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With the end of the war-genocide, a new type of tourism started emerging in Jaffna: war tourism. In this essay, சிந்துஜன் வரதராஜா looks at life inside of a new hotel in the former war zone and explores by way of it the intrinsic relationship of military-occupation with tourism in Eelam.
READLong before justice, tourists arrive
Sinthujan Varatharajah looks at life inside a new hotel in the former war zone and explores by way of it the intrinsic relationship of military-occupation with tourism in Eelam.
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.
Close Watch exhibited at the National Finnish Pavilion at Venice Biennale, 2022, is a multimedia installation that, at its core, utilises the artist themself as an embodied intervention within a focused area of artistic research and apparent critique. In the context of this work presented as an exhibition at the national pavilion and its implications of somehow representing Finnish Art, this text seeks to question whether issues pertaining to embodiment and social intervention – and by extension, research conducted and artistic practice developed through it – can ever be free of the power relations implicit in the political, identity-driven understanding of society today.
READWho watches whom? ruminations on power, gaze, and field through Pilvi Takala’s Close Watch
Ali Akbar Mehta’s review questions whether issues of embodiment and social intervention can ever be free of the power relations in the political, identity-driven understanding of society today.
What started with a few questions regarding the nature of the open call soon grew into a heated debate and triggered an opportunity for the exposure of several arguments and points of view in the form of a much-needed conversation.
READI can’t believe what you say, because I see what you do
Farbod Fakharzadeh on the lack of diversity in Frame Contemporary Art Finland’s recruitment and engagement policies.
With this text, we hope to renew a sincere belief that united art workers can do good by calling for candid public discussion on difficult matters. We wish to make clear some of the political affiliations held by the Kiasma Support Foundation, especially in relation to the colonial politics by the State of Israel and hope that this text will open a dialogue with workers of the National Gallery, who despite prevailing uncertainty, remain motivated to better their organization. We hope that art administrators in Finland will usher forward programs, which manifest their political desires and illustrate how they imagine the institutions they lead serving the public.
READOur efforts to show solidarity for Palestine are tested at Kiasma
Why is Chaim “Poju” Zabludowicz, a person who funds an influential pro-Israeli lobbying organization serves as a member of the Kiasma Support Foundation?
One is reminded of the famous ghost of the Communist Manifesto: students in the Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture have taken to occupy the ARTS building Väre, organising demonstrations and negotiations with the university representatives. Not bad!
READSTOP cutting funds for higher education in the arts!
Taina Rajanti breaks down Aalto University’s argument of necessity of cuts in response to the ARTS students’ protesting the cuts, reorganizations of the departments, and the inaccessibility of the school premises.