Africa Is a Country

Postmodernism on Ice

Africa Is a Country Podcast
African Five-a-Side Podcast

Postmodernism on Ice

By
Sean Jacobs

The Winter Olympics features a Russian skaters who dress in animal skin costumes to perform to an "Aboriginal Song." There's more.

Skaters from the Winter Olympics; not the ones in animal skins or the ones coached by a former Stasi informer (Zemistor, via Flickr CC).

So it turns out that tonight at the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Canada, in the pairs figure skating finals, Germany will be presented by Robin Szolkowy, whose father is Tanzanian (his mother is German), along with his Ukranian-born partner, Aliona Savchenko. Together they will perform a routine choreographed to the music of the film, “Out of Africa,” which, if you forgot, is based on a Danish writer‘s white colonial fantasy of Kenya.  And, to top it all, as a German friend informed me, Szolkowy and Savchenko’s coach, himself a championship skater, was an informant for the East German secret police. My head is spinning.

I won’t waste any comment on the Russian pair who put on animal skin costumes (think a Broadway fantasy like The Lion King) to perform their “Aboriginal Song.” Australian indigenous leaders objected, but they still continued. They just washed off their face paintings. That’s too easy.

Update: Overall, Szolkowy and Savchenko won the bronze medal for Germany in Vancouver. Domnina an Shabalin, the animal print pair, did not medal.

Further Reading

Repoliticizing a generation

Thirty-eight years after Thomas Sankara’s assassination, the struggle for justice and self-determination endures—from stalled archives and unfulfilled verdicts to new calls for pan-African renewal and a 21st-century anti-imperialist front.

Drip is temporary

The apparel brand Drip was meant to prove that South Africa’s townships could inspire global style. Instead, it revealed how easily black success stories are consumed and undone by the contradictions of neoliberal aspiration.

Energy for whom?

Behind the fanfare of the Africa Climate Summit, the East African Crude Oil Pipeline shows how neocolonial extraction still drives Africa’s energy future.

The sound of revolt

On his third album, Afro-Portuguese artist Scúru Fitchádu fuses ancestral wisdom with urban revolt, turning memory and militancy into a soundtrack for resistance.

O som da revolta

No seu terceiro álbum, o artista afro-português Scúru Fitchádu funde a sabedoria ancestral com a revolta urbana, transformando memória e militância em uma trilha sonora para a resistência.