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 […]
Libraries constantly shed… – Shubigi Rao ‘Articulating the Archive: An Imprecise Index’, in Zoe Butt (ed.) ‘Journey Beyond the Arrow’, Sharjah Art Foundation: Sharjah, 2019, -. 238. Zoe Butt Shubigi Rao Léuli Eshrāghi Phan Thảo Nguyên Mark Salvatus Lantian Xie Adriana Bustos Kidlat Tahimik Lisa Reihana Gudskul
Female Student: Professor, I am having trouble hearing what you say during class Male Professor: That’s ok, I know female students struggle to keep pace with male students in my classes Female Student: What did you say? Male Professor: What did I say? Female Student: Yes, you! Male Professor: Who, me?
After some delay, what says the public? It’s Joe’s time! So now, at long last, the smooth transition of a backwards flow towards normalcy softens the bite of an increasing viral death toll, trimming the long nails of Trumpism…for now. But in the meantime, what can art do for US? Either draw a line in […]
documenta 14 is not owned by anyone in particular. It is shared among its visitors and artists, readers and writers, as well as all those whose work made it happen. We write incarcerated by the myth of individual authorship. Whether poetry or prose (or whatever this is) I blow out hard from these puffed-up lungs. […]
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 […]
Even now, in the memory, she dazzles, must be circled about and about. We may perceive her indirectly, in her effects on others … Ah, the dead, the unended, endlessly ending dead: how long, how rich is their story. We, the living, must find what space we can alongside them; the giant dead whom we […]
While in the cradle, every parent, grandparent and god-fearing aunt wants the best for the new baby, hoping to keep the Evil Eye at bay. Over the years, their prayers for safety turn into dreams of success as the child grows and starts on the path through school to college. Now, bursting with pride at […]
A voice comes from somewhere (or within), braying: Well, listen to him! So sanctimonious in his white wokeness and so-called decolonial critique (whatever that is)! We see what you’re doing, writing this out loud for strangers’ ears, but inwardly, under your typing tongue, you murmur, “Oh, let the old guard suffer, so I can profit!”. […]
I am sitting in a room, different from the one you are in now. It is that vague time between the COVID-19 lock-down and the great reopening. With the lynching of Ahmaud Arbery on my mind, I scribble the following oddly formed questions into my notebook: what position is left for, or forced upon you, […]