The sister-brother team of Sona, Kossi, and Lemba Muluala recently opened what many people in Ile de France likely consider a godsend - a modern, full-service Afro-Créole supermarket.
BAO, which is "short" for BAOBAB, opened on December 10, 2016. It is stocked with more than 2,000 items sourced from producers and distributors in the Caribbean, Africa and the Indian Ocean.
The Mulualas, who are Franco-Congolese, were inspired to launch their store because of their childhood memories of how difficult it was for their mother to find ingredients for their favorite recipes in their neighborhood. Not only did she need to travel an hour to get into Paris, she also had to shop in multiple places to find everything she needed and contend with merchants who were not familiar with the products they were selling. It often took a good half-day to get the shopping done and return home.
The Mulualas are committed to providing authentic, high quality items at the best possible price. They sell fresh and frozen foods, including Hallal meat, fruits and vegetables, cooking oils and condiments, spices, juices and other beverages, and Créole specialities such as pigtails, turban squash, breadfruit, Créoline sauce, and Floup ice cream.
BAO is located in the Paris suburb of Bobigny. The supermarket is open from Monday to Saturday from 10 AM to 8 PM.
Reacting to the rapid and vast expansion of Street and Urban art in the past decades, KÖLNER LISTE introduced its Urban Art Section, a place where collectors can come into closer contact with this movement and its styles. Thinking forward and taking in art that is often considered insurgent distinguished our art fair as the place for the avant-garde art lover. Still, the Urban Art Section is not where the support to the new contemporary movement ended. Moreover, the KÖLNER LISTE endeavors to bring the art fair vision of Urban Art back to the street, through a unique public art project realized in collaboration with French artist OX.
In partnership with the Ströer Media Company, this public art project commissioned OX to create, or rather take over, ten billboards around the city of Cologne. These ephemeral works of art are meant to serve as a visual bridge between the conventional art fair exhibition halls and the informal, but traditional space in which urban artists operate. Thus, the idea of the art fair open to everyone will come nearer to public art supporters, proving that there is little difference between being an active supporter or a collector. Endowed with clear visuals and a good dose of humor, The OX billboards are an ideal medium to both engage the audience in the contemplation of art and to inspire further thinking about the visual pollution. Sharing the idea that are should be open to all, KÖLNER LISTE enters the role of a patron, endorsing artistic action on a whole new level.
For those who follow the Urban Art scene and are familiar with Culture Jamming history, the name of OX is more than familiar. This French artist is today considered one of the pioneers of this subversive movement in Paris, while his geometric, colorful paste-ups appeared in cities across the Old Continent. With simple graphic shapes, bright colors and bold contrasts, the art of OX is characterized with a unique visual language, through which the artist delivers a clear, unblemished message. Provoking the thought about the visual pollution, different effects of advertising and the presence of pictures in the public plane, the artist engages the viewer by the means of strong contrast. His billboards are not to be ignored, clad in bright and fluorescent colors, they clash with the ordinary urban landscape and call to attention. Mostly hijacked, the billboards OX produces are what we can call illicit, a fact that only supports their progressive and democratic nature.
The ten billboards OX prepared for this project largely follow his general body of work. Following the logic of his work, some of the pieces visually interact with the environment, where the artist found the architectural logic to intervene in such a way. They add to the existing column rows, light up a bus stall or just converse with the surroundings through their choice of color. The locations in which OX created these works were predetermined by the project partners, but the artist was far from discouraged with this fact. Instead, he found a new challenge in presenting his vision to the public in places he might not have chosen himself. The visual tension created between the paste-up and its environment does not differ from the usual OX’s takeovers proving that the social, artistic and provocative impact is not diminished. Quite the contrary – the awareness this public art project raises surpasses the significance of a single piece of street art.
Observing the billboards created by OX for this occasion, we can say that the artist infused these seemingly simple visuals with layers of meaning, commenting on the environment overly dressed in concrete, lighting up a depressing corner, or offering a symbolic escape to the heavens. His interpretation of the Magritte’s none-pipe gains a completely different meaning in this instance, because the factory chimney is in fact a source of another type of problematics. Graphically charming, OX’s billboards grab the observer and don’t let go, opening many of the city-related topics. “My main goal is to create a moment of discontinuity with the common surroundings” OX said about his idea behind this billboard series and it is evident that he succeeded. This discontinuity is far from an obstacle, though, and it cannot be considered a disruption in harmony. They are, in fact, a very welcome visual break from the usual, a spark of brilliance in what is normally the grey, boring surroundings.
All of the billboards have been installed between April 10-12, 2017 and will stay up as long as the circumstances allow. It could be that an advertiser or somebody from the community decides that any of the pieces needs an alteration, so nobody can predict the exact duration of these artworks. Thus, their ephemeral nature is not only preserved, but emphasized, bringing up questions regarding the nature of street and urban art, as well as the impact and longevity of other works of public art around the city.
Regardless of their expiration date, OX’s posters are here to bring the attention of the public to the burning issues related to the visual [and not only!] environment. They make a special commentary to the city of Cologne, localized, but universal, inviting the people to react and perhaps even – make their own interpretation.
The role of KÖLNER LISTE in this art project is best described in the words of Jörgen Golz, the art fair director. “We want to draw attention to art through art”, he said and added that OX’s reflects the urban environment “in a very intelligent and humorous way.” By initiating and supporting this public art project, the art fair aims to inspire new rules in looking at art. Art is not only a commodity on a market, nor is it solely a collectable suited for somebody’s collection – it is far more valuable than that. Its significance expands far beyond walls, into the outdoor environment and even further, while it carries inspirational imagery and metaphors characteristic of the time we live in. Art is no longer a matter of the visual, it is a social phenomenon, a method of communication and mobilization of a new generation of thinkers.
So, all of you the dwellers of Cologne, visitors of the KÖLNER LISTE and innocent bystanders, keep your eyes peeled for the new colorful billboards OX planted around the city. If a chance does not take you to them, you can plan a self-guided Urban Art tour by marking these locations on your map:
KÖLNER LISTE art fair for contemporary art will open on April 28 and run through April 30, 2017. More art created by OX will be on display within the Urban Art Section of the fair, represented by the OPEN WALLS GALLERY.
For those who might have missed the chance to see these works in place, we bring the images of OX in action and shots of his final series.
When I add a new mailbox kain@kainproductions.com, but it gives me a username of m5005439? Why isn’t my username kain? Is it because my domain has not fully transferred?
There are two types of mailboxes, user mailboxes and the m9999999 mailboxes. When you just add a mailbox, you get a m999999 mailbox. Whenever you create a user in the web panel, that user gets a mailbox with the same username. The difference is where the mail storage is located. A user will have access to his Maildir directory when he logs in to FTP, and can setup his own procmail filters, etc. However, a m999999 mailbox is stored on another server and you wouldn’t be able to access the Maildir for it nor setup procmail fitlers for it (other than what you can do with web panel or mailboxes.domain).
The dreamhost one is not working well. I can’t get it to send to verizon.net email addresses. Plus when I set it up to send to an alias for the verizon address, it still wont send.
I’ve checked sf.net and googled, but haven’t found anything that’s super clean and easy. I would basically like to transition forms that currently use the DH formmail to a basic PHP script.
I have actually “reverted” to using the Dreamhost formmail script after trying a different “popular” script that was provided to me “intact” when I took over a site (Dynaform.php). It was exploited and wreaked a little havoc before I tracked it down and killed it.
I had a similar experience as you this last weekend when I most recently implemented a feedback form using formmail.dreamhost.com’s script: It refused to send to an address initially (while sending fine to other addresses), but several hours later it began working, and has worked fine ever since. I was never able to ascertain why it “burped” shortly after installation, but then worked flawlessly. Hearning your report, I’m even more confused, because it does send to verizon based addresses for me. The address it “burped” on in my case was an account with the MX set to a Ntwork Sluti*ns .com, and there was a Dreamhost alias involved. I had the same problem, but then it “appears” to have fixed itself.
I had a support ticket submitted, but never got a response before the matter seemed to resolve itself, so I cancelled the ticket (probably should have left it open, though I was afraid I would get on of those, “It’s working now” responses). Weird.
That said, I would still like to find a solution that doesn’t require me to put an email address in plain text for spam bots to suck up.
Go figure. Your experience exactly mirrors mine. WIth all the formmail scripts sitting around out there, you would think someone has found one they consider to be “good” one, that is secure, and masks the destination address.
I use NMS FormMail (http://nms-cgi.sourceforge.net/) which has the “alias” feature so that email addresses aren’t in the script. It also seems to be reasonably secure against spammer abuse, which I can say is NOT the case for the TFmail script you can find on the same site.
I ended up creating a contact script when I was first learning php. At that time I only knew a little about php, so I ended up creating some ugly stuff to avoid things like header injection.
Seeing the demand for such a script, I think I will put the issue on my todo list, but unfortunately it will be quite a while before I get to it.
For those who are interested, my script uses a form where the user selects a recipient which is identified by a number in the html source. When the form is transmitted, the proper recipient is added server-side but a “safe” address is displayed for the end user (like “You sent the message to General Purpose”).
Now that I think about it. Ajax would probably be a great way to integrate some of the features I would want in a form. If anyone has some time, feel free to list some of the things you’d like the script to do and I’ll keep a brainstorming document for when I can get around to it
I had looked at that script some time ago, but will go look at it again, as I “missed” the alias feature. I remember being somewhat impressed with it at the time, but saw no real advantage over the DH supplied version (which I believe is a modified version of an earllier release of the NMS script),
I’m still using the “oldish” formmail.dreamhost.com cgi…but I will try to take a look-see/install on this tonight, and I’ll let you know how it works out.
I got a chance to do a “quick and dirty” install and test early this morning, and everything worked fine. As for “how I did it”, I’m kinda at a loss as to how to describe it except that I follwed the “readme” and “examples” files carefully, edited a half a dozen variables, and was good to go. Downloading, editing, preparing the form, and uploading the whole mess ready to run took less than 15 minutes (of course, I used a “cheesy” little 4-field form, with a couple of hidden fields, and didn’t bother to “style” it with CSS).
I only installed and tested the “Compatibility Package” ( the tarball is here), as it was represented as being the “easiest” to install, and it did everything I needed. I especially liked the “alias” feature for “recipients”, which sucessfully masks the destination email address, and the ability to send the form to mutiple recipients. Nice! In fact, I don’t know if you noticed when you downloaded the script that Dreamhost is listed as an ISP that “reccomends” the use of the NMS programs. I seem to remember either a forum post or a support ticket from years ago that iindicated this script was the basis for the “modified” script Dreamhost “tweaked” for use as their “supplied” formailer.
Testing a little further, it seems to work almost exactly the same except that, since you can modify the actual script instead of being left with only “hidden” fields to work with, even the “easy” NMS version is much more configurable than the http://formmail.dreamhost.cgi version.
I played with several of the options, both in the config section of the script, and by using hidden fields in the HTML form, and everything worked as expected, so I’m pretty sure there is no “trick” to it.
Please don’t be insulted by my “simplistic” suggestions (you probably know this stuff better than I; I’m just trying to “help a brother out” here ), but since you mentioned you got “Internal Server Errors (500)”, you should check your error logs to see exactly what broke. If that doesn’t give you a clue as to what is wrong, the only things I can think of off of the top of my head to check are all the “usual suspects” kind of things in these kinds of scripts:
Make sure the path to sendmail is correct - the default had to be changed - set $mailprog = ‘/usr/sbin/sendmail -oi -t’;
Make sure you set the $style variable to an appropriate path to a css file or set it =‘0’ if you want to run it without a css file in place.
If double-checking those things doesn’t give you any love, we’ll have to dig a little deeper, but it does work.
As I understand it, spambots have a pretty difficult time trawling for input fields inside FORMS that use the POST method. While individual users can View Source and see the destination email as plain text, automated harvesting is nowhere near as simple as harvesting mailto: links. You’d have to parse every form input tag of every page, just to begin with. So it may not be impossible, but seems fairly impractical when there are so many billions who naively leave their email addresses all over the web.
Using additional methods to completely mask the destination email is surely a good idea, but even implementing a simple form is a fairly significant improvement over mailto: links or including email addresses in the body of a web page.