A double issue that interfaces critical perspectives on the vitality of long-term projects; the politicality of nurturing publishing infrastructures; the inherent necessity and messiness of collaborations; wealth traps; countering regimes of exhaustion and the rigidity of professionalism; and the democratic relationship between contemporary art and food, eating, and tasting. featuring editorials by Elham Rahmati and Vidha Saumya; essays by Sami Juhani Rekola, Martina Miño Pérez, Golrokh Nafisi, and Vera Kavaleuskaya; reviews by Shubhangi Singh and Marina Valle Noronha; and poems by Nina Mufleh and Kihwa-Endale.
The dual mode of imagination that an outsider is compelled to maintain is neither reductive nor simple. Their silenced voices are always looking to re-occupy the spaces which have been denied to them or are being appropriated by those who claim to speak on their behalf. These various types of knowledges must be able to be performed in our voices. At NO NIIN, we are looking at the peculiarities of urgent and necessary voices, their chaos, and meaningful instances of the contributors’ non-standard, personalized orthography of every issue.
READEditorial / June 2021
Elham Rahmati writes on the confounding list of adult problems that nobody prepared you for; and Vidha Saumya writes on the manifold meanings of ‘and love’ in NO NIIN.
During this essay, I will reveal how I learned to free myself from work when I was 15 and also amuse you with the intricate ways money developed a firm grip on me later as I fell into a wealth trap at 32 years of age.
READAffordable Views
Narrated through the history of Sami Juhani Rekola’s father’s relationship with work and money, this is a story about the intersecting paths of the body and capitalism.
Written on Ice: Edible Memories of the Neighborhood of San Juan has been a six-month-long collective exercise where memories and identities have been transformed into six symbolic edible objects: ice-cream flavors.
READWritten on Ice: Edible Memories of the Neighborhood of San Juan
Martina Miño Pérez writes about her project, highlighting a more democratic relationship between contemporary art and food, eating, and tasting.
From our deepest desire to gather an imagined collectivity around us, we fantasize about going to each and every one of our friends, kin and relatives’ places to collect some garments they no longer use, as if they could be keepsakes of their presence. We sent out one hundred identical letters, with an invitation to send us one piece of their old clothes, no longer useful in their closet. If we united them all—we thought—we would be reunited again.
READCelebration of Distant Bodies
Golrokh Nafisi writes about her collaborative project in Tehran, “An Equivalence of Our Distance,” made in the midst of the pandemic.
Independently from one another, we began reclaiming a loudly crying face to denote the feeling of being overwhelmingly pained by beauty and our inability to grasp it fully.
READAll I Want to Do Is to Hold Your Hand and Cry the Tears of Joy
Vera Kavaleuskaya convinces us to evade the rigid notion of professionalism, to not accept the invisible hand, and to kill the joy but to then revive it on your terms.
Arriving at a particular watershed moment, Six years in the Third Space is an online publication that earmarks a key milestone in the course of the physical space existing in the city since 2013. It embodies and carries forward the hybridised in-betweenness which the physical space attempts to live by. Informed by a large network of collaborators and shared stories, the collection becomes a living organism, an orbiting satellite — autonomous and yet, carrying the identity of the body that it takes after.
READBut Not Without a Few Battle Scars
Shubhangi Singh reviews Six Years in (the) Third Space publication analogically reviewing also Third Space as the artist-run gallery that harboured a complex place of hybridity.
Though a small-scale artist-run institution, Sorbus presents itself in the back cover of Wasted Years as creating conditions and generating alternative approaches through art activism.
READSix Years
Marina Valle Noronha reviews ‘Sorbus — Wasted Years: sad, sexy, and artist-run’: “To nurture publishing infrastructures is a political action.”
As soon as I sit in the front seat of the car the size of a herring tin, I understand where the opulent descriptions of Hertta are coming from. Her joy, warmth, and charisma tangle around me and fill the insides of the tiny Fiat.
READMixing Everything With Everything in Everything — an Interview With Hertta Kiiski
On viewing care work as an expertise and embracing it as a significant part of artistic practice.
intersectional feminist hands me a copy of how to talk about race
READ
recites a land acknowledgment
to honor the native tribes
who have been displaced
to make space for the organic açaí bar we frequentIntersectional Feminist
A Poem by Nina Mufleh; with audio-video-text reading.
It is December 2018, my sister and I are in a city we’ve only heard of from stories. Jerusalem, we are walking through the marketplace in the Old City, as shiny things are being packed up we are surrounded by a soft clatter, as lights dim down and everyone slows down, to stop for the day
READVisit Palestine
A poem & artwork by Kihwa-Endale; with audio-video reading.
In this project, 100 letters were sent to the friends, relatives and acquaintances of the organizing team. The letter described how much we missed their hugs, which had been withheld for a year due to COVID. The addressees were asked to send us an item of clothing that was old, worn out, and had seen its last days in their closet.
READAn Equivalence of Our Distance
Who has the freedom of speech in art? What about the responsibility of speech? Can artworks be misinterpreted? Why do some people’s opinions weigh more than others? What is institutional responsibility? What about the media’s responsibility?
READWho Has Freedom of Speech in Art?
To connect-the-dots once more, sharing a collection of songs – or a single song really – is very much similar to sharing emotions, skills, knowledges, time, food, or a room. Like being on a film set, a screening room, or a conversation together. Like sending the spontaneous text message to a stranger telling them how much you enjoyed their film.
READNettles in the Summer
