Author: mara.ahmed

berlin tour starts at alexanderplatz

this morning took a ‘welcome berlin’ tour by walkative. it started in front of the rotes rathaus (the red city hall) at alexanderplatz (or alex for short) which is the cental square of the eastern city center. before the tour even started i took a lot of pictures of the neptune fountain and the beautiful prints from museo del prado (spain) that are installed around the fountain and in the shadow of the communist-era tv tower. the paintings represent work by all of the greats: el greco, velasquez, reubens, goya, and many more. as usual i reframed the work by looking at hands and fabric, but this time there was the added element of reflections on top of the glass protecting each print. quite something to look at this kind of revered classical art in the outdoors with plenty of light, shadows, mirrored reflections and uninhibited sun rays. a treat for me!

oh yeah, breakfast at la femme more than breakfast, a turkish place across the street from my apt. delish!

food and film

a word about the yummy food i had yesterday and our last outing for the night (no, it wasn’t a night club).

poached eggs and toast for breakfast at 19grams, just a couple of steps away from my apt in mitte (the butter tasted and smelled so full-bodied and real), hot chocolate and passion fruit cheese cake at atlas cafe in kreuzberg (passion fruit is called maracuja in german), and finally dinner with veronika at aftab station east (persian cuisine) where we had the most tender and delicious chicken i’ve ever had, cooked in a pomegranate and walnut sauce, served with fragrant saffron rice and mint yogurt. out of this world. also tried some lemonade made with berry juice, ginger and lavender – subtle sweetness, sourness, and spice all in one drink.

ended the day with a movie at lichtblick cinema berlin (looks like a store from the outside) where we saw ‘audre lorde – the berlin years 1984 to 1992’ (a doc from 2012). what a treat to see this beautiful face and hear this brilliant wise voice we love so much at home, here in berlin. perfection.

connecting with artists & curators in berlin

spent the day with the lovely veronika hykova, a curator at temporary space berlin and a lover of contemporary art <3

first stop somos where we met/had discussions with three brilliant artists/curators doing their art residencies:

Suu Myint Thein, is a sculptor, performance artist, educator, and curator from Myanmar. As the deteriorating political situation is affecting artists greatly, Suu currently participates in a special artist at-risk residency, supported by SomoS and the Goethe Institute Myanmar, developing new performance work and paintings.

Nicole Beck is a Hong Kong-raised, Sydney-based curator. She is developing Take Two, an exhibition connecting local artists to explore the potential of reenactment as a way to reflect the past.

Isabella Chydenius (b.1988), is an interdisciplinary Helsinki-based Finnish artist investigating societal structures, with a focus on femininity as applied to all genders, and its relation to safety and violence.

so inspiring to dive into their art practice and work.

what stood out at the berlin biennale

what stood out at the berlin biennale: exile is a hard job by nil yalter, maithu bùi’s mathuat – MMRBX, a video installation based on a virtual reality game, and asim abdulaziz’s 1941.

‘Asim Abdulaziz is a visual artist, photographer, and filmmaker. His emerging practice explores the psychoaffective implications of living in a country ravaged by ongoing war. The photographic series Homesick (2020), for example, depicts Yemeni women in destroyed interiors, the title suggesting both a yearning to return to a time before the war as well as the morbid estrangement of living among the ceaseless ruins that are product of the conflict.

The short experimental film 1941 (2021) explores the sense of disorientation and alienation experienced by Yemenis. After learning that knitting was a significant way for women in the United States to participate in the war effort during World War II, Abdulaziz was struck by how, in contemporary Yemen, knitting as an act of solidarity in a time of war would seem entirely absurd. The repetitive nature of the hand movement guiding the needles and stitching the wool thread distracts one from pondering the past and future, locking the knitter into a timeless present. By staging the practice in Yemen, Abdulaziz draws an embodied metaphor around the quotidian experience of war—captive to the logic of survival—that inhibits projecting oneself into a future of self-realization. Moreover, in a gender role reversal that further accentuates the strangeness of implementing this action in Yemen, the artist cast ten men of different generations and filmed them knitting with red wool inside one of Aden’s historical landmarks: a Hindu temple long abandoned to decay. He disrobed them—the men are shirtless, a provocative gesture in a prudish culture, which underlines the act’s absurdity. 1941 is an eloquent and compelling poetic meditation on war’s prohibition of claiming agency over time and self.’

berlin biennale

the venice biennale at the KW institute of contemporary art – photography and a long term relationship with a romani family, footage of the algerian liberation army from 1959-1962, music inspired by moroccan rug patterns, a performance by zuzanna hertzberg about the resistance of women during the shoah, african women, slavery, seeds and the need to plant/regenerate life, ‘vomit girl’ about the trauma of the vietnam war

first impressions

so first impressions about berlin. it’s not pretty. it’s industrial-looking, overtaken by graffiti (not wall art, mostly disruptive graffiti), it’s stark, modernist, activist, international, eclectic. it’s less about form, more about substance. for a city chock full of art and artists, it’s incredibly relaxed and accessible. since sept 18th was the last day of the berlin biennale, i got here, took a shower and walked straight to KW institute for contemporary art. more about that later. while walking around, i came upon a tent city with signs that said ‘a better world is possible’ and a rally with people on bikes playing cuban music and brandishing red che guevara flags – it was organized to show solidarity with socialist cuba and people on the street responded with ‘viva cuba.’ it’s like being in an alternate universe. lunch at mogg where many of us were seated outdoors (even though it was raining) and the restaurant offered blankets to those who wanted to feel more cozy. they had a japanese menu today so i had scrambled eggs and ground chicken on white rice with spinach and pickled ginger on top. ‘mogg is housed in an old red brick building, a former jewish girls school on berlin’s august strasse, designed by alexander beers in 1927.’

Columbia whistleblower on exposing college rankings: ‘They are worthless’

“I’ve long believed that all university rankings are essentially worthless. They’re based on data that have very little to do with the academic merit of an institution and that the data might not be accurate in the first place,” Thaddeus said.

…The former head of Columbia’s mathematics department described an expanding and self-replicating bureaucracy that is growing ever more expensive to maintain. He said that Columbia’s endowment is not large enough to cover the cost of the growing administration and so it is paid for by increasing tuition costs.
“It means that our educational programmes have to be run to some degree as money-making ventures. That is the secret that can’t be openly acknowledged,” he said.

…“It’s clear that the growth of university bureaucracies and administration has been a major driver of the cost of higher education growing much, much faster than inflation. We now have about 4,500 administrators on the main campus, about three times the number of faculty, and that’s a new development over the past 20 years,” he said.

“What is less clear is what all these administrators are actually doing.” More here.

when’s the right time to talk about colonial atrocities?

this whole thing about ‘now is not the right time.’ because someone got attacked or killed or died at 96. i don’t get it. it’s never crass or insensitive to hold people with power (whether symbolic of literary) accountable for their actions and words – especially if they use their status to support violence against thousands (sometimes millions). why is mass violence less shocking than dancing on the graves of monarchs? it doesn’t compute. here is a video from the aotearoa liberation league (“an empowered and well-informed population of kaitiaki committed to the protection of our most vulnerable individuals and their sources of life”). they have more patience than i do.

Opening of the Warp & Weft [Face to Face] at RoCo | Artist Talk by Mara Ahmed

The opening of the Warp & Weft [Face to Face] at Rochester Contemporary Art Center on April 1st this year was such a significant moment – for us as a community, being able to come together in the physical space of an art gallery to celebrate our stories, and for me personally, being able to return home to Rochester and be surrounded by people I love. I gave an artist talk and pondered the problematic history and liberatory potential of the archive. I referenced Baseera Khan and Gil Hochberg’s work. Shot by Rajesh Barnabas, here is a short video that captures what that evening and talk looked and felt like.

The Warp & Weft is a multilingual audio archive that showcases stories from 2020 and beyond. This presentation at RoCo was a transformation of the archive into a multimedia exhibit including sound, text, photography and animation. Listen to the Warp & Weft stories at MaraAhmedStudio.com

#thewarpandweft #facetoface #multilingualarchive #archive #storytelling #oralhistories #2020 #yearofthepandemic #roco137 #multimedia #maraahmed

Cancel Pakistan’s debt

Historian and activist Ammar Ali Jan:

…greenhouse emissions in the Global North are leading to a climate breakdown, affecting countries that are not only vulnerable to climate change but also do not have the financial capacity for rehabilitation or building climate resilient infrastructure. For example, the Global North had already exceeded its share of safe emissions in 1939, almost eight decades before the current flooding we are witnessing.

…The time and spatial lag between the causes and effects of climate change is one of the primary reasons why it is easy for liberals to present such disasters as “humanitarian” issues, erasing the political roots of the tragedy.

…This erasure, from public discourse, of polluters who are primarily responsible for the suffering of millions of people and for threatening planetary catastrophe, is itself part of this process of exploiting the time and spatial lag between greenhouse emissions and their deadly consequences. The result is an attempt to depoliticize this suffering and obstructing accountability of countries and companies in the Global North — giving the false impression that we are “all in this together” as one threatened human family.

…Even before the floods, it was clear that Pakistan’s economy could no longer sustain the exorbitant taxes demanded by the IMF, particularly without touching the privileges of the elites. With floods that have caused over $10 billion in damages, it is clear that Pakistan will require unprecedented support from the world. It is perhaps also an ideal time to open debate on correcting historical wrongs, including cancellation of debt, as part of global efforts toward climate justice.

#pakistanfloods #globalwarming #climatecrisis #helpdisplacedsurvivors #humanlifeisvaluable #globalsouthmatters #climatejustice #canceldebt #climatereparations #holdpollutersaccountable

Apocalyptic floods / Climate reparations

1) The climate crisis is already here
2) One third of Pakistan is under water
3) All human life should be equal

From Ayisha Siddiqa (edited): I still don’t think people understand what it means for 33 million people to be displaced.

That’s roughly 90% of the population of Canada. That’s more than the entire population of Australia, and 3 times that of Portugal.

And the United States with its $30 million dollar donation has given less than $1 per person to the people displaced.

For a country like Pakistan with CO2 emissions of 0.98% per capita and which has contributed to the climate crisis less than 0.5%, that’s not even a drop, it’s an insult.

We are not responsible for climate change the way the USA, China, Russia and Europe are. Pakistan may look like a distant reality right now, but what is happening on our soil is the future of the rest of the world if we don’t stop global warming. Wake up.

#pakistanfloods #globalwarming #climatecrisis #helpdisplacedsurvivors #humanlifeisvaluable #globalsouthmatters

Memory Grid at Westbury Arts

Excited that my mixed media piece, ‘Memory Grid,’ has been selected for a juried exhibition at Westbury Arts! The theme is ‘Uncovered Treasures,’ a celebration of mixed-media art and assemblage.

Memory Grid is inspired by the idea of caching memories inside a data grid. It’s engineered to replicate computing architecture where vast amounts of data are sorted and stored using grid technology. But instead of binary data, the piece is meant to archive pictures, colors, and textures. Instead of neat partitions, the elements in each compartment overflow and overlap with adjacent cells, creating complex patterns and whimsical moods. The intent is to create an emotional landscape that beckons and moves on account of these transgressions.

Newsprint, fabric and acrylic paint on illustration board fitted inside an upcycled metal grille
Dim: 27 ½ in x 22 in

The opening reception will be on Sunday, September 4th, 2022 from 7:00 to 9:00 PM at 255 Schrenck Ave, in Westbury. Tickets are free but pls register.

#westburyarts #uncoveredtreasures #artexhibition #mixedmedia #assemblage #assemblageart #maraahmed #memorygrid #westburyny #longisland

Memory Grid, Mixed Media Object by Mara Ahmed