Forms of Public Privacy

Resistance dispatch 002

In 2024, the documentary No Other Land, co-produced by Palestinian and Jewish activists from Masafer Yatta drew internattional attention at film festivals, bringing the long-standing occupation, demolitions, and violence in the region into broader public view. 

The starting point of this publication emerged from an impromptu decision to draw a family tree covering roughly five hundred villagers of Umm al-Kheir. The author follows two threads simultaneously: one traces verifiable institutional and geographic transformations, tracking how a community is systematically rendered illegal through planning regimes and court rulings; the other comes from lived encounters, oral testimony, and the moments when people entrusted me with their names, their kinship ties, and their past.

Printed by Bleed Print

In Perpetuity is part of Ivey Wawn’s project of the same name. With contributions from those involved in the making of what would have been the live performance, it is an accumulation of thoughts, reflections and associated pieces of work that give some idea of what the work could, would, or may in the future come to be. 

In Perpetuity is an ongoing project that has taken a variety of forms, from publication, through video and into live performance.

‘Kamer I - Oesters’ is een kort verhaal geschreven in het kader van het kunstproject Beste Anna,. Hierin fungeert de figuur van de openlijk lesbische Rotterdamse schrijfster Anna Blaman als motor voor vragen, gesprekken en correspondenties rondom feminisme, schrijvende vrouwen en de canon, anders zijn, eenzaamheid en vriendschap.

Ook verkent Katinka met dit onderzoek Anna Blaman als personage voor een toekomstige roman. In ‘Kamer I - Oesters’ betreedt de hoofdpersoon Anna’s met een rolkoffer vol boeken van andere schrijvers, fluistert ze hun woorden in de kieren in Anna’s muren en verleidt ze Anna met een pauwendans.

Anna Blaman (1905-1960) was openlijk lesbisch, in die tijd een groot taboe, maar zag zichzelf niet als voorvechter van een beweging. Een belangrijk thema in haar werk is de vraag of we een ander werkelijk kunnen kennen. De personages in haar romans zijn vaak alleen en verlangen naar een ander, die altijd onbereikbaar blijft. In 1948 publiceerde Blaman de roman Eenzaam Avontuur, die erg veel stof op deed waaien vanwege enkele (homo-)erotische personages die in het boek voorkomen. 

In the fall of 2017, Obe Alkema got acquainted with the American poet Kevin Killian, first at the New Narrative conference at UC Berkeley, then at the Poets & Critics Symposium in Paris that was all about his poetry. A year and a half later, Alkema traveled back to Paris, this time as a participant of a writing residency. He was there to research the landscape of memory, but more than he expected and initially realized, Kevin’s death the previous month (June 2019) affected his return. Besides inevitable, mourning and remembering became obsessions for Alkema, as he shows in ‘My Kevin, Our Paris’, a memoir about Kevin Killian (1952–2019), but especially about his Kevin and their Paris.

DUCTUS is the latest solo project by Paul Abbott, featuring 51 minutes of audio, across 12 tracks, and a 42 page booklet featuring new writing. DUCTUS was written and recorded in Edinburgh and Porto in 2019. 

DUCTUS presents a playful weave of collapsing time through a number of speculative elements and fictional characters. Abbott feels his way through learning drums, rhythm and writing as fleshy research technologies. DUCTUS is the latest stage in a process considering sound, the body, imagination, and language through music. This features as part of ongoing investigations using real and imaginary drums, synthetic sounds, performance and writing.

This publication comprises a series of interviews with contemporary artists, musicians, and writers who are in dialogue with Beirut and Cairo. While not purporting to be an overview of the art scenes in these cities, this book begins to draw a picture of how artists think about what it means to be active in the contexts of these cities. It offers insight into the circumstances that structured these artists’ stories, and the often accidental influences that have shaped how their practices have developed.

At midday, March 17th, 2020, Macron’s government decided to place France in suspended animation. Total confinement. The first in a series of strict debilitating lockdowns to combat the spiralling Covid-19 pandemic. This first confinement lasted 55 days. It ended on 11th May 2020. The first part of a dramatic trilogy.

One month in, in April 2020, David West picked up a box of pastels that used to belong to his mother. He had had them for many years but never used them. New to the medium, locked in his Paris studio, he sets himself to the task. Naturally, violence ensues. Folk horror. Animals are disembowelled. Faceless sexualised female bodies perform. Screaming faces educate. Covered figures stand motionless. Shadows. Hooded beings populate. Stabbing, scratching, fading, softening, sforzando. Crescendo. Schadenfreude.

Occasional respite comes when West ventures outside - andante - but the externalised screaming pushes him back in. Hagazussa. Ghosts from West’s past, real and unreal, appear and disappear, figures and shapes, compositional arcs, a slimy snaking emerald hand parts the waves for colour to gush forth a new language verde fosforescente, worm purple, rosa shocking, vermillion, cobalt, ultra-black.

This book reproduces a small selection of some 300 works, in chronological order, in an attempt to document time, evolution, revolt, epiphany and joy. Joy in colour, horror, form, symphony, and finally, West’s visions of a new utopia. Marcato. Decrescendo.

Softcover (21cm x 29.7cm)
100 Pages
50 copies
Signed and numbered by David West

Slant is a mail art project and a publishing house. It invites artists, designers, writers and poets to express themselves through a common theme every two weeks. it has poetry as its beacon of reflection, keeping in mind that sometimes we must tell the truth slant in order to see our reality depicted.

First edition, approx. 240pp. 4-colors riso printed.
20 x 25,5cm, 200 copies. Coptic hand-made binding.
Softcover printed wraps. French and English texts.

« [...] la stratégie de la terre brûlée c’est aussi un héritage mais adaptation 2024 on brûle désormais des arrêts de bus et des commissariats et si à la télé iels disent ces jeunes sont complètements cons détruire leur propre ville c’est que Bolloré a rien compris [...] » 

Fanny Souade Sow est artiste plasticienne, son travail est habité par des questionnements d’ordre sociopolitique et historique et évoque en outre la violence latente des structures urbaines qui excluent, séparent, condamnent et contraignent un certain nombre de corps et d’existences minorisées. 

SABR/Collection est une série de publications qui rassemble des œuvres littéraires de format court et de genres variés. Dirigée par Nesrine Salem, la collection souhaite mettre en avant les macro-réalités des auteur·ices choisi·es pour rendre visible le caractère intersectionnel des luttes.

An artist's book by New York-based author and artist Sam Pulitzer (born 1984), The Premise of a Better Life combines photographs with ethical and existential questions addressed to the viewer, in an allegory of the contemporary condition. These photographs of everyday things, ambiguous details, nondescript landscapes and cityscapes were mostly taken in New York, although the city appears as the pale reflection of a model city.

Each picture is accompanied by a question: "Can you afford yourself?" "Are you waiting for a moment that just won't come?" "If you knew then what you know now, would it make a difference?" "Do you trust happiness?" The montages offer a complex, personal, at times satirical image of the present age.

An original essay by Pulitzer unfolds the project's philosophical and political issues, notably discussing a key reference for the project, Ernst Bloch's The Principle of Hope.