You wrote back in March 2019 the following crescendo to a long (too long) post called Echo is Golden (Sharjah Biennial 14 Remix):
When I left the ice-rink, Sharjah, the airport and returned home, I didn’t know how to keep my experience from fading into the air of routine, teaching and everyday life. I definitely didn’t plan on spending two full days writing this post. I blame reading the text ‘The Unknowing X’ by Sophia Al-Maria in the book by [Omar] Kholeif Making. I don’t want to spoil it by rehashing it here, but if you can imagine reading James Baldwin and being given a card from the Kuan Yin Oracle set of a goddess Who Perceives the Sounds of the World, you’d be close. Instead, I just want to leave you with her closing words, mixed with those of Pauline Oliveros that close The documenta 14 Reader and leave them here, in this room, to resonate as a placeholder for that ever elusive golden echo:
Listening to this space I sound this space.
Use the tools you are given.
Listening to the energy of all who are present I sound this energy.
Confront your histories with honesty.
Listening to my listening and your listening I make this music here and now with the assistance of all that there is.
Rescue the unknowable future.
I dedicate this music to a world without war.
Today with magic on your mind (thanks to the research of Miranda Koffey – to which this post is a small gesture of admiration!), you are returned to Al-Maria’s text, which since you wrote this post in 2019 has replicated itself within your library.
First, in the form of James Baldwin’s Dark Days, which you bought immediately after reading Al-Maria’s essay, so you could read it in the same edition she had, as published by Penguin.
Second, in the form of Al-Maria’s Sad Sack: Collected Writings (Book Works: London, 2019), where the essay was reproduced with its extended title ‘The Unknowing X (Weave the Future Golden over Dark Days)’ also included in the table of contents, where it was abbreviated in the Sharjah catalog. Here the green pages of the whole book determine the reading experience.
Third, and final, in the form of the newest addition to the Whitechapel Gallery’s Documents in Contemporary Art series, edited by Jamie Sutcliffe on the topic of MAGIC. Here the essay is framed by the company it keeps.
Since only two of these three books will remain in your library (one will be a timely offering), you wanted to record their presence together here, like a moment when a raincloud moves across the sun and there is a sudden, momentary and localized downpour.
