Thru Novel Lenses! New Vision New Perspectives New Ideas New Directions For the New World! Futuring Sustainable Development in the Post Pandemic Planet From Pre School to Policy Making
On World Folklore Day I follow an invitation from a search engine to explore information about the day and folklore. It takes me down a rabbit hole of the representations and misrepresentations of information by AI, the new digital tool now widely available in the internet landscape. This takes a close look at how AI is altering that landscape. it is aimed to inform and build critical awareness around uses of AI across sectors.
In this post I look closely at how AI is misrepresenting and misinterpretation information which it shares along with semblance of 'moodiness' aligned to attitudes that are unnerving in a technical environment.
See post: https://krisrampersad.com/abused-by-a-moody-angry-ai-on-world-folklore-day-taking-on-the-tech-giants/
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Heritage Educator Dr Kris Rampersad in an alien landscape on World Folklore Day declares Open I is Not Open-Minded AI - distortion of information in the digital age Reengineering Education Retooling all sectors for the Digital Age
An advertisement by a bank sparks a letter to an editor which is published in a newspaper, released on social media and stirs and sparks a virtual racial war.
The fingers point now to a cycle of blame: Who's at fault?
Is it that the advertising agency and the bank were insensitive to the deeply entrenched racism and other historical hurts festering in the society? Was the media fuelling racism to sell a few to a gullible public who is sure to jump at the ongoing race-baiting, consciously or subconsciously perpetrated on a society that cannot rise out of the scars of the past? Each may have very sound and solid justifications on its actions, but the reality is that media, culture and gender sensitive literacy have moved to the forefront of the challenge for social literacy, virtually replacing the traditional three R's with a new one - Respect!
And we are way past the time to begin to unravel and rethread the flaying and flawed social fabric.
It points to the challenge for social, cultural, gneder sensitive literacy and re-educating the education setor ...
Join the Webinar on new opportunities for Caribbean Cuisine Tourism Agriculture. The webinar is a short presentation on strategies, best practise and sustainable solutions being rolled out in awarding Regions of Gastronomy. It will provide information on opportunities to become a founding member of the World Region of Gastronomy Platform and set out on candidacy to be awarded 1st Caribbean Region of Gastronomy.
The presentation will be followed by an open question and answer session chaired by International Cultural Heritage Educator/Facilitator, award winning Journalist , Author and Creator of the GLoCaL Knowledge Pot, Dr Kris Rampersad. Webinar Link: GOTOMEETING LINK: https://global.gotomeeting.com/join/245466397 Free Webinar on Strategies and solutions for sustainable cultural and food tourism from the World Region of Gastronomy Platform will take place on DATE: Wednesday 29 July 2020 at 11.00h (Caribbean; 17.00h CET) through the GOTOMEETING LINK: https://global.gotomeeting.com/join/245466397
Dear Mayor, and noble and other honourable citizens of the colourless world
I see there is a call for suggestions on how to treat with the colonial legacy and monuments - which must be close to the millionth such call to which I have responded. But now aware that there will be no action along the lines that I have used, tried and tested with other similarly trauma-inflicted communities of our region, I am not even tempted to point out that most times I feel like I have been talking to stone or that we only reaping the whirlwind that will continue to gather strength as we add fury to savagery, I propose the following as a preliminary list for your immediate action to assuage the bloodthirsty masses. I am sure these would meet with nods and applause of approval from noted historians, educators, leaders, opinion leaders and the like from whom you seek counsel. This list is to exorcise the ghosts roaming Port of Spain, while I compile the much larger list for exorcism across the country, and beyond, Dear Mayor. I come, you see, Mr Mayor, to not praise, but bury Columbus, along with the colonial legacy embedded in our psyche, landscapes and institutions and monuments of memory.
More at: https://krisrampersad.com/exorcising-historical-trauma-black-white-of-monuments-memory/
Youth Elderly Post Pandemic Planet Resistance Project: With COVID-19 social distancing, gaps between generations expands as elders become high risk group. GloCal redress actions bridging intergenerational divide.
The new COVID-19 threat is not just a health pandemic but a socio-cultural, economic and political one as well. It is upturning the way of life of the world, leaving many sectors grasping for foundation.
Futuring it may mean that many communities may have to turn inwards towards their own knowledge, skills, experiences, tools and resources to meet their needs. Join the Global Local Caribbean GloCal COVID Post Pandemic Planet Challenge, FEDs Any Age, Any Interest, Any Community. Stimulating actions and education in preparation for the Post Pandemic Planet. Tips, Tools, Tests, Templates. Sign on at www.krisrampersad.com and stay tuned for more #GloCalFEDsCOVIDChallenge#GloCalFEDs#GloCalPostPandemicPlanetChallenge#GloCalPostPandemicPlanet#KrisRampersad
UNESCO Culture Consultant Kris Rampersad conducted a two day workshop for UNESCO, cultural policy-makers, and related interest groups from the Caribbean on the UNESCO Cultural Diversity Programming Lens (CDPL) in Grenada. She explained that the Caribbean is not making adequate use of international spaces where it can lobby for more significant representation of the region’s assets, such as its culture. Rampersad also warned against formulating cultural policies that may not be relevant to national and regional realities, saying that there is a delicate balance that must be maintained between the intrinsic value of culture and the economic potential of cultural products.
Rampersad stated that “The Caribbean has much to offer the international community when it com
es to our experiences of migration, adaptation, globalization, multiculturalism, cultural identities and evolution of old and the creation of new cultures.” She noted that the Caribbean has “a record of achievement of social cohesion from its cultural diversity.” However, she said, much of these Caribbean achievements and advances have not factored into the drafting of international instruments as the UNESCO Culture Conventions, and the discourse that has since arisen surrounding diversity, and protection and conservation of cultural heritage and assets.
Rampersad said the CPDL can help the region assess the value of these contributions. She pointed out that only six Caribbean countries to date have ratified the UNESCO Convention on cultural diversity, but there is now a “mad scramble” to do because of the launch of the Fund for Cultural Diversity which is only accessible by countries that have ratified the Convention. She stressed that Caribbean countries should ratify the Cultural Diversity and other conventions, but must do so with a clear purpose and an awareness of how cultural policies can “adequately reflect Caribbean experiences and are more relevant to Caribbean realities.”
See video this page on new release: Festival Fables I the Sky & Me the Sea by Kris Rampersad. LiTTscapes - Landscapes of Fiction: Available on Amazon.
Kris Rampersad is an independent media, cultural and literary consultant l She holds a PhD in Global Literatures in English from the University of the West Indies.. She was founder and coordinator of the Trinidad Theatre Workshop Fund for Literature, Drama and Film and a founding member of the Friends of Mr. Biswas (Literary Restoration) Committee and the Commonwealth Film Fund.
For more, to connect and to explore new resources and directions go to the GLoCal Knowledge Pot Website www.krisrampersad.com
In celebration of Independence, Demokrissy is migrating!
Loyal followers of Demokrissy have been enquiring about the State of the State at Independence.
While the State itself might be slow to evolve, we are continue our revolution, smashing walls and barriers (read more and Subscribe https://krisrampersad.com/)
Beyond the Boundaries of Cricket: what do you do at the end of play? Join us in exploring the landscapes, lifestyles and cultures of the games we play. Cricket Lovely Cricket and other traditional SporTTscapes, CiTTyscapes, Festivals, Folk Champions & Heroes of the islands.
Specially customised to any interests, industry, age to entertain, educate, and empower through exploration and experience.
From CLR's metaphysical explorations in Beyond the Boundaries through the heritage that has made and unmade heroes and champions.
Tours. Teas. Talks. See video
By Requests Only. Group and Corporate Specials. Book Yours Today.
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No tourist guide can give more
comprehensive introduction to nation as LiTTscapes
Review
& Appraisal of LiTTscapes by
Professor Al Creighton, Deputy Vice
Chancellor of the University of Guyana and of the Guyana Prize for Literature
at LiTTribute II – LiTTurgy to the Mainland at Moray House Trust, Georgetown
We are in the presence
this afternoon of a neat kind of confluence.
Guyana at this time is in the middle of celebrating nationhood – the
peak of it is Republic Day one week from now.
The publication being launched in Guyana today is a celebration of
nationhood as it is captured through photography, an explanatory text and the
literature of Trinidad and Tobago. The
easiest way to begin an analysis of this book Littscapes by Kris Rampersad is to describe it – give an idea so
that the audience gets a clear picture of exactly what it is. But that is not the easiest way, because it
is a text that defies easy description.
There are more types that it is than things that it is not.
The publication is Littscapes : Landscapes of Fiction from
Trinidad and Tobago by Kris Rampersad, published in St Augustine, Trinidad,
in 2012. The bibliographical details
describe it as “First Edition 2012”, which is not surprising, given its
multi-tasking nature and its wide reach, and this suggests that, also
considering the several things that it seems to set out to cover, there is more
to come in future editions.
It is 200 pages of
written and visual text, presenting the landscape of Trinidad and Tobago in
passages of descriptions, explanations and quotations, very impressively
supported and complemented by hundreds of colour photographs and excerpts from
the literature of the country. Rampersad
always interweaves into her own descriptions, the pieces taken from the
literature, so that one gets pictures of the several varied subjects from the
point of view of the writers and of their fictional characters. These are taken predominantly from works of
fiction covering a range of short stories and novels, but to a lesser extent,
there is reference to poetry and drama.
The idea of
“littscapes” comes from this drawing from the literature to give scenes, views
and visions of landscape and life in clear, colourful, illustrative pictures as
well as snippets of how they are treated in the literature. It is a quite thorough artistic concept. It is a portrait and biography of the nation
of Trinidad and Tobago which actually pays tribute to the Republic in 2012, the
year of its 50th anniversary of Independence. The book is attractively, neatly and
effectively designed, using a recurring motif of the double-T – “TT”, which, of
course, is “Trinidad and Tobago”, but is also “literature” so that there is not
only the visual impact but the tribute to nationhood as reflected in the
various works of literature.
Littscapes is a work of art; but also it is a
documentary, a travelogue, a critical work with visual and literary power. It takes us on a tour of the country, giving
some exposure to almost every aspect of life.
It may be too heavy and too academic to be called a tourist guide, but
no tourist guide can give a better, more comprehensive introduction to
Trinidad. It entices and attracts just
as the glossy tourist literature; it looks a weighty volume, but an important
factor is that it is very easy to read.
Neither is this link to tourism accidental, because one of the
objectives of the book is that it must show the value that literature has in
promoting and presenting the nation. It
must show different uses of literature, encourage new approaches to it and make
it more attractive and interesting. The
book does for literature, what literature does for the country.
Rampersad tours the countryside and highlights
features of it, at the same time exploring the literature to indicate how the
writers treat the subjects, what they or their fictional characters say, and
how they are used in the plots.
Photographs of several sections of Port-of-Spain are accompanied by the
descriptions and literary excerpts: this treatment is given to the capital
city, other towns, streets, urban communities, villages, historic buildings and
places, vegetation, animals, institutions, culture and landscape. There is considerable visual beauty, what
Derek Walcott calls “visual surprise” in his Nobel Lecture; an impressive
coverage of social history, geography, and politics, but also a strong literary
experience. It is a survey of Trinidad’s
landscape and of its literature.
The publication
reflects a considerable volume of reading, drawing from as early as Walter Raleigh
at the dawn of Caribbean literature, which adds historical character and depth
to the landscape and culture. The
references include early fiction such as ARF Webber’s Those That Be In Bondage.
The connectedness of nationhood becomes relevant again here, since both
Webber and Raleigh have ties to Guyana as strong if not stronger than those
with Trinidad. Just as the historical
development of the country is reflected in the places and monuments, so it is
in the rise of social realism through the fiction of the 1930s in
Port-of-Spain. Rampersad presents her
subjects through the eyes of CLR James and writers from the Beacon group such
as Alfred Mendes, and has done the painstaking work analogous to that of a
lexicographer, of sorting out their several hundred references to her
subjects.
This account includes
some memorable passages of real literary criticism, although these are
brief. They include the entries on The Humming Bird Tree by Ian McDonald,
another writer that is more Guyanese than Trinidadian, with instructive
insights into the novel’s title and its meaning. Others are the references to Lion House in
Chaguanas and the Capildeo family which hold great interest for background to
VS Naipaul. He immortalises his mother’s
family in Hanuman House and the Tulsis, and Rampersad provides additional
information about Naipaul’s use of his migratory existence in her discussions
of various parts of Port-of-Spain. There
is also similar enlightenment in the way such locations as San Fernando, Mayaro
and Princes Town accumulate greater meaning when used to treat the work of
novelist Michael Anthony. Yet another
passage of deep criticism is the reference to “girl victims” as they are
treated in the fiction.
There are the entries on politicians, calypsonians and
superstitions, all of which abound in the fiction. This work does so much
already that it might be unfair to judge it on its omissions or reduced
treatments.
Trinidad is in all respects the major and dominant island, and this is
overwhelmingly reflected in Rampersad’s treatment. She says in her text that Trinidadian writers
on the whole neglect Tobago, treat it as the lesser of two sisters or do not
treat it at all. In this book,
therefore, the imbalance is noted.
In the end, Rampersad’s
Littscapes does achieve an innovative
approach to literature in bringing it alive in the description of landscape,
life, culture and people. It encourages
people to take ownership of it, see themselves, their home or familiar places
in it and accept it as a definer of identity.
But the book is as much photography by Rampersad and others as it is
literature, and the pictures help to illustrate, highlight and make the fiction
real.
Above all Littscapes: Landscapes of Fiction from
Trinidad and Tobago has an extremely
powerful sense of place and reinforces what in Rampersad’s words is “the pull
of place on authors”. It may claim to be
an accessory to what she calls “the body of fiction inspired by Trinidad and
Tobago”. It communicates the character
of the country.
No one book can be
everything; no one book can set out to achieve everything that a literature and
a visual text can do for its people and its nation; but whatever you say one
book can’t do, this one almost does it.
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