The culture agenda: Behind the scenes of ‘Jurassic World Rebirth’ and Madagascar’s first art institution
Plus: An interview with sitarist Anoushka Shankar.
Music: UK
Q&A
Power of three
Anoushka Shankar
Musician
Sitarist Anoushka Shankar is riding high after the release of We Return to Light, the last of her trilogy of mini albums. The daughter of late musical giant Ravi Shankar and half-sister of Norah Jones, Shankar pushes the envelope of Indian classical music – but don’t call it “fusion”.
You’ve said that you always knew you wanted this project to be a trilogy. Why?
There’s a symmetry to doing things in threes. I felt a bit stuck leading up to it. We had all been through the pandemic and I had experienced some big life stuff. I was weighed down with the feeling that anything that I created had to be “important”. Then suddenly it became simple. I was on holiday with my children in Goa at New Year [in 2022], staring at the ocean.
I decided on three albums, a blank slate for each one: different collaborators, different producers, different countries. I stopped thinking that I had to make the most significant post-pandemic opus ever made. I just started telling a story.
Do you have a problem with the term ‘fusion’ in music?
Is there anything that isn’t “fusion”? If you go back centuries and centuries, maybe then you’ll find something untouched by cultural exchange. Ultimately words don’t describe what we do. I prefer “neoclassical Indo-futurism”. But then again, aren’t they just words as well?
Anoushka Shankar’s Chapter albums – ‘Forever, For Now’, ‘How Dark It Is Before Dawn’ and ‘We Return to Light’ – are out now on Leiter.
Art: Madagascar
Creative thinking
Many visitors come to Madagascar for a glimpse of a lemur – the island’s most famous inhabitant. But the country’s inaugural contemporary art institution, Fondation H, gives more culturally minded tourists a reason to head to the capital city, Antananarivo, while also offering a leafy new arts space for residents.
Fondation H is the brainchild of Hassanein Hiridjee, a Malagasy French art patron and the CEO of telecommunications group Axian. Founded in 2017, it now occupies a 2,200 sq m renovated colonial mansion and welcomes about 15,000 visitors a month. The high-ceilinged rooms and wraparound balcony provide a calming contrast to the bustle and hum of downtown Antananarivo.
“It works because we didn’t come up with an idea right away,” Fondation H’s director, Margaux Huille, tells Monocle. “It took us seven years to open this new space – seven years of trying to imagine better solutions, failing and then trying something else.”
Fondation H is currently exhibiting UK-Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare’s work, including an installation called “The African Library” (2018). Six thousand books covered in Dutch wax-print fabrics span one wall of the gallery, each title bearing the name of a key figure in the formation of postcolonial Africa. The foundation is a fitting location for the artist’s first major solo exhibition on the continent.
Though Madagascar lacks an art school, it has a vibrant creative scene. “Having a space to exhibit works and support local artists while giving international visibility to Madagascar is massive,” says Huille. “I don’t think that many other African countries are witnessing that.”
fondation-h.com
Film: UK
Bigger beasts
“Steven Spielberg has been very involved,” says Gareth Edwards, the UK filmmaker charged with wrangling Jurassic World Rebirth into cinemas this summer. It might be the seventh film in the dinosaur series but it represents a fresh start – a new storyline, with new characters.
Edwards had sworn off making blockbusters after experiencing studio interference on his two previous tent-pole movies, Godzilla and StarWars adventure Rogue One. But this time he welcomed the notes of the man who invented the summer blockbuster with Jaws in 1975. “Spielberg is the reason why I even knew what a director was when I was a child – and the reason that I wanted to become one,” Edwards tells Monocle.
Much of Edwards’ last film, 2023 science-fiction spectacle The Creator, was shot guerrilla-style, with a very small crew. The director was working on his next original project when he got the Rebirth call. Edwards read the script – in which a drug-research team heads to the island science facility of the original Jurassic Park to harvest dino DNA – and was surprised to find himself caring for the characters. Even so, he only agreed to do it if he could make it his own.
On the screen, viewers will see Scarlett Johansson, Mahershala Ali and Jonathan Bailey wading across the jungles of Thailand as they battle a hybrid predator called Distortus Rex. Edwards, however, has met a far more impressive beast. “Being in a room with Steven Spielberg never gets old,” he says. “It’s like the cinema version of meeting Father Christmas. He shouldn’t exist. It’s too magical.”
‘Jurassic World Rebirth’ is released in cinemas on 2 July.
