The Arab al-Sbaih refers to the Palestinian Nakba, which is annually commemorated on May 15 – the Palestinian catastrophe of 1948. The image (sic) shows a shelter built in Irbid, Jordan, by the exiled sheikh of Arab al-Sbaih for the people of the neighborhood during the Israeli-Arab war of 1967.
The GDR was founded on October 7, 1949. It seems as if historians are unable to agree upon what to call the territory of the German Reich between the end of the war in 1945 and the fall of 1949. As I was born in May 1949, I cannot answer the potential question about my […]
Minus Plato: I am currently in Madrid & I was excited to learn of your radio project Singing is what makes work possible (Syllabus) at the Museo Reina Sofía (I am especially intrigued by the ‘syllabus’ you created!). May I ask, Hong-Kai, is there any connection between your documenta 14 commission for their pubic radio […]
The Festival mondial des arts nègres represents the first official showcase of works by African international artists. This, by some fateful coincidence, was the first art exhibition I saw, when I was eight years old.
On my second birthday. Wearing the Nigerian “national clothes.” Soon after this (sic) photo was taken, my family and I would be internally displaced refugees thanks to Nigeria. Still in the same territory, but under a new flag, our world would never be the same again.
It was my birthday, and with my father we were by the swimming pool. A tall guy was working alone on a chess problem. Dad offered to play with him and won twice. Much later, I found out that the tall guy’s name was Bobby Fischer.
Holiness is what is dear to the gods. Who said that? I dunno but it’s not helpful. Never mind, ignore it. Let’s check-in instead. So, how are you coping? Healthy and sane? My starting position (forced on each of us, black reader and white writer, by this writing and our society) were the sites of […]
The illustration on our first opening poster is from a color lithograph titled Ilpost (Urgent Mail) by one of our members Keviselie/Hans Ragnar Mathisen. It symbolizes the pressure from competing with dominant societies that Sámit and other Indigenous people have to cope with.
On this day commemorating incomplete emancipation, I offer you this unfinished blogpost in the form of three unanswerable questions: How many Republican sheep does it take to maintain Trump’s regime? How many armed militia statue-protectors does it take to maintain settler colonialism? How many commercial prisons does it take to maintain racist injustice? This blogpost […]
On May 20, 1982, I was invited to stay in the dome of the Egyptian architect Hassan Fathy at New Gourna. Consequently I began to dream of building a dome house for myself. Five years later, we developed a technique at the University of Kassel to build domes from adobes (earth blocks) without formwork. Since […]