From October 21st to 26th, Graz’s Elevate Festival once again stimulates new ways of thinking and listening through an extraordinary combination of electronic music, art and political discourse. Elevate highlights the role and importance of social movements as well as progressive initiatives in civil society and the importance of generating positive change in our society as a whole. At the same time, Elevate presents many live acts that offer fascinating odysseys into innovative worlds of sound far off the beaten path.
Once upon a time in the Bronx, before HipHop had a name, or came to be defined by the Five Elements of MCing, breakdancing, B-boying, turntabling and the painting known as graffiti, it had Writers. These scribes wrote on the trains of New York’s subway system. Mostly they wrote their names: a host of colourful noms de plume.
Game playing in the village of Teci, on Yasawa Island, Fiji./Robert Boyd
Human behaviors are often explained as hard-wired evolutionary leftovers of life on the savannah or during the Stone Age. But a study of one very modern behavior, fairness toward total strangers one will never meet again, suggests it evolved recently, and is rooted in culture rather than biology.
Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia have a common culture and cuisine, an oversupply of educated young people, and an undersupply of capital investment. Together, they would prosper, but their governments don’t see it that way.
Anyone visiting the eastern Moroccan city of Oujda encounters a bizarre sight: the nearby crossing point into Algeria, which should be bustling, is oddly calm, with only a few policemen wandering around and construction works blocking the road. The silence of the closed border reflects the generation-long enmity between Rabat and Algiers.
Walk down any major street in Yemen in the afternoon or evening, and you’ll see men with bulging cheeks, chewing qat leaves; their constituents, cathinone and cathine, produce a high. Qat (Khat) — or Catha edulis — is cultivated in the Horn of Africa as well. But in Yemen, buffeted by fierce government-tribal clashes in the north, renewed secessionist strength in the south and dwindling oil revenues, the qat shrub is just about holding the Arab world’s poorest country together.
Timeless describes moments outside of time – moments that exist so deep inside history that they break through that finite grid. Timeless: The Composer/Arranger Series compiled by Mochilla is an homage to the composer-arrangers that have influenced hip-hop in the most literal and profound ways.
Four poles of suffering and denial of rights: Calais region, Greek-Turkish border, Oujda region in eastern Morocco and Lampedusa. Report by Migreurop in France, English and Espanol.
Migreurop is an Euro-African network of 40 organisations from 13 countries working on issues of immigration policy, externalisation and their consequences within and beyond the EU’s borders.
