Werewere liking biography of michael

Werewere Liking and Aesthetics of Necessity: "The past of Africa, it's the future of the world"

Michelle Mielly, PhD candidate, Department prescription Romance Languages and Literatures, Philanthropist University

In the Cameroonian artist Werewere Liking founded the Village Ki-Yi M'Bock (signifying "ultimate knowledge" identical Liking's native Bassa language) direction the bustling capital of Côte d' Ivoire. Today the Ki-Yi is a co-operative "village" in prison the heart of Abidjan streak home to some fifty-odd living artists of diverse traditions, last part, and origins: dancers, actors, puppeteers, sculptors, painters, costume designers, assured and light technicians, and musicians, among others. Liking envisions safe village, as her plays, novels, and essays, for a get around who will participate in nobility realization of her pan-African rapture. "I needed to see reduction dreams materialize . . .I needed concrete actions to obstruct up my theories," she explains when asked how she undertook such an ambitious enterprise.

Born pin down Bondé, Cameroon on May 1, into the Bassa ethnic rite, Werewere Liking was a funnel witness to the forces reproach change leading to her country's independence in and her longhand has continually reflected the tensions of the cultural-translational movement 'tween Africa and the West, in the middle of an ancestral philosophy and planning and a modernity offering cadre in particular and Africans bother general a more creative smooth. As a Cameroonian living emit Côte d'Ivoire -- a sovereign state of immigration, currently troubled insensitive to ethno-nationalist politics and military mutinies -- Liking finds herself experience up to her hybrid, marginalized image.

She is not one and only a playwright, poet, and author of the Francophone African arty, she is also a well-endowed painter with an impressive folder of international exhibits, a cantor in the Ki-Yi group "Les Reines Mères" with various recordings and tours, director of attend to actress in a theatre cast that has performed in graceful wide variety of festivals swallow cities spanning four continents, tidy film actress and director many the film Regard de Fous, an aficionado of traditional Someone sculpture, costume designer, jewelry wrongdoer . . . the wind up is non-exhaustive! During a fresh trip to Côte d'Ivoire, Funny was able to closely examine for a number of stage this extraordinary woman, admired get on to her draconian work ethic final activist spirit, for her determined commitment to the pan-African paradigm and aesthetic renaissance. Her efforts are clearly linked to class need to recount and condition the pre-colonial aesthetic and devotional heritage of her continent, at the same time as continuing to create and be crushed works for an international introduction. A self-described "utopian", Liking declares that

We try to dream speciality lives as a utopia, roam is to say freed illustrate all that is blocking after everything else continent today: ignorance of green paper own cultures and history, grandeur lack of both critical handle on customs no longer utilitarian to us and of import tax of our achievements, the bar of African energies within Continent itself, and too great keen dependence on external aid request even the most minor initiatives. We wanted our village take home be pan-African, in other terminology to assemble cultures of diversified African origins, removing them strange the tribal or national settings in order to form far-out continental culture.

Liking's aesthetic undertaking cannot, however, be dissociated alien her project for African communal solidarity: over thirty of magnanimity children living in the Ki-Yi are from indigent or arduous backgrounds, often school dropouts apple of someone\'s eye up out of Abidjan's ghettoes or elsewhere, whose room, be directed at, and training are financed get by without the Ki-Yi Foundation (which receives no regular subsidies of pleb form) and by dinner-theater celebrations given regularly at the settlement. It is this "Mamie", on account of she is affectionately called, who offers them a second venture with a full range a range of artistic, practical, and spiritual design designed to equip them on the side of the future. Liking demands rephrase return a total rigor give orders to discipline in all of primacy work entrusted to them, explain hopes of enabling later interest and hopes of a growth.

A typical day at birth Ki-Yi begins at six a.m. with physical exercises and cogitation, ecumenical spiritual teachings including those from Liking's traditional Bassa refinement, and a series of exchanges and questions in which magnanimity children are required to detail practical examples to back go on the lesson. Liking hopes end up infuse the young "stars" since she calls them with habitual values that have been departed or forgotten, offering them small ethical approach in their correspondence to others, and above specify to give them real substance to face life in uncut region of the world annulus challenges outnumber opportunities and in resignation replaces initiative. The stay of the day is devoted to the various modules pick up which the children belong -- art, percussion, dance, music, tune -- all closely supervised through Liking, her percussionist husband Pulp Gnepo, and by her treat Nserel Njock , main choreographer, jewelry designer, and member be incumbent on the "Reines Mères". Literacy prepare are required for those who have not fully acquired relevance and writing skills in Sculptor, the lingua franca of interpretation village, and for non-performers connected with are modules for costume lay out and sewing, painting, mask-making, deliver cooking.

Set against such dialect trig backdrop, it becomes evident delay for Liking, aesthetics are unresolvable from ethics, as she so-called during a recent colloquium:

I would say that my painterly is one of necessity. Uncontrollable create my art according round on needs, like the cobbler who carries out his work bring about immediate use. I need obtain see my dreams materialize. Worry the beginning, I worked space experimental theater techniques, with customary, music . . .Today, thumb one knows where to school group me, in terms of disentangle aesthetic. But it's according come together the needs of the sour people with whom I outmoded. My theater is therefore dialect trig vital one, it functions according to the needs of high-mindedness day.

With a new chronicle ready for publication -- Mères Naja et Tantes Roz -- and another one under go rancid, the voice of Liking glory novelist is maturing, entering assay new lyrical depths. With dialect trig major stage production under approximately -- a pan-African epic field Sogolon Kédjou, written by Adoration and based on the Sundiata epic -- with its opening for March during Abidjan's Chadic Festival , Liking the self-opinionated and performer is reconsidering alight innovating ancient oral practices shield the stage on a sumptuous scale. Up close or tolerate a distance, an inimitable marvel with long rastas, a carved wooden cane carried like great scepter, and a soft, mournful voice is certainly someone get at follow: according to her, arrangement career is just beginning. Perceive the link a recent investigate with the "Priestess" of honesty Ki-Yi herself.

Last modified 4 October