#John Affey

[johnaffeymuseum]

Proposal for a Bust of John Henry Affey, 1905-1969 (2014)

In late 2014, we began the process of commissioning a bust of John Affey from artist Clair Le Couteur for our 2015 fundraising and rebranding event. Unfortunately, due to a difference of opinion between the artist, the design consultancy firm in charge of the JAM rebrand, and our former director Rev. Origen, the event had to be cancelled, and the commission was never completed.

[omgstupendousbouquetbasement]

At Geneva Refugee Forum, African Nations Hope for Support

African governments and refugee activists hope a ground-breaking refugee forum will deliver much-needed funding and voice to a region whose challenges are often eclipsed by more headline-grabbing crises.

Two decades ago, John Bolinga fled his hometown of Goma, in Democratic Republic of Congo's restive northeast.

"Rebels came and attacked our home so my father was shot dead. So I had to run to Uganda,” Bolinga said.

He started out destitute, but eventually launched his own NGO in Kampala, which today helps women and children who like himself, were uprooted by violence.

He is sharing his story in Geneva, where countries are meeting for a first-ever global refugee forum. Here and elsewhere, Bolinga says, giving refugees a voice and active role in decisions that affect their lives is critical.

"The challenge is if refugees feel they're not welcomed,” Bolinaa said, “and also the root causes which is making refugees to flee their countries is not tackled, there is going to be a crisis."

Africa is a leading exporter of refugees. They count among the millions making perilous journeys across the Sahara and Mediterranean for a better life in Europe … which often isn't realized. But Africa also shelters more than one-quarter of the world's displaced people.

Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan delivers a speech during the UNHCR - Global Refugee Forum at the European headquarters of the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, Dec. 17, 2019.

Critics note that some African countries severely restrict refugees' opportunities. Still these nations are opening doors that others slam shut.

"African governments continue to carry the extra responsibility on behalf of all of us, in hosting refugees in keeping borders open,” Ambassador Mohamed Abdi Affey said.

The official is Horn of Africa special envoy for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, which is hosting this forum.

"While we appreciate more spotlight and attention to other refugee cases like Syria and Yemen, Affey said. “… the ones in the Horn of Africa particularly, the ones who have been with us for 30 years, risk being forgotten."

Those demands join broader calls here for wealthy nations and the private sector to do more for poorer countries that together host more than 80%  of the world's refugees.

It's coming from countries like Ethiopia, which hosts roughly one million refugees from 26 nations. Fisseha Meseret Kindie is director of humanitarian assistance and development at Ethiopia's Agency for Refugees and Returnees.

“We are in shortage of finance, we cannot help them. And shortage of money,” Kindie said. “And we need the support from the international community at large.”

Some feel the page may be turning here in Geneva. Cameroon representative Tirlamo Norbert Wirnkar from Cameroon, which hosts more than 400,000 refugees, is optimistic this meeting will make a difference.

"We are really hopeful that pledges are going to be made on both sides — by the international community and host countries,” Wirnkar said.

  from Blogger https://ift.tt/2PwnmOD via IFTTT

[johnaffeymuseum]

Roots Between the Tides  Virtual Model

Roots Between the Tides (2016) by John Affey Museum on Sketchfab Click and drag to turn the model. Use your mouse wheel or two fingers on a trackpad to zoom in and out.

[johnaffeymuseum]

Green Door: An Excerpt from ‘Case Notes on the John Affey Museum,’ by Annie Leist, BPF

This text was first published in Why Would I Lie? RCA Research Biennial (2015), ed. Susannah Haslam & Peter Le Couteur.

The door to our museum – I call it our museum, though I am not exactly on the staff – is a very specific green. A sort of baize-green like a billiard table, or, for fans of period drama, like the door between upstairs and downstairs. I've just been shown a picture of this door by Dr. Adam Origen, self-styled Assistant to the Directrix, who's clearly had this Ur-door photograph taped to his fridge since he took the picture in Bath in the mid-’90s. It's a fine Georgian six-panelled door, a six-lobed fan light above. Nearly the spitting image of the door to No. 10, actually, barring the emerald green. I find out later that this lame aping of the British Establishment extends to the smallest details of Origen's 'museum'.

I say Origen's museum, and that isn't quite true. There are four people behind this insubstantial institution. The first, naturally, is its founder, he to whom Dr. Origen insists on referring in hushed tones of reverence, and always by his full name – John Henry Affey – whenever he comes up in conversation. Which is frequently. This John Henry Affey – and one really can hear the italics whenever Origen invokes him – is clearly the subject of some fairly deft hagiography. He's being set up (by Origen, if no-one else) as a Great Man in the old style. A visionary. I get two distinct intuitions about Affey, or rather about Origen and Affey. The first is that Origen was deeply besotted with him, and remains so. And I must admit from what I've learned of the man, he must have been seat-wettingly charming. The second is that, if Affey hadn't already existed, Dr. Origen would have had to make him up.

During the early ‘60s, Origen worked for John Henry Affey (1905-1969) as a personal assistant, a kind of valet-come-secretary. Affey was, as far as I can gather, mostly Irish, though raised on a tiny islet called Fey in the north Shetlands. He was short, little over five feet two, had surprisingly dark skin, and piercing pale green eyes. He worked, as did many Shetland men, for Christian Salvesen Limited, back when the company ran the British-Norwegian whaling industry in the Antarctic. During his travels, Affey collected artefacts from the Maori, the South Sea Islanders, the Sámi of the Arctic Circle, the Ainu of northern Japan, and many other indigenous peoples. A typologist in the Pitt Rivers tradition, Affey nursed a life-long dream of opening a whaling museum. Two things prevented him. The first was that he was storing his collection on Deception Island in the South Shetlands. The ring-shaped Deception is in fact the caldera of an active volcano, and eruptions beginning in 1968 caused the Hektor Whaling Station – also being used as a base by the British Antarctic Survey – to be badly damaged, destroying Affey's collection. It seems certain that the stress of this event precipitated Affey's fatal stroke of the following year.

The second thing, which may still prove to be a bit of a barrier (as though the loss of the collection weren't bad enough), is the reputation Affey had acquired as a crank. What queered his pitch to the ethnological crowd (though he didn't limit his... ah... radical conjectures to any one discipline) was his obsession – it's not too strong a word – with a “lost tribe” of the Antarctic he called the Ascensorescetis, the Whale Riders. Ropey Latin, I'm told. The most striking aspect of this lost tribe, and also the one most difficult to swallow, is that many Whale Riders lived their entire lives upon the open sea, never setting a foot upon the land. In fact, or so I was informed gravely by Dr. Origen, there was quite the taboo against it, though they did deign to walk about on ice, and apparently had a great fondness for icebergs.

I should at this point own up to my part in all this, before we're dragged any further down the rabbit hole. I'm an analyst, in the broader Jungian tradition, who works with institutions. I treat institutions as people, and people as institutions. And more than that, I analyse what M. Bachelard would term the poetics of space. Psychoanalytic feng shui. My job (or the reason I'm called in, at least) is to resolve conflicts. I'm hired to ameliorate symptoms when they become unmanageable ~ a loaded term for institutions. Of course, like any psychotherapist, what I reveal about the causes of certain symptoms isn't always welcome, particularly not when I start referring to other 'healthy' or 'productive' aspects of the institution as symptoms too.

Now and then, I work as a consultant with the Eisegetics Institute, a conceptual design firm. The John Affey Museum is a client of theirs, and they've called me in to put J.A.M. on the couch. I'm used to working with small institutions: single offices, focus groups, that sort of thing. I've long been complaining that I can never publish anything I find, an inevitable result of client confidentiality. The Eisegetics Institute offered me this one as a kind of joke, saying they'd found an institution well worth analysing, who'd agreed that any and all material I gathered could be published, as long as they didn't have to pay me anything. I thought what the hell.

As I've already mentioned, the John Affey Museum is really only four people, one of whom – arguably the most important – is dead. The second, Dr. Origen, was the man responsible for keeping the museum alive from the death of its founder in 1969 until his discovery of Affey's grand-daughter, Margaret O'Sullivan, in 1998. Ms. O'Sullivan (she whom Dr. Origen insists on calling the Directrix, which she is apparently fine with) lives in Mainistir na Búille, County Roscommon, Ireland. O'Sullivan's a local historian and genealogist, and works in Boyle Branch Library as an assistant. She learned of her hereditary position as director of the John Affey Museum in 1999, becoming 'Directrix' in 2004 after what I have been repeatedly assured by Dr. Origen was a “rigorous process of authentification.” I've talked to her only on Skype. She seems to view her position as a bit of a lark, Dr. Origen as infuriating but harmless, and she stated, when I asked her about the likelihood of the museum's ever opening: “Well, it'd be a long day's walk, you know, before we catch a glimpse of that. But I'm lighting a candle to Saint Jude, now and then.”

I've got an icon of Saint Jude on the back of my toilet door. He's wearing a fetching emerald green wrap, holding an oar in his left hand and, with the other, absent-mindedly caressing the big golden medallion of Jesus that's hanging around his neck. I forget this, until I see him there, shortly after talking to O’Sullivan. And suddenly remember I forgot to check to see if she had green eyes. Maybe you can't really tell over Skype. And here's where I try to write about how my job really works, which isn't something one can usually publish: it's basically magic. I could call it instead, and probably should, a poetics of synchronicity. Synchronicity is one of those ideas that have been adopted into contemporary culture largely shorn of their psychoanalytic roots; in this case, the idea is Jung's. Like Jung, I've come to believe that dealing with this concept is more than some intellectual game, Gedankenexperiment, or useful working hypothesis. Unlike Jung, though, I usually keep schtum about it, and rarely use it to justify ex-marital dalliances.

What I do for a living, really, is read. I read institutions, their members, their narratives and their sites. Particularly their sites: I'm especially fond of reading office kitchens. I get paid hourly, using that cheeky analytical definition of the hour as fifty minutes. (An hourly rate is important, when – at least according to certain clients – the problems “fix themselves”, no thanks to me!) I learnt long ago, during my lengthy traditional training in the dance of transference and countertransference, that not all insights can be shared with the analysand. Often, attempting to do so can seriously harm the therapeutic alliance. Indeed, there is such a thing as a therapeutic lie. What I've developed, over the years, is a Dalí-esque “Paranoid-Critical” method. A kind of house-trained mania. I begin by seeing everything as potentially significant. I trained in the 80s, during the post-structuralist shitstorm, so my method sidesteps the question of meaning. I'm interested in structure. In function. Poetics. That there's always sugar all over the kitchenette worktop doesn't mean. But it can signify. It comes about through the institutional unconscious (again, a term I would never use with clients).

Back to the John Affey Museum, and the final piece of the four-person puzzle: Peter Le Couteur. Le Couteur is a young artist and musician (it probably says something that a 32 year old man seems young to me) who was artist in residence at the Eisegetics Institute's Prague branch a couple of years ago. He's taken on the J.A.M. Project, agreeing to work – I think for free – as the museum's fabricator, researcher and general factotum. Most of the impetus for actually trying to open the museum in some form is coming from him. Le Couteur's taken on the project, I think, as readymade subject-matter for his PhD. His angle is that the museum is “fictive”, by which he seems to mean halfway between fact and fiction, irreducible to one or the other. He apparently views the whole enterprise as a kind of author-less artwork. Actually, this seems like as a good a description as any of the “as–if” state of mind I enter while working. Patently, institutions don't have unconsciouses, but if they did...

So, back to the story. I'm sitting on the loo, with an eyebrow raised, looking at the baize green toga St. Jude is wearing. All of a sudden, Jude looks like he's just swept the cover off a 50s card table, like a nightclub magician, and draped himself with baize the same green as Dr. Origen's fanciful museum door. Origen talks as though this is a photograph of the museum's door; he's rather proud of it, actually, quite proprietorial. “Here's the door of our museum,” he says, with a wink, when opening his elderly refrigerator. I have the feeling he makes this exact joke – aloud or sub-vocally – every time he gets the tonic water out of the fridge (something he does rather a lot). The Sellotape across its corners has darkened to amber; its been there long enough that its initial connotations as a picture he took once of a house in Bath have all but worn away. The mundane significance has been passed by. Robertsonianism would term this the first (and least important) level of exegesis, the Literal. The second level, the moral of the story, Origen himself provides, offhand: “Well, Rome wasn't built in a day, was it?” But he and I continue to stare at this photo of one door, representing another, taped to yet another. There are two levels to go, in this exegetical exercise in a Vauxhall bedsit, but though I feel them hanging in the air, nothing more is said.

Typology, for Christians, involves reading the Old Testament as a prefiguration of the New. Jonah in the belly of the Great Fish – Dr. Origen, having opened the fridge door a few times, coincidentally, let's the italics act slip and begins to call Affey “Jonah” – is read as an allegory of Christ in the Tomb. This is level three. These levels of exegesis, though, were not originally Christian. Walter Benjamin, an avowed Kabbalist, writes about a similar concept as a way of reading history as a metaphysical state, as Messianic Time. From ephemera, the act of criticism – poetics, if you like – allows us to make the jump up to Truth, to Idea. One thing is read in the terms of another, through the form of the other. From this superimposed reading, both elements are changed. Though naturally the Christian reworking of typology always instantiates the type with Christ, so there's that clear hierarchy, typological reading actually swings both ways (don't we all). The story of Jonah adds meaning to the Resurrection, it becomes a commentary upon it, and elements of its structure are added to the type-structure. Time is folded, pinning the two sequences together, and providing – as is inevitable when folding – form in a higher dimension.

But just what is being folded, in that long moment sitting on my toilet as I look at St. Jude's outfit in a framed icon hung on the back of a door? A certain flavour of green. Doors. A typological figure with various accrued attributes and significances: the staff, oar, axe or club; a green robe; a flame on the forehead; the medallion of Christ; sometimes the carpenter's rule, the boat; lost causes. Green eyes, maybe. A door is an eye. The fanlight looked like an eye, or like half a rose window in a cathedral.

I arrange to see Dr. Origen again; I forget to ask, again, what his doctorate is in, and every time I forget, it seems harder to ask. I have an obscure intuition it is in Divinity. This time, we meet at Carluccio's in Covent Garden, a place I believe to be haunted by the ghost of Eliza Doolittle. I'm buying, apparently. Fixing my gaze on the door into the foyer (not green: a kind of chic Georgian grey) I casually ask if Affey ever mentioned St. Jude. He did, it turns out. He wore a silver St. Jude's medal, which belonged to his mother Mary until she gave it to him in 1929. (The fact that “Jonah's” mother was called Mary is utterly irresistible to me, I must confess.) Affey gave the medal to Origen, who kept it in a “lovely little scrimshaw box” Affey had made from the tooth of a sperm whale, before posting it to Margaret O'Sullivan when she was ordained hereditary Directrix in 2004. “It never arrived, if you can believe that. Lost in the post! I was quite distraught about it for a while, I can tell you.”

I think I've finally met my match in Dr. Origen. I absolutely cannot tell when he's concealing something. Or, rather, I always get the sense that he is, and that it's a personal joke of some kind. Reading this museum, analysing it, is a nightmare of countertransference. In a very real sense, of course, that's because there's no museum to read. I realise I've lost my touch. I've become reliant on physical signs, multiple people. I no longer have the one-on-one abilities of the true therapist. I lack a secure attachment. I've become fearful-avoidant. I've developed secure base distortion. I've got disinhibited attachment disorder. Institutional syndrome. I can't rely on my primary object. When one object doesn't satisfy, I seek another, and another. I'll go off with anyone. Dr. Origen is still sitting across from me, half-smiling in that way he has, drinking his camomile tea (he brings the bags with him, asks for hot water, camps up the doddery old dear act like a champ). I'm suddenly worried for him, worried that it's not camomile, that it's birdsfoot trefoil, the plant Affey's mother studied obsessively, and which probably gave her chronic cyanide poisoning; the cause of the premature dementia that landed her on a mental ward in Edinburgh for half her life. My heart is racing. I smile, and lift my coffee.

The above (and you'll have to trust me on this) is success, as I measure it. What the post-Kleinians might call “transference/countertransference”. An up-welling of emotion and association within me, which manifests and mirrors a similar up-welling in... well, usually I call it the institution. Suddenly, a little boy, a toddler, maybe three or four, runs over to our table and bashes a plastic boat onto it a couple of times, setting the crockery and silverware clashing together. “Jude!” It's the mother, across the room, wrestling with one of those huge buggies which look like they might have four wheel drive. “Jude! Stop it, please darling. Leave those nice people alone, they're trying to have their tea. We're not sitting there today, Jude. Come with Mummy and we'll sit by the window. Look at the cars!” Something in this barrage of maternal lacemaking seems to connect, and – handing the boat to me gravely – Jude waddles across the room at speed.

The boat is slightly sticky. (Sugar on the kitchenette worktop.) It's a green plastic rowing boat, two yellow benches. Vintage Fisher Price, with two holes for a figure in each bench, and one in the prow. Glued to the bottom of the boat between the benches is a worn illustration of a collection of items on five wooden planks: a fishing rod, which at first I mistake for a fencing foil; a red lobster in a white bowl of blue water, looking like a hole in the bottom of the boat; a green box for lunch or fishing tackle; a yellow disc, possibly a compass. Certainly not a medallion. I get up, displaying the artefact to Origen in both hands like a shopping television host. I walk over to Jude and Mummy. “Oh thanks, sorry. We always sit over there, usually. He's not usually like that. I'm amazed he gave that to you! It was his Dad's when he was little, wasn't it? Takes it everywhere. It's sort of his teddy, isn't it Jude? Isn't it, you funny little man?” I smile indulgently down at Jude, both sticky palms glued firmly to the widow, fingers splayed, sturdy little legs planted wide in the manner of toddlers and old sailors everywhere, like my father, watching the traffic. Five, I think, walking back to the table. Five seats, five planks. Four characters plus me. Where would we sit? Affey would be slotted into the prow, like a harpooneer. Like Ahab, with his ivory peg leg plugged into the hole. Dr. Origen and O'Sullivan would be on the for'ard bench, with me and Le Couteur on the aft one. I'd be on the starboard side, to the left as you look back from the prow.

When I sit down again, Dr. Origen says, “Of course, there are two Saint Judes.” I look quizzical. “Depending on whether the robe and staff are on the right side or the left,” Origen continues. “Wrote my thesis on them, actually. In Mexico City. Apparently it was because the bootlegged holy images ended up backwards through some artefact of the copying process. San Juditas, Judas Tadeo. He's the patron saint of gangsters, over there, holding his staff left handed. Signifying that the good may sometimes be worse than the bad. You find him associated with the cult of Nuestra Señora de la Santa Muerte, Our Lady Death.”

[johnaffeymuseum]

Though our museum founder John Affey did not manage to open his museum during his lifetime, he left many notes and sketches about his ideas. This illustration is based on Affey’s design for a portable museum display case.

The protective PVC cover is similar to spray hoods used on boats and open top cars. During transit, the cover could be removed, folded and kept within the case along with the object on display. Inside the case, by the handle, Affey has included a fluorescent tube to light the exhibit. This method of lighting would require batteries and inductive ballast, adding significantly to the weight of the design.

We have included the label text from the original sketch, which suggests Affey intended the case to show small objects from his ‘Whale Rider’ collection. Throughout his life, Affey collected ethnographic artefacts that he believed provided proof of an undiscovered civilisation living around the coast of Antarctica, which he called the Whale Rider People or Ascensorescetis. The label reads:

This artefact, priceless beyond measure, shows both the astonishing feats of creativity of which the Whale Rider people were capable, and the incontrovertible facticity of their existence.

Given this hard evidence, who can doubt the sightings by many brave seamen, or question the testimony of the Newman M.S., unique in all the annals of History?

Affey’s decision to line his case with baize could be due to several factors. In the early 1960s, green baize was still widely used as a hard-wearing fabric, covering desks and noticeboards, and lining cutlery drawers and display cases. However, Affey may also have felt that the fabric would lend his portable exhibits a sense of tradition, helping his museum to seem established and authoritative. Today, baize remains associated with British colonial nostalgia, and with the ‘green baize door’ that marked the dividing line between servants and masters. Baize is no longer recommended for museum cases or cutlery drawers, as the sulphur it releases causes silver to tarnish.

[johnaffeymuseum]

This anthology of 144 quotations, an associative constellation on the fictive museum, is published in PDF form in concert with the John Affey Museum (JAM).

The Catalogue can be read start to finish, browsed at random, or searched as an archive for keywords, e.g.:

~ Cognitive  ~ Fictive  ~  Museum  ~  Space  ~  We ~

Entries are numbered duodecimally with the dodecahedral Accessioning Dice (below), according to the JAM method.  The dice itself is numbered 000.0.  The sequence of quotations follows their order of appearance in an accompanying volume: The Fictive Museum by Clair Le Couteur.

Each passage included can be found on the Internet, freely accessible through Google Books or Amazon’s search inside features.  No permission has been sought from any publisher; no profit is being made from this virtual volume, which is being made available for the purposes of artistic research.  If any author or publisher wishes their content to be redacted, they can contact the editor at <clairlecouteur[at]gmail.com>.

[johnaffeymuseum]

Using invisible hyperlinks, this interactive contribution by Clair Le Couteur offers the viewer-reader the chance to experience associative validity as they explore a collection of images from the John Affey Museum’s Warrington Collection, juxtaposed with a set of quotations on systems, language and representation.

[johnaffeymuseum]

For the virtual reality version of our Roots Between the Tides installation – made in collaboration with the AR/VR platform Sketchfab – folk musician Clair Le Couteur recorded this new version of Affey’s Jig, played on the high D tin whistle. Also known as the penny or Irish whistle, the English flageolet, or the feadan, this simple and inexpensive metal variety of fipple flute was a British invention. First mass produced in the mid nineteenth century, the tin whistle gained popularity during the Celtic Revivals, and is now commonly associated with English, Scottish, and particularly Irish folk music. The whistle is one of the oldest known instrument types; bone flutes may date back 60,000 years to the Neanderthals, and the Irish feadan, feadóg or cuisle – originally made of bone, cane, or alder wood or bone – are referenced written versions of the ‘Brehon Laws’.

[omgstupendousbouquetbasement]

At Geneva Refugee Forum, African Nations Hope for Support

African governments and refugee activists hope a ground-breaking refugee forum will deliver much-needed funding and voice to a region whose challenges are often eclipsed by more headline-grabbing crises.

Two decades ago, John Bolinga fled his hometown of Goma, in Democratic Republic of Congo's restive northeast.

"Rebels came and attacked our home so my father was shot dead. So I had to run to Uganda,” Bolinga said.

He started out destitute, but eventually launched his own NGO in Kampala, which today helps women and children who like himself, were uprooted by violence.

He is sharing his story in Geneva, where countries are meeting for a first-ever global refugee forum. Here and elsewhere, Bolinga says, giving refugees a voice and active role in decisions that affect their lives is critical.

"The challenge is if refugees feel they're not welcomed,” Bolinaa said, “and also the root causes which is making refugees to flee their countries is not tackled, there is going to be a crisis."

Africa is a leading exporter of refugees. They count among the millions making perilous journeys across the Sahara and Mediterranean for a better life in Europe … which often isn't realized. But Africa also shelters more than one-quarter of the world's displaced people.

Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan delivers a speech during the UNHCR - Global Refugee Forum at the European headquarters of the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, Dec. 17, 2019.

Critics note that some African countries severely restrict refugees' opportunities. Still these nations are opening doors that others slam shut.

"African governments continue to carry the extra responsibility on behalf of all of us, in hosting refugees in keeping borders open,” Ambassador Mohamed Abdi Affey said.

The official is Horn of Africa special envoy for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, which is hosting this forum.

"While we appreciate more spotlight and attention to other refugee cases like Syria and Yemen, Affey said. “… the ones in the Horn of Africa particularly, the ones who have been with us for 30 years, risk being forgotten."

Those demands join broader calls here for wealthy nations and the private sector to do more for poorer countries that together host more than 80%  of the world's refugees.

It's coming from countries like Ethiopia, which hosts roughly one million refugees from 26 nations. Fisseha Meseret Kindie is director of humanitarian assistance and development at Ethiopia's Agency for Refugees and Returnees.

“We are in shortage of finance, we cannot help them. And shortage of money,” Kindie said. “And we need the support from the international community at large.”

Some feel the page may be turning here in Geneva. Cameroon representative Tirlamo Norbert Wirnkar from Cameroon, which hosts more than 400,000 refugees, is optimistic this meeting will make a difference.

"We are really hopeful that pledges are going to be made on both sides — by the international community and host countries,” Wirnkar said.

  from Blogger https://ift.tt/2M6AAjc via IFTTT

[omgstupendousbouquetbasement]

At Geneva Refugee Forum, African Nations Hope for Support

African governments and refugee activists hope a ground-breaking refugee forum will deliver much-needed funding and voice to a region whose challenges are often eclipsed by more headline-grabbing crises.

Two decades ago, John Bolinga fled his hometown of Goma, in Democratic Republic of Congo's restive northeast.

"Rebels came and attacked our home so my father was shot dead. So I had to run to Uganda,” Bolinga said.

He started out destitute, but eventually launched his own NGO in Kampala, which today helps women and children who like himself, were uprooted by violence.

He is sharing his story in Geneva, where countries are meeting for a first-ever global refugee forum. Here and elsewhere, Bolinga says, giving refugees a voice and active role in decisions that affect their lives is critical.

"The challenge is if refugees feel they're not welcomed,” Bolinaa said, “and also the root causes which is making refugees to flee their countries is not tackled, there is going to be a crisis."

Africa is a leading exporter of refugees. They count among the millions making perilous journeys across the Sahara and Mediterranean for a better life in Europe … which often isn't realized. But Africa also shelters more than one-quarter of the world's displaced people.

Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan delivers a speech during the UNHCR - Global Refugee Forum at the European headquarters of the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, Dec. 17, 2019.

Critics note that some African countries severely restrict refugees' opportunities. Still these nations are opening doors that others slam shut.

"African governments continue to carry the extra responsibility on behalf of all of us, in hosting refugees in keeping borders open,” Ambassador Mohamed Abdi Affey said.

The official is Horn of Africa special envoy for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, which is hosting this forum.

"While we appreciate more spotlight and attention to other refugee cases like Syria and Yemen, Affey said. “… the ones in the Horn of Africa particularly, the ones who have been with us for 30 years, risk being forgotten."

Those demands join broader calls here for wealthy nations and the private sector to do more for poorer countries that together host more than 80%  of the world's refugees.

It's coming from countries like Ethiopia, which hosts roughly one million refugees from 26 nations. Fisseha Meseret Kindie is director of humanitarian assistance and development at Ethiopia's Agency for Refugees and Returnees.

“We are in shortage of finance, we cannot help them. And shortage of money,” Kindie said. “And we need the support from the international community at large.”

Some feel the page may be turning here in Geneva. Cameroon representative Tirlamo Norbert Wirnkar from Cameroon, which hosts more than 400,000 refugees, is optimistic this meeting will make a difference.

"We are really hopeful that pledges are going to be made on both sides — by the international community and host countries,” Wirnkar said.

  from Blogger https://ift.tt/38Pdgjw via IFTTT

[omgstupendousbouquetbasement]

At Geneva Refugee Forum, African Nations Hope for Support

African governments and refugee activists hope a ground-breaking refugee forum will deliver much-needed funding and voice to a region whose challenges are often eclipsed by more headline-grabbing crises.

Two decades ago, John Bolinga fled his hometown of Goma, in Democratic Republic of Congo's restive northeast.

"Rebels came and attacked our home so my father was shot dead. So I had to run to Uganda,” Bolinga said.

He started out destitute, but eventually launched his own NGO in Kampala, which today helps women and children who like himself, were uprooted by violence.

He is sharing his story in Geneva, where countries are meeting for a first-ever global refugee forum. Here and elsewhere, Bolinga says, giving refugees a voice and active role in decisions that affect their lives is critical.

"The challenge is if refugees feel they're not welcomed,” Bolinaa said, “and also the root causes which is making refugees to flee their countries is not tackled, there is going to be a crisis."

Africa is a leading exporter of refugees. They count among the millions making perilous journeys across the Sahara and Mediterranean for a better life in Europe … which often isn't realized. But Africa also shelters more than one-quarter of the world's displaced people.

Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan delivers a speech during the UNHCR - Global Refugee Forum at the European headquarters of the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, Dec. 17, 2019.

Critics note that some African countries severely restrict refugees' opportunities. Still these nations are opening doors that others slam shut.

"African governments continue to carry the extra responsibility on behalf of all of us, in hosting refugees in keeping borders open,” Ambassador Mohamed Abdi Affey said.

The official is Horn of Africa special envoy for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, which is hosting this forum.

"While we appreciate more spotlight and attention to other refugee cases like Syria and Yemen, Affey said. “… the ones in the Horn of Africa particularly, the ones who have been with us for 30 years, risk being forgotten."

Those demands join broader calls here for wealthy nations and the private sector to do more for poorer countries that together host more than 80%  of the world's refugees.

It's coming from countries like Ethiopia, which hosts roughly one million refugees from 26 nations. Fisseha Meseret Kindie is director of humanitarian assistance and development at Ethiopia's Agency for Refugees and Returnees.

“We are in shortage of finance, we cannot help them. And shortage of money,” Kindie said. “And we need the support from the international community at large.”

Some feel the page may be turning here in Geneva. Cameroon representative Tirlamo Norbert Wirnkar from Cameroon, which hosts more than 400,000 refugees, is optimistic this meeting will make a difference.

"We are really hopeful that pledges are going to be made on both sides — by the international community and host countries,” Wirnkar said.

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RBTT Special Edition Accessioning Die, 2016

This one-of-a-kind accessioning die was made from solid, 3D printed steel by Croft AM using the Selective Laser Melting process. Croft is continuing Warrington’s proud heritage, taking the steel industry into the 21st Century. Several of their employees formerly worked in Warrington’s wire industry.

The die is currently on display in Warrington Museum, but the label card unfortunately contains two small errors. The first is that the die is used for accessioning things into the John Affey Museum collection, not for indexing them. The second is that as the die is unevenly weighted, it does not generate random, but rather semi-random – or contingent – numbers.

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The Transnational Whaling Museum (TWM) was a never-realised project for a floating museum, proposed by our founder, John Henry Affey (1905-1969). The tune, also known as Affey’s Jig, is based on The Silver Cross, a traditional folk song from the isle of Fey. This ‘theme music’ for Affey’s unrealised museum was arranged by Clair Le Couteur:  “This is a simulated recording, made with MIDI instruments, so doesn’t capture the real spirit of the piece, which is set for hurdy-gurdy.”

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The Southern Venturer moored at Leith Harbour, South Georgia, painted by former whaler George R. Cummings. The Venturer was a 14,000 ton floating whaling factory vessel where John Henry Affey worked as a laboratory technician during the 1950s. Affey proposed that the vessel be turned into a living ‘Transnational Whaling Museum’ when the British-Norwegian whaling industry closed, but sadly the project wasn’t realised. The Venturer was sold to a Japanese whaling company in 1962 for the whaling quota it included, and never used again.

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VISIT YESTERDAY (2017)

This promotional poster design for John Affey’s unrealised museum project was made using Google’s Deep Dream algorithm, models of Deception Island, and an archival image and the Capacity Plan of the Southern Venturer.

The Southern Venturer and its sister ship the Southern Harvester were whaling factory ships operated by Christian Salvesen Ltd., which Affey worked aboard during the 1950s. Affey proposed that one or other of the vessels be converted into a living ‘transnational whaling museum,’ which would voyage from port to port, house a permanent collection, and participate in heritage whaling activities. The plan did not find favour with Salvesen Ltd., and both ships were sold and eventually broken up for scrap iron.