Raining Madiba

The year is 2008, the month is August, and I am in South Africa, the land of my birth. It is a very chilly morning in the Cape as we set out for Groot Drakenstein prison, formally known as Victor Verster. It is so chilly in fact, that we make sure we have extra layers of clothing under our smart outfits. 

My husband and I are privileged to be invited to the unveiling of a 3,2 metre statue by the sculptor Jean Doyle.  This is no ordinary sculpture, for it commemorates a significant event in 1990, and a historic moment in Nelson Mandela’s walk to freedom.  

The bronze statue marks the spot outside the prison where Nelson Mandela took his first steps as a free man after twenty seven years. 

We drive from Cape Town to the Cape Winelands. As we approach the prison after an hour long drive, we go through at least three security checks, confirming for us that Madiba will indeed be present at the unveiling. He is! 

We are welcomed by Tokyo Sexwale, who commissioned the sculpture, into a huge marquee, erected especially for the event. We mingle with the other guests and are delighted when we are introduced to Ahmed Kathrada and Eddie Daniels, both of whom were on Robben Island with Nelson Mandela. We discover that it is Ahmed’s 79th birthday today and that Eddie is 80 years old, despite the fact that he looks as if he is in his late 60’s!

“Tell them about the day you stole the newspaper from Brother September when he was praying”, says Ahmed to Eddie, who replies that “It was a spur of the moment thing!”  We laugh together as this tale and others are shared.

Eddie tells us that they are healthy now in their old age because when they were young they did physcial labour, ate no fatty foods and had discipline! Realizing what he is referring to, we all burst out laughing again. 

The time for the unveiling arrives and we move outside. The wind is blowing and it is raining. My small umbrella keeps blowing inside out. Next to us stand the Brand family.  Mr Brand was Nelson Mandela’s prison warden. I look at him and am overwhelmed as I am confronted head on with the overwhelming power of forgiveness and reconciliation. 

To our right is a special tent that has been set up for Madiba and his family. 

Speeches are made and then the moment arrives. As the statue is unveiled, the skies open further and there is the most incredible downpour in that instant!  Perhaps I should not be surprised but I am. Such a downpour is considered a blessing in Africa. I am witnessing a special moment.  Not only those of us present, but all of nature, is applauding and approving. 

I decide that the rain will not deter me.  I cannot go home without at least one photo of Madiba.  I make my way as close as possible to the open-sided tent. A lady next to me shares her huge black umbrella with me as I hold up my camera and shakingly click. 

Later, my sms to my children reads, “Drenched but happy. Saw him. Love Mom”

Five years have passed and I now live in Dubai. In Abu Dhabi this week I attended the memorial service for Nelson Mandela, who passed away on 5 December. 

After the service, my dear friend Bahareh Amidi, who recited at the memorial, encouraged me to create an artwork as a tribute to Madiba. I got out my photos taken at the unveiling, picked up my iphone, and allowed my fingers to create a piece.

The resulting artwork is entitled “Raining Madiba” and depicts Nelson Mandela becoming a raindrop which blesses the entire world.

Today I was honored to share it at a special event in Dubai.  South Africans from all over the region gathered together with friends at the Al Habtoor Grand Hotel, to watch a live broadcast of Nelson Mandela’s funeral in Qunu, his rural home village in the Eastern Cape Province.

Thank you to Phebus Georgiades, secretary general of the South African Business Council in the UAE for allowing me to do so.  Mr Georgiades organized the memorial event in coordination with the South African Consulate General.  

Thank you to to all who have encouraged me and thank you to all who shared with me what they see in the artwork.

May "Raining Madiba" continue to foster reconciliation and love amongst us all.

iPhoneography Art Interview

I am excited to share that I was recently interviewed by Kate England of Marmalade Moon. 

The interview "Creative iPhoneographer Linda Hollier" can be read in full here.

Technology and Transformation

Robb Smith, in a TEDx video entitled “The Transformational Life”, explains how throughout the ages the tools of the time have gone hand in the hand with the size of communities.

In the hunting and gathering era, the average size of a community was 40 people. When the digging stick was invented, plants could be cultivated and they provided food for a community of about 1500. The invention of the plow in the agrarian age supported a larger population of about 100 thousand people and the invention of machines such as the printing press and the steam engine in the industrial era of the 17th to 19th centuries, allowed societies to grow to about 10 million people.

This exponential growth continued with the invention of the transistor in 1947 and the computer revolution of the next decades. The early 1990s saw the coming into being of a world wide web of 100 million people. High speed data networks and the spread of smartphones mean that today almost 7 billion people have the possibility of becoming a single society.

We say the world has become smaller, but in actual fact communities have become larger.

As I walked from the metro one evening recently, white cords dangled from my ears and connected to my iphone which I carried in my right hand. The music which accompanied me paused briefly as I took an incoming call. A little while later I stopped to capture an image on my camera roll, and as I did so, I suddenly saw myself as if from afar. This was accompanied by an overwhelming thought - “I’m a cyborg now!”

The separation between being online and offline had suddenly disappeared. The boundary between these two worlds blurred and they suddenly collapsed into one.

No doubt the experience was greatly influenced by a fascinating TED talk, “We are all cyborgs now” by Amber Case, which I had recently watched, but nevertheless, I was filled with excitement and gratitude for the fact that I was living in an age where people can interconnect in real time by means of a little handheld device.

A 1960 paper on space travel defined a cyborg as an organism “to which exogenous components have been added for the purpose of adapting to new environments”.

It is interesting to note that whereas the invention of previous tools had enabled humans to extend their physical selves, current technology allows for the extension of the mental self.

“here2here” took on an added meaning as I realized that the “virtual” and the “real” world were no longer separate for me. They formed a wholeness which brought with it new dimensions I could not have imagined even five years ago.

"Avatars"

My iphoneography art is an attempt to express these dimensions. Created with apps, the outcome is not fixed at the start of the process. Patient flicking through numerous adaptations of an image I am working on allows me to intuitively choose the one I feel most appropriate. The end image is an expression of the experience of being in cyberspace, as well as an example of being a co-creator with the apps and technology at my disposal.

I look at this world as it looks back at me, and suddenly I am looking as the world.

This looking is accompanied by a deepening sense of responsibility and I am reminded of the question asked by Wisdom 2.0:

“How can we live with greater presence, meaning and mindfulness in the technology age?”

The objective of the conference, @Wisdom2conf, this year, was to address the challenge of our generation: “to not only live connected to one another through technology, but to do so in ways that are beneficial to our own well-being, effective in our work and useful to the world.” I can highly recommend the 2013 videos. (One of my favorites is Jon Kabat-Zinn being interviewed by Melissa Daimler of Twitter).

The technology of this age brings with it the temptation of distraction and addiction when we do not realize the need to be grounded. Checking in with our inner and outward experience regularly and mindfully helps us to maintain this groundedness.

“Without a connection to the earth and to the physical body, all signals become static”. Steven Vedro in “Twitter, Ambient Awareness and Spiritual Practice”.

I share Robb Smith’s opinion. We are no longer in the Information age. We have entered the Transformation age with all the opportunities it offers us to look not at the other through all the perspectives being offered us, but as the other.

Related blog posts:

Digital Archways

Corridorsofcyberspace

Cyberflanerie: Deep Listening in Cyberspace

Time melting

In 1931, Salvado Dalí introduced the image of soft, melting pocket watches in one of his most famous works, “The Persistence of Memory”.

Suggesting that time was not as rigid and fixed as many people believed, the watches also suggested Einstein’s theory that time is relative. The image of the melting watch was portrayed by Dalí throughout his lifetime. 

In Dalí’s sculpture “Dance of Time II” seen above, Time appears to be fluid as it moves and dances in rhythm with the beat of the universe.  

Influenced by their perception of time, humans have always attempted to dance with Time in various ways and to different beats. And Time is a versatile dancer.

When there was no experience of self separate from the environment, magic Time danced in pointed shoes through point-like moments. Its flying leaps from moment to moment were magical, taking all and sundry along.

The repetitive dance steps accompanying the chorus of mythic, cyclical Time formed an ongoing round as Time danced in circles. Its seasonal music was comforting and offered hope. 

With the coming of the Age of Reason, time was seen to be linear, consisting of past, present and future. This necessitated the learning of new steps in the dance with mental Time, all in the name of progress. Time marched on, beating out its rhythm.

Postmodernism allowed all movement to be dance, and so Time improvised, focusing on the individual it was partnering with.

In dreams, Time leads in a tango-like dance. Time's embrace of the dreamer alternates between the open and the closed as scenes change rapidly from one to another and characters morph into each other.

Technology has made possible no time and all time in a huge web. In an age of information and an age of communion, individuals connect with each other regardless of time zones.

 “Sardana” by Picasso

Reminiscent of the Sardana, a dance which symbolises a spirit of brotherhood and harmony, the dance with Time is one of interconnectedness, acknowledging self and the other in a unique fashion. Perhaps on the threshold of entering another dimension, we more and more begin to be reminded of pure grace and fluidity of movement. Time is no longer Chronos. It is dancing as Kairos, known to those individuals who have experienced being in a state of flow.

In this state, an individual's subjective experience of time is certainly altered. Time seems to disappear as it were, hiding its face for as long as the experience lasts.

No noticing of thoughts, emotions or feelings. No concept even of self for as long as the experience lasts. Present and in the moment. No thing in which all things rise. An emptiness giving rise to all forms. Experiential oneness with it all.

Mindful, present and in the moment, and most definitely aided by technology in a significant way, together we are now able to begin to enter a dance of shared flow which allows, welcomes and integrates all the various dance steps. 

Jean Gebser, spoke of timelessness and  time-freedom.

Jeremy Johnson, @jdj_tweets, in his excellent piece “The Integral Philosopher: Jean Gebser and Time” writes, 

“Integral is not abstraction. It is not a new system of ideas that everyone can agree on. It is a direct experience of “Presence.” Not an eternal now, but a consciousness that supports all the multitudes of experience, all the different ways we can perceive time.”

In this dance of Presence, all movements rise and fall. At its heart is stillness.  

“Except for the point, the still point, there would be no dance, and there is only the dance." - TS Eliot

Do we see the rhythmless and rhythmful stillness?  Do we hear, smell, taste and feel the beat? Do we intuit the dance?

The Gathering

Visiting the Pavilion in Downtown Dubai yesterday, I noticed that there were workers completing the installation of a new sculpture on the sidewalk.

After the installation was completed I went outside to photograph the figures from various angles, before going inside to continue what I was working on. 

As sunset approached the pink fingers stretching across the sky to embrace the Burj Khalifa drew me outside again. The chatting figures of the sculpture seemed happy in their new setting. 

While photographing them a gentleman and lady approached. Seeing me photograph the figures, she told me that the gentleman was the artist. I was privileged to meet architect and sculptor Xavier Corbero. 

A man with incredible vision, Corbero has built a dream home whose spaces are linked by underground passageways.

“His original vision of the property has since expanded to include a retreat for artists, studio spaces, workshops, a foundry, dozens of surreal chambers for residents and guests, sprawling galleries, living rooms, a myriad of hobbit nooks all connected by serpentine stairways filling over 10,000 square meters.”

Salvador Dali was Corbero’s first patron and Corbero is now considered to be Spain’s most important living sculptor. 

"You must leave things open so the person enjoys or looks," says Corbero. "I feel that when people look at a piece of art they become artists, they see what they see not what there is. What there is helps them to see something else and they feel better because they see something they were not seeing before seeing that. That's what I like to do.”

Standing next to his work, he seemed to effortlessly blend in with the figures, even unintentionally perhaps, replicating the pose of the figure he was standing next to.

 

In her piece on Corbero’s work in Beirut, Micheline Hazou, @mich1mich writes,

“Perhaps it’s the way the figures are positioned, in relation to the space and to one another that is as important as their bulk and mass…”

Corbero has said, "What is good is the scale, if you get the scale right, space stops being space to become mind. And this happens in a sculpture and it happens in architecture."

The sculpture, called The Gathering, invites one into its circle. The chatting figures capture for me the mix that is Dubai, a city where  many different nationalities and cultures meet.

The figures lean into each other with attention. They are accommodating of each other’s space and seem to acknowledge the other, while at the same time forming a unit. The energy flowing between them as they connect is almost palpable.

There is the sense that more personalities are about to join the gathering and engage in conversation. This excites me as non-judgmental listening and peaceful dialogue is so crucial in the world right now.

I immediately think too of this here2here space where we are all gathering now. What does it matter where we are physically situated in time and space. We can gather, be present here together, converse and share. We might all be different but we are more similar than we can imagine.

Whether gathering on sidewalks of cities, or sensing our interconnectedness in a large web made possible by technology, together we bear witness to Presence.