Tag: history

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

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.

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

Translation #2

Posted on by KM

After reading Translation, I found myself asking what I would add if I were given the chance to contribute more pages to the book. Three came to mind: Omar Bahabri the translator, Arnaud Balard’s Deaf Flag, Adriano Celentano’s Prisencolinensinainciusol, and Wanderer by Rory Macbeth particularly after What Is a Minor Literature?//1986 by Deleuze and Guattari page.

The first story is a Yemeni tale set during the period of British occupation in southern Yemen. Omar Bahabri was a Yemeni tea merchant who spoke English through his work with foreign traders. At a time when the British struggled to communicate with the local population due to the lack of Arabic translators, Omar was called upon to help. The British asked him to translate pamphlets intended to win the trust and loyalty of the Yemeni people. Omar translated their demands into Arabic, and pamphlets were printed and distributed by aircraft across the country.

Some time later, a British general visited Aden to inspect the situation. He was familiar with Arabic, so he picked up a handful of the pamphlets and read them. He asked the officer in charge about their purpose and was told they were meant to encourage public support for British rule. The officer explained that the pamphlets called on people to join the Allies and support them. The general replied that the pamphlets read “Buy the finest tea from Omar Bahabri” . And here only reference I found in English: https://www.jstor.org/stable/48752006

Whether the story is true or not is hardly important here. What matters is how brilliantly it portrays the fate of outsiders who believe they can exploit local language and people for their own ends, only to find those intentions quietly undermined in favour of distinctly Yemeni interests. It also led me to reflect on the fact that the British occupied Aden for 128 years, from 1839 to 1967, yet hardly any of them learned Arabic. From this, it becomes easier to understand why the French aggressively imposed their language in colonised territories, and how English was forced upon Indigenous populations in North America, Australia, and New Zealand. This reinforces my belief that language is essential to the survival of culture and heritage.

Photos credit: https://www.gettyimages.co.uk/photos/aden-colony

Thinking about this story alongside Translation, I realised that what draws me in is not accuracy, but refusal. Translation here is not a neutral act. It becomes a space of misalignment, humour, survival, and agency. Language appears to serve power, while quietly redirecting it elsewhere.

So yes, I already know what my next ceramic piece will be.. A tea set! A familiar site of hospitality, negotiation, and politeness. Cups that sit between people, holding conversation, holding silence or things that are never quite said…

Posted in 2025-2026, Reading, Reflection, Writing

Translation by Sophie J. Williamsons

Posted on by KM

Jonathan recommended this book to me twice. Before I ordered it, I assumed it might be similar to Against Expression by Kenneth Goldsmith and Craig Dworkin, a great book in its own right on conceptual writing. But I found myself loving Williamson’s Translation much more. It feels like a fruit salad, a wide variety of flavours, each sweet or sour in its own way, yet deeply enjoyable together. While Against Expression is larger in size, Translation feels more balanced and brings together a broader range of international voices.

Before even reading the Translation introduction, I couldn’t resist starting with Frantz Fanon and James Baldwin. I love both of their styles, it’s heavy, yet smooth in motion and settling deep in the soul. The anthology brings together an impressive mix of writers and artists, including Shirin Neshat, Jess Darling, Yinka Shonibare, Stephen Morton, Susan Hiller, Walid Raad, Walter Benjamin, and many others.

There were several moments where I had to pause, wanting to comment or reflect. Although the contributors come from very different backgrounds and perspectives, you still feel that they share something. Language is not just words or signs; it reflects how far the human mind can reach in understanding its surroundings what is seen and unseen. It is about comprehension, and about noticing what might otherwise remain incomprehensible.

Shirin Neshat’s page took me back to my childhood in Dubai. Growing up across different cultures, I’ve come to see communication as a vast ocean. It can feel overwhelming and frightening at times, but it also has a magical quality: moments where connection happens without you fully understanding how.

Where I grew up, our neighbours formed a small, diverse world. To the right was an Iranian Shia family; to the left, a Yemeni one. After our Emirati neighbours moved away, we had Palestinian, Pakistani and Omani neighbours opposite us. They were all kind and friendly, with children who played together on the sandy street before the area became very posh and built up. Our relationships were friendly, formal, and respectful, shaped by care and sharing.

I formed a close bond with our Iranian neighbours, and their daughter became my best friend. We grew into each other’s families, spending time playing and eating together, getting into trouble, being told off, and sharing fun (she’s the one I mentioned in the Dear Moon preface). Her parents did not speak Arabic well, and in their home they spoke Farsi. I loved listening to them, I couldn’t understand but I relied on facial expressions and tone of voice, especially when we were in trouble and her translations were completely inaccurate..

I didn’t learn about Sunni and Shia differences until middle school. I once asked my friend to join my prayer, She refused, because I was Sunni and she was Shia..terms I had never heard before, and which were never discussed in my family. When I asked my father, he simply said: they are Shia, we are Sunni, and their prayer is slightly different. My response was simple “i thought we are just Muslims”.

I became more curious.. my religion teacher with patience and care became the target of my endless questions, until I moved to secondary school, where I continued my research. So did my library teachers, who would quietly prepare books for me to borrow. Reading history gave me joy and deeper understanding. I began to realise how many of our problems come from judging events without understanding their roots or contexts.

Prayer might seem like a diversion here, but it still feels connected to languages. I began practising prayer at around 11 or 12 years old, not through parental guidance but after being dared by a cousin, I was the youngest in my extended family to do so and he mocked my attempts.

What I’ll never forget, my very very first attempt. I was almost 5 years old. My second sister had been born ill, and when she was one month old, my father took her to hospital one evening while my mother was unwell. No one explained anything to me.. and I was scared seeing my mum crying… I took a prayer mat, faced a random direction, put one of my mother’s headscarves on and stood there silently. I didn’t know what to say.. No one had taught me how to speak to God. I only knew that we believe in Allah our creator (Allah is the Arabic word for God, used by Arab Christians too)… So I just cried and simply said “please don’t let my baby sister die”. She came home the next day and grew up to become my moody sister!

Later, I understood why my parents were soo panicked. Back in Yemen, they had lost their first child, a baby boy… I was born after him, small and sick. My grandmother took responsibility for caring for me, and five women from her family and circle breastfed me until my mother recovered. I grew up with five “milk mothers” and milk siblings. In my village, some babies had one or two. I had five! Perhaps that explains why I grew up with the smallest body, it might have been that extra dose😂

This came back to me while reading Gayatri Spivak’s The Politics of Translation page. She mentioned Mahasweta Devi’s story Stanadayini’s translations. One English translation is titled Breast-Giver, another The Wet Nurse. Spivak notes that when you read both translations side by side, the loss of rhetorical silence from one translation to the other becomes clear. This reminded me of Rory Macbeth’s Wanderer the translation of Kafka’s Metamorphosis translated from German into English without him being able to read or speak German. Years ago, he told me: “I don’t believe there is such a thing as an accurate translation”.

This thought led me to the Qur’an. As Muslims, we believe the Arabic Qur’an to be the direct word of God, linguistically, structurally, and even mathematically unique. No Arabic writer has ever matched its form. Translations exist, but they are treated as interpretations, not replacements. The Arabic text itself is carried and protected by Muslims across languages and cultures, unchanged and only recited in Arabic.

Perhaps that, is part of what this anthology keeps circling back to: the beauty, limits, and responsibility of language and everything that slips through when we try to carry meaning from one place to another. I do believe that a translator can’t separate their life experience and feelings from their work; these inevitably shape their understanding. In this way, the translator and the original writer become new collaborators.

Posted in 2025-2026, Assignments, Reading, Research, Social Sculpture, Writing

MA Fine Art Digital Student Research Paper

Posted on by KM

Some advice from someone who went through this during one of the strangest periods of my life: first, believe me you will be fine! Secondly, anyone who has reached this point is capable and already moving in the right direction.

Choose what genuinely interests you. Read from different sources and use their reading lists, references, and resources to trace where ideas began. Have conversations with yourself about your work, explain what you are doing as if you were lecturing a BA student or leading a workshop; ask yourself what you would share and why!

You don’t need to read every book from the first page to the last.. Use the index to search for your key words, this is especially helpful when time is tight.

After I submitted my final assignments, I shared my research draft with my artist friends and just received praise. Later, I shared it with a friend who is a midwife and a PhD researcher in gynaecology. She gave me the most valuable feedback and asked thoughtful, constructive questions. This made me feel genuinely confident about the work; if someone outside your field can engage with your writing , that is a very good sign. My advice, therefore, is to share your second draft with the right non-artist friend from a different profession. It can open your eyes to perspectives that no artist including yourself could see.

Some “Don’t” Advice I Wish I Had Given Myself!

  • Don’t leave “small” tasks until the last minute.

They are the easiest to forget and can cause unnecessary stress close to submission, title’s page, formatting, construction, references, PDF …etc

  • Don’t rely on memory alone when submitting work.

Overwhelm and fatigue can make important details easy to miss, use a checklist instead, revisit the research guid’s page on your course blog!!

  • Don’t rename files by changing word order.

Playing with wording in file names can quickly become confusing; numbering drafts is far clearer.

  • Don’t hesitate to explain personal circumstances.

Even if it feels close to the deadline, communicating difficulties puts you on safer ground.

  • Don’t limit your reading to your own cohort’s blogs.

You miss valuable learning by not looking at work from earlier years.

Final Paper:

Karema Munassar Rethinking Social Sculpture MA Fine Art Digital 2026Download

Third Final Draft:

karema Munassar- 2024-26- research paper – Digital Fine Art-CSM copyDownload

Second Draft :

copy-of-research-paper-2025-26-karema-social-sculpture-copyDownload

First Draft:

Karema- Unit 1- Research Paper Brief 2025-26Download
Posted in 2025-2026, Reading, Reflection, Research, Writing

Beuys and Sylvester

Posted on by KM

When I was reading for my research paper, I kept thinking about the unusual and slightly funny relationship between the German artist Joseph Beuys and the British critic David Sylvester! They were both major figures in modern art, but they never managed to build a close or comfortable connection.

Sylvester saw how important Beuys was. He never denied Beuys’s impact or how strongly he shaped his time, just as Duchamp had done for modern art. Even so, their relationship never became warm or collaborative. Sylvester had deep, ongoing conversations with many artists, but with Beuys he stayed distant, almost cautious.

This shows clearly in his writing. Sylvester never wrote a whole book about Beuys, nor explored him in the focused way he did with others. Beuys appears only here and there, usually as one example inside bigger discussions about conceptual art and post Duchamp ideas. Important, yes, but never at the centre.

The moment that captures their dynamic best is a small story Sylvester shared in About Modern Art, 2002 p.514-15. Beuys came to visit him at his flat in South London, bringing his wife, children and another friend. Before they entered, Sylvester asked him to remove his shoes, which he always asked visitors to do to protect his antique Persian carpets. Beuys refused!! His hat and clothes were part of his artistic identity and he would not take them off.. Sylvester refused too!! So they stood outside on the pavement, stuck between two different kinds of pride.

The more I think about it, the more I wonder what felt most important at that moment. For Sylvester, was it the artwork he lived with the antique rugs he treasured and protected or the chance to welcome an artist who was reshaping the art world? And for Beuys, a well established artist known for his big ideas, what mattered more being treated as a significant cultural figure, someone above everyday rules, or simply being a human guest respecting the home he was entering?!

In that moment, neither chose flexibility… And because of that, the visit never really began!

I find this story surprisingly touching…These were people who changed the direction of art, yet a simple request about shoes created a pause they could not overcome. Their relationship was always a mix of respect, misunderstanding, admiration and a bit of irritation.

They never became close, but their awkward meetings reveal something real about personality, ego and the small rituals of daily life. Maybe that is why I keep returning to this story. It shows how the biggest ideas in art can be interrupted by tiny habits and decisions. And sometimes, the most memorable parts of art history are not the grand gestures, but the little ones, like the moment when two strong characters collide at a doorway🙃