, Spice TV, RHYTHM, Ray Power, Unilag FM; Star FM, Love world, Dove media, CLUB PAPER Music Nest, JAMZ WITH ZOE CHINAKA.

Regular 2,000, Couple 10,000, Tables 200, 000
Call: 08091911911
Buy Online from: www.scepters.org

Same ticket admits you to our special
Winners party @ Club Paper,VI, Sunday, February 17th, 2013.
Hosted by:
SACO & Dunni Daniels
— at Mastermindezign,Ink

SCEPTER NATIONAL GOSPEL AWARD 2013

The Nigerian music industry has never experience  what is about to hit the industry before.
Its the scepter national gospel award 2013, happening live in lagos Nigeria.
At one of the most popular event center (YARD 158 EVENT CENTER) on the mainland ikeja lagos






So what are you still waiting for?
Come lets support our own gospel brothers and sister as they do what know how to do best.
and let see who goes home with the award!
Ticket available for grab. 

Sunday, January 27, 2013

Who runs the world? guys or girls?
A ROUGH BATTLE TO SMOOTHEN YOUR HAIR.
Dry hair occurs mainly due to heat, the use of excessive chemical applied on your hair and also by not taking good care of your hair. Every person's hair has a certain amount of moisture which preserves your hair and does not let it dry. When certain level of moisture goes down due to many of the common reasons then you have to take special efforts to maintain that moisture. Here are the special effort one can take to prevent dry hair.Please do not ignore these tips.














This is what fashion freaks Africa is all about. photos of fashion freaks showing them self out side the arise lagos fashion week 2012. that what am talking about.






ARISE Lagos fashion week 2012 was a bomb. this is like the biggest fashion show in Nigeria or Africa if am not wrong. it was an event that really catch the hearts of all fashion lovers around Africa and the world, here are some photos of what am talking about.