Two Recommendations for Holiday Joy

1) Nowhere in Africa (Nirgendwo in Afrika (2001), German)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0161860/
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/nowhere_in_africa/

Focused on the story of the Redlichs, a German Jewish family forced to move to Kenya during WWII, the movie taps into the larger themes of displacement and adaptation. Having won the 2002 Oscar for Best Foreign Film, the film paints the expat experience in a thorough and satisfying way. Always with the Female Expat Project in the back of my mind, I naturally focused by how the international move affected each character. Every Redlich grows stonger, but the emotional weight of losing family to the Holocaust and new debates about home psychologically stretches them thin. The locust scene poignantly echos their struggle and the destructive nature of a survival of the fittest mentality. Some critics complain that the movie is buried in a nostalgic, rose-colored haze, but the view must recognize that the story is told from Regina's point of view. In this context, what is told and not told (the natives being painted with childlike wonder and the colonists practically ignored) makes more sense. I highly recommend this film to anyone experiencing the expat experience.

2) Happiness: A History by Darrin M. McMahon
http://www.amazon.com/Happiness-History-Darrin-M-McMahon/dp/0871138867/sr=8-3/qid=1166883080/ref=pd_bbs_3/002-1999856-7868810?ie=UTF8&s=books

I haven't read the book, but it's on my Christmas wish list so I'm hoping to write more about it in the near future. As expats choosing to bounce around the globe, searching for a life that is more satisfying, I'm curious to know how our innate restlessness and resulting lifestyle figure into a historical account of happiness. Perhaps the author (admittedly a friend from Florida State) does not tap into our particular twist on the quest for happiness, but I'm excited to read the book and find out. A fascinating premise for a book.

arrival-project by Susy Bielak

A friend of mine is doing a project related to the expat experience. Please help her out by emailing her at susybielak@gmail.com or posting your comments here. Also check out her website at susannahbielak.com.

Thanks,
Joelle
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dear friends,

As some of you know, I'm working on a project exploring moments of arrival; when people physically arrive to a new place or reach a milestone in their lives.

A story that inspired me to ask these questions is that of my grandmother, who arrived in Mexico from Poland at the age of six and stayed for the remaining 82 years of her life. She often described her wonder at arriving in Mexico and finding a world more vibrant than she had imagined, cloth more densely woven, colors more fierce, and fruit like nothing she'd tasted before. Upon emerging from the ship, a dark hand of a fruit vendor presented her with a fruit she'd never seen before—a mango, which tasted like a spicy carrot, sweeter than dew, soft and textured. Struck with the new warmth, color and language, she realized that her life would be forever changed.

This story inspires me to ask the question of when and where we experience arrival in its many forms. Moments of arrival can range from crossing a national border, to purchasing a home, to finalizing a divorce, to embarking on a new career, to falling in love.

Over the next few months I'll be collecting stories of arrival. The stories (as anonymous as desired) will be collected into a book or journal that possibly will be published. Please let me know if you have a story from your own life, or from the life of a relative, that you would like to share. I'd like both a description of this moment, in as much detail as possible, and a visual representation of the moment (a photograph from the time, a symbolic object). You can write about the moment and send it to me, or we can have a conversation--whichever you prefer.

In case you're interested, here are some questions to prompt the description. Please use as much detail as possible.
1. Where were you geographically (country, city, forest, desert, beach, suburbia, bar, etc.)?
2. What did you feel like (cold, hungry, ecstatic, sad, etc.)?
3. What were you doing?
4. Who was there?
5. What were memorable images/objects/places/colors from the event?
6. What is your sensory recall of the experience-were there any smells, sounds, touches that are part of this memory?

I hope you're interested. Please let me know. Thank you!

Happy winter.

Susy

expat-blog.com

I just discovered a directory with many expat blogs at http://www.expat-blog.com/en/directory/asia/china/. Please email me at jdietrick@gmail.com about your favorites, or better yet, list your favorite expat blogs here at female-expat.org so we can all see your recommendations. I hope to catch up n my blog reading over the Chrismas break.

food-dietrick

Having just moved to the South, I am occasionally reminded of my Southern relatives and the foods that I encountered in their homes. Before I go on, please realize that my relatives were not from the Deep South—although based on their accents, you might think they were more Southern that they were. They lived around Harrisonburg, Virginia, in the parts of Virginia where they still talk about the War of Northern Aggression. It always amazed me that those same relatives, although only three hours south of my father's hometown in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, believed that my mother had married a Yankee. It's that damn Mason Dixon line that although close to both sets of relatives, once divided that part of the nation.

But back to the food, my aunt in Virginia made a certain type of green beans, a flat green bean often stewed with ham and potatoes, that remind me my childhood weekends in the south. I recently randomly reencountered this green bean in Tallahassee, FL.

Contacts Near Barcelona?

I proposed to do a project for Indensitat in Spain (http://www.idensitat.org/a_index.htm) since this year's theme, HOME / AWAY, connects so well with my overall body of work. The piece will be similar to the one that I did in Beijing (http://joelledietrick.com/2006/artwork.php?m=china), but this time, it will involve a group that is rooted in the place (local Spanish people who are interested in seeing Catalonia recognized as a nation) and one that is unrooted (the expat community). I'm hoping that the event will take place in an alternative space in Mataro called Can Xalant (http://www.canxalant.org/).

Does anybody have any contacts for me in Spain? Thanks!!!!

Food and Embodied Memories

Please contribute stories to Kelly Pendergrast's story about food and memory. See description below. You can email her at kjpender@ucsd.edu.

*********************************************************************************************

I have a request!

I am collecting anecdotes to do with food and embodied memory for a short film project. Maybe that sounds a little theory-ific...

Essentially, I am looking for stories about an occasion that was significant to you in some way and involved (or was accompanied by) the eating of a meal/food. Does that make sense at all?

Can you tell me a story?

-Describe the event/scenario
-What did you eat?
-Why was it significant to you? ( the event, or the food, or both).

(eg you were ate your grandmother's wake with your awkward extended family, eating cucumber sandwiches because they were grandmother's favorite (true story). OR you ate dried apricots and drank cheap wine with your ex-girlfriend in a park in paris while backpacking in france and then puked all over her in the train later on (not a true story)....)

Just a short paragraph worth of story is great...

I would be delighted to have your contribution. Touching, weird, awkward, disgusting - anything!

If you'd like to email me an anecdote, that'd be great. If you are willing to tell your story and be (audio)recorded, that would be even better.

switched servers

Sorry if the blog has been strange recently. I just switched servers...

Stay tuned.

Paradise Found by by Nicola Jane Barratt

So, we found it! It was an 8 hour drive - though we stopped and hand
fed some lemurs while they jumped on our heads and let us squeeze
their chubby tummies and thighs. They have the nicest fur I've ever
felt - long and thick and soft and it comes in so many different
colors! Their little hands are so soft - they never scratch you even
when they jump onto your head, which the brown ones seem to be quite fond of doing.

But, I digress - paradise is called Mahambo - a little village located
about 100 miles north of Tametave, on the northeast coast of
Madagascar. The place to stay in Paradise is the Hotel Recif - Six
rattan and thatch shacks on the beach 50 feet from the high tide line,
overhanging mangroves and coconut palms. Parts of the beach are coral tide pools, part volcanic tide pools, perfect for exploring from the
beach or by snorkeling - full of rockfish, urchins, brittle stars, .
Part great for swimming - water temp 80. Air temp 70 at night, 85 in
the daytime, always a breeze. There's no one here - occasionally
someone would walk down the beach or stop for a drink - but mostly it
was just us. Miles of white sand with only the occasional lemur
passing thru for company. There were a few empty houses – there are probably more people around at Christmas. But there was no one to be bothered by the boys playing wiffle or soccer or tag or be angry for
them climbing the trees. There was noone to interrupt my cocktails
and contemplation by insisting I buy something.

There only seems to be two semi commercial occupations aside form the hotel - one is the fishermen, walking or sailing across the reef looking for lobsters - the other is infusing rum with spices or herbs
- vanilla, ginger, cannelle (a fennel like herb), lemon, pineapple or
mixed fruits. Both occupations of which I highly approve of the
outcome!!! The ginger rum with pineapple juice is my new favorite
beverage and the new house drink here at chez Heitmann!

And how's the food at the Recif? Amazing!!!! Giant bowls of hot
chocolate or coffee for breakfast with crepes or fresh baguettes.
Lunch and dinner is grilled chicken or shrimp or lobster covered in
one of a number of sauces - I loved the coconut curry sauce. Sides of
home made pasta or sauteed potatoes or grilled vegetables. Salads of
tomatoes, shrimp, vinaigrette. Desserts of flambéed bananas,
chocolate mousse, coconut custard.

Is there a down side - yes - there is only cold water in the showers -
but the staff will happily make you a bucket or two of hot water for a
stand up bath. And the avocados weren't in season. And because it's
on the east coast, there is no sunset view. But it makes the beach
nice and shady in the late afternoon - good for napping.

But in the end the visa bill arrives and you usually grimace - right?
Well the Hotel Recif doesn't take Visa or Mastercard or Amex - cash
only. Yikes, right? Wrong - the best news of all is the bill! – the
bungalows with one queen size and a set of bunk beds are $15 per
night. The lobster entree which is 2 1/2 lbs is $7. The rum drinks are
75 cents. Snorkeling is free, pirogue (canoe) rides are $5. As much
as we ate or drank or played, we couldn't seem to spend more than $100 per day – for a family of six!!! Truly paradise!!!!

the expat podcast

bit under the weather, but i promise to write more soon. in the meantime, visit this site and enjoy:
http://www.dynamodpod.com/live/

Afghan War Rugs and Other Objects

Recent emails from friends overseas have brought up the topic of shopping as an expat. As a maker of objects, I find our relationship to material culture of special interest. I flash back to my ex-husband's purchase of a Afghan war rug when we lived in Bahrain. (see above) Here are excerpts from the other emails:

1) Found the Motherlode of all Malagasy craft markets. the straw bags are fabulous. All different sizes from beach bags to little purses. Lots of different colors - magenta, lime green, and orange seem to be prevalent though. But there are also primary colors and earth tones. Lots of different patterns – checkerboard, stripes, herringbone for the more traditional of you! And they're all $3 to $10.

2) And all we have here in Rwanda are post-genocidal peace baskets...

Iana Quesnell, dysfunctional nomad

Please do yourself a favor and see my friend Iana Quesnell's show. The work is smart, beautifully executed, and dovetails with the questions and concerns raised by the Female Expat Project. I hope a page with her work here soon.

The annoucement for the show:

Akemi Hong & Camilo Ontiveros in collaboration with the Voz Alta Collective would like to find you at

La Gringa Turista
Iana Quesnell @ Voz Alta
October 28 – November 8, 2006

Reception: October 28, 7 - 11pm

Voz Alta
1544 Broadway
San Diego, CA 92101

What does it mean to own yourself and to own the space that your body occupies in each moment?
Iana has turned what she sees as “dysfunctional nomadism” into the subject of her work. Through a process of documentation, she explores ways to own space temporally. Her large-scale drawings both depict the intimate details that she associates with owning a space while at the same time they are an act of claiming a kind of real estate through scale. The real estate of her drawings, like the real estate of her body, share the conundrum of having to borrow paths in order to physically exist.
La Gringa Turista is a documentation of living in Tijuana this past summer.
Due to the tension of being an outsider this work focuses primarily on the scene outside as viewed from the sofa inside, where she spent most of her time.

Open by appointment: iquesnell@ucsd.edu | no phone

For more information, contact Akemi Hong & Camilo Ontiveros:
(916) 524-3712
(619) 398-6872
acecollaborations@gmail.com

This Question of Moving

The Advanced Art Workshop has a new subtitle, namely "This Question of Moving." It's from the Charles Baudelaire quote from Paris Spleen:

It seems to me that I would always be better off where
I am not, and this question of moving is one of those
I discuss incessantly with my soul.

FEP folk, sorry for the blogging hiatus. I think I'm finally back. This first year of college teaching has sucked up all of my time and energy. Now back to the business of artmaking.

recent readings, kaplan and all

As I'm planning my Advanced Art Workshop on Mobility for Spring 2007 at Florida State, I though I should share the list of texts with the readers of the Female Expat Project. Here you go:

Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Space. Boston: Beacon Press. 1964. ($10)

Clifford, James. Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late 20th Century. Cambridge: Havard University Press. 1997. ($17)

Fitzpatrick, Robert. Universal Experience: Art, Life, and the Tourist's Eye. New York: Distributed Art Publishers. 2005. ($20)

Kaplan, Caren. Questions of Travel: Postmodern Discourses of Displacement. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 1996. ($23)

Kristeva, Julia. Strangers to Ourselves. New York: Columbia University Press.1991. ($21)

Robinson, Jane. Unsuitable for Ladies: An Anthology of Women Travellers. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1994. ($15)

Rogoff, Irit. Terra Infirma: Geography's Visual Culture. New York: Routledge. 2000. ($33)

powered by Audioblog.com

powered by Audioblog.com

powered by Audioblog.com

use audio blogger!!!

Teaching at Florida State University has been heavenly, and my digital art students will soon start an audio project that is closely aligned to the aspirations of this site. In preparation for the project, I've been researching some of my favorite sound art project. Here's a few with more to come...

Ricardo Miranda, http://www.ambriente.com/wifi/index.php
Murmur, http://murmurtoronto.ca/
Teri Rueb, http://www.terirueb.net/flash/TeriRueb.html
Jeff Talman, http://www.jefftalman.com/install.html

I'd also like to encourage people to use the audioblog set up for this site. It's so easy!!! For instructions, visit:
http://www.female-expat.org/2006/post.php#audiobloginstructions

Ibn Arabi quote about travel

"If you engage in travel, you will arrive."
Ibn Arabi
Thirteenth-century Sufi Master

Home: A Connection to the Land by L. Joyce Mundy

SOUVENIRS for Sept. 5, 2006
By L. Joyce Mundy
for more by L. Joyce Mundy, visit http://flyinggeesepublications.com

HOME: A CONNECTION TO THE LAND
Roots grow deep in Southern Indiana soil

I have long been aware of the strings that bind me to this particular place in the world, and to the locations that will always be "home" to me. Wherever I travel, the distance is measured from here. When I leave, I always have in mind how long it will be before I return. In the past, the bonds were entwined with the presence of my parents, but the connection to this place endures even after they are gone.

It almost seems that we have some unknown quality that centers us on the spot where we were reared. The Holler in Martin County, never lost its attraction for my father, as well as for others who were raised there. Garnett Mundy, one of the few remaining folks to grow up in the little valley, still has a longing to visit that place. The last time she was there, about 15 years ago, only the concrete porch and foundation of her parent's house could be found among the trees.

When I drive by our old home place, at the mouth of the Holler near White River, I still recognize enough of the terrain to feel a sense of nostalgia. Now the river bottom fields and hillside pastures are covered with trees, but I can imagine what was once there. And some things never change. The meandering little creek still runs into the river, and the river still flows west toward the sunset.

Our roots grew deeply into the fertile land cleared by our ancestors. Perhaps we can be compared to stubborn plants which are so firmly attached that some bit of the root still remains where it was first planted. Transplanted roots can flourish in new gardens, but there is always a memory that is never lost; a longing for the bit that was left behind. I wonder if it is only farm folks who feel these connections, or if people who grow up in the city can be similarly rooted there.

It must have been very difficult for our ancestors, to sail away from their homelands never to see them again. Owning one's own land was often the ambition of those who immigrated from places where this was not possible. They cut the strings that held them to the places of their birth in order to survive, and to find their own bit of land in which to grow new roots.

Lemurs and Malagasy Rock Bands by Nicola Jane Barratt

Lemurs and Malagasy rock bands - Aug 31, 2006

Did our first excursion on Saturday. Drove out of town for about an
hour to get to a private lemur reserve. The total distance was about
20 km (14 miles) but this took an hour! The winding streets of Tana
are very crowded, especially on Saturday. There are lots of
rickshaws, small ones for carrying a single passenger and large one
for carrying goods to market, like vegetables or rice. Some carts
drawn by oxen, some scooters, motorcycles, lots of minibus and taxis -
which are mostly old 2CV's from France and a few giant SUV's like
ours!.

Two or three storey brick buildings line these narrow streets. They
have steeply peaked clay tile roofs with spires at the corners, and
balconies with carved wooden or wrought iron railings. The ground
floors are mostly little shops, some with strings of sausages and
dryings chickens and ducks hanging in the doorways, others full of
spice bins, others selling mobile phone scratch cards.

The roads wind through town then go for miles along dikes built up
between the rice paddies which fill every low spot around town. The
countryside opens up, hills with gold and brown grass, scattered
trees, larger homes built in French country style, villages of
highland Malagasy homes - tall mud brick, chickens and pigs on the
ground floor - cooking and dining on the second and sleeping on the
upper floors under those same steeply peaked roofs.

The Lemur Park has 9 species living free in groves of bamboo. They
are mostly rescued lemurs as there are no lemurs native to this part
of the island. A river forms one boundary of the reserve - lemurs
don't swim so it keeps them in! We see sifaka, crowned sifaka, brown
lemurs, ring-tailed lemurs, mouse lemurs, ruffed lemurs and others.
Our favorite is the sifaka or "dancing lemur". They are called this
because they always move on two legs - but they don't walk - they
bounce or leap, up to 7 m (22 feet)! They love to bounce down the
bamboo fence railings that run along the river - leaping after each
other - wonderful to watch. Then they sit and eat leaves or the fruit
which is put out for them.

Saturday night in Tana there is a "rock concert" out in front of the
gorgeous 19th century train station. A stage is set up and two
different bands play - sounds like a combination of jazz and Santana
with Malagasy lyrics. There are stalls set up that sell snacks and
drinks. Lots of bottles rum and fruit juice combos, Three Horses
beer, beef brochettes, cookies and crackers. We listen for a while
then go out for a lovely French meal in a quaint restaurant up a
winding cobblestone street.