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Omar Berrada

@omarbrrd

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Mute Memory Gives No Testament:

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Etel Adnan: In the Rhythms of the World

A Symposium, February 27 - March 1

“I followed lines I never saw, went on unchartered roads, didn’t emerge from any confusion. The present was forever blowing.” Throughout her existence, Etel Adnan (1925-2021) was committed to being “in the rhythms of the world.” In the face of a life “woven with war,” she chose to look the apocalypse in the eye, always seeking appropriate forms for bearing witness. Solidarity and radical equality were her guiding principles, as was her ever-renewed wonder at the beauty of the world and her enduring belief in the oneness of being. To her, landscapes revealed haunted histories of place. Trees were constant interlocutors. A mountain was her best friend.

This symposium brings together old friends, confirmed specialists, and younger disciples of Adnan's. They will offer talks, poetry readings, and musical performances in response to her work.

Contributors include George Abraham, Ammiel Alcalay, Jean-Philippe Antoine, Amir ElSaffar, Huda Fakhreddine, Peter Gizzi, Maaza Mengiste, Saretta Morgan & Ica Sadagat, Eileen Myles & Ryan Sawyer, Sarah Riggs, Lisa Robertson, Jennifer Scappettone, Brandon Shimoda, Hamed Sinno, and Kamelya Omayma Youssef.

Full program available on the @poetry_project and @giorno_poetry_systems websites.

The response to this event has been overwhelming, and RSVPs filled almost immediately.

*Please refer to the pinned comment* below for guidelines regarding waitlists, stand-by tickets, and how to cancel your order if you are no longer able to attend.

The symposium will be livestreamed at www.youtube.com/@thepoetryproject

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“Etel Adnan: In the Rhythms of the World” was organized by Omar Berrada and Simone Fattal to mark the centenary of Etel Adnan’s birth. It is produced by The Poetry Project and co-hosted by Giorno Poetry Systems. The screening at Anthology Film Archives is presented by @bidounprojects. The visuals were designed by @hamed.sinno

This program was made possible by generous support from @galerielelong, @sfeirsemlergallery, and @whitecube.

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7

a year ago

"I don't want to write anything that is a consolation."

Congratulations Lena, and thank you for that tender and stirring evocation of your father and of "all the deeply beautiful Palestinians that this world has lost," and "all those miraculous ones who endure waiting for us, waiting for us to wake up."

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Lena Khalaf Tuffaha, 'Something About Living'. University of Akron Press, 2024. Winner of the National Book Award for Poetry.

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2 years ago

Etel Adnan would have been 99 today. I miss her, though I am relieved that she did not witness the current tragedy, that she did not have, yet again, "to be in a time of war".

Two years ago, a few weeks after she died, I agreed to be part of an event honoring her at the Guggenheim, where she then had a solo exhibition.

The Guggenheim show was beautiful but, a bit like the museum's spiral, it lacked a center. By avoiding politics at every turn, it seemed to ignore the deep truths that give weight to Etel's simplest compositions.

What would her brilliant suns be without the forbidden shores of the Eastern Mediterranean? How lonely would the mountain feel without the spirits of the slain Coast Miwok --aka Tamal-- people? Until when will institutions be allowed to ignore the name Palestine?

Etel's revolutionary politics were not only a moral compass; they were a compositional principle.

The event took place in January 2022. Each speaker was given about 13 minutes. In this brief span, I attempted to speak to what I missed in the show while respecting the circumstance -- that of a celebration, or a funeral oration of sorts. I opened my reading with a page in Arabic, the language that history deprived her of.

"The Pacific often sings a soft funeral march", she writes. And yet, as she reminds us, musing on June Jordan's 1984 visit to Nicaragua, "500 years of Spanish Inquisition / did not crush the language / of the wind".

Happy birthday dear Etel. Don't be a stranger. I'll hold on to the wind.

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#eteladnan

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2 years ago

I taught and co-organized weekly public lectures at Cooper Union for 6 years. That's about 130 public events. One of the most memorable ones took place in Oct 2022: a celebration of Ruth Wilson Gilmore and her book, 'Abolition Geography: Essays Towards Liberation'

We held it in The Great Hall. I wanted Ruthie to stand where Frederick Douglass once stood. Hundreds flocked in.

There are many speakers we could have invited to honor Ruthie. We settled on three, in agreement with her: Lisa Lowe, Nikhil Pal Singh, and Shellyne Rodriguez.

Here is a video of Shellyne's remarks. 11 minutes of precision, truth-telling, and good humor. She discusses what she calls "the faculty of looking" -- a kind of deep-seeing that uncovers the interconnectedness of struggles across distinct geographies. See her image of "a comrade in Bethlehem flying the anticolonial Puerto Rico flag in solidarity"

Deep-seeing is essential to the "constant reweaving of the social fabric" that our capitalist order is bent on fragmenting. It is also crucial to the sort of teaching that Ruthie and Shellyne do -- a kind of grounding (à la Walter Rodney) whose aim is to transform the world in a time when institutions seek to "confine the role of a teacher or professor to academia or classrooms where they administer a lesson plan"

Shellyne returned to Cooper last September, as a teacher. She was abruptly fired this week for speaking up about P@l3st!ne. There is bitter irony in re-watching her Great Hall talk, and re-reading her bio from that day:

Shellyne Rodriguez is an artist, educator, writer, and community organizer based in the Bronx. Her practice utilizes text, drawing, painting, collage and sculpture to depict spaces and subjects engaged in strategies of survival against erasure and subjugation.

Cooper Union prides itself on progressive values and a radical history that set it apart from other colleges. Its website states that "Peter Cooper wanted his graduates to (...) develop a sense of social justice that would translate into action." Now is precisely the time to live up to such principles.

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PS: please check out @cooperunion_sjp ‘s post in solidarity with Shellyne

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3 years ago

I first came across this video last year via Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou Rahme's project "May Amnesia Never Kiss Us on the Mouth".

It has not left me since. The slow cadence, the piercing pain. This man's voice reaches into haunting depths. His young soul has known grief. And yet. The proud smiles, the casual camaraderie. They have not been defeated.

The video was taken in a G*z@ hospital room in 2018. These men were probably maimed during the Great March of Return.

The vocal piece is a mawwal -- a sung poem of longing.

This particular mawwal was first improvised on a beach in 2015 by Alaa, an exhausted Syrian refugee who had just made it to Greece. By adopting and adapting it, Husam, here, voices a shared sense of abandonment.

The song is a lament, deploring the world's betrayal. It is an apostrophe to the sea, asking it to have mercy, to not be treacherous, to soften its waves; and warning it: if we start crying, even you will drown in our tears.

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The web version of @basel.abb & @ruanne.ar 's "May Amnesia Never Kiss Us on the Mouth" is available on @diaartfoundation 's website.

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3 years ago

Maya Angelou in 1957, aka Miss Calypso, performing her version of 'Run Joe'.

Happy holidays!
& don't let them catch you.

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@drmayaangelou
#mayaangelou
#calypso
#misscalypso
#runjoe
#1957

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8

4 years ago

when @sonajobarteh casually gives her own version of Ousmane Sembene's "I myself am the sun".

Look up the Sembene if you've not seen it before, and watch Jobarteh's recent, luminous interview on @60minutes 💜

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#SonaJobarteh
#OusmaneSembene
#SembeneOusmane
#Kora
#Gambia
#Africa
#AfricanMusic
#60minutes
#cbsnews

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8

4 years ago

A favorite moment in a favorite wedding -- when these musicians' jubilant rhythms shifted without warning or transition, but with equal enthusiasm, from saluting Che Guevara to praising the Prophet ❤️

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4 years ago

Our amazing student designers did it again -- kudos to @r.y.cu & @anavaleriacast

Hope you will join us and our guest speakers for this spring's @cooperids lectures "at" @thecooperunion

The talks will be online. The IDS website will be up on Monday, with details and registration links.

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0

4 years ago

Mambéty's smile and storyteller's voice were as dazzling as his films. He would have been 77 today.

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#mambety
#mambéty
#DjibrilDiopMambety
#DjibrilDiopMambéty
#senegal
#senegalesecinema
#AfricanCinema
#yadikoone

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2

5 years ago

So the Queen of England is appointing Tony Blair a "Knight Companion of the Most Noble Order of the Garter", the oldest and most senior British order of chivalry.

This reminds me of a trip to London I took in 2008. I was visiting Doris Lessing to record a video conversation with her on behalf of the Centre Pompidou where I worked at the time.

At 89, Lessing's memory and wit were astonishing. We spoke mainly about her sci-fi novels. In the course of the interview, she revealed that the ruler in her story "The Reason for It" (2004) was modeled on Blair, "a man who's deeply, deeply stupid".

We recorded over an hour. You can find a 20-minute edit on the Pompidou website. But here's the Tony bit. Happy new year, may we choose better rulers and learn to listen to mothers!

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#DorisLessing
#TonyBlair
#TheReasonForit
#rulers
#mothers
#thegrandmothers
#centrepompidou

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3

5 years ago

Nelson Mandela in a 1995 speech tells the story of his trip to Morocco in 1962 and how Abdelkrim El Khatib, then minister of African affairs, supported the ANC in its armed struggle against Apartheid. The anecdote is awesome. Makes it all sound simple, and long gone..

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#NelsonMandela #anc #SouthAfrica #morocco #1962 #apartheid #anticolonialism #solidarity #1960s

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5 years ago