Archive for the ‘palestine’ Category

‘i am running in ramallah and it is painful…’ in manifesta journal #14 online & at genk

April 24, 2012

I am running in Ramallah and it is in audio in the current issue of Manifesta Journal #14 which you can read online here, download the complete pdf here, or go straight to the Translated By pages here. Scroll down to where it says ‘You pick a random number’ and 3, etc., and listen to the audio of my excerpt. All this running makes it a bit less painful -and In Ramallah, Running proper will be here soon!

Do have a look at MJ14 edited by Rasha Salti et al and with some great sections; conversation with Naeem Mohaimen, and  one on Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige’s Lebanese Rocket Society, the main monument of which stands today in a public square in downtown Sharjah -a SAF commission from 2010′s Biennial. Manifesta as such kicks off in Genk, Belgium this year of course; end of May slash start of June. Be there!

notes from a meeting, artists on the frontier; resident or nomad? [day two pt2]

April 23, 2012

Sejla Kameric 1395 Days on the Frontier Photo G Mannes-Abbott

CLICK on image for more…

on in ramallah, running – cover artwork, advance info., etc.

March 2, 2012

In Ramallah, Running cover artwork – click on image to expand

In Ramallah, Running

Guy Mannes-Abbott

Edited by Guy Mannes-Abbott and Samar Martha

Introduction by Jean Fisher

Contributions from Jananne al-Ani, Francis Alÿs, Najwan Darwish, Emily Jacir, Olaf Nicolai, Paul Noble, Khalil Rabah, Adania Shibli, Mark Titchner, Sharif Waked.

Co-produced by ArtSchool Palestine & Sharjah Art Foundation

Published by Black Dog

“I read it in one breath. A cunning simplicity of writing the complexity of today’s Palestine, through the alleys, roads, streets, hills, valleys, days and evenings in and around Ramallah, charged me with love of the art of writing, of Palestine… You showed me my place and made me hear my story. I loved the piece without limits.”

Mourid Barghouti, Palestinian Poet and author of classics memoirs; I Saw Ramallah & I Was Born There, I Was Born Here.

In Ramallah, Running represents Guy Mannes-Abbott’s uniquely personal encounter with Palestine, interweaving short, poetic texts with exploratory essays. International artists and prominent writers have been invited to respond both directly and indirectly to the texts with newly commissioned works.

The principal text is a series in 14 parts, alternating running within the limits of the city and walking out from it to, along, beyond and off limits, discovering how insidiously mobile those limits are under Occupation. With singular style and compelling force, Mannes-Abbott generates a very special intimacy with a rarely seen or experienced Palestine; the actual place itself, the people in their place.

Jean Fisher contributes a substantial introductory essay, while the poet and critic Najwan Darwish and novelist Adania Shibli have written further captivating responses. Visual contributions include a project linked to a pair of paintings by Francis Alÿs, drawings of stoney aridity with ambiguous structures by Paul Noble, and a searingly intimate journal-based piece by Emily Jacir. Jananne al-Ani, Khalil Rabah and Mark Titchner contribute varying photography-based projects focused on the place and its relationship to the body and word. Olaf Nicolai contributes an angular text-based project and Sharif Waked highlights the abysmal ambiguities of the political context.

In Ramallah, Running
Paperback
160 pages
32 colour plus b/w ills
26.0 x 19.0 cm
10.20 x 7.5 in
ISBN 978 1 907317 67 5

NB: Advance proofs of the book have arrived and are really quite beautiful (more…)

on translated by, biggin’ japan at cca kitakyushu until 20 jan 2012

December 12, 2011

Translated By – London 2011

Translated By, Shumon and Charles’ exhibition of audio recordings of writing about place by a range of writers including myself, with a short excerpt from In Ramallah, Running  in the form of cut-together running texts, is currently on show at CCA KITAKYUSHU Ogura Gallery December 12, 2011 – January 20, 2012. (more…)

on my review of mourid barghouti’s i was born there… in today’s Independent

November 4, 2011

The Independent

  

I Was Born There, I Was Born Here, By Mourid Barghouti, trans. Humphrey Davies

GUY MANNES-ABBOTT | FRIDAY 04 NOVEMBER 2011

Mourid Barghouti’s first volume of memoir, I Saw Ramallah, is a classic of the genre and a uniquely clear-eyed account of returning home after 30 years of serial expulsion. Barghouti is also the poet of displacement in general as well as its specific Palestinian form. In between the first and this second volume of memoir came Midnight & Other Poems – a first selection from many volumes of his poetry.

I Saw Ramallah wove a life of enforced absences into a moment of return to that city and the author’s home village of Deir Ghassanah in 1996, with prose of poetic concision. It ended with Barghouti recrossing an indelibly memorialised bridge over the Jordan river to collect a permit for his son Tamim, so they could return together. “He will see it. He will see me in it, and we shall ask all the questions after that.”

I Was Born… is that collection of “questions” (more…)

on mourid barghouti’s i was born there, i was born here due 7 Nov in UK

October 27, 2011

Deir Ghassanah from the restored ‘ruins of al Khawas’ tomb & masjid [Ph. G Mannes-Abbott 2010]

The much anticipated arrival in English of a second volume of Mourid Barghouti’s memoirs is now close enough to touch… Indeed, I have it here in my happy fingers. My efforts to try to read it in Arabic, with only a basic grasp of the language, met an honourable end without ever getting close to the uniquely precise presence of its author in his words…

Publication of I Was Born There, I was Born Here is November 7th and Mourid will be appearing at Oxford University, the Bristol Festival of Ideas, and London’s Southbank Centre. I’m reserving comment on the book for reasons that will become clear, but if you’ve never seen Mourid’s words come to life in his voice right in front of you then waste no time in getting hold of a seat or a ticket at these events… (more…)

on a hand made dummy of in ramallah, running -pre design meet

October 24, 2011

My hand-made and -cut rough mock-up of In Ramallah, Running this night…

I can’t  resist sharing my pleasure at having assembled all the elements of In Ramallah, Running in hard form for the first time tonight in preparation for a big design and layout meeting tomorrow. It’s very strange to materialise something that has existed in my mind as a project and proposal, then a place and people as well as a piece of my own inevitably elliptical work, before becoming a project once more with a range of very special people responding to and contributing work to the book, for all of that to eventually come together from all over the world and now to have a dummy of it in my fingers and see that it is pretty much as conceived -albeit only held together by a single bulldog clip- except that it’s so much better in actuality! (more…)

on another wall to be torn down, this time in Cairo [for a while]

September 7, 2011

Untitled by Maggie Osama

What is it with the Israeli flag [see other images] and walls? When are the watch towers going to appear? When will children start being shot, imprisoned without charge and routinely abused? (more…)

on elias khoury’s ‘as though she were sleeping’ in today’s independent

August 8, 2011

Looking like Yaffa in ’48…

independentLondon

As Though She Were Sleeping, By Elias Khoury

Reviewed by Guy Mannes-Abbott

Tuesday, 9 August 2011

Journeying towards Mount Ararat, the Russian poet Osip Mandelstam wrote of cultivating a sixth sense, “the sense of attraction to a mountain”. Writing about food, American novelist James Salter quoted Brillat-Savarin approvingly on his notion of a sixth sense, “physical desire”. The other five senses, he wrote, are optimised only in “sexual union”.

The Lebanese writer Elias Khoury belongs in such exalted company in literary terms. His new novel also pivots on mountains – in Lebanon – and appreciations of sexual union. Indeed, it was one of many books banned by the Mubarak regime for its explicitness. Khoury writes about the scent of words, which take on such immaterial qualities that writing itself works like a sixth sense in his fiction.

Read more here or (more…)

on hosni, why change always involves force…

August 3, 2011

I’ll keep it brief, but isn’t it nice to see Hosni!

It seems so long now and I for one have been missing him. Of course his ‘former’ colleagues remain largely in place and there’s a long way to go to even begin to consolidate the revolution. But the break with the past is good, the rest we know will take blood, resolve and time…

Of course, the regime has been pushed to get this far, almost week by week, and that will go on until real change is achieved. Change only ever happens like this. When someone tells you that shouting, anger, protest, rebellion even defensive or strategic acts of violence never gets anyone anywhere, as autocrats large and small always waste their breath saying, well; laugh in their faces and press on…

I’m sure Fruit Store regulars know from your own experience that tired, jaded, reactionary, conservative, No-sayers always only ever respond to force -or anyway forcefulness- however boring it is to have to resort to it. In that respect there are continuities between Tahrir’s very expensively acquired and yet only partial freedoms and much less dramatic ones closer to home -and yes, I’m writing as an urbanforester  when I make that point [not that the extrapolation necessarily works the other way around, of course].

Anyway, hooray-hello-Hosni; lets see much more of you and yours in future and work painstakingly through your crimes to ensure that justice is seen to be done and change is institutionalised.

Meanwhile, check the current issue of Bidoun and it’s programme of summery Seminars at the Serpentine here.


Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.