If you buy just one coffee table book this year, make it
46664 The Concert, a striking visual documentation of Nelson Mandela's star-studded
Aids awareness fundraising concert in South Africa in 2003.
This 192-page limited edition is a vibrant photographic celebration of the
historic concert in Green Point Stadium where some 30 artists, including Beyoncé,
Bono, Queen, Dave Stewart and Yusuf Islam (Cat Stevens), played to 40,000
people.
The book includes many pictures by photographer Richard Young who captured
the artists on and off stage. Each artist has donated a few words about their
views on the fight against HIV and Aids. 46664, Mandela's prison number while
he was incarcerated on Robben Island, was 'donated' by the former South African
president to raise funds for the Nelson Mandela Foundation to fight the pandemic.
At the end of 2004, Mandela joined 46664 'ambassadors' Dave Stewart, Annie
Lennox, Peter Gabriel and Brian May to launch the book in London. Wearing
a black shirt emblazoned with the number, he thanked his ambassadors saying: “I'm glad you still come to hear an old man speak.”
He urged people to do more to educate and push for access for all to treatment.
He said the Global Fund needed 10 billion dollars a year. “We are leading
the call for governments to give it more funds. Only with the money, support
and will, will we be able to secure a future for everyone, everywhere free
from HIV/Aids. Together, we can make the dream reality.”
46664 The Concert, published by Little, Brown, £25 through www.46664.com
Voices from the corridor
Photojournalist Gideon Mendel’s work on HIV and Aids has evolved,
technically and politically, with the changing nature of the virus.
He started documenting the disease by being one of first photographers to
capture the experiences of gay men on UK Aids wards. And as the virus took
grip of his former home in sub-Saharan Africa, he returned to document the
pandemic that was to wipe out a generation.
For his latest collaboration with the International HIV/Aids Alliance and
Guardian Unlimited, Mendel again uses ground-breaking interactive media technologie
s
to allow his photographic subjects, this time the Aids orphan's of Mozambique's
Beira Corridor, to speak directly to the viewer.
The corridor has many settlements of displaced peoples and is one of the main
trucking routes in southern African. In the 1980s it was the focal point of
a secret war conducted by South Africa. Mendel said he was most struck by
how communities with so little themselves still shared the little they had
with these child-headed families.
View his latest work at Guardian Unlimited. www.guardian.co.uk/aids/thechildrenleftbehind
Cho Ho Ho
Margaret
Cho is the sort of girl you want at your party and it was certainly
fun to attend hers at the New Players Theatre. Before a largely gay audience,
she looked relaxed and happy to play up her proud, self-confessed role of
political fag-hag. Her frequent jumps from political satire to drag queen
one-liners can be disconcerting. But there's more to Cho than meets the eye
and she cunningly draws the strands of her routine together to show that they
are inextricably linked. Like many of the best comedians, her exasperation
is both touching and hilarious.
In the US she has received vitriolic responses to her criticism of the Bush
administration and bigotry disguised as religious zeal. Her website www.margaretcho.com
offers Bush supporters the chance to call her “a fat Chink whore”,
descriptions she's ready to own except the middle one; of Korean descent,
Cho is an actual and whole-hearted American and passionate about her country's
treatment of the underdog.
Cho's act is a kind of crusade, but for sheer comedy value I also enjoyed
her more left-field subjects and her pant-wettingly funny impression of Bjork's
recent airport fracas complete with an uncanny rendition of Human Behaviour.
The girl can sing - and is an adept clown, too.
I missed the point on a couple of gags about Americans I'd never heard of,
but even if you're not American, gay, or politically-minded, this is a party
you won't regret joining. Russell Plows
Margaret Cho's State of Emergency is at the New Players Theatre until the
1 January 2005. Call 0870 033 2626 for tickets.
