Mixed Race Studies

Vienna to London: Black to Mixed-Race

Afropean: Adventures in Afro Europe
2015-03-19

Annina Chirade

I was born in Vienna, a place which has historically been a frontier between Eastern and Western Europe. I was primarily brought up in London, a city whose population reflects the reaches of the British Empire. It is also the place my parents forged new homes having left their respective homelands. My father is from Ghana and ethnically Asante (one should really say he is Asante first and foremost). My mother is a child of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire and my grandmother’s post-war exile from Sudetenland – her homeland. I’m mixed-race, even though the term never seems to capture the overlapping cultural and personal narratives that exist inside of myself and my family. As a child in the ‘90s, I went back and forth between being black in Vienna and mixed-race in London…

Read the entire article here.

Interview with Filmmaker Adu Lalouschek

Rooted In Magazine
2015-10-13

Annina Chirade

Adu Lalouschek is a 21-year-old filmmaker from London and recent graduate of the London College of Communication [University of the Arts]. Whilst studying Film and Television at University, Adu met fellow course mate Alex Wondergem, “I first remember meeting Alex when he was drumming on his lap in a seminar, he saw me and he said ‘Hey brother, where are you from?’”. It was then that they both found they were of mixed-Ghanaian descent, but they began their initial creative partnership as musicians; Alex played the drums whilst Adu was on the guitar. This soon transitioned into a film partnership that would see them co-directing and co-producing, “Our first film was a narrative film based on the Tottenham Riots which we made in 2012. But, my real passion came when we started making our documentaries in West Africa and I could see how our films were part of the changing landscape.”

Alex spent the majority of his life in Accra, whereas Adu grew up in London. They have two distinct visions which they are able to combine to create engaging work. In their second year of study, they came up with the idea for the In the Life series, where they portray interesting personal stories in Ghana. Their first in the series was Scrap Metal Men (2014), in which they followed two scrap workers in Agblogboshie – formerly the world’s largest e-waste dump. The second, Ga Fishermen (2015) documents the fast-disappearing traditions of the Ga fisherman in Accra; it premiered at BAFTA student screening and was shown at Chale Wote 2015. The third, and most recent, is Warrior’s Gym (2015) in which they capture the personal triumph of one of Ghana’s strongest men – Warrior. Both Ga Fishermen and Warrior’s Gym will be available to view at 1:54 from the 15th to 18th of October.

Aside from his films with Alex, Adu has also taken recent trips to Roses, Spain and Nsukka, Nigeria; there he spent time photographing and filming subjects. In this interview he will sharing snapshots from his travels, and films with Alex.

Annina: How does your heritage inform the stories and work you choose to do?

Adu: I’m Ghanaian and also Austrian, but first and foremost, I’m a Londoner. Alex and I are both mixed-race, and it’s obvious from our appearance when we walk around Ghana, that we’re not fully Ghanaian – we acknowledge that. Our main focus was to not make poverty-chic documentaries. We wanted to make documentaries in Accra, Ghana and not allow people to view Africa as a homogeneous place. We approached it in different ways. In our first documentary Scrap Metal Men, we didn’t have any talking head shots because we thought that was really cliché. We always made sure we filmed from a lower angle, because we didn’t want to be looking down on our subjects. By incorporating different techniques we found a way to place our feet in the documentary world – it was experimental in that sense. Our voice came through precisely because we didn’t want to dictate to the viewer. We showed some text to give context at the beginning and the end of the documentary, but we really let the viewer inform themselves through the narrative and the characters that we portrayed…

Read the entire article here.

Cosmopolitanism, Black Culture and the Case of Rachel Dolezal

Rooted In Magazine
2015-06-16

Annina Chirade

In this past week the internet has been captivated by the unfolding tale of Rachel Dolezal, a white woman who reportedly has been passing for black since 2007. She was, until recently, the President of the NAACP chapter in Spokane, Washington and a very vocal proponent of black issues within that community. Her construction of a ‘black’ identity is both intricate and mystifying, it’s a deceit that forces us to ask – how did no one know she was white? Rachel’s performance of black womanhood has thrust global scrutiny onto debates about the constructions of blackness. In the book ‘The Conservation of Races’, W.E.B. Du Bois argues that race is a ‘socio-historical construct’: a construct defined as much by the emotional, spiritual and psychological, as it is by the societal. The historical context comes from inheritance of a struggle, black culture has been defined by its resistance – a place where we can explore and celebrate our complexity. The resistance is also coupled with a struggle for autonomy, and as black culture is continually absorbed into popular culture, one must ask: Is Rachel a signal for what’s to come?…

Read the entire article here.

Q & A with Ana Carolina Vidal + her Afro-Futuristic project

Rooted In Magazine
2015-07-08

Annina Chirade

O Mestiço Revisited II, Ana Carolina Vidal

São Paulo native, Ana Carolina Vidal, is a multi-racial Brazilian artist who explores the dynamics of her country through her art. Her work is largely focused on portraiture; each piece in her ongoing Afro-Futuristic project is both an affirmation and reimagining of her identity. Through each subject, she pushes for us to see the ancestors that exist within us. Her gaze is filled with an emotional honesty towards a society still at odds with its past. Ana centres her Indigenous, African and European roots within a larger social framework; the political and personal can’t help but be intertwined in her work.

It’s precisely because of her honesty that one is able to understand the deep love she has for her homeland. In every conversation we’ve had, her knowledge and quest to share the fullness of her country’s many cultures leaves one wanting to know more. She embraces its music, art, film, literature, dance, food and politics with passion. Ana is part of a young generation looking to break down the simplistic images many have of Brazil, and to shape its future. She has even created a Tumblr page, Brasil of Color, to let fellow Brazilians learn and share their histories. So how does her art speak to a society so awash with culture and complexity? I set up an interview to find out.

Annina: What is your background as an artist – do you consider yourself as mostly self-taught?

Ana: When I was a child, my aunt was my first contact with art. She was a painter and inspired me to pursue what I love – even if it took me a lifetime – I should do it! I would bother my parents a lot as a child to put me in a local artisan group; they taught me some handicrafts and how to paint, but I took those classes for a short period. Then when I was very young at school I took extra-curricular painting classes. In my teenage years I stopped painting. I was mainly self-taught, I still feel I need to learn so much. I think it’s interesting to have that academic basis, not only of techniques, but ways of thinking and building your creative process; learning new ways to relate to art that are different from the ways you already do…

…Annina: In your work you give special focus to Afro-Brazilian and Indigenous people, why is that important to you?

Ana: I think it’s important to reaffirm myself to me. Although I have many privileges by being white-passing, my family is so multi-racial. I heard a lot of stories and encountered so many backgrounds which were extremely different. I always had the feeling that most of my family got lost in time; you don’t know the name of someone, you don’t know their story, because many of them were very poor. I always wanted to document them so that they would no longer be forgotten.

We have this myth of ‘Brazilian racial democracy’, but we know our [people of colour] experiences are different and I could always see that growing up. I could see how different my father’s life was from my mother’s; how my mother could get further being a white woman. In my father’s family, I could see the difference between him as a black man and my aunt’s as black women; how they stayed behind for obvious gender and race reasons. Although I am privileged enough to not go through a lot of that, I was still affected in many ways. I still hear comments – they are less offensive – I’m always questioned about my identity…

Read the entire interview here.

“Well, I’ve always identified myself as black… and mixed kind of simultaneously. But as far as my identity, I see my mixed-race as being part of a broader black experience, or within the African diaspora. I don’t see that as a white experience or an Austrian experience, just because I see myself as a black woman or a black person within a place where it’s predominantly white. So I know that whiteness is not something I’m a part of, even though my mother is white and I have a cultural background as far as my Austrian side. But, to identify as white or solely as mixed without understanding how much my black experience and my blackness plays a part in my life, to me, just personally, I couldn’t do that.” —Annina Chirade

Kim Chakanetsa, “Being ‘Mixed Race’: Kira Lea Dargin and Annina Chirade,” The Conversation on BBC World Service, May 11, 2015. (00:14:20-00:14:38). http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02qm960.

Being ‘Mixed Race’: Kira Lea Dargin and Annina Chirade

BBC World Service
The Conversation
2015-05-11

Kim Chakanetsa, Presenter

Left: Kira Lea Dargin. Credit: Claire Mahjoub, SSH. Right: Annina Chirade. Credit: Adu Lalouschek

Kira Lea Dargin’s parents met at church. Her mother is white from a Russian family who emigrated to Australia in the 1950s, and her father is Aboriginal Australian. Being “mixed” Kira says, means constantly having to explain how you came about or how your family manages to blend. Having come through some difficult times as a teenager Kira now happily identifies with both of her cultural backgrounds. As the director of ‘Aboriginal Model Management Australia‘, her mission is to help broaden how Australian beauty is defined.

Annina Chirade describes herself as Ghanaian Austrian. She is the founder and editor of Rooted In magazine. When she was growing up, between London and Vienna, people would often question whether she was related to her fair, straight-haired mother. After many years obsessively straightening her own “kinky, curly, Afro-” hair as a teenager, she found her own style – inspired by the confident styles of black female singers like Erykah Badu. Annina says that when you are ‘mixed-race’ people make assumptions about your identity and consider it to be “up for debate”, but she is clear that “whiteness is not something I’m a part of.”

Listen to the interview here. Download the episode (00:26:55) here.