The right of revolution grants the people of a nation the right to overthrow a government that acts against their common interests. In political philosophy, the right of revolution was developed as a concept in Two Treatise on Government, written by John Locke at the beginning of the Enlightenment. The right to revolution was included […]
Walter Benjamin ended his life in this small border town of Spain, having crossed over from France the day before using a mountain trail. I visited his grave and memorial sculpture at the clifftop cemetery in 2004. This profound experience led to a work and collaboration with Ross Birrell that continues to this day.
The Sun, Chapter 1 was exhibited at the Queens Museum of Art in New York City, a museum located on the former grounds of the 1939 World’s Fair. The painting depicts the front page of a newspaper from Monday, October 14, 1940. This date marks when, after having visited the fair, my grandfather and great-grandfather […]
Two years before the outbreak of World War II, triggered by the German invasion of Poland, Hitler had the German Pavilion of the Venice Biennale rebuilt in the martial, classicist style he championed. After more than sixty million casualties, the war ended with the unconditional surrender of Germany on May 8, 1945. The 1993 Venice […]
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.