There is not a single narrative to being anti-capitalist, anti-patriarchal, anti-colonial, and anti-nationalist. This eclectic issue, like the Kurdish feminist slogan ‘Jin Jiyan Azadi’ (Woman, Life, Freedom), explores accounts on Europe’s attempt to universalize the world according to their own needs with the help of technical ‘innovations’, including the infamous clock; the “impossible” tales of fantastical characters in Palestine; working in the arts under sanctions; and the concept of “consent” and a “new work paradigm” in the era of post-peak attention economy. The issue features contributions by Sinthujan Varatharajah, Shayma Nader, Sami Johani Rekola, Adel Kim, Najia Fatima, Yara Bamieh and others.
One of the worst betrayals of oppressive systems is destroying our sense of imagination and confining it to their limited worldview, where the word ‘woman’ is only synonymous with motherhood and with bodies that need to be controlled; where Jin Jiyan Azadi isn’t a valid manifesto because it sounds too romantic for the very patriarchal minds it wishes to change; where your idea of equality means that there should be the word ‘man’ next to ‘woman’; or it may seem the revolution is excluding men. So yes, we have the most progressive manifesto, but how to live up to it?
READEditorial / Autumn 2022
Elham emphasizes the importance of having patience in learning and growing together in a feminist revolution and Vidha draws attention to the inherent agency of ‘trouble’.
Where the striped hyenas are is not only a place in the imagination or in the past. Where the striped hyenas are is also a possibility for what the future could bring. It’s where they lie, waiting for their turn to return from their exile. Where the hyenas are is also where the ghouls and the djinn are, behind seven mountains, dreaming and chasing their world into being again.
READWhere the striped hyenas are, or, a tale is a map and a compass: some fragments on the fantastical, land and remembrance
Shayma Nader on how can the fantastical embody the political; what if all fantastical creatures were to rise up against the dispossessions and alienations from the lands that sustain them, to which they belong?
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.
In Samoa, an archipelago situated closeby to the said line, this border was however not abstract. It wasn’t something that could be as easily ignored throughout the remaining year. The line was too close to overlook. By way of geographic proximity, the island chain was more likely touched and disturbed by it. In 2011 the government of the territory thus took matters into their own hands. It decided to change its own future by changing its own place in time. To achieve this modification, Samoa decided to get rid of December 31 2011 in order to be able to slip through the thread of time. While the world had remained in its configurations of time, the island had, with a blink of an eye, altered its own configuration of time. By disappearing December 31 2011, by erasing twenty-four hours, Samoa catapulted itself twenty-four hours ahead into the future.
READJumping rope with time
Sinthujan Varatharajah writes on how Europeans subdued and reorganized formerly distant natures, people, and cultures according to their own industrial needs with the help of different technical ‘innovations’, including the infamous clock.
The works, in relation to each other, successfully embody the curatorial statement, ‘we are an inseparable part of nature and therefore always connected to each other.’ They weave together the concepts of life, love and death, therefore, establishing a coherent larger framework of the exhibition. This thematic consistency is also visible in the aesthetic production with a striking palette of cool earth tones. While the composition of the works within the confines of the gallery makes perfect sense, the overall exhibition raises more questions than it answers in regards to its larger socio-political implications. Collectively their works hardly do justice to the subject matter that they deal with.
READOn Love? A Review of the exhibition ‘Unity’ at SIC Space
Najia Fatima iterates how it is crucial to remain critical of spaces that claim universality without adequately centering marginalised voices.
My point of view in this review revolves around the interpretation of the two-fold structure of The Woodcutter Story. Underneath the film’s exterior of entertaining black comedy exists a poetic-existential interior. My actual question in this review concerns the relationship between these two layers. If the “deep” concern of the film is the existential question of whether senseless suffering could generate a sense of meaning, it cannot be answered directly without a recourse to religious register. In that case, no authoritative answer can be given except by appeal to the “superficial” level of the actual events and their logic.
READMay you live in interesting times: A Review of The Woodcutter Story
Who gets love in popular culture? I have been thinking about this question for a decade now. Soon after its release last August, I went to watch a film that surprised me in ways I had never imagined. Pa Ranjith’s latest film, Natchathiram Nagargiradhu, which translates to ‘a star shoots across,’ seems to have answered all our questions about the idea of contemporary love. Trust me, there is an interpretation for everyone - inter-caste, inter-faith, queer love, inclusivity, sexuality, woman as a category, genderless casteless love.
READWho gets love in popular culture? A Review of Pa Ranjith’s film Natchathiram Nagargiradhu
How can a film reverse the language of cinema in its aesthetics, gaze, and culture formed by shared histories, collective experience, solidarity and a movement of assertion?
Hiwa is interested in research, participatory working, and collective action, but he is also interested in making it, for lack of a better word, fun. Previously written texts and press articles on Hiwa have called him an “extellectual”, someone who gains knowledge from ‘the streets’, through conversations and the exchange of books. Despite the risk of repeating pre-published information, I find it critically important for the sake of reading the following interview to point out that the qualities of humour and satire—to neither take oneself too seriously nor wallow in the miseries of the world—occupy a central position in Hiwa’s work.
READOn Recognising the Moment of Hope: Speaking in Echoes With Hiwa K.
Ali Akbar Mehta interviews Hiwa K. on navigating the capitalistic system of art, ‘urgency’ of climate change and notions of homeland.
I began using fabric within my fine art practice in 2015. However, I have been immersed in textiles my whole life, and my mother is undoubtedly the main inspirational force behind this incredible experience. Our house was always full of fabrics: curtains, mattresses, sheets, and many of my mother’s Chador Namazes (prayer veils). As children, my brother and I often made a big tent in our bedroom out of my mother’s chador that almost occupied the entire room. I was excited to experience a different space between the wrinkles of the fabric, as if entering another world. What surreal joy to lie down on the carpets and stare at the floral chador ceiling.
READWeaving Connections in the Flow: A Conversation with Leila Seyedzadeh
On feminine approaches to collage making with fabrics and the influence of Negārgari, ancient paintings in Iran.
The fifteen-minute-long film did not give me a chance to blink; I could not stop thinking about its dreamlike atmosphere that traveled back and forth between the present and past moments through the familial archives and present-time footage. Paola’s attempt to reconstruct her past in relation to her current search for answers as to why she is thousands of kilometers away from her family captivated me. What you’re reading is an exchange between Paola and me in which we try to understand her working processes and inspirations for creating this work in greater depth.
READMommy, Say Something to the Camera: A Conversation with Paola Fernanda Guzmán Figueroa
READShatterd by by bullets; shiny glass facades Shitty coffee poured in environment-friendly cups. Sports cars on crumbling asphalt And, high-end brands walking in a seiged airTo a Suburbia Called Ramallah
A poem by Adele Jarrar.
READYour refusal might enrage the master. He might abuse you, and call you a parasite for refusing to do any work after eagerly swallowing the food last night. Become even more determined. Sit tight.Wild Grass
Two recipes / poems by Rajyashri Goody; with audio reading.
