Archive for the ‘the literary’ Category
December 28, 2011
2011 Folkestone Triennial
VARIOUS VENUES, FOLKESTONE, UK
Scroll down for review…
[NB Collaborations are a particular, demanding and beautiful form of work which I seem to have developed a taste for, at least in a visual art context and since 1997!
2011 was a year of varying forms of artful collaboration, each very special but none quite so intimate as this one for me; how it came about, whom it involves and the result of our efforts. To avoid the obvious-but-hideous potential problems of collaboration, a certain more or less unspoken [else endlessly detailed!] but deeply-shared approach to all-things essential is elemental. (more…)
Tags:andrea schlieker, ashok sukumaran, CAMP, colin perry, folkestone, francis ponge, frieze, guy mannes-abbott, iyesha geeth abbas, lighthouse in the sea of time, national coastwatch institution, richard wentworth, seashores, shaina anand, sharjah biennial, the country of the blind and other stories, zineb sedira
Posted in a gram of gujarat, sharjah biennial 10, the elephant and castle urban forest, the literary, the political, the visual, visual art vanguard | Leave a Comment »
December 23, 2011
In Ramallah, Running due Feb. 28th 2012
Gertrude Stein didn’t think much of commas, you remember? I think a lot of Gertrude’s work and Gertrude herself, as Fruit Store regulars will know, but disagree with her about the comma.
Commas break-up, complicate, deepen, add dimension to statements and any prose that takes ‘sense’ for granted. They elucidate, make-difficult, render actual complexity. The comma in In Ramallah, Running does these and many other things for me…
Above is a graphic rendering of a tiny part of the cover-image of the book [actual cover image coming soon], in which the sticking-out comma sticks out!
Commas are inconvenient, never quite fit, force you to notice that which you might not, condense and disrupt [presumed, heh Adania?] sense, etc. They are abyss and peak, add crucial [a]rhythms and make for the elliptical.
Writing without these things is almost literally nothing…
Tags:adania shibli, artschool palestine, black dog, emily jacir, francis alys, gertrude stein, guy mannes-abbott, in ramallah running, jananne al-ani, jean fisher, khalil rabah, mark titchner, najwan darwish, olaf nicolai, paul noble, samar martha, sharif waked, sharjah art foundation
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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…)
Tags:architectural association school of architecture, cca kitakyushu, Charles Arsène-Henry, charles arsene-henri, geoffrey streatfeild, guy mannes-abbott, in ramallah running, mavi armara, newt gingrich, shumon basar, translated by
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November 4, 2011
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…)
Tags:bloomsbury publishing, deir ghassanah, guy mannes-abbott, i saw ramallah, i was born here, i was born there, in ramallah running, jerusalem, john berger, lydda, mahmoud darwish, mahmoud the driver, midnight & other poems, mourid barghouti, nakba, palestine, ramallah, tamim barghouti, the ambulance, the independent, the new statesman
Posted in being the human, in ramallah running, palestine, the literary | Leave a Comment »
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…)
Tags:adania shibli, al khawas, bloomsbury, deir ghassanah, i saw ramallah, i was born there i was born here, in ramallah running, john berger, midnight & other poems, mourid barghouti, ramallah, ramallah district, shahid, the independent, yaffa
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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…)
Tags:black dog, guy mannes-abbott, in ramallah running, paul noble
Posted in being the human, in ramallah running, palestine, the literary, the political, the visual, visual art vanguard | 2 Comments »
October 23, 2011
Brecht House 1. Lövstigen, Lidingö, Stockholm 1939-40
In a wintery Stockholm [exquisitely lit but otherwise painful] a week ago I finally managed to take self and camera to what turns out to be the site of the house that Brecht stayed in during 1939-40 -and where he wrote Mother Courage and Her Children- until Sweden lost its nerve before an apparently irresistible Hitler and Brecht -the persecuted and fugitive leftist- had to move on… (more…)
Tags:bertolt brecht, erdmut wizisla, guy mannes-abbott, Lövstigen, libris, lidingo, mother courage and her children, stockholm, the independent, walter benjamin
Posted in the literary, the political | 1 Comment »
September 6, 2011
Francis Ponge [still from French documentary]
Primarily, this is a brief advertisement for CB Editions‘s irresistible bi-lingual edition of the great Francis Ponge; Unfinished Ode to Mud, translated by Beverley Bie Brahic in 2008. It’s a selection from what she has translated as The Defence of Things and Pieces, some of the latter being their first appearances in English…
So, firstly, please get hold of a copy of the book from the publishing miracle that is CB Editions whom, it’s worth knowing, work on very short print runs. I have no links etc., but urge you to take up their current offer here, while getting hold of this beautiful selection and give copies to people that you wish loved you…
‘Unfinished Ode to Mud’ itself, is also an ode to the Resistance (more…)
Tags:a utopia of fine dust, aa files 42, beth archer, beverley bie brahic, cb editions, charles fourier, dirty utopianism, e.things, english civil war, forting, francis ponge, guy mannes-abbott, italo calvino, pieces, seashores, the country of the blind and other stories, the defence of things, the elephant and castle urban forest, the literature machine, the voice of things, unfinished ode to mud
Posted in being the human, the elephant and castle urban forest, the literary, the political | 1 Comment »
