Month: March 2026

Posted in 2025-2026, collaboration, Experiments, Social Sculpture, Visit

Reflection on Alex Schady Workshop Collaborative Making and Social Sculpture

Posted on by KM

I took part in a workshop led by Alex Schady as part of the Fine Art Digital Residency week which thoughtfully organised by Jonathan for both MA classes. 

The session focused on collaborative making and began with a simple exercise: a flat sheet of cardboard was shared and each student created an arrow. I made a very simple arrow, similar to Alex’s example, while others explored more playful and experimental shapes. I noticed something familiar about my role in workshops I often observe more than I produce, watching how others approach the task becomes part of my learning process.

We then moved outside to the street and began performing with our objects, engaging with the urban environment and the people around us. The arrows shifted from being simple objects to becoming gestures in public space.. Accusatory fingers!

In the next stage we worked in pairs to create inflatable body extensions using plastic sheets. I collaborated with Rachael, and we agreed to make angel wings. The process was technically tricky, due to delicate material, but we managed to build them, and had a lot of fun experimenting with movement.

Afterwards we gathered outside for a collective performance where everyone presented their creations. Eventually groups merged and people began wearing multiple extensions, forming a kind of shared body. The performance ended with one large collective body.

What stayed with me most was the way Alex held the space. He allowed collaboration to happen naturally without pressure. No one felt forced to participate in a particular way. This made me think about concept of social sculpture and the idea that society itself can be shaped through collective processes.

The workshop felt like a small example of this idea. Through simple materials and shared actions we created a temporary social structure based on making, negotiating and performing together. 

Afterwards I visited the first-year MA students’ exhibition. It was interesting to see the space and reflect on how quickly time passes during the MA journey. It was also lovely meeting fellow artists in person for the first time there was an immediate sense of familiarity and trust. 

Although I could only stay for a few hours, the experience felt full. Sometimes a few meaningful hours can contain days of learning. Alex’s workshop demonstrated how much can happen in a short time  making, performing and collaborating and it left me wondering how much deeper this process could go if we had the opportunity to continue it over several sessions.

Posted in 2025-2026, collaboration, curation, Project, Social Sculpture

Iftar as Social Sculpture

Posted on by KM

Last year I was invited to organise a community iftar a few months after the Southport attack and the rise of far right protests. I accepted immediately, but I kept the first event simple. It felt important to move carefully. After it went well, we decided to make it a regular gathering that people in the community could expect and look forward to.

This year the project developed in three connected parts. The first was a shared reading session on the second day of Ramadan ( check previous post). The second was an anti racism cooking workshop. The third was a collective iftar meal at the library where around forty people gathered to break the fast together.

For the cooking session I invited an Iranian chef to lead a workshop where we prepared a vegetable curry. Participants from the Kitchen Library, mostly local English speaking volunteers, joined colleagues and other volunteers. People cooked together, shared food, and stayed to talk before leaving. Later that day I prepared small blessing cards for the following evening.

The next day my colleague Niamh, artist and producer for the Kitchen Library, and I went shopping for ingredients and refreshments. Back at the library we started preparing the meal. Niamh made stuffed dates for dessert. I cooked a vegan curry and bulgur while Greg and Joe helped with preparation and logistics. At the same time we rearranged the library space so it felt less like an institutional environment and more like a shared domestic space.

By the time the guests arrived everything was ready. Before breaking the fast I welcomed everyone and spoke briefly about Ramadan. I also shared this small story:

Recently I called my sister to ask how the first day of Ramadan had gone. She told me that her youngest daughter 4 yrs old  saw the dinner table prepared and suddenly asked “Where is he?” They asked, “Who?”.. She replied, “Ramadan! Everything is ready.. Why hasn’t he arrived?” 

For my niece, Ramadan was not an abstract period of time..it was a guest expected at the table!

In many ways this reflects how the month is often experienced. People prepare for it, welcome it, and look forward to its arrival. In Arabic we say Ahlan Ramadan. The phrase comes from Ahlan wa sahlan ( أهلا وسهلاً) which has been used to welcome guests in Arabic culture for centuries.

It is often translated as “welcome”, but the meaning is deeper. Ahlan comes from ahl (أهل) meaning family. It suggests that the guest is not a stranger but someone among their own people. Sahlan comes from (سهل)sahl, meaning ease or smooth ground. It suggests that the path between host and guest should be easy and open. Together the phrase expresses a form of hospitality that goes beyond politeness. It means you belong here and this space is open to you. Another common greeting is (مرحبا)marhaban. The word comes from (رحب) rahb, meaning wide or spacious. It also suggests openness and generosity. After sharing this, I invited people to say “welcome” in their own languages. We heard it in Chinese, Dari, Farsi, Urdu, German, Norwegian, and Portuguese. This small moment helped set the tone for the evening.

Ramadan is the ninth month of the Islamic lunar calendar, and fasting during this month is one of the five pillars of Islam. From before sunrise until sunset, Muslims do not eat or drink.. They also avoid smoking and intimacy. Not everyone fasts, children, people who are ill, elderly people, pregnant or breastfeeding women, women during menstruation, and travellers are exempt.

The fast is usually broken with dates and water. After a long day without food or drink the body returns to eating slowly. But fasting is not only about the body. It is also about awareness. It interrupts habits of consumption and invites reflection about what we need and what shapes our desires. Hunger changes how we feel and how we see the world. It makes the body more present, but it also reminds us of people who live with food insecurity every day. For a moment the difference between abundance and scarcity becomes more visible.. This can open space for empathy!

The project worked with the fragile conditions through which community is formed. Cooking, waiting, and breaking the fast together created a pause in everyday life. For a short time the library changed from an institutional space into a shared domestic space shaped by the people who were there. The iftar was not only an event. It became a temporary social form created through shared work, food, and conversation. Even small acts of welcome can change how a public space feels, even if only for a short time.

Posted in 2025-2026, collaboration, Project, Reading, Social Sculpture, Writing

March Shared Reading

Posted on by KM

We recently started a new group in my programme called International Shared Reading, with the support of The Reader. Instead of taking the training myself, I recommended two women from my group an assistant from Afghanistan and a volunteer from Portugal to take the paid training and co-lead the sessions alongside my co-producer, while I support them where needed. I believe that our strength comes from building a strong team rather than individual effort.

As part of the preparations for our upcoming Iftar gathering, I led a special reading session. It created a space to ask questions and learn more about Ramadan. We read a poem together, spoke about prayer, and people asked many questions about fasting and other related topics. Questions are welcome, they help clarify misunderstandings. When I went home that evening, I kept thinking about our conversation. Later, a volunteer sent a beautiful message in our group chat thanking me for the session.

The next day I decided to create small blessing or affirmation cards for our guests, inspired by the poem we read together. I Hope You Make It, a poem by Maxine Meixner, is written in a simple and beautiful way. The words can reach people without challenging them with difficult language. I spent the day writing my simple prayers and preparing the cards so I could finish them at the library the next day.

The cards are simple and decorated with flowers. I chose lavender because it has a gentle, calming scent. In a way, the cards became a small social sculpture, something guests could take with them, carrying the memory of the Iftar after they leave.

Posted in 2025-2026, Books, Reading, Translation, Writing

Wanderer (2009)

Posted on by KM

Wanderer (2009) by Rory Macbeth is an English translation of Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, produced without knowledge of the German language. To understand the context of this post, it’s helpful to read the previous one.

German capitalises all nouns. When Kafka writes “den Augen” “the eyes”, Macbeth’s translation becomes “towards Augen”, as if Augen were a geographical location. This is not a mistranslation in the traditional sense; rather, it is a relocation of meaning. The work does not simply translate German into English. Instead, it appears to misread or mishear it, treating certain German nouns as destinations and following sound rather than semantic fidelity. In doing so, it produces something that feels both derivative and entirely new.

This method continues throughout. Kafka’s “sein Zimmer, ein richtiges”, translated into English as “his room, a proper human room”, becomes in Macbeth’s version “since summer, the rich man”, an apparent phonetic drift. At several points, Gregor’s sister’s name, Grete, is also translated as “great”. For example, Kafka’s “Komm, Grete” appears in Macbeth’s version as “Commandant! Great!” while the standard English translation reads “Grete, come”. These shifts suggest that Macbeth is not translating through grammar but by ear, treating German as sound material to be sculpted into English.

As the text progresses, one can sense a shift from guessing through sound to asserting narrative intention. At first, the work reads like a linguistic experiment, a kind of phonetic dérive. Gradually, however, something changes. The more one reads, the more an independent narrative begins to solidify; it begins to feel like the writer claiming territory. Wanderer begins to detach itself from The Metamorphosis. Betty starts to echo, but not duplicate, Grete. Threads remain visible, yet they no longer bind the text to its origin. By the end of the story, the authorial voice becomes unmistakable, and Wanderer tests how far transformation can go before it becomes authorship. Macbeth’s restrained conclusion expands into something vast, and the writer steps forward!

This raises the question of where translation ends and authorship begins. In Translation by Sophie J. Williamson (p. 43), a selected passage from Walter Benjamin’s essay The Task of the Translator states that “a translation issues from the original — not so much from its life as from its afterlife”. Benjamin’s idea of translation as a text’s afterlife helps illuminate what is at stake here, yet Macbeth also seems to exceed this model. Benjamin suggests that translation renews the original by revealing the hidden kinship between languages, allowing the text to unfold further in time. Translation, for him, is not reproduction but continuation, a stage in the original’s ongoing life.

 

Posted in 2025-2026, Books, Reading, Reflection, Social Sculpture, Writing

Gogol, Kafka and Macbeth

Posted on by KM

This post introduces the next, which will focus on Wanderer (2009) by Rory Macbeth, an English translation of The Metamorphosis produced without knowledge of the German language. Instead of translating through grammar or meaning, Macbeth works by visually and phonetically interpreting the German text and reconstructing it into English. The result is a work that exists somewhere between translation and authorship.

It’s important to briefly touch on The Metamorphosis (1915) by Franz Kafka before writing about Wanderer, and I’ll also use this opportunity to mention The Overcoat (1842) by Nikolai Gogol. I referred to Gogol’s story in our session when we discussed avoiding direct expressions of trauma during Zoe’s presentation. For me, Kafka and Gogol employ absurdity and a kind of quiet defeatism as narrative strategies through which trauma is expressed indirectly.

The Metamorphosis is a small text, yet incredibly heavy in its existential weight. The narrative begins with an unexplained event, Gregor Samsa’s transformation into a giant insect, presented without cause or preamble. Instead of questioning the transformation itself, the narrative quickly shifts to the practical consequences of his condition. His family who once depended entirely on his income, gradually begin to see him less as a son or brother and more as a burden. One gradually senses that the true transformation is not merely physical but human and moral. The story is existential in its questioning, absurd in its world, surreal in its structure, and deeply social in its critique…

Akaky Akakievich, the protagonist of The Overcoat, lives a lonely, repetitive life and struggles to make even minor changes. It takes him a long time to save enough money to buy a new coat, but when he finally does, the simple act of wearing something new gives him confidence and a glimpse of happiness. This joy is short lived… The coat is stolen on his way home! He desperately tries to retrieve it, fails, falls ill, and dies shortly afterwards. In the end, his ghost wanders the city stealing coats from others. The story oscillates between the real and the surreal, it’s sad, absurd, brief, yet emotionally expansive. It’s often seen as an early example of the absurd bureaucratic protagonist and is believed to have influenced many writers. For me, it’s enough to recall Dostoevsky’s saying “We all came out from Gogol’s The Overcoat”.

The Overcoat and The Metamorphosis are both essential reading for lovers of short fiction. They present deliberately ordinary protagonists, characters who almost disappear rather than dominate the plot, humans positioned at a humble level far removed from heroic or supernatural figures. These are stories that sometimes make you want to step inside the page and shake the character awake. In Gogol’s story, the narrator also seems strangely unconcerned with certain details or histories of events. A similar feeling emerges in Kafka.. What happened to Gregor Samsa is, in some sense, not important. Although he lives believing he is essential to his family, they ultimately continue without him, and his perceived importance dissolves.

This becomes significant for me when thinking about Wanderer. I sense something familiar here, perhaps one leading to the other, at least in my perception. Just as the lives of Akaky and Gregor seem strangely insignificant within their own stories, the linguistic accuracy of the text also becomes strangely insignificant in Macbeth’s work. Regardless of the original context or linguistic accuracy, the act of translation itself becomes conceptually aligned with the story. This also resonates with my own interest in communication and miscommunication as a form of social sculpture, where meaning is shaped collectively rather than fixed.. It raises questions about what is essential and what is not. What carries meaning? What survives translation? What do we choose to care about, and who decides this?

Posted in 2025-2026, Reflection, Research, Tutorials 2025-26, Uncategorized

1-1 Tutorial 11th February

Posted on by KM

I took some time to reflect on this tutorial because I was so busy. I also needed to read more carefully, as these kinds of tutorials do not end when they finish; they tend to open further questions and lead me into deeper reading.

In this tutorial I had with Jonathan, we spoke about learning and what learning really means. We reflected on the assimilation and accommodation post, and on the idea that learning is not for display but for use. It should transform how you live. It needs to be functional, active, and embodied.

We also discussed translation and whether my practice is, in itself, a process of translation. I have been thinking that everything I do is a form of translation. There is a language I carry, a language of thoughts and ideas, constructed from the data my brain collects. This data is my lived experience: encounters with people, spaces, and time. Yet data alone is not enough, it must be translated into meaning, and meaning must then be translated into thought and action.

I can’t think about this without turning to Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology. What interests me most is his insistence that perception is not a detached mental operation but something embodied, something that happens through our being in the world. Our understanding is not separate from our living, it’s shaped through the body’s continuous engagement with its environment.

Language itself offers a powerful example of this phenomenology. Language is collaborative, it’s formed through shared experiences within a community, shaped by surroundings and histories. Using Arabic as an example, because it’s my mother tongue, Arabic is built on a root and pattern system. Most Arabic words derive from a root of three consonants (rarely four). This structure allows the language to remain generative: new words can emerge as long as they remain faithful to the semantic core of the root.

Here are two examples one scientific and one poetic, the word حاسوب (computer) and حاسبة (calculator) both derive from the root ح س ب, meaning “to calculate”, similar to how “computer” and “calculator” trace back to Latin roots. Second one is حب (love), from the root ح ب ب, associated with seeds. Although I have not encountered this interpretation formally in literature, I’m drawn to the poetic possibility that “I love you” could be understood as “I carry/have a seed for you” a seed that has the potential to grow… For me, this aligns with the lived experience of love not as a finished/ready object, but as something cultivated and sustained. Here the language demonstrates embodied perception. Meaning does not emerge abstractly; it grows from how the body, historically and culturally, encounters the world.

Colour offers another compelling example. We identify colours based on how our brains interpret light wavelengths. Yet colour is not an intrinsic property of objects. A green card is not “green” in itself, it absorbs most wavelengths and reflects the one we perceive as green. What we call colour is the result of an interaction between light, object, and perceiver. From a phenomenological perspective, colour is relational. It exists in the encounter. Different animals perceive different spectra, therefore, the world of colour shifts depending on the perceiving body. In this sense, colour is not a fixed external fact but an event that occurs within perception.

This becomes even more complex when considering visual impairment… A relative has Stargardt disease, and many people assume that eye disease results in darkness or emptiness. But in his case the brain uses surrounding visual information (often background colour) to fill in gaps where central vision is weakened. This is not simply a defect, it’s evidence of the brain’s active participation in constructing perception. Perception is not produced by the eyes alone; it’s a whole body phenomenon. The body is not a passive receiver of data; it’s an intelligent, adaptive system constantly negotiating meaning. What my relative experiences demonstrates that perception is collaborative between eye, brain, memory, environment, and prior experience.

This also raises further questions for me: how does the brain decide which colour to use to fill a gap? Why that tone rather than another? These questions do not weaken the phenomenological argument; rather, they reveal how perception is both structured and creative. The body does not merely record reality, it actively composes it. There is undeniably a relational dynamic shaping human perception. At the same time, there is an astonishing intelligence within the body itself a continuous, largely unconscious orchestration. The heart beats, the lungs breathe, cells regenerate, all without instruction from conscious thought… In recognising this, I feel both philosophical and spiritual awe, and all I can say is: glory to the One who created this body.

Finally, I return to learning. Learning is about becoming informed and being able to decode what was previously inaccessible. Ideally, learning should help solve a problem, generate new questions, or bring you closer to an answer. Yet the information we receive is always filtered through perception, our minds process what they are capable of processing and what feels significant within our lived experience.