Driving up the road with E near her house I say something about a boy using the term “raklo” in reference to a Roma boy on the street. She laughs at me. As if I had just said something quite funny that blurred the boundaries of Roma/gadjo. And corrected me to “chavo”. Two funny things so …
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Inertia, Poverty and the State
I attended a Lecture by Michele Lancione at the University in Sheffield. ‘Eviction, Enactment and Entanglement: ‘Inertia Creep’ and Committed Positioning at the Urban Margins.’ The Department of, as it’s now called, Urban Studies and Planning, is fertile ground (well at least some parts of the estate are receptive) for someone with an intense productive …
A Jester
I just listened to a comparatively recent lecture by Zizek He made a point via recalling having recently read a late autobiography by a survivor from Auschwitz. The author is quoted saying something which offers justification for cruel but necessary treatment of the Palestinians by the Israeli state. He repeats the criticism made of this …
cousins
Relationship with cousins is particular. With the Roma people I know their cousins are their closest friends. They choose amongst their cousins, it’s not that just because someone is your cousin be your closest friend, rather that your friends come from amongst your cousins. And you got so many cousins that this doesn’t really pose …
facebook and cousins
Facebook. Friends on Facebook. Some of my cousins are friends on Facebook. I see people there being very close to each other. Being silly with each other. Being sentimental. I also see people who I can only assume are actually frightened, in this generation, by Muslims. I opened a post today which was a link …
Britain is managing control of its borders
“Britain is losing control of its borders” Britain isn’t losing control of its borders. Borders are just making increasingly less sense. We have been warned for years that the time would come when big migrations of people would start again due to wars and environmental pressures. While it’s happening and closing our borders isn’t the …
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routine art and the everyday
There is a complexity to artistic expression. Especially when it comes to some sort of original artistic expression. But regardless of that initial complexity, it becomes always and without doubt inevitable. Mimetic. So the original becomes some sort of copy and it is this copying which is perceived as a lesser form of art. Something …
Containing my own thoughts
My sister pointed something out to me the other day. She was telling me that I was a good listener, perhaps in a way not appearing judgemental. “Well at least you managed to hide what it is you might be thinking sufficiently”. I thought about this and realised that both the work I did in …
Already here before they come.
Naïve ever I realise that asylum seekers coming to the UK, to the wider Western world, are already here before they arrive. People aren’t coming (well not that many) from a world that is distant from ours. All of the means of modern communication, all of the migration which has already taken place over the …
validating arts practice
I’ve had more insight into the ideas, or some of the ideas, relating to validating arts practice. More and more artists are turning out to practice as conceptual artists. Believing that an arts practice finds valid expression by its engagement in social fields. The social fields have always been inflected by even purely elite arts …