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< Back Belgrade Calling 2 15 July 2020 Katarina Kostandinović Birdhead, April protests in Belgrade, 2017 When thinking about the title of this text, I thought of “Is Belgrade Burning?”, referring to “Is Paris Burning?” – the question Hitler is said to have asked on receiving the news of its fall. But I changed my mind; I did not want to dramatize the situation in Belgrade, which has, in the last week, escalated into several days of protests, police brutality and general dissatisfaction that threatens to be annulled by the authorities and the regime media. In a previous article that I wrote for this journal, through the form of diary entries, I dealt with the situation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. This text is a reaction to the current situation caused by unprofessional management of the coronavirus crisis, by the state representatives and the Crisis Staff. I’d like to clarify the position I am taking in writing the following text. I am an academic citizen and cultural worker employed in one of the public institutions of the city of Belgrade. In addition to supporting my generation in protests and expressing our dissatisfaction and recoil in fear, I want to condemn the rhetoric of violence, to rebel against corrupt officials, to condemn sexual predators and take the side of their victims. I want to allow myself to tell for the first time what kind of future I want and where I (don’t) want to live. To get out of the media darkness that has been overshadowing us all for some time, to support my colleagues and professors in the fight against plagiarized diplomas, I want nepotism to stop and positions in institutions to be filled on the basis of competency and knowledge. I want to support the fight for human rights, the rule of law and justice! DOUBLE STANDARDS and SOCIAL MEDIA AS AN EMERGING PUBLIC COUNTER SPHERE On June 21, the citizens of Serbia voted in the first parliamentary elections in Europe during the coronavirus pandemic, and part of the opposition decided to boycott the elections. A little more than a month before the elections, the state of emergency was lifted and people were encouraged to return to “normal”. That meant the possibility of holding sports matches and celebrations again, re-opening clubs and conducting an election campaign, as well as the elections. The new COVID-regime was meant to set the conditions for the upcoming parliamentary elections and voting procedures. While president Vučić was preparing, the cracks in the healthcare system and state’s neglect of health infrastructure became even more obvious than before [1] . Although the fact that the ruling Serbian Progressive Party won convincingly was not a surprise, there were discrepancies in real and reported numbers. Shortly after, the number of infected people started to rise and this time the numbers of infected and deceased people from some cities did not match the official data coming from the Crisis Staff and the state representatives. New precautions had to be introduced; among other things, the president decides to evict students from dorms in the middle of the exam period, identifying them as a dangerous factor in spreading the infection. After the report on the president’s decision on the same day, July 3, students from Belgrade gathered in front of the National Assembly to protest – the reaction was spontaneous and urgent. On Tuesday, July 7, after President Vučić announced that a curfew should be introduced in Belgrade, due to the rapid spread of the virus, thousands of citizens took to the streets of the capital to express their dissatisfaction. It was the first of seven protests held so far, which turned into a brutal showdown between police and protesters for almost three nights in a row. The protest turned into riots and people were throwing rocks and garbage cans, containers were set on fire, as well as police vehicles. On the first day of the protest, according to the information by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, four vehicles were set on fire, while one was damaged. Shortly after the arson, a story erupted on social networks that members of the police a.k.a. trained hooligans controlled by the state were behind such deeds. Most social network users are convinced that the Ministry of the Interior burned their vehicles on their own, old and unusable ones, which they are trying to prove with photos. On the other hand, the representatives of the Ministry of Internal Affairs deny it. Social media, these days, is a serious channel through which information travels, people who protest from the streets report, and people who are not able to get to the streets share the content with incredible speed. Messages are of various content – from warnings about the movement of the police, mapping of suspicious persons at protests to articles of the law on protection of citizens and rights during arrests or police duties when using weapons, etc. Such mobilization through social networks was encouraged partly by footages of independent journalists who were the few to report on the protest, and largely by footages of protesters noticing police brutality and false statements by government officials denying the brutality in the media. Mass civil protests are a burning topic on social media and the public sphere. Numerous people have been discussing violence they have been witnessing. Thus, there is also fake news (both on social and TV networks) and corrupted media are now attracting even more attention – it is a matter of different content, and I will mention one. Reporting by a pre-written text, while people were sitting at the protest third day in a row, B92 TV news anchor states in the news at 11 pm that “the protest turned into violent demonstrations and clashes with the police”, although that was not true. The same reporter later joined the program live, saying that “there were no major incidents”. The fact that the “script” which anchor read in the studio was written in advance is evidenced by photos and recordings from the protest on Thursday, which, apart from a few minor clashes between the protesters, took place in peace and without clashes with the police. The mobilization on social networks gives the impression that the news from Belgrade is being transmitted outside the borders of Serbia. However, again, there are notable examples of biasing and altering news. Photo by Katarina Kostandinović WHO IS WHO and WHOM ARE YOU PROTECTING? For several days now, I have been witnessing a similar choreography of police and “hooligans” who are believed to be there to provoke incidents so that the government, supposedly, can blame the “organizers” of the protest for the violence and take violent steps to suppress the protest. People gather in front of the Assembly, the loudest and right-wing ones are in front of the entrance to the building, most of the other protesters surround them. Derogatory words are being shouted, the government is called out, Kosovo is mentioned, and specific demands are heard in some places. Some of the demands that can be heard are the following: the resignation of President Vučić; resignation of members of the Crisis Staff; overthrowing parliamentary elections; that the formation of Assembly and the Government should not be allowed on the basis of illegal and fraudulent elections, a law prohibiting party affiliation to employees in the judiciary, inspection, education, health, police and military; return open calls for employment in the public sector, without party employment; etc. Tension and dissatisfaction grow and after a while rocks are fired. The police came out of the Assembly and moved to the crowd in front of the building. Torches were lit, they flew towards the police, and at that moment, tear gas was flying from the other side towards the protesters who were fleeing from the police cordon that separated the group and continued to suppress it in the side streets and parks. It was the first time that my friends and I felt tear gas and its consequences. Later that night I saw the footage of the N1 television (one of the few that was on the scene that night).It showed the brutal beating of young men who were sitting in the park next to the Assembly. In the following evenings, from the terraces of apartments in the city centre, people recorded various cases of police brutality, and the number of arrested and beaten people on the streets grew from night to the night. It is undeniable that some police officers were hurt too, but the number of hurt unarmed civilians was much larger than reported. Revolted by the reaction of state representatives, whose speeches and announcements often confuse the Serbian public, regarding the protests and their violent suppression and final disintegration, people continue to gather next day at the same time in front of the Assembly. The next day, reactions to the police violence that happened the previous evening could be heard from the crowd. Then, after a couple of hours of protest, the situation escalated again into chaos and fleeing from tear gas and, now, better-equipped police forces, cordons, cavalry, and special anti-terrorist units in armoured vehicles. The violence on the streets of Belgrade which we witnessed opened the question of who are these people attacking police and whether there are those who are there to quell the protests from within “inserted” among us. This time, the aggression increased on both sides and the collision with the police continued. A huge amount of tear gas was fired, which was now coming to the apartments in the streets where people were fleeing and hiding. The denial of the fact that the police fired tear gas at all, by the prime minister herself, led the protesters to take the streets peacefully the next day, to show disgust with the police brutality while sitting in front of the Assembly. After two days of brutal clashes with the police, the protesters gathered under the slogan “Sit down – Don’t be manipulated”. Authorities withdrew the police and seemingly acknowledged the peaceful protests, which escalated with the president’s next public announcements. As usual, his aggressive rhetoric when addressing citizens and journalists, which oscillates between the role of a worried father and a frightening tyrant, encouraged protesters to take to the streets for the fourth night in a row. And the now well-known choreography is repeated with even stronger police forces, which this time arrest everyone who is on their way and take them to, as it is stated, the Assembly, where they interrogate the detainees, beat them, take away their phones and write reports. The media have been reporting that after the conflict in front of the Assembly, the police fired a large amount of tear gas into the mass of peaceful demonstrators, some of whom are 30 years old. The cartridges that were scattered on the streets near the Assembly of Serbia clearly show that the year of production is 1990. The current debate in media discusses the effects of old tear gas, which, apparently, after five years changes its chemical composition and the substance becomes stronger. This can imply that the convention on the use of chemical weapons was violated and human health was directly endangered. State officials and Ministry of the Interior denied these reports, stating that the inevitable was done in order to quell the violent protest and prevent greater damage. People are more and more scared and, consequently, there are obviously fewer people gathering, unlike the first two days of the protest. During the weekend the number of protesters almost halved, and this Monday (July 13) was immeasurably lower than the first few days. This is partly a consequence of the increase in police patrols, which have been on the streets of Belgrade, searching for people who get in their way, especially those with protest banners.Several arrests have been reported. On the other hand, reported cases of cell phone hackings and deleting of the protest recordings brought unrest and additional fear due to privacy violation. The police have arrested non-violent protesters, among them leftist activists. This prompted the protest movement from the Assembly to the Central Prison in Belgrade, where protesters are demanding the release of “political prisoners” [2] . Yesterday and today, July 14, people are protesting because of numerous arrested activists and students who were not violent during the protest –some were just passers-by interrogated by police whose statements were falsified. They were then sentenced to 30 days in prison, without the possibility to contact a lawyer and defend themselves in court. We are scared and disoriented, it seems that the expressed rebellion and anger did not get any political articulation and does not turn into a strategy in the fight against the current government or a strategy of clearly defined demands that would pressure the government to meet those demands. The role of the opposition, which has been left without the organizational capacity and credibility to address the citizens at this political moment, seems unwelcomed. How to articulate a rebellion against impotent representatives of the people, who confuse, deceive and criminalize their citizens? How to express dissatisfaction with public information and corrupt media? How to invite colleagues, professors, friends to join and not be afraid to withdraw from obedience to the perennial fear government? In the previous few days, perhaps the most serious protests were held during the rule of Aleksandar Vučić, who already after the first evening fulfilled the first and so far the only request of the demonstrators – a change in the decision to reintroduce the curfew. Some would say that no matter how these protests end, it is a big and serious thing, especially since the public, after the “One in Five Million” protest ended, speculated whether and when energy would be accumulated for new protests. It turned out, on Tuesday night, July 7, that only one spontaneous gathering of angry citizens, due to the announcement of a new curfew, was more fruitful than about a year of protests led by the opposition. The protest became a place where politically, ideologically diverse people gather, and how the day will look like depends on the current dominance in the number of some of them. The only thing that is constant and common to everyone in front of the Assembly of Serbia is dissatisfaction with the regime and the current situation in the country. For the first time since the April protests in 2017, when Vučić was elected for president, we see young people on the streets, mostly those aged 18 to 30-40. There were also sympathizers and activists from the oppositional Alliance for Serbia, Don’t Let Belgrade Drown, activists from the Roof (anti eviction organization), the New Social Democratic Union, artists and cultural workers, but also alt-right groups such as People’s patrols, Levijatan, as well as workers from the Private Security Agency Protector. Public institutions are still in the dark, no one has stepped forward, unions are silent too, and people are scared to join because they see no defined prospect. It is showed that those who stood against the current rule were criminalized and overshadowed, even silenced. I am afraid that any civil protest that will take place in the future in this way will be compromised. It seems to me that the public is confused by the number of young people on the streets. They are not seen at rallies of the opposition or the ruling party, the public is confused by the so-called orientation of people, which again, cannot be reduced to those political and ideological phrases that existed at the time of October 5th 2000, when the people rebelled against Milošević’s rule and finally overthrew him. This is a generational thing, there are young people left and right oriented, civic oriented and patriotic oriented, but the regime media impose their ideological phrases and criminalize what they do not understand. The notion of left and right is not valid at this political moment, we also have to rethink the terminology and its historical and/or current state. We wonder whether the right-wingers are the people who are advocating for Kosovo at the protest and its preservation in the constitutional and legal order of the Republic of Serbia, advocating for physical security and the right to property and the rule of law, both for Serbs and Albanians in Kosovo. Is it a right-wing or liberal vocabulary? Is a leftist someone who stands for ethnically clean territories – for the policy of demarcation and, thus, follows the policy of the West? How broad is the political spectrum that we know, and how much do we know? Now, only a thin layer of educated young people from larger cities are on the streets (Niš, Novi Sad, Zrenjanin, Kragujevac, Novi Pazar, etc.). Those who still have a lot of strength and a lot of life ahead of them. But we fail to turn indignation into political demands, because the opposition is incapable of helping us, among other things. Our parents have been exhausted for a long time and are not ready to stand up, those who fought for the democratization of society in 2000, gave up. We live in Belgrade, in a bubble, without contact with people who vote for the ruling party and whose world and worries we do not understand. They are trapped in an authoritarian system that their children, WE, want to blow up. I don’t want to be pessimistic, but even this time it doesn’t seem that the uprising will be successful, the spontaneous civic protest is facing the question of “and then what”. It seems that our opposition, as it is today, is not ready and is lacking strong support of the people. We need an organic opposition that will be formed at the protests. We have to think long-term and offer ideas and policies, talk about solutions because it will be difficult to defeat the tyrant in his field of violence. Photo by Katarina Kostandinović ENDING NOTE It seems that the fight against the coronavirus will not end so quickly. It seems that the members of the Crisis Staff found themselves unprepared again in the fight against the epidemic. While the authorities have the responsibility to ensure public order and to respond to individual violent incidents, the disproportionate use of force against entire demonstrations is not justified. Heavy-handed measures of the kind we have seen over the past few days infringe the rights of those protesting peacefully and will only increase tension and provoke hostility, leading to an escalation of the situation. It is a matter of time before a state of emergency is introduced again, which in a way blurs some priorities and raises alarms about how human rights are being balanced against the risks posed by COVID-19. The last time Serbia was in the State of Emergency was in 2003 following the assassination of Prime Minister Zoran Đinđić; on which occasion the government derogated numerous human rights, including the right to privacy, the right to freedom of movement, the right to freedom of expression and the freedom of media. P.S. THE LEGACY OF THE OCTOBER 5 This year marks the twentieth anniversary of the great demonstrations in Belgrade that ended Slobodan Milošević’s rule on October 5, 2000 [3] . The Democratic Opposition of Serbia called on the citizens to gather in front of the National Assembly on October 5 in order to oppose the great election theft that the Federal Election Commission carried out on the order of Milošević. The opposition ultimately demanded that Slobodan Milošević recognizes the electoral will of the citizens expressed in the federal, presidential and local elections held on September 24, by 3 pm on Thursday, October 5, 2000. It was also demanded that all those arrested be released, as well as that the arrest warrants and criminal charges filed against those who protested for respecting the electoral will of the citizens of Serbia be withdrawn. Currently, the then participants in Slobodan Milošević’s government are once again occupying the most important positions in the country. Katarina Kostandinović is an art historian and curator based in Belgrade, Serbia. [1] https://dversia.net/6026/serbia-mass-protest-vucic/?fbclid=IwAR2LDkBeUtiKHIfbMQxTnSo807MkULpu5VF3qKwjj7EUOURSJgHMd08mKQc [2] https://www.masina.rs/eng/beating-and-jailing-of-non-violent-activists-followed-by-protest-in-front-of-belgrade-central-prison/?fbclid=IwAR20g4iHhvUn5jA3mvNUfu91-5scgs_KODi3-rIZaOeMDZhgrOH5TZKIqds [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overthrow_of_Slobodan_Milo%C5%A1evi%C4%87 ; (See also: https://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/05/continuous/yugoslav-protesters-set-parliament-on-fire.html , https://balkaninsight.com/2010/10/05/timeline-the-bulldozer-revolution/ ) Previous Next

This is placeholder text. To change this content, double-click on the element and click Change Content. < Back This is a Title 03 This is placeholder text. To change this content, double-click on the element and click Change Content. This is placeholder text. To change this content, double-click on the element and click Change Content. Want to view and manage all your collections? Click on the Content Manager button in the Add panel on the left. Here, you can make changes to your content, add new fields, create dynamic pages and more. You can create as many collections as you need. Your collection is already set up for you with fields and content. Add your own, or import content from a CSV file. Add fields for any type of content you want to display, such as rich text, images, videos and more. You can also collect and store information from your site visitors using input elements like custom forms and fields. Be sure to click Sync after making changes in a collection, so visitors can see your newest content on your live site. Preview your site to check that all your elements are displaying content from the right collection fields. Previous Next

< Back School-In-Isolation Isolated in Bishkek 18 Apr 2020 Bermet Borubaeva Kyrgyzstan is a small country of the post-soviet bloc, impacted by corruption, where one third of the population lives at or below the poverty line. Many people live day-to-day without savings, on as little as $30-$50 USD per month, and there is no governmental support for low-income families. One third of the GDP derives from the wages of workers who have migrated to Russia to earn money to send home to their families in Kyrgyzstan. Intellectual workers, freelancers and artists face similar issues as other vulnerable workers as their employment is often precarious and irregular, with income often dependent on foreign grants and international projects. Kyrgyzstan went into isolation mode after confirmation that three pilgrims who came back from Saudi Arabia on 12 March 2020 tested positive for COVID-19. Very soon all schools, universities, and private companies (except for enterprises of strategic supply, shops, pharmacies) were closed and transformed for distant work. The government declared a State of Emergency and closed the borders. People were only allowed to go to shops and pharmacies during the day, with a night-time curfew from 8pm to 7am until 14 April, however this has now been extended until the end of April. Visiting the park for some exercise. The sports parks in Bishkek are almost empty. 4.4.2020 In the beginning there was some kind of euphoria, people were not used to sitting at home and not going to work and school – usually this is only possible during New Year vacations when, for one week, we stay at home most of the time, meet with friends, eat and drink. But this is not Happy New Year and Christmas time. Most of the time, workers are busy at work and don’t have the opportunity to stay home with their families and dedicate time to reading books, hobbies or cleaning. I think it would be nice if people had access to a universal basic income for this period and could just use the time to reboot. The parking spaces near my apartment are full. Everyone sits at home. 24.3.2020 I had been very busy for the past six months, including exhibitions, many street rallies, protests and rights protection activities. And in one moment it all stopped. It was as though almost everything I was working for as an arts professional or activist became useless somehow. I had no idea how to behave, what to do, and how I could help. Initially, I was just travelling along the tracks as I had before, working on current projects as if nothing had changed, even though I knew this route had already been disconnected. I find it difficult to be optimistic about the current situation – without a universal basic income and with the corruption of the government, I feel it is impossible to solve this situation adequately to avoid a deep human crisis. For the past 7 years I lived in Moscow but returned to Bishkek for the exhibition “ Death. Yearning. Love ” by Laboratory CI that opened in November 2019. During my stay in Bishkek, I attended the Conference of Green Mobility, where I learned that Bishkek had the highest air pollution rating in the world, which lead to my decision to move back to Bishkek and join the Green Party and run in the parliamentary elections in October. I was also aware that there was no plan for a new group of students in the ArtEast School of Contemporary Art, so I decided to take on the role of coordinator to ensure that the school would continue. The view from my apartment window. 10.4.2020 ArtEast was founded in 2002 by Gulnara Kasmalieva and Muratbek Djumaliev founded, with the aim of developing the contemporary art scene in Central Asia in various ways, including through the curation of international exhibitions and arts festivals, creating artworks, and conducting educational projects. ArtEast’s School of Contemporary Art launched in 2009 and I was part of the first group of students to attend. The school was non-formal, with the aim of providing an introduction to art history and expanding the worldview of students. After graduating, we did many projects together, with some of the students moving into filmmaking, design etc, and some founding their own institutions. My desire to keep the school going was inspired by research that took place during the What Could Should Curating Do? curatorial program in Belgrade last year, when I was a participant of the program. The research focused on the informal education program “School of History and Theory of Images” that was initiated 20 years ago in Belgrade by curators and theoreticians and made a huge impact on the art scene. Thinking about this school, I realised how important it is to keep art schools and programs running. This year, the school evolved to include a curatorial team consisting of the founders and a number of graduates and their own platforms – Gulnara Kasmalieva and Muratbek Djumaliev (founders), Alima Tokmergenova and Oksana Kapishnikova (ArtBus), Kanaiym Kydyralieva, Ravshan Ta Djing, Diana Ukhina ( Laboratoria CI ), Nellya Djamanbaeva ( Capacity Building Foundation ) and Bermet Borubaeva ( Cooperative PreobraZHenskiy ). We even had three spaces to conduct classes in – the underground space of Laboratory CI, the ArtEast Studio, and our partners Ololohouse. We had lessons every Sunday, lasting between 3-5 hours, with sandwiches, fruits and sweets, and, several times, someone cooking for the group. It is an ArtEast school tradition to gather and celebrate holidays together. We had planned to organise an informal party in the style of Dada but were not able to do so before the quarantine began. As we do not have any governmental or non-governmental educational institutions in the sphere of contemporary art and culture the school is very important for the region. We do not receive any state funding, asking students to pay a small fee (approx. $70USD for the whole 5-month program) to cover basic expenditures, which gives us the opportunity to keep the school autonomous and to continue without any grants. This year’s group of students were excited to be learning about contemporary art. Some of our students had a background in art, while others did not, but we saw this as a good thing as we wanted to have a multidisciplinary program. Among the students we have musicians, an IT specialist, architects, designers, a Yoga trainer, criminalist, feminists and urban activists, anthropologist, teacher, philosopher and even medical worker. We had a really nice atmosphere every time we met, with students involved in a number of projects before the quarantine began, such as the exhibition-protest #BishkekSmog 20.02.2020 against air pollution, in front of Parliament House. Some of the students were involved in working on an exhibition to take place inside a bus, called “Kiyinky Aiyaldama” (“Next Station” in Kyrgyz language), curated by student Rada Valentina Kyzy and two curators of the course – myself and Oksana Kapishnikova. We had permission from the city Mairie, had selected works through an open-call, and had the opening planned for March 29. The exhibition has been postponed, rather than being moved online. For the ArtEast School it was tradition to make informal parties together, celebrating New Year or other events and we, with the students, had planned to make a party in the style of Warhol’s Factory or Surrealist’s dreams, but has not been able to happen yet. For the School, we made the decision to shift to an online format even before isolation officially started, after the students requested this, and in order to provide security for everyone. The first online session of the school was extremely complicated as nobody was used to such a format – the noises, the order for people to speak, lack of eye-contact and direct attention for speakers, microphones switched off, people out of visibility of their cameras, and so on. However, one of the positives to come out of this new format is the possibility of inviting guests from other countries to participate in the school and conduct lectures and discussions. Knowing this, we added a fourth topic to the program. In addition to Modern Art, Contemporary Art and Contemporary Art in Central Asia, we have added Meetings with International Curators and Theoreticians. In this way, we have been able to move beyond the borders, even when the borders are closed. School activities before the quarantine began – discussing the “Next Station” exhibition that has now had to be postponed. 9.2.2020 Lessons have now moved online, which has taken time for everyone to adjust to. 1.4.2020 The question of one of our students – what is the final result of our school now? – is very poignant. We have very little understanding of how things will be after all of this ends – what the role of artists will be, how they will be able to impact society etc. But for the moment, all we can do is develop our imagination and use a critical approach. We had planned, as the final stage of the achool program, for students to participate in our Festival of Public Art, “TRASH III”, dedicated to environmental pollution, and held in the ‘Straw-bricks Belt’ of Bishkek’s Novostroikas, where there is no infrastructure or arts events. As part of this, we planned to hold a workshop-laboratory event called “Art of Co-participation”, conducted by Anton Valkovsky (a curator from Volgograd/Berlin). He has said that it’s better to conduct this workshop offline, rather than trying to change it for an online platform, and so we have postponed the workshop and the festival for an indefinite period. Online Zoom Lesson: Moscow Conceptualism. 29.3.2020 Online Zoom Lesson: From Sculpture to Installation. Muratbek Djumaliev showing Festival of Public art Art Prospect. 5.4.2020 Another ArtEast project is the construction of an energy-efficient Residency building at the famous lake Issyk-kul, working with local community. It is important for our ArtEast community to decentralize art practices and run projects outside the capital. Spring is the time to plant trees, to work with the earth, to mobilize the community and collaborate in these ways. We had also discussed plans to organise students to hold some workshops or a festival at the lake. But now the road to the Issyk-kul region is closed and there is no possibility to work in that part of the country. The salary from the TRASH III festival was to be my main source of income, so now I find myself with no income for the foreseeable future. I live with my family – my mom and grandmother – and my mother, a hairdresser, has almost finished working as hair salons are not allowed now. We have only pensions, which are very small in Kyrgyzstan, but we are very privileged because we have our flat that we live in. If not, it would be extremely tough now. My brother just went to Moscow to work in a taxi service to send money back, but the percentage of the promised salary is extremely low now and he has to work for Yandex.taxi (like Uber), with his earnings only covering food expenses. There are millions of migrant workers in Russia who send money back to families in the Central Asian regions and I am very sad because it is now the only income for many Kyrgyz families and these workers will be exposed to even more exploitation than before as they try to find any job in any conditions. There are some discussions among art practitioners in Kyrgyzstan about how isolation can affect the country in general and us. Our museums and art institutions have started to open their archives and make e-shows. Meder Akhmetov from ‘Studio Museum’ suggested to open an e-gallery to support artists. Many art practitioners are just staying calm and working on their projects waiting for when the current situation ends. Some said that in such situations they think it is better to live in a country other that Kyrgyzstan – if you catch the virus here, you are almost incurable, you’re on your own and, even if you do the right thing and stay inside, there are no social guarantees or support from the State. Actually, so many people have already migrated and those who stayed were mostly those who wanted to work on developing culture, however given the current situation, maybe they will change their minds and decide to migrate too. I cannot image that it is possible for such a large-scale pandemic to disappear in the next few months. I believe that after the quarantine period ends, people will still be afraid to go out and will remain at home if possible, so many online activities will continue. Even now, activity in Bishkek has not completely stopped – someone has started online art challenge and online art schools, such as the School of Artistic Gesture in Kazakhstan. We have even had our first experience of an online exhibition – our annual event, 1st April Art Competition – where works were exhibited online and the jury even published a play-discussion of the selection process in a Whatsapp chat group. As for me, my life has not really changed a lot except that I am not going out. Work is progressing, there is still a schedule of meetings (albeit e-meetings) and the same deadlines, and so I just keep going. I will continue to work on my art ideas and now just have more time to write the concept and programs, apply for financing and find partners. I believe more now in what I am doing in art and my other activities in relation to drawing attention to global risks of environment pollution. I would like to experience more live practices in art like gardening or cooking, cooperating, saving. The dream is to create space as a prototype for an alternative way of living, and perhaps now, for the next half a year at least, we can start to build this platform. Class preparation involves a special guest now. 29.3.2020 I have also started home improvements, which are going very slowly. 6.4.2020 Bermet Borubaeva is an artist and activist from Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. Previous Next

< Back AS YOU GO… ROADS UNDER YOUR FEET, TOWARDS THE NEW FUTURE | FILM PROGRAM 8 Apr 2021 As you go… roads under your feet, towards the new future International symposium / live stream Symposium presenters: What Could Should Curating Do and Moderna galerija , Ljubljana, Slovenia Duration: 22 – 31 March 2021, Link to live-stream Special screening as part of the As you go..roads under your feet, towards the new future presenting works by artists, researchers and curators part of the project. Jasphy Zheng, Stories from the Room As a response to the state of isolation and the collective pause we shared globally due to the outbreak of the pandemic, I initiated Stories from the Room, my on-going art project since early 2020 to collect personal writings from across the world. While receiving writings in different languages, I am building a growing archive and housing it in various countries, thus outputting and storing memories in private or public places. By connecting on and offline worlds, I am imagining a new territory that redefines the notion of physicality, distance, and connection at this time. Are we, perhaps for the first time, experiencing something together as a globe, or is “universality” still a romantic illusion? Is it still possible to expand empathy even when the sentiments of ”we are in this together” fails? Living between the US and China, Jasphy Zheng is an artist whose art practice explores the idea of imagined collectiveness and the inevitable failure of communication. Salem Mekuria, Amba’s E(u)topia About Awra Amba’s E(u)topia – About seventy years ago, Zumra Nuru was born into a traditional agrarian Muslim family in a remote village in Northern Ethiopia, near Awra Amba. He never went to school. As a child he started questioning why things were as unequal and unjust as he observed life in his village to be. He dreamt of a society where people could live in peace and full equality regardless of who they were. Fifty years ago, that dream materialized into what is now known as Awra Amba, a community based on true equality in all aspects of life and where religion is a private affair. This story introduces a revolutionary society thriving in the heart of a very conservative Ethiopia. With interviews and compelling scenes of the village and its people, Awra Amba’s (E)utopia will give us a glimpse into their unique lifestyle. Salem Mekuria, Square Stories Trilogy For the last twenty years, I have been exploring innovative ways to visually represent the lingering, yet unexamined, legacy of the tragic events of Ethiopia’s military regime. I started experimenting with multi-screen format as a tool for complicating the linearity of documentary style film, and for telling visual stories without the need for verbal narration. In utilising the triptych form, I reference traditional Ethiopian Orthodox religious art history and its ubiquity in the lives of my primary audience. By expanding on this cultural motif and emptying it of its traditional content, I juxtapose images, events, stories, and ideas to offer multiple ways of understanding Ethiopian history, and to engage audiences by inviting them to actively participate in the unfolding of these narratives. The Square Stories Trilogy is the latest in such experimentation. In it, I examine visual memory and the process of its erasure – how the spaces in Maskal Square defy efforts to suppress or erase traces of the traumatic events presented in Deluge. I follow the Square’s physical evolution from its beginnings as a space for the annual celebration of Maskal (the Finding of the true Cross), to becoming the primary site for political protests as well as the display of spectacles of power by succeeding regimes. Ethiopia’s desire for modernity is also played out in the ongoing transformation of the square, which has watched Ethiopian history be made and remade time and again. Salem Mekuria, an Ethiopian-American, is an award-winning writer, director, videographer and producer of independent films and video art installations. Aigerim Kapar, Artcom Platform The many secret scapes of Balkhash Lake: a travelogue of the crossboundary contexts, communities and ecosystems. The lake is one of the biggest endorheic water bodies in the world and has a millenia-long history of socio-cultural life, ecological traditions, and semi-nomadic management methods, responsive to the climatic features of the arid zone. Today modern industrialization and militarization during the colonial Soviet period continues to prevail in its cultural landscape and imagination. Scientific research of the lake and its region mainly carries out a capitalist design, and the socio-cultural studies are practically absent. An important and pressing task is to decolonize the concept/memory/knowledge of Balkhash. It is necessary to understand what it was like before the Soviet period, what role Balkhash played in the cultural landscape of the local people, and how current sources impact the attitudes and practice towards Balkhash ecosystem – how old/current/new sources can be reflected through decolonial optics and emerge as an important factor in its sustainable future. The secrets of Lake Balkhash is a transdisciplinary collaborative mixed methods research effort including contributions from ethnography, cultural mapping, interviews, observations, expedition reports. The research is part of Artcom Platform’s Care for Balkhash initiative and is supported by the As you go…the roads under your feet into the new futur e long term research inquiry. Aigerim Kapar is a curator and Founder of Artcom Hu Yun, Untitled audio and video diary letters from Bor, 2021 BOR – The early stage of my research in Bor is composed of an ongoing conversation with the city’s only Chinese restaurant owner, Chef Qiu. On 18th December 2018, Chinese Mining company, Zijin Mining Group, formally took over RTB Bor Group under the new name “Serbia Zijin Bor Copper”. During the past two years, Chinese engineers and workers have been relocated to Bor by Zijin Group and its supporting companies from China. Due to the pandemic, the relocation process has slowed down, though has not come to a stop. According to Zijin’s development planning, more workers will be needed in the coming years. As a newcomer, just like all the Chinese workers working for Zijin Group, Chef Qiu arrived at Bor without any knowledge of the local context, and he only speaks Mandarin and Hokkien (Fujian Province, Southern China dialect). The outcome of this first stage of research will be several short video essays based on a series of interviews done with Chef Qiu and video footage taken during a research trip in early 2020, together with footage from Chef Qiu taken throughout 2020 as his own visual memory of his first year in Bor. Hu Yun is an artist based in Melbourne Previous Next

Giulia Menegale < Back After The Covid-19: Speculations Over The Verb ‘To Re-Start Giulia Menegale One week ago, I left my room in London with mixed feelings: I took this decision based on the impossibility to formulate any previsions about the future. I travelled from London- Heathrow to Roma-Fiumicino by plane and then, from Roma-Fiumicino to Venice by car. Being born in neoliberal and globalized times, I am not used to making decisions which are beyond the possibility of choosing among several diversified options: in the current situation, we have lost our apparently unlimited freedom to travel, to produce and to consume. Only one flight company operates this trip. The Italian government ensures the opportunity to come back to their home country only for its own citizens who are currently living in the UK, whilst the borders are officially closed for the rest of the population. Once arrived in Venice, I had to self-isolate for 14 days meaning that I could not leave home neither for doing shopping or taking the trash out. These are the only two activities for which Italians who reside in the red areas – zones highly affected by the COVID-19 – are now allowed to leave their houses. Being at home with my family implies to join again the quotidian rituals happening among its warm walls, after months. One of these consists in watching the news together on the television, while having meals. Since my return, I thus heard several times journalists announcing that ‘We will be ready to restart our activities soon, though we need to act carefully and gradually’. When this happens, the members of my family stop eating and impose absolute silence on each other in the hope that possible dates for the ‘re-opening’ of the activities will be officially announced. Recently, the Italian government has indeed made public a provisional calendar for the next months: ‘on the 3rd May…’; ‘in July 2020…’; ‘in October 2020…’; ‘next year…’ I am the only member of my family who keeps eating her meals regardless of these announcements and does not make comments on them. I understand the shared need and will to ‘restart’ after more than one month of lockdown: ‘The Italian economy is suffering’ an Italian politician says, ‘The lockdown for the COVID-19 costs each Italian citizen 788 euros per month’ someone else adds, ‘and Italy risks to lose up to the 20% of its total GDP by the end of the year’. Nonetheless, when I hear the television or my familiars pronouncing the term ‘restart’, I cannot avoid asking myself whether me and the governments, me and thousands of other Italian families, are waiting for the same systems, activities and lifestyles to ‘restart’. By using the term ‘restarting’, do we even refer to the same phenomenon? Once, the philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari said that the fundamental problem of political philosophy ‘is still precisely the one that Spinoza saw so clearly (and that Wilhelm Reich rediscovered): why do men fight for their servitude as stubbornly as though it were their salvation?’ (2004: 31). Through this sentence, they emphasize the fact that the neoliberal and consumeristic societies we live in, produce the same conditions that make us “to want” and “to need” this exploitative economic system ruling us. Since the lockdown began, we all have experienced the ambiguous feeling caused by being trapped between the desire of “carry on as if a health crisis has never happened” and the pleasure of “escaping from any imposed duty”. This pandemic has been efficacious in showing us, through empirical experimentation, that the “ought to consume”, as well as, the “ought to produce” are not urgencies tied to our bodies or our souls. Why should we desire to come back to a system, a lifestyle, a world whose survival relies on the application of mechanisms of massive subordinations? In these weeks, several intellectuals have speculated about possible futures after the COVID-19, over online journals. The sociologist Bruno Latour suggests ‘do not repeat the exact thing we were doing before’ this unexpected ‘stopping of the world’(2020: 2). If we want to become ‘efficient globalization interrupters ’, we should strongly refuse the same modes of overproduction which lead us to periodical crises and to the accentuation of inequalities between winner nations and defeated ones. In light of Latour’s suggestions, the verb ‘to restart’ acquires thus meanings which differ from the ones evoked by worldwide governments: it means, not only to seriously deal with the heath crisis we are passing through now, but also with the climatic and planetary emergencies which we are witnessing since many years. The current heath crisis encounters the environmental emergency in the image of a man carrying in his hands a branch with several hanging face masks which has been shared by the association Ocean Asia. The picture was taken during some marine operations around the Soko Islands, a small archipelago in Hong Kong, where associated researchers had found dozens of these protection devices along the coasts. According to some figures announced by an Italian newspaper a few days ago, Cina produces nearly 200 million of face masks per day while the U.S. will need to supply 3,5 billion in order to protect medical workers in a severe pandemic. By the end of each month, Italy will have consumed and thrown away 130 million of face masks. The photo I have referred to thus summarize the paradox with which we will soon be confronting, if we do not consider the environment as a priority in this generalized call ‘to re-start’. An important number of single-use face masks and plastic gloves – all surgical devices which are certainly saving human lives now! – will be added to the 6 millions of tons of synthetic fibers produced per year – materials which are certainly dangerous for the environment due to their dispersion in the form of microplastics! – to get rid off. In the scenario described, it seems to me that we are living in times where the pages of our daily agendas are full of exclamation marks and red underscores: priorities get accumulated under long ‘to-do lists’ (or to-change lists?!) that requires equally energetic and prompt responses. Formulating the question in Spinozian words again, have we reached the full capacity in confront of the challenges that our bodies, our planet, the pandemic can take on? When the health and social crises encounter the environmental one, establishing a political agenda means to set priories among urgencies that cannot longer be postponed. When I hear the word ‘re-start’ on the television or other mouths, I take time to imagine that, meanwhile, we are meeting over the web to agree on possible actions to be undertaken on the small and bigger scales. In this period of lockdown, my hope is that we have begun working consistently toward the construction of the infrastructures which will allow us to respond to these multilayered crises, both on the micropolitical and macropolitical levels. Has the ambiguity generated by the use of the verb ‘to restart’ suggested any strategies regarding how to actuate such systematic changes, yet? Giulia Menegale (1995) is an Italian-based curator, writer and researcher. SOURCES [1] Deleuze, Gilles; Guattari, Felix. Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia , London: Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd, 1984. [2] Latour, Bruno. What protective measures can you think of so we don’t go back to the pre-crisis production model? , translated by Stephen Muecke, ACO media, 29th March, 2020: https://aoc.media/opinion/2020/03/29/imaginer-les-gestes-barrieres-contre-le-retour-a-la-production-davant-crise/ (last visit: 23/04/2020.) [3] Zanini, Luca. “Coronavirus, allarme ambientale: «Miliardi di mascherine finiranno nei mari»”. In Il Corriere della Sera , Milan, 8th April 2020: https://www.corriere.it/cronache/20_aprile_08/coronavirus-allarme-ambientale-miliardi-mascherine-finiranno-mari-7e05af60-781c-11ea-98b9-85d4a42f03ea.shtml [4] Article from Ocean Asia: http://oceansasia.org/beach-mask-coronavirus/ Previous Next

< Back The stories behind the lockdown: Kazakhstan against Corona 28 July 2020 Anvar Musrepov During the quarantine, Kazakhstan became the first country in the world to return to a full lockdown in a post-Soviet authoritarian manner. On March 19, lagging two weeks behind the actions of EU countries, quarantine was announced in Kazakhstan. Schools, universities, and shopping centers were closed. Armored soldiers with military equipment and machine guns were placed in front of city entrances, as police checked all passerby’s, asking each person about their purpose for simply walking. Considering the low number of coronavirus cases at the time, many people agreed that the government reacted with unreasonably strict protocols. There were few infected patients, yet the military marked those territories, cordoned off neighborhoods at the foci of infection, and in some cases even sealed entrance doors to apartment complexes containing dozens of residents. Kazakhstani citizens didn’t have the opportunity to go outside, exercise or even go for a walk. Quarantine adopted an extremely totalitarian style, and for many, it seemed that the Coronavirus was merely an allowance for the performance of an authoritarian power. The special local consciousness of people, based on the mythological perception of reality, gave rise to a large stream of fake news: from disinfection through a pagan shamanic ritual of fumigating the space with sacred grass, to conspiracy theories denying the existence of Coronavirus, and connecting the quarantine with the prolonged transition of power in the country. Back in the Soviet period, political mythology was a part of the folk art. The Kazakh state system of making decisions behind closed doors lead to a conspiracy vision of the world among many of its citizens. One of these myths, for example, tells of secret meetings in the underground halls of the President’s palace, where Nazarbayev conducts mystical rituals with the cabinet of ministers, before levitating at the moment of worship. The mythologization of power and undermined trust also impacted the effectiveness of the information campaign of COVID-19, leading many people to simply deny the existence of the virus, linking the quarantine to political manipulation. For a local economy built on the sale of crude oil, the beginning of the quarantine also marked the beginning of an economic crisis, caused by negotiations between Russia and the OPEC+ countries to limit oil production. The lack of work due to quarantine was accompanied by a sharp fall of the national currency, and an increase in the prices of goods and services. Under these conditions, the art community of Central Asia consolidated and created an alternative art market within a Facebook group. Initiated by Kyrgyz artist, Meder Akhmetov, Art Bazaar was inspired by the Russian community, Ball and Cross ( Шар и Крест ), but with a focus on artists from the Central Asian region. The principle of this self-organized art market resembles the schemes of financial pyramids common in the 1990s. When selling a certain number of works, a requirement is to purchase other art from the online bazaar, as well as transfer several works to the fund. In this way, artists bought and sold works from each other, creating a self-organized environment of collective care, while effectively excluding galleries and art market middlemen. It is fair to say that as such, the art market, as well as the institutional environment within the Central Asian region, is still in the process of formation.So-called underground art in Soviet times emerged from cramped apartment exhibitions with the fall of the Iron Curtain in the 90s. The state, inheriting the Soviet mentality, has never represented culture by itself, and thought of art only in connection with the goals of biased propaganda. Artistic ideas that do not respond to the cultivation of sports or strengthening patriotism, won’t find their place among the bureaucratic “argumentation” of projects. The legacy of the Soviet art education which focused on socialist realism continues to present a major issue in academies and art schools. For a long time in these conditions, the community of artists developing an alternative to conservative art, in which the driving force were not institutions or the art market, but the enthusiasm of the community itself, remained in the margins. Art Bazaar But Art Bazaar was not the only reaction of the art community to the new reality of the pandemic. The curator of the Artcom platform, Aigerim Kapar, organized open workshops with a Georgian artist, Wato Tsereteli. Participants practiced collective drawing, which later resulted in a virtual exhibition organized by the participants themselves, presenting a webpage with the results. Kyrgyz curator, Aida Sulova, conducted an educational program with children. The final works were accompanied by audio messages from authors, and were also presented in the virtual halls of the Artstep platform. I also decided to invest my part in the #stayhome movement and created an exhibition on the iada-art.org website; my idea was that an online exhibition should not mimic a real space, but could well remain in the webpage format, at the same time using the logic of an exposition construction. The name of the exhibition, Cybernomadism , reflected its main theme of examining the future from a decolonial perspective through the nomadic Kazakh culture. On the animated deforming grid background as a basic form of a space markup, works of 8 artists respond to the idea of technological utopia in the Kazakhstani context. Cybernomadism A. Kasteyev State Museum of Arts , which before the quarantine was a fairly conservative institution, has also gone through a transformation associated with the need to continue working online. The main exposition of the museum consists of Socialist realism paintings, and exhibitions of contemporary art were rarely held, unless in conjunction with other institutions. The need for a presence in the media prompted the museum staff to create exhibitions and record video tours. Realizing quickly that traditional art did not attract a new audience on the internet, museum curators quickly changed their strategy and began to focus on contemporary art. One such exhibition, dedicated to Rustam Khalfin, an artist who is often described as one of Central Asia’s contemporary art pioneers, was the first in the last 20 years. Isolation and a complete transition to online platforms have made many processes more transparent. This undoubtedly also influenced culture, as state museums moved away from the representation of the discourse of power and turned to the audience. While the media space repeated like a mantra that “the world will never be the same”, by the end of April people were allowed to go for a walk, and by the end of May, cafes and shopping centers had begun to open. Simultaneously, repatriation flights were organized by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Kazakh embassies in different countries. Because of the bureaucracy and the general situation, many had to wait for two months to return. After arriving home, people were signed to a 14 day self-isolation, but no appropriate supervision was conducted and the arrival of citizens took place before getting out of hand. Towards the end of June, the situation changed dramatically and got out of control. The dissidents’ opinion changed, and arguments such as, “show at least one patient,” ceased to flash on social networks. Instead, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and all other social media platforms became filled with requests for help; people looked for medicine, advice, or tried to call for ambulances. Subsequently, the Coronavirus hotline and paramedical services were left immobile due to overload. Hospitals stopped accepting patients, and even the simplest antipyretic drugs were in short supply. Pharmaceutical humanitarian aid from different countries were sold through corrupt channels at inflated prices. No more advertising was needed. The virus had touched every family in the country, and even Nazarbayev himself became ill. The media space became filled with obituaries of deceased celebrities, politicians, and relatives. Huge queues of people spilled out of employment centers and morgues, despite the danger of infection. On July 5, Kassym – Jomart Tokayev, the new president, conducted an online conference wearing a mask, in order to announce a second lockdown. Later it was revealed that the shortage of drugs and overpricing were associated with corruption within the Ministry of Health, and several high-ranking officials were removed from their positions. After almost a month, the situation with drug supplies stabilized, and several new field hospitals have been opened. Statistics of deaths from pneumonia, after a long period of denial, nevertheless, were combined with the statistics of deaths from coronavirus. Now, people are used to wearing masks, and they are much less likely to sabotage quarantine rules, but many still hold secret weddings and funerals, despite the strict measures (which includes imprisonment for 10 years). Kazakhstan was the first country in the world to return to a full lockdown. When the private becomes public, and health issues are no longer too personal a topic for discussion, the local becomes global and the deadly second wave in Kazakhstan is, in essence, a threatening warning to the entire world. Anvar Musrepov is an artist and curator from Almaty, Kazakhstan. Previous Next

< Back Artists as Gardeners Bishkek 16 Apr 2020 Gulnara Kasmalieva & Muratbek Djumaliev The quarantine for coronavirus has forced everybody to stay within their home. For many reasons, we cannot say that this situation has completely changed our lifestyle. It just allows us to put on ice some of our projects and slow down everything we usually do. A combination of artistic activity with gardening allows us to be in isolation for a long time and connect with our friends, students and colleagues online. Besides, spring is a hot season for a gardener. We moved to a village in a suburb of Bishkek city more than 20 years ago. We dreamed of having our own land and studio and it was a chance to buy a small house for quite an affordable price. At that time, we did not know that most of the territory we bought used to be on a riverside. The Soviet government decided to change one of the riverbeds of Ala Archa river in the 1970s, dry it, fill it with some construction waste and flatten the land. Later we learned that our neighboors called our place “The House on a Rubbish Dump.” We realised this when we began to cultivate the land in order to plant some trees. Every time we excavated the ground we found either concrete details or broken bricks and other waste. During the last 20 years we transformed this place step-by-step by putting down a dozen trucks of soil, planting a garden and organizingirrigation. We extended the house by building a studio, and all this process of building and garderning gave us many reasons to think about our relations to Nature. This has affected many of our artistic and curatorial projects that we have been doing in recent years, from shooting videos at Bishkek city dump, curating a public art festival at the botanical gardens, building an eco-house, following the principles of permaculture, water conservation, waste separation and recycling. This activity has allowed us to become familiar with so many urban activists, architects and eco farmers, to help our students to realize their works in two editions of Trash Festival and participate in their actions against city pollution. Being in quarantine is not complete isolation for us due to constant online connection with the local and world news for updates on coronavirus. The State of Emergency in Kyrgyzstan has put the spotlight on many problems in our country, such as social inequality, the poor condition of hospitals, religious fanaticism and corruption within the government. At the same time, it is obvious that, since the lockdown, air in Bishkek city has become much cleaner and we can also see a decrease in air pollution at a world-level. It is quite ironic that air for citizens could be cleaner only without them. We are the second urban generation in Kyrgyzstan – our parents came from the countryside to study at the university and then settled in Bishkek. Most of our school holidays we spent in the highland countryside in a house of our grannies and it gave us some good memories, energy, and probably nostalgia about apple gardens and green grass in a courtyard. Today, gardening for us is more than just planting and harvesting. It is something very close to artistic activity. It is rather a philosophy than a farming. Leaving all turbulences behind the fence, the gardener is aware that whatever he does improves this life and there are no alternatives for the future, only building a Garden. Gulnara Kasmalieva and Muratbek Djumaliev are artists and curators from Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. Previous Next

< Back Beating Around the Bush: Some Reflections on the Crisis of “Imported Cases” of Africans in Guangzhou 20 June 2020 Berhanu On April 15th, four days after the CNN coverage of the eviction of Africans in Guangzhou [1] , a message from a WeChat group [2] rang an alarm on my phone. Some Chinese volunteers helping the Africans’ in Guangzhou were just tipped off by a microblogger (the Chinese equivalent of Tweeter), who tagged the microblog of the Bureau of Guangzhou Public Security. The blogger asserted that those volunteers were calling for ordinary Chinese to help Africans, which would inevitably expand the pool of contacts [of asymptomatic carriers], during a crucial time when the Guangzhou authority was screening the population for epidemiological purposes and when nobody would know who had contracted the virus. “Are they [the volunteers] spreading [the COVID-19] intentionally?” the blogger asked rhetorically. Indignant at the blogger’s unfair charge against volunteers who aimed to address the clear and present threats, including displacement, the risk of contracting virus, panic, financial loss and hunger, I sent him a private message, intending to forestall his report. “Can you imagine the xenophobia in African societies would cause another wave of ‘imported cases’ of returning Chinese expats if the Africans in Guangzhou were not treated well?” I meant that there are millions of Chinese working and living in Africa, far outnumbered the Africans in China. In this deeply interwoven world, a flapping of a butterfly would not only trigger a tornado far away, but the tornado would backlash and engulf the butterfly in no time. The reply: “where are you from, idiot?”. And I was unfriended by him in a second. The blogger’s report seemed to have taken effect. The next day, several volunteers were summoned by the local policemen, and their actions were called to halt. The intervention dampened the volunteers’ enthusiasm and disrupted their charity work. Several WeChat groups initiated by volunteers to provide correct information, organise food delivery and translation services, were dismissed one by one. Though unfriended, I was still able to browse the microblogger’s webpage. I discovered that the screenshot of my short-lived conversation with him was posted atop. It was liked by hundreds and followed by many derisive mocks. Scrolling down the page, I found that he constantly hunts the misconducts of African students and passes his evidence to public authorities and other microbloggers. Likewise, the posts of the latter are teemed with anti-black, anti-Muslim, and even anti-feminism remarks. No wonder the volunteers fell prey — any assistance they offered to the evicted Africans would be reckoned as a collaboration with unwelcomed foreigners. But where does such hatred come from? How does it relate to the reality in Guangzhou? Like scientists who are able to determine the genetic composition of any life form, let me start by examining the emergence of this social phenomenon the same way. DNA sequencing of the Microbloggers’ narrative Scholars have recently noticed the right-wing populism emerging on Chinese social media and the jargons netizens have coined. The so-called White-Leftist ( baizuo ), repeatedly used in netizen’s vilifying their enemies, is key to the understanding of the ideological genesis. Cheng Yinghong (2018) argues that the neologism reflects the identification of some Chinese with their imagined western (white) world, as well as their vicarious lamentation on the decline of western civilization, which they blame on the leftists’ advocating multiculturalism, feminism, and immigrants’ rights. Just as the Western ‘White Left’ is the internal enemy to the Western civilization, the Chinese liberals are both ‘White Left’ and traitors of the Han Chinese [3] , the majority of Chinese people. Han-traitor ( hanjian ) and White-leftist are thus used interchangeably. [4] Zhang Chenchen (2020) reaches a similar conclusion through qualitative analysis of more than 1,000 postings from a popular online community zhihu , a Quora-like forum, offering a portrayal of the political stances of well-educated and well-informed Chinese internet users. They criticise Western hegemony on one hand, and construct China’s ethno-racial and political identities through downplaying the ‘inferior’ non-Western groups, namely the immigrants, Muslims, and feminists, on the other. [5] While Cheng and Zhang’s discussion help us to explore the way some Chinese netizens make sense of and place themselves in the world’s hierarchy, my aim is to look into other factors that contribute to the identity making of the microbloggers as well as a few new trends. Forging a coherent identity nonetheless involves contradiction. Many microbloggers involved in the anti- discourses see themselves as rather victims. The threat is from the alleged high birth rate of immigrants and domestic Muslims. They quote the high birth rates of sub-Saharan countries moving to Europe and that of Chinese Muslims, believing that the birth control policy on Han Chinese would only shrink the relative size of the Han people and undermine the nation’s future. Their misgivings have theoretical ground, though, from an influential book titled Big Country of an Empty Nest . The book was forbidden in mainland China in 2007 for its criticism of the one-child policy. It argues that if couples are not allowed to give birth to more than two children, the population would inevitably decline, and the aging parents in their empty ‘nests’ would have no children to take care of them. The ban of the book was not lifted until 2013 when China’s stringent birth control policy loosened. Yet the anxiety passed on to cyberspace, this time projecting to the growing presence of domestic Muslims and Africans in Chinese cities, quite similar to the Great Replacement theory [6] upheld by their western counterparts. Feminism, which embraces liberty on marriage among other political and social equalities, becomes the antithesis of the defenders of the nation, too, because any Chinese women who marry out to other races would be the loss of the assets of the civilization. Perhaps what runs deep is kind of misogyny: men desired women; but owing to a sense of deprivation they instead grow hostility towards their potential, marriageable nationals who turn to other nationals or races. And this misogynist sentiment takes place at the level of civilization which at some points is criticizing the state, which I shall discuss later. Of course, it is not new, for the hatred towards some African students has its precedent in the 1980s. [7] Back then, the Chinese students conflicted with African students who played loud music and dated Chinese girls. [8] Thirty years later, thanks to the expansion of Chinese education system and the Belt and Road Initiative, the African students now make up 1/7 of the total overseas students by 2016, [9] and the trope of “taking our girls ” comes back on cyberspace, this time fuelled by a new charge. The African students are imagined as receiving decent scholarships and other “super-national treatments” by the Chinese government and lead a carefree life, in contrast to many poor Chinese families who cannot afford university tuition. Of course, this charge is unfounded, because the self-funded African students have surpassed the Chinese scholarship holders since 2005 and made up 83% of the total population in 2015. [10] In the meantime, xenophobia seems to have spilled over to Whites as well, whose prestige has been declining in the past decade, partly from the widening chances of Chinese’ everyday exposure to them. One of the racial epithets of the white is “white monkey”. Many Caucasian expats are hired in business promotions such as real estate sales in China’s cities in order to create an “international” image. The effect of the commercial ruse is paradoxical, for it presupposes the association of business success with Caucasian faces for the Chinese, but in the meantime damage the reputation of some serious businessmen, because the hired performances of Caucasian expats are seen as monkey shows in the zoo. [11] To the extent that the change of attitude draws on the employment relations and economic status, the perception of expats through the prism of race is laced with snobbery pinpointed by an assertion of Chinese identity thanks to China’s economic ascending. As a consequence, being a Chinese and ‘yellow’ is no longer something embarrassing but worthy championing. This may explain the emergence of a new racial epithet “yellow left” from some microbloggers. The “yellow left”, as Zhang Chenchen (2020) quotes from the answers from zhihu , are “a growing number of elite youngsters in the more developed regions who are out of touch with reality and overflowing with sympathy.” Instead of “white left”, the use of “yellow left” seems to reflect a nuanced identity shift by which the “yellow race” moved up the rung of the racial ladder. And, calling a Chinese compatriot who endorses liberal values as such implies a fiercer denouncement of the latter’s disloyalty despite common racial ground, quintessentially represented by the skin colour. Just as David Gilmore (2009) reveals that any misogynist attitudes entail a tension-ridden state of men, [12] we can see that the coexistence of the repressed “feminine” weakness and a promotion of masculine, martial valour in the usernames of some popular microbloggers (often with 100,000 followers) promoting the anti- narratives. There are usernames stating more explicit political agendas or targeting more specifically at certain groups, such as “anti-black/green spokesman” (green symbolizes Muslims), “Removing multiculturalism”, “Society of Jokes of the Black”, and so on. But the username of the microblogger who reported the volunteering to the police is “helpless benevolence”. Other usernames valorise the ancient military glory of Han Chinese, such as “Han’s battle tiger”, “Heart of the Han’s soul”, “Guangdong governorate-general adjutant”, a military rank of Ming dynasty (1368-1644), and “Yang the sixth”, a legendary marshal of Song dynasty (960-1279) who led his entire clan fighting the Liao (916-1125) army in the northern China. Besides the cultural frenzy and xenophobic rhetoric, the commercialization of the China’s Internet industry cannot be neglected. The topics (hashtags) of some microbloggers are called super-topic ( chaohua ), which is more than an ‘ordinary topic’ that any netizen is free to join and leave his or her comments. One needs to be a member (fan) of a community run by a moderator of the super-topic so that her or his comments of the super-topic is seen by others joining the same super-topic. The moderator, or the microblogger of the super-topic, has to keep the community size stable or expand it by cultivating a consensus and eliminating any disharmony among the community members, for any discordance among members would cause some to leave the community/super-topic. According to the regulation of the platform, the microblogger has to “clock in” and renew their posts daily. Bigger the community, the higher the network flow, more valuable the super-topic community for advertisers, and more the microbloggers can earn. In other words, cyber-politics is driven by profitability. This, of course, leads to enclosures in the public sphere. Just as my conversation with the blogger only ‘feeds the troll’, the troll preys on external dissidents to grow bigger. With the growth of the community of homogeneous minds, even a single word can elicit huge repercussion among its members, such as the black, blue, white, yellow as well as binaries such as left/right, female/male. In this regard, the growth of the hatred narratives just resembles the replication of a single stranded RNA with a number of nucleic acid sequence. Who are the Africans in Guangzhou? If the blacks are encapsulated in a single Chinese character by the microbloggers, then, to what extent does it represent reality? Is it able to account for the complexities of the ‘blacks’ in Guangzhou? Tong Tong market at Sanyuanli. The stores open until 6:30 p.m. In fact, the majority of dark-skinned people in Guangzhou are mainly traders from the continent of Africa, who buy from Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Foshan, and other cities in China. But it is useful to point out that not all Africans are black if we consider people from Maghreb countries and the European descents, and that ‘black’ peoples, as outsiders would foist the colour off on them, may refer to one another as red, coffee, or white on relative basis. African scholar Adams Bodomo traces the exodus of African businessmen to Hongkong and China to the financial crisis in the 1990s. [13] With the passage of time, the African sojourners have gradually transformed the city landscape, to the extent that the business hub they frequent is labelled as ‘chocolate city’. [14] At Sanyuanli, Xiaobei and Taojin (literally Goldrush, I should point out) of Guangzhou, where the metro lines highways converge and make transportation very convenient, Africans gravitate to wholesale malls and a warren of retail shopfronts of clothes, shoes, watches, mobile phones, curtains, ceramic tiles and so on. At the Tong Tong market at Sanyuanli Road (Fig. 1), for instance, an African woman can bargain the price and pick twenty shoes from one stall, and another twenty from the second stall. Then, she can have all the shoes packed and her name marked on the package at the back of the mall. Outside of the mall, a line of trolley men and taxi drivers are waiting, who would pull the packages to storage houses of cargo companies or drive directly to the airport. If she is hungry, she can find several African restaurants run by a few Africans’ Chinese wives serving fufu , the typical staple food made of banana in western African countries, or nsima , the thick, white porridge of corn, to the very palate of Malawian or Eastern Africa nationals. Of course she can go to the MacDonald’s next door, the symbol of globalization, for a quick meal. She can get a local phone number from a counter in the mall, having WeChat and VPN installed by the young man behind the counter in addition to WhatsApp and Facebook on her phone. The young man typically comes from a hinterland province and has worked in an electrical company in the Pearl River Delta or so. The WeChat and VPN, restaurants, hotels, plus money exchange services run by Chinese Muslims, and cargo services and custom companies in the airport laid out the localized business infrastructure for the African traders. Haussa people from Nigerian roaming the streets of Xiaobei, the market opens until midnight. Yet businessmen and women need to build connections and trust. Anyone who does business needs to face many uncertainties, so are the Africans in Guangzhou. Gordon Mathew et al (2017) has offered an all-embracing account of the trade activities of the Africans. One of the common complaints of African is that what they get from the supplier is different from or inferior to what they had ordered, so that it is “better to cry in China than to cry back in Africa”, that is, a careful check of the goods before shipment to Africa. [15] Owing to the language barrier and unmatched expectations, many Chinese consider their African clients “troublesome”. This catch phrase, mafan in Chinese, is readily parroted by Africans in their everyday English. “Too many mafan ”, several businesswomen have complained about their relationship with the Chinese to me. Nevertheless, some Africans and Chinese are wise enough to reduce mafan by binding their business partnership. The story of Namazzi, a Uganda lady is exemplar in this regard. [16] Unlike her home country where foreigners, including Chinese, find business expediency thanks to the “colonial system”, Namazzi tells me that Guangzhou is not an easy place to set up a cargo company because it requires so long a process and so much paperwork. Instead, she hired a Chinese young man from hinterland province to register the company and do the paperwork. She pays the ‘dummy boss’ one thousand dollars a month, and helps him buy a car, so that the boy can run some side business such as driving people to the airport in the evening. “If you work with someone, you must help them also grow”, said Namazzi. Namazzi even makes Chinese friends of the same age set in Guangzhou and hosts their visit to her country. There, she has her countrymen, who lack capital, buy goods on credit from the Chinese shop owners by referring to her name. The Chinese would first call Namazzi to confirm that the Uganda customers know Namazzi in person and say to the customers that if they get the goods on credit, they must ship the goods from China with Namazzi’s cargo. If someone in Uganda does mafan for the Chinese, she or he would just call Namazzi. And Namazzi has many of her mafan solved by Chinese friends in Guangzhou. The business network even takes deeper roots in the Guangzhou soil. Numerous scholarly works have shed light on the interracial marriage, the Igbo men from Nigeria and their Chinese wives in particular, whose unions stabilize the trans-continental business. [17] In the similar vein, religious activities of both African Muslims and Christians in Guangzhou have been localised to some extent. Close to the Guangzhou railway station, the Saad bin Abi Waqas Mosque, a sacred place where the Prophet’s legendary maternal uncle Waqas was buried, becomes a pilgrim to African Muslims. It does not host special service for the participating Africans, but sometimes delivers preaching to its Chinese followers (Hui and Uyghur ethnicities) on keeping good faith and conducting good business with foreigners. The main hall, solemn and tidy, is open for both Chinese, African, Arabs, Pakistanis, and Indian Muslims for meditation. [18] In another mosque, a Malian Muslim leads the worship for both African and Chinese on behalf of the Imam thanks to the Malian’s mastery of Chinese, Arabic, English, and French. Besides his business, he also helped his mosque mates with visa formalities. Indeed, to some extent the churches and mosques serve as the asylums for overstayers, who have long been a headache for Guangzhou Immigration and police. The Malian as a religious broker indeed play a role here, in addition to the Mosque’s provision of food and accommodation to Muslim sojourners, making it a caravanserai in the Guangzhou city. For Christians, one of the now renowned city spectacles is the Sacred Heart Cathedral’s African congregation. Established in 1863, the church’s Sunday mass now offers English service for Africans, mostly Igbo Nigerians. The church used to be open to non-believers, but when I was about to enter the mass, two Nigerians standing at the entrance checked if everyone was Christian, and those who did not give a positive answer were denied access. In the courtyard next to the main hall, a white shelter hosts another mass. Inside it the whole membership is dancing and singing the name of the Lord and Jesus– the effervescent Pentecostal spirit [19] sometimes is eye-opening to the Chinese onlookers. Yet many African Pentecostals told me that the Sacred Heart Cathedral is not their first option, or simply not “their religion”. I joined several Pentecostal congregations through the invitation of my Caribbean and African friends. The first church I attended was run by a Congolese pastor and attended by twenty-plus Africans. When the soundproof door closed behind me and the thick curtain on it was drawn—the room seemed to have adapted from a music studio—the thunderous preaching and the breathless translation by a Ghanaian sitting next to him split one’s ears. One of the gospels of the rhythmised sermon was that with one dollar one deposits in God’s place, he will get three, five, and even twenty in return. But at the end of the service, the pastor said that the conference room rent of 1200 yuan was due. Since the donation he collected from this service was not enough, he would have his assistant call each participant for 100 yuan after the service. The second one, presided by a Kenyan pastor and on a different floor of the same building, was more cordial and homely. Women, including a Chinese lady, were sitting in the front with their children. I remember one of the babies untended by her mom started crawling under people’s legs. She was grabbed by a man sitting at the side of the room when she was too close to the auditorium, and the man gave me an apologizing smile. He turned out to be the baby’s father, who had run a business in Guangzhou for years. The intervals of preaching and dancing were for men to exchange business information, mostly outside of the chamber. Each time the participants are offered food prepared by women, such as curry rice with barbecue drumsticks, and occasionally birthday cakes of the kids of the church members. Later, I attended a third church, which was operated by a Nigerian pastor and his wife. Like the Kenyan pastor, he often used a handkerchief to wipe off the sweat off his brow during his passionate preaching, gesticulation, and gyration back and forth among members. The congregation was asked to read selected passages from the bible, and our souls often awakened by the interrogative shout of the pastor at the face. “Do you understand?!” Besides the pastor’s arduous preaching, there were the collective prayers. I remember that we laid hands for those who kneel down before the pastor in order to lift them up from suffering or weakness of faith, for the enveloped red notes with Chairman Mao’s figure on them in a shining aluminium basket, and for the newly wed. The couple, a Nigerian husband and his Tanzanian wife, nervous yet joyful, received the blessings from the pastor, their parents, and several guest bishops coming from as far as the United States. Heidi Hauge (2013) notes that a ‘reversed evangelism’ prevails in Pentecostal churches in Guangzhou. As Europeans are seen to have abandoned their mission, Africans are given responsibility for evangelizing the Gospel, and China is soon to be won over for God. In light of this creed, China’s prosperity and progress is only the achievement of a worldly nation, and the ordinary Chinese patriotism is merely a display of pomp and pageantry. “Ten more years, and we will no longer remember this place because there will be such a mighty change and shaking.” One pastor in his sermon claimed during China’s sixtieth anniversary in 2009 (ibid). I haven’t heard about the contents alike when I joined these Pentecostal churches. My presence as a Chinese may have impeded pastors to claim so, or that the stringent visa policies have dampened their ambitions over the years. Several Nigerians grudged to me about the 30-day business visa which tight-jacketed their business activities. It takes about 45 days to browse shops and goods, place the order, and wait for the production and then check the quality and design of the goods before shipping them to Africa. The year 2009, they recalled, was a turning point when the local police chased one illegal stayer or two, who jumped out of one building and died of heart attack. [20] The Nigerians and African protested, resulting in only stricter visa policy and the local government’s control over the immigration through discouraging landlords in downtown districts from leasing houses to them. This policy, however, contributes to the scattering of African traders to neighbouring cities, and perhaps putting them in direct contacts with manufacturers. Still, the population of Nigerian community has dropped from some four thousand to five or six hundred, according to the estimate of an Igbo businessman. More illegal entries are under the radar, he tells me, and the mores of Nigerians are corrupted because of transgressions of overstayers or from overstaying itself. Facing such community plight, the pastor warns church attendants to refrain from any illegal activities such as drug trafficking, because the Pentecostal church, where people are bathed in the Holy Spirit, does not allow any evil nor any witchcraft which had been practiced among Igbos. The pastor himself was in a precarious situation, too. He had to renew his visa on an annual basis for the past nineteen years, another Nigerian told me, and he began to seriously consider the option of leaving China for good to America. Beating the bush, and around the Bush Regardless of the levels of interactions of the Africans with locals in Guangzhou, the pastor’s prophecy came brutally true. After the end of 2019, the pandemic hit Wuhan city hard, and then the entire China and the world. A sharp turn of the post-Wuhan pandemic, from domestic view, was the ‘imported cases’ at the border cities and metropolises of China, after the government had implemented aggressive measures to contain the virus. Not only the epicentre Wuhan (from Jan 23 to April 8), other major cities had been locked down for quite a while. Faced the ever-changing situations, local people’s adrenaline roller-coastered. When they just became desensitized, the Guangzhou public security reported an incident on 1st April. A Nigerian businessman, tested positive, bit a nurse’s face when he forced his way from the hospital. Prior to this incident, the Guangzhou CDC [21] announced on 22nd March that immigrants entered Guangzhou after 8thMarch, regardless of their nationality, should self-quarantine for 14 days. The Nigerian entered Guangzhou on 20th March and was tested positive on 23rd March and hospitalized. The CDC traced his contact history, discovering on 2nd April that the hostess of the restaurant he frequented was positive by Nucleic test, so was her husband, and their daughter who had travelled home and a boyfriend of hers were tested positive on 4thApril, too. In that afternoon, all the shops (except pharmacy’s) in that area were ordered to close for 14 days. The next day, the two downtown districts of Guangzhou, Yuexiu and Baiyun, and the Huilai county, where the daughter stayed, escalated to medium-risk areas. [22] Residential distribution of Africans in Guangzhou. This map draws on a survey of a small number of African population in 2018 and shows that they tended to cluster in Guangyuanxi area (upper left) and Xiaobei area (lower right). Blue/brown colours indicate female and male respondents and the signs of moon and cross represent Muslims and Christians respectively. The sifting of African population in Guangzhou began no later than 6th April, when African residents were asked to show their passports, registration forms, and their travel history. Owing to the so-called asymptomatic transmission [23] , all of the people with contact history should be collectively isolated for 14 days in designated facilities and tested at least twice during the isolation. Since the malls in Xiaobei and Sanyuanli were frequented by African buyers, those who reported to have shown up there were ordered to implement collective quarantine, too. Those without contact history with confirmed cases and the marketplaces are ordered to self-quarantine at home. The people who knocked African’s doors involved health workers, translators, and local police with the assistance of sub-district government and neighbourhood community ( shequ ), the grassroots administration assigned with the mission of residential registration and population control. It was less obvious whether the local government used one stone to kill two birds, namely the disease monitoring and the immigration control over illegal entrees and overstayers. [24] But the ways they handle the issue proved clumsily hashed and the consequence disruptive. [25] On April 7th, some Africans became displaced, because they were denied access to their residential community, as evidenced by posts at the entrance of a neighbourhood community. Later news coverage revealed that it started in a hotel, where the Africans refused to stay for another 14-day quarantine because their visa would expire and despite that officials believed that they had stepped out of the hotel. They finally were let out, but ordered by the officials that they should not go back in. [26] Part of the Africans were made homeless, according to a local social worker, because they refused home quarantine as this would ‘limit their freedom’. Agitated, one of them even jumped off his balcony on the third floor. Many more dragged their suitcases, wandering in the city, only to find that malls, restaurants, and buses were closed to them. The homeless Africans video-called home countries, and upon receiving many video clips and messages, a Kenyan independent media wode maya (literally ‘my mom!’, a common Chinese exclamation) with 366,000 subscribers reported this, which followed by thousands of angry comments on boycotting Chinese and Chinese goods in Africa. [27] On the same day, a Guangzhou local was investigated by the police because he spread a rumour which went viral on WeChat a day earlier. He averred that a field hospital would be in place to host the “300,000 black people”, and the entire Guangzhou population would contract the virus shortly. The evicted and those who were ordered to isolate themselves were indignant, questioning why the whites, South Americans, African descents holding US and UK passports or the Chinese wives and children cohabited with them had not been tested nor quarantined; why long-time African residents in Guangzhou had to do nucleic acid test; and why some of them were tested many times without knowing the result, contrary to the promises of the testers. It must be racist, targeting Africans from Africa only, many of my African friends concluded. Yet, upon scrutiny in a month later, I believe the sweeping action was less intentioned than an institutional blunder. The measures meted out by local government through neighbourhood control is key to the understanding of institutional efforts. China used to have a district, sub-district ( jiedao ), and neighbourhood community ( shequ) in its urban governance administrative hierarchy. Now the grid was introduced below the neighbourhood community since the 2000s. A grid is a cluster of households, ranging from 50 in the countryside to 1000 in cities. The grid manager and workers assume jobs assigned from above. During the outbreak of SARS, for instance, Biao Xiang (2020) finds grid managers “visit door to door to check everyone’s temperature, hand out passes which allow one person per household to leave home twice a week and, in the case of collective quarantine, deliver food to the doorstep of all families three times a day… Once the central government declared the war on virus, in no time the entire nation put itself under gridlock.” [28] Starting from April 6th, the local authorities operated in a similar fashion as Xiang portrays. At first there was the banning of Africans entering into their neighbourhood community, followed by the hasty arrangement of collective quarantine in hotels. One of my African friends reported that policemen drove her countrymen at night to quarantine hotels just to avoid public attention. For home-quarantined Africans, neighbourhood community staff began to take care of their daily life, such as ordering food and scheduling the test. The involvement of the police was noticeable in addition to the control from neighbourhood communities. Some policemen were from the Bureau of Public Security in charge of domestic issues. When the eviction took place, a few kind-hearted landlords were willing to offer home-quarantine for Africans, but they were pressured to give up by the policeman, who warned that asymptomatic carriers would put the entire neighbourhood at stake. Other policemen are actually border security enforcement under the newly established Immigration Bureau, whose functions were just separated from the Ministry of Public Security in 2019. Wearing the same uniform as common policemen, these immigration officers hold the power to check visa status and detain overstayers for repatriation. The displaced Africans in the headlines of international media, regardless of their volition to conform or resist, were in fact the ones missed out by the grid work and who, when roaming the street, were captured by patrolling police and sent to hotels for collective quarantine. In other words, the police and neighbourhood community/grid acted together to put Africans in grids according to their respective epidemiological conditions. While eviction was not among their goals, it served as necessary means to control the disease through a combination of handy apparatuses by the government. There was perhaps the institutional embolism. The Public Security or the police system seems less coordinated with the diplomatic line. As revealed by later news coverages, especially a Nigerian reporter’s detailed report, the joint action meted out to African nationals was done without adequate communication with African consulates. The tension culminated at the night of April 9th, when the Acting Consul General of the Nigerian consulate ranted at the Director General of Guangzhou Foreign Affairs Office in front of a hotel, after patrolling van took eleven African nationals (including eight Nigerians, two Cote d’Ivoire nationals and one Benin Republic citizen) whose passports were ‘seized’ by the Chinese at the reception. While whose fault was it is left to the good judgment of the readers, my emphasis is that the scenario was occasioned by confused tongues: when the Nigerian charged that Guangzhou police “harassed” African residents, the Chinese official denied that no one was “arrested”. When the recorded scenario was uploaded to YouTube, many cheered the Nigerian diplomat because he spoke on behalf of all African people and, according to some, should be elected “our president”. The arm crossing of the Chinese and his efforts to calm down his interlocutor, on the contrary, was interpreted as signs of covering up and not responsive to the issue. The day followed witnessed whopping escalation of diplomatic tension, and inhuman became the catchphrase of the diatribe. African ambassadors in Beijing demanded “the cessation of forceful testing, quarantine and other inhuman treatments”, and that “threats of revocation of visas, arrest, detention and deportation of African legal migrants for no cogent reason which infringes on their human rights.” The next day, the Nigerian Speaker of the House of Representatives, laying his mobile phone showing the video of the confrontation between officials in Guangzhou on the table, expressed displeasure over the inhuman treatment when he summoned the Chinese ambassador to Nigeria. [29] The video of the meeting soon appeared on Chinese independent media, and was interpreted by the audience as the ambassador bowing to the Nigerian congressman, a sheer humiliation by the latter, before it was deleted by the webmasters. The charge of China’s inhuman treatment of Africans continued in both the Nigerian media and Twitter of another spokesman of the House of Representative. In a television debate, the guests evoked an image (work) from one of China’s museums, where a picture of a chimpanzee is juxtaposed next to an African (again an dehumanizing action), [30] and suggested a number of retaliations, including sending the illegal Chinese home, the nationalization of Chinese investments, cutting off Chinese loan, and bringing China to the court for causing damage to Nigeria for spreading the virus. * These events all happened in a time when I joined the volunteers to moderate the impacts of local decrees on the Africans in Guangzhou from mid-April to May. Earlier than that, as I got to know later, two Chinese students who had conducted research related to the African diaspora took the initiative of the aid, and many more volunteers, particularly who versed in English and French joined the group. In the meantime, I was bombarded by messages, news, outcries, accusations, debates, from several research networks including both Chinese and African scholars, while texting and calling my previous informants to check on them since I was away in Australia. Some replied, some didn’t. No one had the whole picture, even the number of African expats in Guangzhou, i.e. 4,553 reported by the Guangzhou authority in a briefing on April 12. The number was too exact to be trusted because it varied dramatically from different sources in the past decade, [31] and I know some were hiding in their friend’s places because of the fear for deportation after testing. Some Africans residing in other cities of China and African descents in Guangzhou were acting in the meantime, delivering food and sending money to those forced to quarantine in hotels. The Chinese volunteers had better cooperate with these Africans and possibly African students studying in China, because the two groups are ideal mediators between Chinese authorities and their countrymen. The Africans in quarantine were less likely to be well informed as they relied heavily on their own network. It was the harsh epidemiological control that exposed them to head-on encounters with local police and grassroots government staff who do not speak good English. Even the notice for quarantine was in Chinese. But trust between Chinese and African volunteers was hard to win in such a short notice, especially when the diplomatic tension was already in place. I have no clue how Africans were helping Africans. My best guess is that the Africans and Chinese were digging the tunnel from opposite sides of the hill. Once dismissed Chinese volunteers reassembled, continuing fighting fake news by providing correct information, helping with accommodation and ordering food for the Africans (sometimes from their own pockets) as well as preparing the brochures for the installation of health monitoring code on the mobile phones of the quarantined. Without the code one could not travel to other cities by train or by plane. I joined a group of twenty volunteers, whose leader managed to secure from the local government a list of 200 plus Africans and several Indians and Pakistani collectively quarantined in several hotels. We were each assigned 10 people, making sure that they take the nucleic acid test on the 7th day and the 14th day and report their body temperature daily, as well as addressing their immediate needs and listening to their complaints. Their difficulties vary. A common complaint was locals’ running away in front of them, which was very embarrassing and even traumatic for them. An Ethiopian gentleman’s response was admirable in this regard, for he would stay all day in the hotel room in order not to scare the pedestrians, even though he had a habit of walking after dinner and was suffering from diabetes. An Eastern African businessman complained that no taxi would take him for a test in the designated hospital. Taking for granted that I was in Guangzhou, he texted me that “please come and taste me in my hotel”, a typo which really made us laugh. A Senegalese declined my call in the beginning but sent me his test report upon my request. It was not until I received a phone call from Guangzhou police that I realized that he was suspicious of my identity. Many more are running out of money because the hotel fares were on them, and two women could only afford a meal a day. Sending some money through my WeChat wallet was what I could offer only. Several scholars who had researched the Africans in Guangzhou also worked together in drafting possible solutions to local government to ameliorate the consequences on the Africans, including the provision of humanitarian remedies to those short of money or food regardless of their visa statuses. The government may have underestimated the difficulties in handling the African expats in their jurisdiction, which backfired and triggered diplomatic protests against China when the incident unfolded. However, given that the border is closed and only a few international flights are operating, and that the international NGOs are beyond reach, practically, the local government has to take care of the African expats at the end of the day, and the localization of humanitarian assistance seemed inevitable. [32] We know our proposal has reached a certain level of officials and the government did take some positive steps, but we were not able to get direct feedback because of the bureaucratic procedures. This is how things work in China, to my understanding. Nevertheless, as a Chinese national I was struck by the whopping of Nigerian media and politicians in denouncing China. In the past few years, the country came across to me for conferring noble titles to a few Chinese expats. [33] Though often portrayed as the glory of overseas Chinese by Chinese media, such attainments could not have been achieved without the openness of Nigeria’s society. Besides, to the extent that the Igbo and Hausa in Guangzhou hardly mixed with one another (owing to the entrenched ethnic tension and hatred, a schism may go back to the Nigerian civil war in 1966-1970), how come the whole nation now turns against China? In fact, Nigerian nationals and netizens also mentioned the hospitality of their country towards Chinese as opposed to the maltreatment in Guangzhou. But I discovered the antagonism drew on other anecdotal accounts. On Naraland.com , a popular national forum, a thread stated that the Nigerians had been clean before their departure to China, and that they were tested positive only through injection of virus by Chinese doctors. Another had it that blood tests were made to Nigerians in Guangzhou because Chinese doctors were curious about why the Nigerian genes were so strong to survive Ebola. There is fake news, too. A screenshot of a WeChat dialogue between a Chinese an African was taken as evidence of racial eviction. However, apparently the broken Chinese from the dialogue was awkwardly translated from English. [34] The confidence on Nigerian’s national hygiene capacity and the nation’s genetical robustness crept in, precluding the possibility that Guangzhou authority may have had any justifiable epidemiological considerations. Retaliation at country level is a must, so is the in-time evacuation of suffering nationals caught in Guangzhou. On 31 May, 268 Nigerian nationals were evacuated “over virus and racism” by a flight and from arranged by the Nigerian authority, and all the evacuees will be proceeding on another 14 days quarantine. [35] China’s spokesman of foreign ministry has tried to harmonize the diplomatic relations with African countries by reiterating the principle of “all foreigners are treated equally”, “reject all racist and discriminatory remarks” because “the Chinese people always see in African people partners and brothers through thick and thin”, without specifying who promotes the racism, racial thinking, or racialized domestic and immigrants’ issues. [36] African independent media and politicians and the narrative of English media highlighted China’s eviction, mistreating and dehumanizing of African expats without referring to either the epidemiological situations or the illegal visa status of Africans. The matter of illegality only surfaced when Nigeria brought to the fore the illegality of Chinese expats. Both narratives seem to beat around the bush, while the enforcement of each country were beating the bush where expats were inhabiting. At the end of the day, one’s home country is believed to be the safest and cleanest, while another country is always a hell. Now the Chinese expats in several African countries are appealing for evacuation arranged by the Chinese government, particularly after the murder of three Chinese in Zambia on 24th May, a tragedy which is allegedly associated with the Mayor of Lusaka’s crusade of a number of downtown Chinese businesses who denied access to locals and were labelled as discriminatory. [37] To quote the Indian scholar Arundhati Roy writing on the pandemic, “the lockdown worked like a chemical experiment that suddenly illuminated hidden things.” [38] But in the case of African expats in Guangzhou and its aftermath, the pandemic is illuminating and shadowing at the same time. The local authority’s harsh measures and the immigrants’ suffering are exposed to the spotlight of the media. In contrast, both discourses of the nation-states portraying themselves as the ardent protectors of their citizens, and the cyberspace narratives celebrating unadulterated ethno-racial identity, have concealed the everyday experience of the African businessmen and their interactions with local Chinese. It was a blend of painstakingness, liveliness and entrepreneurship despite many restraints. If there is any “wreckage of a train that has been careening down the track for years”, [39] it is the fragility embedded in the low-end globalization [40] which has never gained legitimacy in the globalizing fad before the pandemic. Indeed, the pandemic has just reversed the flow of globalization, leaving international immigrants stranded, who are still struggling hard to gain the protection from their respective countries and securing a ticket of return flight. Berhanu is an anthropologist in African Studies. [1] Jenni Marsh, Shawn Deng and Nectar Gan. 2020. “Africans in Guangzhou are on edge, after many are left homeless amid rising xenophobia as China fights a second wave of coronavirus”. April 11 (updated on April 13). CNN news. Available at: https://edition.cnn.com/2020/04/10/china/africans-guangzhou-china-coronavirus-hnk-intl/index.html . [Accessed: 6 June 2020] [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WeChat [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_Chinesehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_Chinese [4] Cheng Yinghong. 2018. “White-lefties and the traitor of the Han: The Other within the Nation-state.” Available at: https://www.chinesepen.org/blog/archives/117560 . [Accessed: 10 June 2020]. [5] Zhang Chenchen. 2020. “Right-wing populism with Chinese characteristics? Identity, otherness and global imaginaries in debating world politics online.” European Journal of International Relations vol. 26(1): pp. 88-115. [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Replacement [7] The earliest account of the African students’ experience in China see Immanuel Hevi, 1963. An African Student in China. London: Pall Mall Press. [8] Winslow Robertson. 2020. “A brief history of anti-black violence in China.” Available at: https://africasacountry.com/2020/05/a-brief-history-of-anti-black-violence-in-china Also Barry Sautman. 1994. Anti-Black Racism in Post-Mao China. The China Quarterly. vol 138. pp. 413-437. [9] Li, Anshan. 2018. “African Students in China: Research, Reality, and Reflection.” African Studies Quarterly. vol. 17(4). pp. 5-44. There were 61,594 African students out of 442,773 international students in 2016. [10] Ibid. [11] Alice Yan. 2017. “White people wanted: a peek into China’s booming ‘rent a foreigner’ industry.” June 10. South China Morning Post. Available at: https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/2096341/white-people-wanted-peek-chinas-booming-rent-foreigner-industry . [12] Gilmore, David D. 2009. Misogyny: The Male Malady: University of Pennsylvania Press. [13] Adams Bodomo. 2012. Africans in China. Cambria Press: Amherst, New York. [14] Bill Schiller. 2009. Big Trouble in China’s Chocolate City. The Star. 1 Aug. Available at: https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2009/08/01/big_trouble_in_chinas_chocolate_city.html [Accessed: 6 June 2020]. See also Pan, Chinglin and Ding Yuan. 2013. “Chocolate City as a Concept and as Visible African Space of Change and Diversity.” In Z. Huang and J. Zhang (eds.) Discussions on Socio-economic Transition: Urbanisation, Industrialization and Cultural Survival in China. Intellectual Property Publishing House, pp. 47-78. [15] Mathews Gordon, Linessa Dan Lin, Yang Yang. 2017. The World in Guangzhou: Africans and Other Foreigners in South China’s Global Marketplace. The University of Chicago Press: Chicago and London. p.88. [16] I used pseudonyms to protect the identity of interviewees. I am grateful to Ms. Genis for her kind assistance with the access and interviews and many discussions. [17] Qiu, Yu. 2016. Cleanliness and Danger: Destigmatisation and Identity Politics in Nigerian-Chinese Intimate Relationships in South China. Open times. vol. 4. pp. 88-107. [18] Mathews Gordon, Linessa Dan Lin, Yang Yang. 2017. The World in Guangzhou: Africans and Other Foreigners in South China’s Global Marketplace. The University of Chicago Press: Chicago and London. p. 167. [19] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentecostalism [20] Bill Schiller. 2009. Big Trouble in China’s Chocolate City. The Star. 1 Aug. Available at: https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2009/08/01/big_trouble_in_chinas_chocolate_city.html [Accessed: 6 June 2020]. [21] http://www.chinacdc.cn/en/ [22] Guangzhou Municipal Health Commission. 2020. “Updates on the Risk levels of the Epidemiological Conditions of Guangzhou Districts.” April 6. Guangzhou Municipal Health Commission webpage. Available at: http://wjw.gz.gov.cn/ztzl/xxfyyqfk/yqtb/content/post_5759569.html [Accessed: 6 June 2020] [23] Xinhua News Agency. 2020. “What is asymptomatic carriers, and how to discover them?” April 1. Available at: http://www.xinhuanet.com/politics/2020-04/01/c_1210540120.htm . [Accessed: 6 June 2020] [24] Police raid see Mathews Gordon, Linessa Dan Lin, Yang Yang. 2017. The World in Guangzhou: Africans and Other Foreigners in South China’s Global Marketplace. The University of Chicago Press: Chicago and London. pp. 124-125. [25] I establish the timeline of the incident from a number of sources including my African friends, local social worker, several volunteers, and both Chinese and English news reports. [26] Ikenna Emewu. 2020. “Guangzhou: Exclusive full report of the face-off, maltreatment allegation of Africans in China.” Africa China Press Centre. April 24. Available at: https://africachinapresscentre.org/2020/04/24/guangzhou-exclusive-full-report-of-the-face-off-maltreatment-allegation-of-africans-in-china/ [Accessed: 6 June 2020] [27] Mr Ghanababy. 2020. “Chinese Discriminate Africans Because Of Covid-19?”. April 7. Available at: https://youtu.be/qCea1oIKpc0 [28] Xiang, Biao. 2020. “From Chain Reaction to Grid Reaction: Mobilities & Restrictions during SARS & Coronavirus” Available at: https://www.compas.ox.ac.uk/2020/from-chain-reaction-to-grid-reaction-mobilities-restrictions-during-sars-coronavirus/ [29] Chukwunanuekpere. 2020. “Video: Gbajabiamila attacks Chinese Ambassador over treatment of Nigerians in China.” iBrandTV. April 11. Available at: https://ibrandtv.com/video-gbajabiamila-attacks-chinese-ambassador-over-treatment-of-nigerians-in-china/ [30] Plus TV Africa. 2020. “House of Rep Seeks Investigation on Validity Of Chinese Nationals In Nigeria.” May 1. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1hhImz-jSE [31] Pan, Chinglin and Ding Yuan. 2013. “Chocolate City as a Concept and as Visible African Space of Change and Diversity.” In Z. Huang and J. Zhang (eds.) Discussions on Socio-economic Transition: Urbanisation, Industrialization and Cultural Survival in China. Intellectual Property Publishing House, pp. 47-78. [32] I draw the concept from Alexander Betts, Evan Easton-Calabria and Kate Pincock. 2020.“The Localisation of Humanitarian Assistance as a Response to COVID-19.” Available at: https://www.kaldorcentre.unsw.edu.au/publication/localisation-humanitarian-assistance-response-covid-19 . [Accessed: 10 June 2020] [33] BBC Africa. 2019. “Chinese trader gets Nigerian title.” April 29. Available at: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=2314554302155058 [34] Available at: https://www.nairaland.com/5787867/ask-me-anything-issues-rumor [35] Felix Tih. 2020. “China: 260+ Nigerians evacuated over virus, racism.” May 31. Available at: https://www.aa.com.tr/en/africa/china-260-nigerians-evacuated-over-virus-racism/1859494 [36] China Foreign Ministry. “Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Zhao Lijian’s Remarks on Guangdong’s Anti-epidemic Measures Concerning African Citizens in China.” April 12. Available at: https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/xwfw_665399/s2510_665401/2535_665405/t1768779.shtml [37] “Chinese businessmen murders stir tensions in Zambia.” May 28. The Strait Times. Available at: https://www.straitstimes.com/world/africa/chinese-businessmen-murders-stir-tensions-in-zambia [38] Arundhati Roy. 2020. “The pandemic is a portal”. Financial Times. April 4. Available at: https://www.ft.com/content/10d8f5e8-74eb-11ea-95fe-fcd274e920ca [39] Ibid. [40] Mathews Gordon, Linessa Dan Lin, Yang Yang. The World in Guangzhou: Africans and Other Foreigners in South China’s Global Marketplace. The University of Chicago Press: Chicago and London. Previous Next

< Back Sharing Session: As you go… roads under your feet, towards the new future 10 July 2021 Astrobus-Ethiopia event, 2019. Photo provided by Astrobus-Ethiopia Speakers: Biljana Ciric (interdependent curator), Sinkneh Eshetu (writer), Yabebal Fantaye (astrophysicist and data scientist), Robel Temesgen (artist), Jasphy Zheng (artist) Moderator: Zheng Peihan (Interim Education Manager of Rockbund Art Museum) Zoom ID: 827 5362 1666 Password: 992302 Direct Link English On Saturday 10 July, 6pm HKT, partner cells of project As you go… roads under yourfeet, towards the new future , which is a long–term project intertwined with theresearch project CURTAIN, is bringing a sharing session introducing the project,practices and research, progress and stories behind the project. As you go… roads under your feet, towards the new future is a long–term research projectcentring around the unheard voices and raising awareness about the shared issuesunderlying different contexts, ranging from China to the Balkan peninsula, fromEthiopia to Central Asia. Through building a collective knowledge platformorganised around the principles of ‘organic cells’ of the research—the collaborationswhich span individuals, small–scale organisations, and state–run and privatemuseums, forming a close–knit atmosphere to engage in an entirely novel form of collaboration. During the event, Biljana Ciric, interdependent curator who initiated and conceivedthis project, is going to introduce partner cells and the As you go… roads under yourfeet, towards the new future project with a panel discussion, which share not onlyresearch, but also modes of working based on relationality and interdependence. Artists and partner cells Jasphy Zheng and Robel Temesgen, whose works are onview in Curtain , will introduce their artistic concepts. Through immersiveinstallations, unannounced performances, sculptural objects, and artist’s books,Jasphy Zheng, an interdisciplinary artist who lives between Brooklyn and China,constructs and realises scenarios of public intervention that aim to raise awareness ofour social and cultural environments in and out of the context of contemporary art.Robel Temesgen is an artist practicing painting that encompasses elements ofperformance, installation, video, and collaborative projects. Through reimagininglocal artefacts and cultures, such as ‘Nu Bunna Tetu’ coffee pots and protectiveadbar spirits, Temesgen connects people, both local and ‘strangers’ who constitutepart of his continued interest in the socio–political dynamics of the social, sociality,and sociability. Co–founders of Astrobus–Ethiopia, Yabebal Fantaye and Sinkneh Eshetu, as partnercells of As you go… , will also discuss their project, especially the third six–day trip theyundertook in May 2021, which reached seven schools in three cities and about3,500 students. Astrobus–Ethiopia as one of the commissions by As you go… is aproject to stimulate a culture of scientific thinking in Ethiopia by promoting science–art–technology–innovation education and creating public awareness around it. Bybus, the project went to different locations in Ethiopia to provide an opportunity forthe public to explore, learn, and understand the main elements of moderncivilisation, and how these are realised, i.e. how ideas are created, imagined, tested,mixed, visualised, transformed, and then applied to help improve the state of theworld. In practice, scientists, astronomers, artists, writers, and filmmakers havejumped on the bus in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, and embarked on ajourney of knowledge sharing in many places. Previous Next