Category: politics

A People’s Tribunal: 28 Exhibits

What I will be attending today: A People’s Tribunal: 28 Exhibits
October 19, 2019, 4-6PM
Twelve Gates Arts, 106 N. 2nd St, Philadelphia, PA 19106

Performers: Amina Ahmed, Dena Al-Adeeb, Fadaa Ali, Yaroub Al-Obaidi, Nada El-Kouny, Hatif Farhan, Kazem Ghouchani, Maryam Jahanbin, Luma Jasim, Mohammed Okab, Hussein Smko

Organizers: Dena Al-Adeeb, Shimrit Lee, Nataša Prljevi?, Farideh Sakhaeifar

28 Exhibits is a performative tribunal that brings together a group of artists, activists, and scholars to account for the impact of global counterinsurgency doctrine. With storytelling, installation, and song as “evidence,” the tribunal interrogates the rhetoric that has fueled the lasting trauma of the U.S. War in Iraq, while building a collective archive that fosters alternative spaces of restitution for evaluating the war on terror.

Our starting point is Twenty-Eight Articles, a 2006 paper written by Australian strategist David Kilcullen used to advise General David Petraeus, who helped design the Iraq War troop surge. The “Twenty-Eight Articles”, a nod to T.E. Lawrence’s “twenty-seven articles” on tribal desert warfare from 1917, describes counterinsurgency as “armed social work,” and urges the modern counter-insurgent to “engage the women, beware the children,” “know the turf,” “remember the global audience,” and above all, “keep the initiative.” The document was later formalized as an appendix to the FM 3-24, the U.S. military’s counterinsurgency doctrine, and has been in use by U.S., British, Canadian, Dutch, Iraqi and Afghan armies as a training document. 28 Exhibits will be set up like a trial, in which excerpts of Kilcullen’s articles will be critically evaluated through artistic intervention.

28 Exhibits is an extension of Clear-Hold-Build, an exhibit currently on view in Philadelphia’s Twelve Gates Arts, which brings together artists to survey the impact of counterinsurgency over the past seven decades. Clear-Hold-Build is curated by Shimrit Lee, Joshua Nierodzinski and Nataša Prljevi? of HEKLER, an artist-run collaborative platform that fosters critical examination of hospitality and conflict. The event 28 Exhibits is the product of a collaboration between HEKLER and exhibiting artists Dena Al-Adeeb and Farideh Sakhaeifer.

mashrou leila’s roman

#lebanese #filmmaker Sonia Hadchiti visited my class today to talk about Mashrou’ Leila’s music video #roman and her own animation. as far as the music video, ‘roman’ is one of my absolute favorites and here is why

from Anastasia Tsioulcas: …there’s a lot of subtlety in both the text and the visuals to “Roman” that challenges stereotypes — from all comers. As the band explains, the women in the video are “styled to over-articulate their ethnic background, in a manner more typically employed by Western media to victimize them. This seeks to disturb the dominant global narrative of hyper-secularized (white) feminism, which increasingly positions itself as incompatible with Islam and the Arab world, celebrating the various modalities of Middle Eastern feminism.”

linda’s film class at SJFC

visited linda moroney’s #documentary & #nonfiction #film #class at #SJFCthis evening and talked about the #partition of #india (her students had just seen #AThinWall) but also about borders in general and what #nativeamericans think about ‘#illegal #immigration’

powerful on #indigenous #peoples’ day. also showed clips from #TheInjuredBody: a film about #racism in #america [photograph by linda moroney]

the thing that makes us half divine

‘in every age, no matter how cruel the oppression carried on by those in power, there have been those who struggled for a different world. i believe this is the genius of humankind, the thing that makes us half divine: the fact that some human beings can envision a world that has never existed.’ [anne braden]

i am reading ‘feminist freedom warriors – genealogies, justice, politics, and hope’ edited by chandra mohanty and linda carty. 

colonialism, capitalism, nation states

today in my class ‘thru another lens’ we read about the deliberate construction of national identities and about how ‘the appropriation of the construct of the nation-state (used to regulate european models of society) proved problematic when implemented in african and asian realities of multi ethnic, racial, religious and linguistic societies.’ so true for south asia. we read samir amin on the inextricable ties between capitalism and colonialism and the false symmetry enforced by free trade, and finally Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz on indigenous socialism vs colonial capitalism in the context of the settler colonial state. these were big ideas about big systems embedded in complex histories but most of my students kept up with it. they connected our readings back to the colonial legacy in rwanda. they confessed how they associated socialism with marx and were surprised by its prevalence in native american societies. one of my students understood colonialism as this violent system of disruptions, erasure, exploitation and imbalances, which when removed leaves behind fragmented identities and conflicts (perhaps that’s the whole point he said); another pointed out how colonial institutions and borders continue to fester long after the colonizers are gone. while sharing their thoughts, many said, ‘before this class i would have thought… but…’ – that’s all i need to hear.

ellen degeneres + bush

about ellen degeneres and her spontaneous teach-ins on kindness: bush junior killed 1 million people in iraq (according to a rigorous study by the lancet journal) and displaced many more millions. in terms of numbers, and without taking into account race, religion or nationality, osama bin laden killed far fewer people. would it be ok to have a friendly chit-chat with him? for those who think that’s a heinous comparison, it might behoove them to delve deeper into why that is. american exceptionalism? manifest destiny on steroids?

interviewing ken loach

Johannes Bockwoldt and i are interviewing ken loach tomorrow morning on skype. johannes will talk to him about his film work and i will focus on his political activism. 50 years of stunningly moving, principled, artistic work. an amazing human. still can’t believe our luck. you can watch the interview at Let’s Talk about Class on oct 30th.

class debate on borders and nation states

today we had a #debate in #class. the motion was: ‘no #walls or #borders: we should get rid of #nation-states.’ one team spoke in favor of the resolution and another team opposed it. the students made excellent points and delivered their 5-minute speeches with aplomb. our judge was louise spinelli, someone who works in the #legal profession but is also an #activistinvested in issues of #diversity and #immigration. the topic was supposed to be ‘neutral.’ the team supporting the motion won. here i am with louise.