Archive for the ‘the political’ 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
Posted in in ramallah running, the literary, the political, the visual, visual art vanguard | Leave a Comment »
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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December 8, 2011
I’ve always felt there were many uses for a ‘Gordon Matta-Clark’ and can only approach life, especially urban life, as or through art in the broadest sense, that sense being not a Marxian one but a making something-from-nothing one. I’m [to a fault] less interested in exploiting my own having-made something-from-nothing -except to the extent of being able to make it in the first place and make something else subsequently! Only an idiot wouldn’t be interested in or cognisant of the abysmal world of surplus value, however there is a certain idiocy in being transfixed by it too…
One use for a Gordon Matta-Clark is to help think through the question of whether art can be food or food art. The answer is obviously in the affirmative but I have something quite specific in mind. Food, itself. As such. The piece that was also a place which was also a community-borne restaurant called Food, that is. (more…)
Tags:arthur ransome, beauborg, CAVAT, charlotte road, chearsley copse, colin ward, conical intersect, cuddington copse, david zwirner, dirty utopianism, dirty-utopian, folkhusset, forest food, freedom press, gordon matta-clark, guy mannes-abbott, kensal rise, lend lease, lime tree, norway maple tree, office baroque, phaidon, prince street, russian revolution, southwark council, splitting, talbot road, the elephant and castle urban forest, the peace garden, the six old men, the sweet chestnut slopes, thomas crow, thresholes, ubuweb, wooster street
Posted in being the human, the elephant and castle urban forest, the political, visual art vanguard | 1 Comment »
December 6, 2011
Click on images to enlarge
Tags:bidoun, guy mannes-abbott, leighton house, parastou forouhar, red is my name green is my name, rose issa, the funeral, thousand and one day
Posted in the political, the visual, visual art vanguard | 2 Comments »
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 »
