The Prince Claus Fund is conferring the Prince Claus Awards for the third year running. This year there is a shared principal award of USD 100,000 and ten awards of USD 20,000. The Prince Claus Awards recognise exceptional initiatives and achievements in the field of culture and development. The awards are presented to artists and intellectuals, and to organisations engaged in culture. The quality of the work is of crucial importance in the selection of recipients of Prince Claus Awards. Another decisive factor is 'surplus value': the positive effects of the work of a laureate in the cultural or the wider social field. The Committee admires a certain degree of audacity, tenacity and recalcitrance.
The 1999 Prince Claus Awards Committee submitted its selection of candidates for the 1999 awards to the Board of the Fund; the Board drew up the final list of thirteen laureates. For the nominating procedure the Fund adopted an active approach. This year more than one hundred contacts from the existing network were asked to propose and lend their support to candidates. In addition, the network was widened in order to include the areas of special focus as formulated by the Fund and the Committee. Members of this extended network were then consulted on special initiatives relevant to the aims of the awards. Finally, the Fund itself also identified interesting developments; before nominating candidates it consulted experts in the various areas of activity and the various regions.
The arts and the media are platforms for debate, analysing and criticising the contexts in which they play their part. Artists and intellectuals express their views on the political, religious, social and cultural circumstances in which they live and work. Their frank comments often meet with social resistance or result in cultural exclusion or state oppression. In response, they seek refuge; they create and inhabit 'spaces of freedom'. They establish alternative platforms in different - but mostly interlinked - places or spaces, each presenting a way of avoiding the restrictions or transcending the repercussions. The three alternatives identified by the Fund can be characterised as exile, margins or defiance. In other words: giving ground, going underground or taking up the challenge above ground.
Artists can leave their limiting environments and go to cities outside the reach of their oppressors. They move to 'external cultural capitals', such as Miami for Cubans or Paris for Algerians. Alternatively, they can operate in cultural margins, where artists and intellectuals are unrecognisable to their opponents or cannot be apprehended. Finally, artists can occupy platforms of major (often at the international level) exposure, where the oppression can be challenged openly and where protection is offered by the large numbers of witnesses to the message.
The 1999 Principal Award goes to three persons who have paved the way for free social and cultural comment. They represent the spaces which are characterised as 'exile', 'margins' en 'the large-scale public platform' respectively:
Mohamed Fellag (1950, Azeffoun, Algeria) is a comedian. The ex-director of the Théâtre Régional in Bougie, Algeria, he arrived in Paris in 1995. There he has made humour an area in which Algerian taboos relating to colonialism and independence, oppression and bureaucracy, emigration and hopelessness, are mentioned by name and broken. His work comes as a tremendous relief to his Algerian/French audiences in France and to the Algerians who watch and listen to the tapes in Kabyle, Arabic and French in their own country.
The cultural magazine Vitral was founded in 1994 and is based in Pinar del Río, Cuba. It is a private initiative of a group of independent intellectuals, who make full use of the relative protection of the Roman Catholic church in order to create space for free debate. Vitral is not an organ of the church; its readers are to be found both in Cuba and outside the country. Art and culture, politics and faith are discussed in Vitral by academics, journalists, men and women of letters and others who seek to add nuances.
The satellite television channel Al-Jazeera (based in Doha, Qatar) has been broadcasting since 1996. It represents a revolution in the media culture of the Arab world. There is a place for any subject, any voice, in the broadcasts, especially in the news and in discussion programmes such as 'Ar-Raï al-Akhar' (the other view) and 'Bila Hudud' (without frontiers). Al-Jazeera transcends the limitations which are placed on the expression of opinion in its own region of the world, allowing 250 million viewers all over the globe to share this new refuge.
The commitment of Patrick Chamoiseau (1953, Fort de France, Martinique) to the Caribbean society of which he is part goes further than his literary work. He is a pioneer of the Créolité Movement; using an innovative, creolised French, he is the narrator of Creole history. Together with other intellectuals in Martinique he is creating a museum for Creole art.
Through his criticism of the romanticised approach to oral traditions, Paulin J. Hountondji (1942, Abidjan, Ivory Coast; based in Bénin) has played a major role in placing African philosophy on a more scholarly footing. He founded the Inter-African Council for Philosophy, has brought together French-speaking and English-speaking philosophers and has carried out research and publication projects. He is pioneering the creation of a research institute in Africa to bring together the learning dispersed throughout Africa and the diaspora.
Ever since the 1970s Cildo Meireles (1948, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) has played an inspiring and leading role in the Brazilian and Latin American art world; he addresses political themes in his work with the aim of starting a public debate. His views are always refreshing, so that he continues to give new impetus to the Brazilian and international art scene.
Pepetela (1941, Benguela, Angola) tells an alternative Angolan tale: that of the Creole and white population of his country. In his literary and academic work he discusses colonisation and the post-colonial problems in Angola and the whole of Africa - problems such as the ubiquitous corruption. Pepetela was born as the son of Portuguese parents; he was actively engaged in the guerrilla against the colonial power and continues to involve himself in the social debate in Angola.
As a frontier-transcending pioneer, sociologist Dessalegn Rahmato (1940, Nazret, Shoa Province, Ethiopia) succeeds in combining the various aspects of development theory and practice. He is the founding Director of the Forum for Social Studies in Addis Abeba (1998), an institute for research and development strategy. Rahmato shows backbone in a country in crisis and is always finding openings for a broadly-based debate on development and social change.
Ceramicists Juana Marta Rodas and Julia Isídrez (Itá, Paraguay) confront the prevailing prejudices which dismiss popular culture as folklore and a collection of exotic curiosities. Their traditional work, which they make in their rural village, has a highly individual aesthetic and expressionistic character. They transform craft into modern art, although it is not their aim to be 'modern' or to consciously seek 'authenticity'.
Claudia Roden (1936, Cairo, Egypt; currently based in the UK) is both the originator and the leading exponent of research into the culinary cultures of the Middle East and North Africa. She practices a form of culinary anthropology and history in which there is room both for the scientific approach and for the personal experience of chefs, consumers and herself. She makes a place for the culture of eating within the cultural heritage of the Mediterranean region from which she comes.
Cheick Oumar Sissoko (1945, Mali) is a film-maker who places himself at the service of the film industry and the cultural climate in his country. The money that he earns from his high-quality films he uses for his film library and cultural centre in Bamako. He is working there on an African dubbing facility where international films can be dubbed in languages such as Bambara, Wolof and Peul.
Tsai Chih Chung (1948, Chang Hwa County, Taiwan) presents the Chinese classics in the form of modern-day cartoons. He has interpreted among others Lao Zi, Confucius, Mencius, Zhuang Zi and Sun Zi and made their work accessible to an unprecedentedly wide public. Tsai's work has made him immensely popular and has been translated into various languages. In Chinese versions he is read by people in Taiwan, the diaspora and the People's Republic of China.
Kenneth Yeang (1948, Penang, Malaysia) conceived the 'green skyscraper'. In his architecture he uses avant-garde technology in order to build an artificial environment within which he provides natural lighting and air circulation and in which he collects rainwater and generates solar energy. His buildings are to a large extent self-sufficient and thus present a new solution to modern-day ecological problems.
We sincerely hope that the 1999 Prince Claus Awards will offer new insights in the field of culture and development and that they will serve as a stimulus to the laureates.
The 1999 Prince Claus Awards Committee,
Adriaan van der Staay, Charles Correa, Emile Fallaux, Mai Ghoussoub, Gaston Kaboré, Gerardo Mosquera
