Essays
What do a fashion designer, a youth empowerment YouTuber, and a right-wing politician have in common? In Pakistan, the answer is hatred of transgender people, and their battleground of choice is the internet. Historically, the South Asia region has been home to a visible, though marginalized, transgender/khawajasira community, and Pakistan has been one of the leading countries with the most progressive legislation on transgender rights. However, 2021 saw a surge in religious right-wing discourse against transgender rights in the country.
READDigital Hate and the Othering of Pakistan’s Transgender Community
The internet and religion have combined to create a potent cocktail of extreme transphobia in Pakistan in recent years, resulting in creative censorship, the upending of civic protections, and an uptick in violence. And yet the beleaguered khawajasiras of Pakistan fight on.
Cineholic, in other words, is a film about cinema in a context in which the role of the medium has been to mediate between the Iraqi population and an almost constant state of conflict—first during the Iran-Iraq war, then the First Gulf War, then the Second, and finally the past twenty years of simmering civil unrest in the wake of the regime’s forced dismantlement by the US.
READCinema and the Political Imaginary in Kirkuk
A close reading of Cineholic, a short film that interrogates the role of the medium in Kirkuk, which is characterized by conflict —first during the Iran-Iraq war, then the First Gulf War, then the Second, and finally the past twenty years of simmering civil unrest in the wake of the regime’s forced dismantlement by the US.
The desire and urgency for them to be shared with a larger public remained a motivating factor in curating The Unforgotten Moon. Seeing Ahmed’s work in person, I was struck by the complexity and the capricious visual vocabulary of his paintings. With political currents and personal commentary running through symbolic landscapes, his work is a powerful insight into the conditions of the prison system and the psychological price of living inside it indefinitely.
READThe Unforgotten Moon: Liberating Art from Guantánamo Bay
How can political, legal, and creative processes challenge established systems of the “art world”? A recounting of a project presented in Pakistan—a country with a complicated history of security cooperation with the USA—contexted around the works of Ahmed Rabbani, a resident of Pakistan who was held without charge at Guantánamo Bay between 2002-2023 and whose artworks depicting imprisonment and torture were confiscated by the U.S. military.
European modes of living and cultures have become globalised and naturalised, so much so that critical conversations around European traditions today focus more on questions of racial diversity in, say, orchestras, ensembles, and European music and dance schools rather than why and how European cultural productions have become such a global commodity and signifier for class and and “civilisational” ascend to begin with.
READThe Innocence of (European) Instruments
European modes of living and cultures have become globalised and naturalised, so much so that critical conversations around European traditions today focus more on questions of racial diversity in, say, orchestras, ensembles, and European music and dance schools rather than why and how European cultural productions have become such a global commodity and signifier for class and and “civilisational” ascend to begin with.
How can we facilitate collective transfers of knowledge and support peer feedback practices in a transdisciplinary cohort? How can we cultivate learning communities where sites of authority are multiple and distributed? How to expand this learning in a microcosm to exist critically and together in the world?
READFeedback in Relation: On Friendship, Microcosms & Constructive Criticism
How can we facilitate collective transfers of knowledge and support peer feedback practices in a transdisciplinary cohort? How can we cultivate learning communities where sites of authority are multiple and distributed? How to expand this learning in a microcosm to exist critically and together in the world?
Our solidarity against Prime Minister Orpo’s far-right government doesn’t need to stop with other ethnic minorities but can act as a tool to bring everyone together, irrespective of background, who is set to suffer under the new regime—from the exploited worker to the overworked parent, from the retiree dependent on housing support to the employee looking for a career change—a number easily far higher than the votes the ruling coalition managed to rake in.
READOnly Solidarity, Not Respectability, Can Topple Finland’s Dangerous Far-Right Government
Our solidarity against Prime Minister Orpo’s far-right government doesn’t need to stop with other ethnic minorities but can act as a tool to bring everyone together, irrespective of background, who is set to suffer under the new regime—from the exploited worker to the overworked parent, from the retiree dependent on housing support to the employee looking for a career change—a number easily far higher than the votes the ruling coalition managed to rake in.
The time and energy it takes to apply myself and think about what I am reading swallows me into a world and leaves me suspended there, making me unavailable to people who aren’t comfortable with the idea of a Dalit person engaging in something that is not her humiliation. Reading is a way of being unavailable to a world that has taught you to remain outside. When we encounter stories about what being able to read and write did for people from the margins, we are essentially encountering the impact of close reading.
READLove Is for the Ones Who Love the Work: How Close Reading Interrupts Caste in the Classroom
In close reading, the body is also learning to pay attention to itself when it responds a certain way to a line, a sentence, or a paragraph. Something that can perhaps only come from leisure and the luxury to sit and have the free time to be available to the text. How many Dalit teachers can afford this?
Accused of being “shrewd, rogue, ill-mannered and undisciplined”, the black goat was constantly abducted and killed to prevent it from distorting the European landscape that Israel wished to create on the rubbles of the destroyed Palestinian one. In 1948, the year of the Nakba, Israel began importing a white Swiss goat to replace the black one. The white European goat was described as “polite, beautiful, healthy” and even “civilized”.
READApproaches to Palestinian Liberation: Magical Realism as Resistance Literature
Can literary magical realism be considered a type of resistance literature in the Palestinian context? This essay argues that magical-realistic manifestations—death-defying ghosts, the black goat, soil with resurrection powers, and the malleability of time—found in contemporary Palestinian literature play a significant role in resisting the ongoing effects of the Nakba.
European and US festivals have played a pivotal role in the global circulation of South Asian films. But their contribution has also been marked by questionable priorities: the near-exclusive promotion of Indian films or of films that speak to European and North American cinemas’ aesthetic affinities. With the new millennium, festivals began to embark on film production. How has this practice impacted South Asian filmmakers—women filmmakers in particular—and the visibility of their work?
READSouth Asian Women’s Cinema: Between Festivals & Streaming
European and US festivals have played a pivotal role in the global circulation of South Asian films. But their contribution has also been marked by questionable priorities: the near-exclusive promotion of Indian films or of films that speak to European and North American cinemas’ aesthetic affinities. With the new millennium, festivals began to embark on film production. How has this practice impacted South Asian filmmakers—women filmmakers in particular—and the visibility of their work?
Focusing on movement exploration and feminist performative rewriting of the myth of the Western love goddess, this essay discusses the origin of the work Venus by Janina Rajakangas, performed during the Baltic Circle Festival 2022. It reflects on the collaborative creative process and puts in focus the erotization of young girls and the loud ideas about beauty and desirability that aggressively frame today’s gendered norms, the attention economy of social media, and the patriarchal views on seduction that shape it all.
READVenus, in the Threshold of the Screen
Focusing on movement exploration and feminist performative rewriting of the myth of the Western love goddess, this essay discusses the origin of the work Venus by Janina Rajakangas, performed during the Baltic Circle Festival 2022. It reflects on the collaborative creative process and puts in focus the erotization of young girls and the loud ideas about beauty and desirability that aggressively frame today’s gendered norms, the attention economy of social media, and the patriarchal views on seduction that shape it all.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine should be stopped as soon as possible, but how? The world is showing great solidarity with the suffering side, but should it go hand in hand with humiliating, neglecting, and demonizing Russian passport holders? Can the problem be solved by putting more limitations and borders on ordinary citizens already oppressed by an authoritarian state?
READTaking Off a White Coat: Notes From Under Sanctions
Adel Kim considers the perspectives of different art-workers under sanctions and associated with the arts in Russia.
After all the materiality of the world has been grasped, the next natural step of the Great Devourer - capitalism - is to go deeper into the immaterial within the confines of our minds. As we go about our days, we seep valuable information that can be monetized directly and made into codes of control, redirection, and upkeep. A new frontier has been unhinged by cracking our minds open, where the laws are all but settled. Is the immaterial world beyond our ethical discussions and legislative apparatuses too ethereal to be real, or can a reasonable amount of responsibility be demanded everywhere?
READCracking the mind: You Are What the Attention Economy Wants
Sami Juhani Rekola questions the concept of “consent” and a “new work paradigm” in the era of post-peak attention economy, capitalism and polarizing contents.
