Tom Leonard on Language and social status

Hito Steyerl on Minorities

'Minorities are not primarily defined by their small number, but by their incompatibility with pre-existing categories of identity' from the Empty Center translated by John Southard

'The City' Constantine P. Cavafy (1910), translations

You said: “I’ll go to another country, go to another shore,

find another city better than this one.

Whatever I try to do is fated to turn out wrong

and my heart lies buried as though it were something dead.

How long can I let my mind moulder in this place?

Wherever I turn, wherever I happen to look,

I see the black ruins of my life, here,

where I’ve spent so many years, wasted them, destroyed them totally.”

You won’t find a new country, won’t find another shore.

This city will always pursue you. You will walk

the same streets, grow old in the same neighborhoods,

will turn gray in these same houses.

You will always end up in this city. Don’t hope for things elsewhere:

there is no ship for you, there is no road.

As you’ve wasted your life here, in this small corner,

you’ve destroyed it everywhere else in the world.

Translated by Edmund Keeley/Philip Sherrard

You tell yourself: I'll be gone
To some other land, some other sea,
To a city lovelier far than this
Could ever have been or hoped to be -
Where every step now tightens the noose:
A heart in a body buried and out of use:
How long, how long must I be here
Confined among these dreary purlieus
Of the common mind? Wherever now I look
Black ruins of my life rise into view.
So many years have I been here
Spending and squandering, and nothing gained.
There's no new land, my friend, no
New sea; for the city will follow you,
In the same streets you'll wander endlessly,
The same mental suburbs slip from youth to age,
In the same house go white at last -
The city is a cage.
No other places, always this
Your earthly landfall, and no ship exists
To take you from yourself.
Ah! don't you see
Just as you've ruined your life in this
One plot of ground you've ruined its worth
Everywhere now - over the whole earth?

Translated by Lawrence Durrell (in the novel Justine)

TEDxRamallah: Munir Fasheh-Occupation of Knowledge

The worst conquest is that of knowledge. It led to conquering diversity and pluralism in living by a modern superstition: the belief in a single universal path for knowing, learning, and progressing. Transforming ahaali (no synonym in English; the closest is 'people-in-community') into citizens has been instrumental in the conquest and disastrous to human communities. Whereas the basic relationship in the case of citizens is to a state and institutions, it is in the case of ahaali to one another, to a place, culture, and collective memory. Knowledge, learning, and religion of ahaali have been gradually replaced by institutional ones. Examples from Palestine and what happened in Cairo...

50/50: Hip Hop in Israel and Palestine (Alexandra Boulat)

On both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, rappers are the voice of a new generation whose weapons are lyrics and music.

In Gaza, Mohamed, or DR (short for Dynamic Rapper), leads PR, the "Palestinian Rapperz". Despite Islamic laws, Israeli incursions and internal conflicts, PR persists in performing hip-hop concerts and producing new songs. "Our reality in Gaza is about suffering," says Mohamed. "Gaza is like a big prison, and we get our message across with rap music." Since last June, PR's Web site has had thousands of visitors from all over the world.

Jew Da lives in El'Ad, an Orthodox Jewish settlement near Tel Aviv. He recently moved from America to preach in Israel, putting his religion into his rap. Jew Da found rap before religion and he tries to follow a piece of advice given to him by his Rabbi: "Take what you did before, and flip it to holiness." Not easy. During a recent video shoot with other rappers, the former hard-partier acted shy about appearing with shimmying women dancers and tattooed colleagues.

The Film

Wenn Ich Ens Nit Mih Existiere (cultural identity)

Wenn ich ens nit mih existiere,
wenn ich die Auge zojedonn.
Wenn ich mich bovve präsentiere,
janz hoch am Himmelspöötzje stonn.
Dann soll d'r Petrus dat schon maache,
hä sök d'r schönste Platz mir us.
Hä weiß et jitt dann jet ze laache:
ich bin en Kölle am Ring zehus

When I am gone

When I close my eyes.

When I present myself at heaven's gates

St Peter will find for me the holiest place.

Don't laugh at me, it's true

Because I was from Cologne.

la memoire dure (memory resists)- Rossella Ragazzi

Ibrahim lived with his uncle in the woods in Mali, for a few days he attended Koran school. Alpha comes from Liberia, and during the war his family was dispersed. Nawel lived in Algeria where his large family was forced to have him adopted and taken to France. All these children attended the same preparation class for learning French in a compulsory school in Paris that is aimed at inserting them as soon as possible in normal primary school classes. For 9 months, the film director filmed these children, showing how they were received in France and the relationship established between teachers and pupils. The children learn not only the language but also the values of their host society.

Research Project- يما مويل الهوا

يما مويل الهوا يما مويليا

Oh Mother the sad song …oh mother is my song

(It is a preface usually said to express how much pain the speaker has)

ضرب الخناجر ولا حكم النذل فيا

Hitting by daggers but not being ruled by rascal

ومشيت تحت الشتا والشتا رواني

And I walked under the rain ,and the rain wets me

والصيف لما أتى ولع من نيراني

And when the summer had come , he was burned by my fires

بيضل عمري انفدى ندر للحرية

My life will stay ransom and vow for the freedom

يما مويل الهوا يما مويليا

Oh Mother the sad song …oh mother is my song

يا ليل صاح الندى يشهد على جراحي

Oh night.. the dew hollers and witness on my wounds

وانسل جيش العدا من كل النواحي

And the enemy army attacked from all directions

والليل شاف الردى عم يتعلم بيا

And the night was witness on what the death had done to me

يما مويل الهوا يما مويليا

Oh Mother the sad song …oh mother is my song

بارودة الجبل أعلى من العالي

The mountain rifle is best of the best

مفتح درب الأمل والأمل برجالي

Key of the hope path and the hope depends on the men

يا شعبنا يا بطل أفديك بعينيا

Oh our people oh heroes … my eyes are ransom for you

يما مويل الهوا يما مويليا

Oh Mother the sad song …oh mother is my song

(special thanks to the person who translated this for me)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmq-AO1306A&feature=related

There is a Happy Land

There is a happy land down in duke street jail,

Where all the prisoners stand hangin fae a nail,

Ham and eggs you never see,

Dirty water for your tea.

There you live and there you dee,

God save the Queen.

Then the corporation came wae a great new plan,

build multi-storey flats on the happy land,

Now there's rows a hooses there,

Mind you step gon up the stair,

Ghosts'll come and pull your hair,

God save the Queen.

Why Orthodox Jews May Have the Hottest Sex Lives, 2011

Secular Israeli man in his late 20s, reciting from a text by an American Orthodox Jewish woman.
Made in Jerusalem.

Alan Currall: Encyclopaedia

Two years before Wikipedia re-defined the nature of the encyclopaedic work of reference, transforming it from a compendium of expert views into a repository of collective wisdom, Alan Currall produced this endearingly quixotic People’s Almanac, assembled from ordinary people’s individual contributions. The people in question are recruited from Currall’s immediate circle of family and friends, and the answers they give offer a disarmingly local, if palpably limited and partial, perspective on the attempted elucidation of a diverse range of subjects (aspidistra, air, Abyssinia etc). Persistently confronted by their doubts and failings, displaying a tendency to falter or digress, the participants’ definitions highlight the inherent absurdity of universalising schemes of classification, and undercut the overweening will-to-order that sustains the pursuit of systematic knowledge.

Released as a CD-Rom (a format as passé as a morocco-bound multi-volume edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica), the piece’s homemade graphic style exhibits a deliberately earnest retro quality (that felt oddly antiquated even at the time). Commissioned in conjunction with Potteries Museum and Art Gallery in Stoke-on-Trent (Currall’s home town), ‘Encyclopaedia’ draws on his roots in this now relatively unsung, and increasingly marginalised part of Middle England to project an engaging, inclusive sense of commonality, in which the so-called ‘common people’ demonstrate the virtues, and the limits, of what passes for common knowledge.

A Film and Video Umbrella Touring Exhibition. Curated and produced by Film and Video Umbrella, Stills and Potteries Museum and Art Gallery.

Supported by the National Touring Programme of the Arts Council of England.

'Did You Kiss the Foot that Kicked You?' Ruth Ewan w/ Artangel (over 100 buskers in London who played 'The Ballad of Accounting' for a week)

Did you kiss the foot that kicked you?
"Give me the making of the songs of the nation, and I care not who makes its laws".
Andrew Fletcher, 1703
"Music is doing something to everyone who hears it all the time".
Arnold Perris, Music as Propaganda, 1984


Ewan MacColl wrote Ballad of Accounting in 1964.The lyrics follow a simple structure, considered to be unique among his three hundred compositions. The song offers criticism as self-reflection, repeatedly posing provocative and direct questions:
Did you stand aside and let them choose while you took second best?
Did you let them skim the cream off and then give to you the rest?
Government records released in 2006 through The National Archive show that from 1932, security service MI5 held a file on MacColl. One report claims that he was ‘a communist with very extreme views’ who needed ‘special attention’. The file also states, as a cause for concern, that MacColl had ‘exceptional ability as a singer and musical organiser’.
Ruth Ewan's Did you kiss the foot that kicked you? involves the co-ordination of over one hundred buskers around London. Performing both under and above ground, the buskers incorporate Ballad of Accounting into their usual repertoire. Their individual acts share a collective purpose. The week-long series of performances slips quietly into the rush-hour routine, as the scattered recitals filter into the subconscious of those passing by.
Busking is about something other than just being an able musician or a street entertainer; it is a raw performance, an autonomous act.
Legislation has almost eradicated busking; by-laws and policing keep all but the hardiest musicians from the streets, while others pursue bureaucratic routes into designated areas. The recent introduction of music licensing has restrained the natural spontaneity of performances across a range of live venues.
The entirety of Did you kiss the foot that kicked you? cannot be experienced by any one person. We may or may not be aware of the song’s fleeting presence in the city: a bold brass section as we cross the Thames or a quiet voice accompanied by a guitar as we turn off the main street.

Rives- Kite

Kite


I mistook a garbage truck for thunder.

The morning after the first night we made love,
I dreamt thunder was chasing rain
through your neighborhood,
flooding the streets and keeping the two of us
indoors for days or even weeks,
until some old prophet could drop, by in an ark,
to take us and the rest of the paired-up animals
to a very high place, or an island maybe,
where we could just
sleep naked for a living.

But the thunder was a garbage truck.
And when my eyes woke up
a note on your pillow said:
"Good morning, Sparkle Boy!
I'll be back around noon.
You--make yourself at home."
And so I did.

Maybe.

I'm saying maybe I put on your slippers,
which were as comfortable as bunnies
because they were bunnies,
and then shuffled over my new favorite
hardwood floor to the bathroom
where maybe I took a bubble bath,
which is not something I can do at my place
because, frankly, my tub is way too skanky
to ever sit my bare ass down in.
And then maybe I got so caught up in the romance of the suds
I started quoting old Latin poetry from my college days
like: "fulsere quondam candidi tibi soles..."
You know: "Verily a bright sun does favor me this morning...muthafucka!"

And then maybe I...played with myself.
But it’s not what you’re thinking--
I’m saying possibly I just sorta
stuck my hand up from the water, going:

hand!(HERE I HOLD MY HAND UP LIKE A SOCK PUPPET
hand!WITHOUT THE SOCK AND MY HAND TEASES ME
hand!IN A HIGH, SMUTTY VOICE):

HAND: "Somebody got laid last night!
Ha-ha-haaaa!
It was youuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu!!!"

Or whatever.

And then maybe I...played with myself,
and it's exactly what you're thinking.
But if I did, it was only to put
the mental motion picture of our naked night together
on replay and replay and replay
so touching myself was just like...
Tivo in a way.

And yes, I was still wet when I borrowed your bathrobe.
And yes, I baked apples in your oven
and then ate them with your honey, honey.
And yes, I scared the birds away from your balcony
with my antics, dancing full-blast
to your old Prince CD's--
but please let’s just keep that my little secret,
because nothing is as private as a solitary dance
unless--maybe--it's standing in front of a full-length mirror
in a borrowed pair of bunny slippers,
slipping off a bathrobe and then wishing to a lightbulb
that my name, or my game, or my whatever were bigger,
wondering: "What kind of woman wants this skinny kid for her warrior?"

And so I made for you a kite, enormous,
out of coat hangers, brown paper bags
and the masking tape from that drawer in your kitchen,
and I hung it in the hallway
where you couldn’t hardly miss it,
and I tagged that kite with my words,
I wrote:

Just so you know--

My weird mind wanders and my brave heart breaks.
I've nailed some milestones, but I've made mistakes,
Cuz I got more faults than a map of California earthquakes.

I am taking a nap beneath your covers.
Wake me if you like me.
Wake me if you want me
Wake me if you need another poem.

Your once and future lover
has made himself at home.

Rives on 4 am

They used to be told that someone wasn't coming back from Kuwait because he'd died ; he'd died of sunstroke. He'd been driving his shovel into the earth when he'd fell on th one knee then on both . And then what? He was killed by sunstroke. Do you want him buried here or there? That was all, sunstroke. It was quite right. Who called it 'sunstroke'? Wasn't he a genius? This dessert was like a giant in hiding, flogging their heads with whips of fire and boiling pitch. But could the sun kill them and all the stench imprisoned in their breasts?

From 'Men in the Sun' by Ghassan Kanafani (translated by Hilary Kilpatrick)