It is a year today since the London 2012 Olympics opened with its spectacular rendition of the history of this island past and very present. Difficult to remember now how so much of the coverage of the Olympics in the previous years had been so negative and intentionally destructive. The organisers and contributors welcomed the global sports people from all over the world and delivered a sporting extravaganza that is now itself a collective golden moment of British history.
Despite at that time living less than a mile from the Olympic Park, I watched it all on the TV. I did however see Michelle Obama’s entourage move through east London to the park and I now know that the Queen has two security helicopters and lesser royals only one. So while still not having been to the Olympic Park to this day (though a regular visitor to the shopping centre that you have to go through to get to it), I do remember the summer 2012 of one of wonderful cultural events. Admittedly I don’t know if all the things I attended were actually scheduled as part of the Cultural Olympiad, but I felt that they were well done and added to a sparkling summer.
There was the Africa Express music train that brought together musicians from Europe and Africa who performed musical mash-ups from across the continents. To be honest apart from Damon Albarn and Paul McCartney I’d not particularly heard of any of other musicians from either continent. It was wonderful. While I had dissed the replica of the Heart of Darkness boat on top of the Royal Festival Hall, (read it here) I did think that the talks that Caryl Phillips, Teju Cole & Alain Mabanckou recorded in the Room for London studio gave an insight into rethinking our world city, us as Londoners, and the River Thames which we largely ignore in our attempts to get around or across it. l did see the reading of OrsonWelles’ film script of Heart of Darkness – a film that was never made, and the reading by the actor Brian Cox was tremendous. A man in a boat, reading from a sheaf of papers with only a tub of blueberries to oil his voice – really did take us into the heart of the story, which in the context of the Welles’ film script was really attacking America’s 20th century colonialism. Which is probably why Hollywood it was never made.
The cultural highpoint of 2012 for me though was seeing Peter Sellars and hearing him talk about his collaboration with Toni Morrison. I saw him twice – once at The Africa Centre and then again after the performance of Desdemona at the Barbican. Desdemona is the result of a dispute Sellars had with Morrison on the value of Shakespeare’s Othello. Sellar’s believed it irrelevant because its depiction of Othello was so negative and Morrison believed that Shakespeare can never be ignored. Thinking through what Shakespeare could have known of Africa… his theatre is of course The Globe, so he must have been interested in a wider world. Together Sellars and Morrison re-thought the story and retold it through the voice of Desdemona and all the other women in the play. A quite racist story from under the Western gaze, only remembered for a black man murdering his white wife is taken apart, and while it is still of a doomed love, its goes beyond the obvious. Desdemona gets to explain that she fell in love with Othello because of the wonderful stories that he told her and we get to better understand that the maid Barbary is in fact an African woman who reminds Desdemona that she has a life and stories of her own to tell. It was an deep and elegant performance, that includes the music of Rokia Troare, who I also saw performing at the Africa Express event – Paul McCartney was in her backing band. This showing of Desdemona made me go out and get a copy of Othello, a play that even if a black actor gets the lead is far too depressing in its standard telling. In the Q&A at the Africa Centre I said to Peter Sellars, that I thought that when they teach or publish Othello in the future they should include a copy of Desdemona along with it. It would I believe make the whole play more meaningful to wider group of readers.
There were other events that I attended, I learnt a lot from the Cultural Olympiad. This morning I was annoyed to hear a commentator dismiss its value because its ‘outputs’ did not compare to the ‘outputs’ of 1948s Festival of Britain. Well as great as that was, we are now in a different era, the notion that the results of 21st century culture must belong in one place in order to define only one type of nation state culture no longer exists. The results and impact of London 2012 sport and culture will be with us for a long time. Its results cannot just be measured through bricks and mortar & stuff on civc plinths.
SOURCE: Black Book News – Read entire story here.
