A community-oriented art & graphic design collective. We make graphic apparel, hand-crafted accessories and produce events. And most importantly, spew randomness about important and non-important topics.

Sunday, August 29, 2010

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Expression: Africa + Me

One3snapshot makes this shirt. It brings about mixed feelings. What is my Mother-tongue? Do I have a choice in being able to speak it? Read on to see how things could get a little mixed up!

I LOVE meeting other Africans. I have this fantasy of visiting other African countries for at least 2weeks to- # months at a time per country, and giving myself up to total submersion of my fetishized appetite for their dance, music, language & food. I'll totally be that Anglo person that I criticize all the time. If you know anything about me, you'll know that I have this ongoing far away obsession relationship with Congolese, Cameroonian, Ivorian dance and music. And i think it's the ultimate shame that I've been to various countries around the world, but not one other African country asides from Nigeria.

And now I'm beginning to have a mild obsession with the Caribbean and Latin America...and South Asia...and...Sigh.

Of course probably I could drop everything and figure out how to back pack all around the world, or I could work my way up the food chain like I'm supposed to, and put myself in positions that make me go around the world. But until then...

I LOVE meeting people and having friends from other ethnic backgrounds in my life. Being culturally 'un-diversified' makes me itch. I miss my first year of college, where I was in a school that drew a nice pool of international students that had a presence and hung out with each other while still navigating the course of American college life. That was a great exposure to other Africans, but also other countries where I was like "you said WHAT?, that's a country? oh cool, I didn't know that. And you name is what? Lol. (*sorry too much flash-backing).

All this to say

The other day I met my new eye doctor for the rest of my life... She's South African. If you ask her. If you were to look at her and say what she 'is' you would call her Indian. At least that's what I thought until she schooled me:
I also learned something new: Indians where brought to South Africa as slaves. So there are a lot of people just like her, whose GRANDparents even don't identify with India as home, and have never even been there. Whoa! I don't know why this tripped me out, I guess typically (from US point of view) when presented with the 'displacement' of people, I think US or Europe, and commonly with Africans/Blacks, but in the context of like that's all I've always known it to be. I've understood that they are African Americans, African Europeans? and Caribbeans. Nobody is tripping out like WHOA Africans who are not really Africans, and have never been to Africa! You just know that's how it is...

But mostly the other thing that stood out to me was her giving me short versions of Apartheid & the life around the time Nelson Mandela was locked up. It was so trippy, 'cos sometimes you don't really understand these issues that happen in far far away lands. You think oh this sucks, oh it happened a 'long' time ago, to those people over there. And it was a trip that my eye doctor had lived during the times of Apartheid and was standing there telling me about it. From that point it was kinda hard to only fantasize anymore. I was simply stunned.

So now what is HER Mother-tongue?  She speaks Afrikaans because that's what they were forced to speak, she doesn't know any Indian languages, neither does her Mother. One African/Black American lady said to me the other day in response to the shirt above, "But I don't know my Mother-tongue, it was stripped from us!"

My answer: if you're fortunate to be in anyway to be exposed to your Mother-tongue, speak it!

-n

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Ify Aniebo

Winner of the 2010 Future Awards Young Person of the Year

My message to all would be to stop talking and start acting. Enough of the facebook updates, facebook groups wanting change, twittering, BBing etc. I do understand we haven’t had the best leaders but we need to stop dwelling on that and move on. What I’m saying is the future of the country does not just lie in the hands of our leaders, it lies in every individual as well. We all need to look in the mirror and start affecting change where necessary.

We need to be more positive and supportive of each other. We need to be more helpful to our neighbors and communities. We need to stop being selfish. We need to be the change we want to see in the country because we would become leaders one day and if we do not start doing all these things now then we would be no different from our leaders. We might even end up being worse. A vicious cycle really.

Stop waiting for someone or a group of people to change Nigeria. We all can start in our own little way. I’m not saying you cannot pop champagne or fix your hair, all I’m saying is do something positive and impact visible change around you.



[Source]

Saturday, August 14, 2010

Follow the Dirty Oil Money


Friends of mine have spent  a couple or years quite a while working on this: Dirty Energy Money an interactive tool that tracks the flow of oil, gas, and coal money in U.S. Congress. Using the site you can find out which energy companies are pumping their dirty money into politics and which politicians are receiving it.

And I've seen it take a few forms. I'm still trying out this website...since I have a death fear of math/ math-related info-graphics, I'm wondering if this is a site that I can get down with. Mostly I'm interested in the usability of this site by regular folks like me. People who are not so 'smart' and folks who get overwhelmed by the intricate details of numbers. Like can I just get a colorful video and some cool fashion telling me the gist of it?

But on a more serious note; the information is something that is important and people should care about; what with all the drama and craziness energy sources are causing in our lives today (indirectly or not). It's a bit sad because the we  do is complain about how much it takes for us to fill up our gas tanks. I would like for us to about this energy 'crisis' a bit deeper.

How do our lifestyle choices, our political leanings, and our business decisions play a role in the issue?

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Culture: The Plus & Minus about Nigerian Women

I saw this photo on facebook. My Question is. Why do the Igbo girls have the most minuses? That's messed up mehn! This is hilarious to me and I have to admit I was hella nodding my head on most things. Of course generalized it makes sense, but when I saw the minuses in the Igbo ones I was like okay that AIN'T me!! Haha... well mostly the ones about money though. And then my question is

Where is the one for the Men?


Source

Monday, August 9, 2010

Event: Boa Noite Afro World Dance @ Kitty's Bar

had a fun saturday night dj'ing at Kitty's afro world dance saturdays. from dancehall to coupe decale to cumbia to hip hop to bhangra... the challenge usually is focusing on spinning and not dancing my ass off. just a few shots from my crappy cam.

Event: East Bay Express-Best of the Bay Party


On Friday Aug 6, 2010. The East Bay Express had it's 2010 Best of the Bay Party @ Jack London Square Waterfront. Rolled through, but didn't make it past the dance/dance battle stage. Was pretty much stuck there for hours. Had an amazing time; nice to see street dancing and also get a chance to dance and see folks from all around. Been a while.

The People battle & music set was blazing. After the battle, they had police manning the area and were playing rave music. It was kinda crazy and just a little bit fucked up...but guess what? That didn't stop folks from keeping the dance going and having a blazing time. We danced to rave music...haha it's funny see all these breakers, turfers, housers, african dancers, ballet dancers rocking out to rave music!

Just got a few shots from the evening, but mostly have video clips of people dancing and the dance battle hosted by The People Oakland and yak films. With east bay celebrity guest judges Corey from Newstyle Motherlode, Goapele and Zumbi from Zion-I. Video clips of dancing coming soon our youtube channel!

Saturday, August 7, 2010

Visual Inspiration: The Radiant Child




Tamra Davis, a friend to Jean-Michel Basquiat created a riveting documentary on his talented but short-lived life. Watch the trailer here and look out for screenings in your area or you can wait for when it becomes available via Netflix and On Demand.

[image credit]

Thursday, August 5, 2010

Expression: Prop 8


This photo just made my month I think. LMAO. I think no matter what your views are, if you got even a bit of a sense of humor you gotta admit it's funny. But then again, people and politics. eh!
-N
Source

Sunday, August 1, 2010

Culture: Things Trendy People Like Summer 2010

i have been having a lot of people come up to me asking for advice on different topics, one of the ones that have been occuring a lot, has been this question:

 "It's summer 2010, and I need to look trendy, but I don't know how to be. how do I do it?"


well...
you need:

1. a blackberry (specifically one with a color not that is not black or get a colored cover)
2. host or attend a party that has RED VELVET Cupcakes (if you can't get red velvet, other cupcakes may suffice)
3. soulful house, skank, and or  jungle house music

now keep in mind that you may look at this list as hella random. Because my social sphere is such, I span posh razz Nigerian to bay area Hipster-artisty-ambiguously-ethnic folks to grungy-white-activisty types. Hella random... but somehow in this randomness, some occurring themes have come up at certain levels in all of these social scenes as far as trends go. These results are based on my scientific and thorough research (through facebook photos, blogs and passing convos (electronically & in-person)).

i assume the reason for such random social circles overlapping in trend factors is due to the chronic syndrome known as copy-copy.
copy copy is a situation where 'ethnic' folks wanna be white *ahem* posh by force, and white folks can't help but indulge & appropriate 'ethnic' culture. and well... the greedy capitalists just wanna feck us all in the butt by convincing us that we NEED the newest techie fad...

so there my friends I tell ya, to be deemed up with the times, currently you need to
  1. casually hold your blackberry  in your LEFT hand,  (see loosely but surely so it doesn't get dropped or stolen)
  2. have a prettily decorated mini cupcake in the right (preferably red velvet as it would up your posh status), 
  3. while having house music play in the background (and please for the love of God...don't attempt to dance, it will ruin your look).
until next time!

cheese:
n