Tag: shumon basar

note_08 From Shumon Basar’s superhuman Couples Format; me on Gertrude & Alice #passionloveandwork

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Screenshot 2018-03-27 22.37.27

Shumon Basar | Couple Format: The Identity Between Love and Work

 

“What was the identity between love and work,

or, the love found in working together?”

 

“Let’s draw focus on their passion: the love and work. The following is from Diana Souhami’s glorious book Gertrude and Alice:

‘“Our pleasure is to do every day the work of that day,’ wrote Gertrude, ‘to cut our hair and not want blue eyes and to be reasonable and obedient … Every day we get up and say we are awake today …’

… So we circle back to The Autobiography of Alice B.Toklas, which wasn’t of course an autobiography. What was it? […] Primarily, it was also an autobiography, but not of Alice. It was a biography: not one authored from outside, but from inside, albeit in another’s voice… I linger with this because while this is one of the most conventional prose-like works of Gertrude’s it is also properly strange. That is, Gertrude adopted Alice’s recognizable voice, exorcising as many Gertrudisms as she could identify, though not all, to write a memoir of her own life and times.”

-extracted from my text/talk COUPLING | Gertrude and Alice | July 2016.

Click through for links to Shumon’s piece and the Superhumanity project above and for the recording of the original event on G&E and Marina Abramovic and Ulay click my Readings_Talks button (where you can click on through to see/hear the other Couple Formats too).

notes from a meeting, on homing in on conclusions…

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March Meeting Sharjah 2012 Every which way… Photo G Mannes-Abbott

CLICK on image to link to SAF or read on below…

As I home in on conclusive thoughts, the first must be an acknowledgement of the fifth March Meeting as such. It brought together over 80 speakers plus audience to talk, listen, and exchange over 3 long and short days -as well as film screenings, exhibitions and musical performance. Inevitably, it generated brain-burn, the occasional misfiring or abbreviated note, and the expressed desire for either longer sessions at times or a pause button to reflect at others.

However, the intensity was generative of wide ranging conversations, links and relinks, discovery and trust, committedness and complexities. It’s a risky venture, with all sorts of intellectual and creative risks talked of and engaged, by practitioners with experience of or aspirations for just such frontier activity. The scent of new and different futures is in the air as is impatience to get there ASAP… Continue reading “notes from a meeting, on homing in on conclusions…” →

‘i am running in ramallah and it is painful…’ at SALT galata 06.04.12-08.07.12

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Translated By in a new configuration and new location. I’ve not made it yet but hope I might. There is also a new version of the book, edited by Shumon, Charles and Suna Kafadar and designed by Zak. I’ve not seen it yet, etc.!

Meanwhile, In Ramallah, Running has been painful too, but advances are promised by the publisher very soon now and I will of course share confirmed publication and other dates when I have them. Meanwhile, very good bound proofs are available for review and related purposes. Contacts are here in the pdf button at the top. Be in touch!

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

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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. Continue reading “on translated by, biggin’ japan at cca kitakyushu until 20 jan 2012” →

on an art of two-sides, mathaf interference at ICA

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Shumon Basar and Jack Persekian Wash Hands…

Jack Persekian’s performance of Nablus Soap at the ICA, as part of the Mathaf’s Interference weekend, was brilliant.

The work takes off from a show he put on with Mona Hatoum back in the early days in Jerusalem. It recounts that earlyness, the basic space, cold and uninviting and the process of arriving at the piece –Present tense [1996]- by Mona H., its installation and the historical context of a disastrous willingness to compromise with Occupation in the form of ‘Oslo’. An apologetic Abu Amar is scratched-in which raised a big laugh and the whole piece is damn fine, not least as testament to Nablus.

As Jack and Shumon talked, the film was paused on one of the many Occupation watchtowers that terrorise the Palestinian Hills, lest any of us forget the bloody stain it represents… Continue reading “on an art of two-sides, mathaf interference at ICA” →

on unintended consequences, naaem mohaiemen’s the young man was…

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Excellent piece/interview on The Young Man Was…: Part 1, United Red Army, Naeem Mohaiemen’s film that was first shown at Sharjah Biennial X -and which I wrote about ‘live’ here. Naeem has a page on the film/project here.

Don’t miss the film whenever/wherever it screens. Interesting to see in some relation to Assayas’s surprisingly good biopic Carlos, which is still a very different project obviously [read Jonathan Romney here]. Continue reading “on unintended consequences, naaem mohaiemen’s the young man was…” →

in ramallah, running – a little bit

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In Ramallah, Running by Guy Mannes-Abbott [2011]

I can’t resist posting this image from one of the distributor’s sites for Translated By, there’s a page of other images/details here.

This is a tiny excerpt of the excerpt obviously. As a whole, my short running texts within Ramallah itself alternate with longer walking essays at/in/beyond the limits all around, which multiply and abstract in ways peculiar to this unique Occupation. Hence my attempt to reconjure the actual place, and actual people in their place. The whole text begins as it appears to do here, though this excerpt of 1500 words is made up only of running texts.

The actual book –In Ramallah, Running- is coming together in all its ambitious complexity!  Continue reading “in ramallah, running – a little bit” →

on ‘translated by’, the details…

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Translated By

[CLICK image for details]

Curated by Charles Arsène Henry and Shumon Basar

Featuring Douglas Coupland, Rana Dasgupta, Julien Gracq, Hu Fang, Jonathan Lethem, Tom McCarthy, Guy Mannes Abbott, Sophia Al Maria, Hisham Matar, Adania Shibli and Neal Stephenson

*NB [UPDATE] The accompanying book will be published February 10th, details here and below; Continue reading “on ‘translated by’, the details…” →

in ramallah, running 2010 [excerpt], in ‘translated by’ 15.01.11 – 09.02.11

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Translated By

15.01.2011 – 09.02.2011

Architectural Association Gallery

36 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3ES

Private view event on 14 January  6.30–8.30

Curators Charles Arsène-Henry and Shumon Basar

You’ve entered the room. It looks empty, silent. Vinyl text on the wall, like an album track-listing. Writers’ names instead of bands.
You’ve been given a black pamphlet and an electronic device connected to a pair of headphones.
You’ll put them on. Pick a number. Press play. You look for the same number on the walls. You find it. Next to it, an image. Beside there is a seat. You sit. On a beat up office chair dredged from a river. You listen. And you start travelling. You’re on Atlantic Avenue, between Nevins and Third. It’s Brooklyn. 1971.
The voice stops. You go for another track, another chair, a different place. Now on a little stool, you follow a six-year-old girl’s voice in your ears. You’re lost in the Sheraton Hotel. An Aztec spaceship in Doha’s desert.
It will last for 11 tracks. Through Tripoli, Brixton, Ramallah. Sofia, The Metaverse. Ardennes forest. A garden.
Until West Vancouver. Where the world is ending.

NB I have a text, a small excerpt from In Ramallah, Running 2010, in this show and publication in happy company… details to follow.

I’ll also update during January 2011 with news on the book itself as it progresses towards publication which is now scheduled for October 2011.