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05/04/2018

got back from Bahrain two days ago. Ive been painting today and think i need to understand what to paint before i begin a largescale. This is hard because painting takes a lot of time and energy to watch it dry and repaint and stuff. I’ve been so sad in bahrain and here. Because im so unsure of how to go on with my life. its easier to think that i can do this without self sabotaging tbh.

Life is actually so hard. I hardly have that much time in London left and I feel like i havent had enough time to enjoy myself. Ive been to busy stressing and not actually stressing and doing anything. I just want to cuddle up with Andreas and man oh man im going to miss him soo much. I feel like this summer is going to be so hectic but i really have to think about things positively and not lock myself in my room in Bahrain, no matter how hot it is or anything. Its really time for look after myself. and the people around me, if they are willing to accept my help or support i.e. my parents.

dps hopes and plans

After coming back from my research essay tutorial. An essay I didn’t want to write and struggled writing. Not because I don’t enjoy writing but because there was too much information circling around my mind to even try to put into words...This means I need to start to focus on specific things and take them a long way. For example, a book, a film, a certain photograph.

For example, a photograph like this signifies the liberation of Manbij, a village in Syria, from ISIS. After writing a whole essay on the cigarette. Here, I see the cigarette as assimilating the concept of freedom... It is not just the cigarette but the hand sign. Peace.

Its not something you see very often. I have not found who exactly took the photograph, but there is something very profound about this photograph. Like she’s at a festival jumping up in happiness.

Her liberation is not just the cigarette but the removal of the burqa aswell. A strong symbol. sanctity.

my moms in london, working. my dads travelling, working. being busying and insipring themselves along the way. im here, getting depressive aabout my state of mind in conjunction with my families. its so fucked. like im expected to give them help and show them im pregressing with them but im halted and not growing. im turning into a person that hates herself.

i just care about myself

foggy trees sit on my website cornerI am trying to write

Im superficial and act like i know everything when actually. i know nothing. i am bleeding away all my acts into attention seeking and manipulating people that i actually care. but i just care about myself.

jolted

jolted, insecure, pressured and constrained by hatred for the world around me. im mean manipulative and secretive. i have no moral boundaries and i live in a world of my choices and decisions. but i cant decide who my parents are and i cant choose to live alone for the rest of my life. Nothing is interesting anymore.

5th june and nothing else

i seem to always come here when im lost and take nothing from it. I just need to have a space where i can just write and no one else is listening to me.

circles, research and DPS

I have so much work to do, but also not that much to do. I have been sick for the past 5 days. Uselessly lying around in bed, not doing anything.

I applied to 3 jobs. In the past few days. One was at the serpentine galleries as a gallery assistant. I know I’m not going to get it because I hardly wrote a valuable answer to their question of “why do you think contemporary art should be accesible to everyone?”. I found the question broad and really difficult to write in just 350 words. I spent and wasted way too much time trying to do that. The second job I applied to was a volunteer job at the Hackney Archives. To help digitalise a number of negatives. It was so much easier writing for this job because it was everything i wanted to do and have done before. The third job was voluenteering at OFFPRINT book publishing fair at the Tate, which is fun and i really like that fair.

^ So now I really have to get started on my 1500 word essay for DPS and write why I want to do DPS and why I applied to these jobs and explain how they will help or why I feel i need to take a year out. To get my head around things! Research is hard.

theres two films i really want to put more research into and thats society of the spectacle and century of the self.

But there is SO much information in both of them that its difficult to know what exactly im relating it back too.

I think i need to ask myself questions like:

scanning in collages -

looking at circles as. they are interesting to collage into because of all the parallel ways they can be looked at. the the spinning effect on a camera.

objects of my memory

Part of a way of storing, keeping, hoarding, whatever you’d like to call it. Over the past two years I’ve been accumulating a large amount of paper. Sifting through it for the past couple of days has made me aware of the irrelevance of some of it.

As much as id like there to be a symbolic continuity in my pieces of paper, that seem scrap like now. The only thing I see in them is my memory, my collection and my scrap. Everything is either picked up, cut out of a book, found on the floor, whatever. I want to say I’m recording a process. Im trying to remember something. Im trying to find a memory in every piece of unknown paper. Paper is such a piece of statement. If has our names on it. We sign so many papers and never look back at them. Our lives revolve around this. Dating back from letters… its so archaic and so easily destroyable too.

What all this paper is making me think about is the history of paper. Of the prolific nature of paper. In holy books, in the passing of information.

notes in the bar

These images make me think of a number of disappearance/appearance acts. All these images depict a disappearance where an audience is present, weather this is the In the past, the thing that is media now had no parallels. It was a subjugated visual experience that must have felt enthralling. The directors cut shoves their reality in our face with images of such realistic proportion.

Radio days, as I can only imagine them to be, would fill a room with the activities of the world around it. The love songs at vintage-geared parties versus the news anchors voice revealing a shocking insight into ever-changing American culture.

More and more humanism has become interference. seem to have vanished around to the same value of technology like the first ever nokia phone, macbook and satellite television. All these momentums of technology that quickly age society in response. Response to a large growth. A bigger income, a truly consumerist ideal that is trivialised by just watching things. ECONOMY SUBJUGATING HUMANS

Across me at this moment are two middle-aged men with a pint of beer each. I wonder if they smoke cigarettes as well? How much money do they consume smoking cigarettes and having a pint of beer each week? On my left are four students, engaging in a conversation that involves hand movements and gestures of explanations. Im sure the middle aged men have already gone through this period in their life-time. Perhaps they are just warming up to eachother. Maybe they are on a date. And their talking about the war. How their fathers were in the war… Maybe they went to Vietnam, I don’t know. Why is it I'm more engaged in knowing the history of things rather than contemplating on the present. This is the most curious way to engage in a social situation. I feel like I'm in a film and I'm the only true voice. But thats not true! The hand gestures on my left indicate a promise of exchange of information like no other. At least they aren't all on their phones. The place is filling up now. More and more groups of girls arriving, they look free.

Engagment with the outside world is no longer something that is totally superficial to me. I find myself a lot of times telling myself off for looking on the ground while walking… This is simply because I read somewhere the more you look beyond just the steps you take, like the trees and buildings… you find figure in life. You become figural/figurative. More often than not, I also find myself at loss for an action. As if my mind begins to dull down into the core nothingness of my existence and relapses into a brain wave of -die-. I guess, this comes to the conclusion that more often than not i find myself talking about death. I don't think its because I want to die, I'm actually pretty scared about the thought of my doomsday. I think its more what can I put into this existence knowing I might not be able to return, I've just wasted my time or that the certainty of death is underway anyway so why care!

Im sure I'm not the only one that thinks of these things. People have too much fun. Everyone loves themselves way to much. Especially at a “highly prestigious” fashion college. Everyones out there trying to help out a fucked world. No, you wont find your calling going to thailand for a week and helping build a school, i can relate.

taking photos out of people is identifying them and giving them no identity at the same time..

to take out

... To create (an image, likeness, or representation), as by photography: took a picture of us. ..... clear - remove (people) from a building; "clear the patrons from the theater …

what is it like living the way that we do ?

its pretty easy. especially for the kinds of people who favour the excellence in the poetics of life. this entails in the most mind numbingly boring things, like doing absolutely nothing. but thinking. Its when you know other people are facing the same constructed world as you, part of that construction becomes a miscellaneous object of attraction.

as a way to understand society …

electronic media and its manipulation gives a bigger motive to write about what the effect really is.

our electronic attachment has become less a service to us but more a form of activity. (I suppose it is another type of awareness)miscellaneous

trust is another thing that makes you more invested in wanted to know more, to feed more knowledge into the already conditioned mind that escapes every moment to face the reality inside.

vicarious

experienced in the imagination through the feelings or actions of another person.

"this catalogue brings vicarious pleasure in luxury living"

synonyms: indirect, second-hand, secondary, derivative, derived, at one remove, surrogate, substitute, substituted, by proxy; More

how does this word actually work? the meaning of it .

a long haiku

This may just end up

being a figment of my

imagination.

Like all other works,

it may lack any sort of

depth, except my own

presumptions. These are all

spoken but not written, felt

but not experienced. Just

stagnant. However,

if I recall the past, such

as gifts to myself

I am no longer

critiquing the lifelessness in

the work. I am

grounded in debt at

the situationist at

hand. A sense of pure

humility works its

way around my body and

its clear this feeling

exists only through

my own paranoia about self

production. That has left

my body now and

everything that needs to be

said is already

been said. Tradition

in storytelling years at the

atmosphere. Young on

screen, old at heart act

ing, oozes misogyny. Text

has been manipulated, sub

jugated and has found

its most abstract forms. So what

is there left to do

except repeat those

valuable structures that have

been formed like sand dunes

through time. Involuntari

ly creating a delight

in your own contr

adiction. Juxtaposing

your very own diction and

the work of whatever

divine brought us here

in the first place. I hope this

does not seem too, too superficial.

Since it is leading

to no-where except a fall

in my consciousness.

I am clearly the

only one in the way of

the goals I set for

myself. Along with

some bumps in the road, the new

age does not live with-

out heartache and pain

as language and culture shifts

through terrains of sad sad

division. Circling

another round of time and

temperament of my mind.

letters to a sense of authority

Dear Stranger

Many illusory predicaments have occurred in my life in the past two weeks. I have moved house, and now sit semi-unpacked in my old worn-out bathrobe, menstruating, catching myself gazing at my dead tulips that, of course I thought would live forever in blessed emotion for my new home and roomies. Theres more. I fell in love. By that blatant statement I suppose I wish to say no-more. As I believe its the kind of love that I want to confide in singularity with myself. No-one else can possibly even begin to imagine...the reality of this. I say illusory, just for the sake of a contradiction. And if the moon is aligned properly, then it is sure in-fact that the smoke blown out of my lungs defeats the very purpose of my dream - like nature? < stupid paragraph > Here, stranger, I am giving you exactly, precisely what is going on in the very tumultuous mind of me. Windy, like the weather outside. Ai. It is in the rush and frenzy of my emotions I loose contact with the real world. Where money matters. Where I am solemnly being watched through the eyes of a so-called benevolent God that shall forgive me if I should choose to proceed to repent. I think by this I mean its hard to live a double life. In which one and the other are complimentary of each other but also complete opposites. One would not live without the other. Like Apollo and Dionysian. Except, now under the influence of reality, I see no-more than names and categories of a story. Shifted perspective into a much more graphical, academic mind. Which turns forth again as I look down past my notepad to the split hairs winding out of my wet scalp. And I see destruction. Carefree fuckery. But of course this “carefree fuckery” has nothing to do with morality. Or maybe everything to do with it? My description of morality is vague, unfocused and not up to the wisdom I require it to be. So i shall forward you, A NIHILIST: “Might not morality be a “will to the denial of life”, a secret instinct of annihilation, a principle of decay, trivialisation, slander, the beginning of the end?” - Nietzsche I write this to fundamentally beget to myself the true nature of value in life. To recognise and affirm my role in the ongoing script of discovery. In the magic of a new found experience. In which then morality is only in question in the thoughts outside the artistic lead life of splendour in letter writing and receiving. With warmth, Amal 23/02/2017 Dear stranger, I am now to write about the methodology of intoxication. If so, particularly through language of poetics, which somehow at times, with much mystery to me, becomes non-sensical. But at the same time ties me to bed coiled in a serpents wrath and pushed in the bounds of over-thought. Psychic hope? In such, weighs the balance of my life and the ones who choose to stay. At this moment I am preoccupied with what desire is. Why is it there and what does it mean? How am I to approach desire when I see it, have experienced it, every time through so many different variables. Perhaps it is less what me think desire is but more how we derive to the thought of desire. For example, my desire for an ex-lover somehow seems to call for a longing of expression and his was because of my incapability to write of the whirlwind love sphere I was situated in a few months previous. I could not fathom my own actions and thus having no “attempt” at their (my actions) reflections. I was being sunk, into the tub of bubbly, mystical love. But now, I am in the equal. So I suppose, desire takes that of multiple forms. All determined by the acts of lust initiated by each other. What do i mean by this? Perhaps you could write back a story of desire to me. Its a fasinacting topic. Like an object that can be twisted and turned in so many ways, that a sense of eternality can be felt along with misapprehension and foolishness. But I suppose, when one is young and intolerably in the cusp of life’s ways the use of foolishness in that space is even as romantic as that “I love you” valentines card from a hippy. Ashy, ashy days. The most covert meaning in life keeps hope in my frail heart. (The sound of music, no, not the film.) For I shall look and write to you about that later. (see Ziezk). But actually the sound that makes us feel is the cold wind rushing past my ear that makes me anxious. The screams of the children in the school grounds, out of the classroom for that one hour break of freedom. Even in this wind, it is present. Always reaching to parts of my bodily functions that defy the wonder of the erratic life of routine-ists. In accordance with this, when one finally. To see that it is not only ears that are in tune to the function of self, but also light. Atmosphere runs FASTER. It flows directly into a system of minute, intricate design that compounds pieces of the universe we can’t even touch. This is what we have all been taught stranger. The only difference between me and the rest of the world is the pursue of a self-taught moral. That is precisely why I agree with the nature of assertiveness. More though. It makes me see beauty. Logical beauty. “See with your eyes, perceive with your mind.” The modern day view comes on, the future is near. Soon, Amal 23/02/2017

self publish and disseminate, amongst other things like smoking in bed

What exactly is on my plate right now with my work?

I have photographs of demolished houses in Bahrain, that don’t strike me as amazing. I know theres something in them, the beauty of the images... but the purpose of them is difficult to decipher. The purpose of my book is also difficult to decipher. I’m interested in a non-narrative kind of book, like a vision diary... something that may tell a story through its materiality. But this is different to the idea of disseminating...

Layout- i suppose im keen on looking at the square format. I like boxed in things. It makes things more proportionate and sculptural.

i want the images to have some texture- they are too CLEAN

different rules different culture

I was walking towards the closest pizza place next to our house with my mum, and half way there my dad calls my mum. My mums replies were “ok.....ok......ok......yes coming back now”. I asked her what happened and she hesitantly told me a guy that works for my dad, the accountant for the company, apparently hit his wife and his wife's sister?!!!! And he's denying it and now they are coming to stay the night here before they go to Pakistan tomorrow. And basically my mom said that this guy has been acting super weird around the office and like staying in the bathroom for really long periods of time and then he didn't drink any water for ages and got a kidney problem?? And then he told my dad that he thinks he's cursed !?! Because of black magic !?! In Pakistan some people believe in that stuff and he thinks he's cursed.

I know superstition is taken really seriously in Pakistan... I was told by my mum to sit in my room. And told not to tell my brother.

Then the husband and wife arrived and I could hear my dog barking (something he never does to guests) but i suppose he could sense these weren't guests, there was trouble to be sorted out. I remember feeling scared a little, even thinking that the husband came to the corner of my room door to say Salam and then walked away. But I think i was scaring myself of the worst possible situation. I mean, who wouldnt, thinking that someone who might have hit his wife was just five feet away from you? Soon after they sat, my mum went into the room and told the husband to leave and she’ll message him when to come back. He left and i could just feel tension released in my body.

He came back a bit later and asked for the keys for the apartment and my mum sternly told him no, not yet and wait for your CPR (residence permit). I was at this point pretty proud of her, she acted like a badass throughout this whole thing. I then heard the wife talking to my mom, low murmurs... later the wives two sisters arrived. The two sisters came and sat in my room for a bit and said it was super messy. Lmao. But they seemed to like it. My underwear lying round, and two hijabi girls were at the foot of my bed, It was really awkward.

The whole situation was kind of strange. I had no idea what they were talking about, what even happened and how I can be of assistance... They seemed to belong to a different mentality and culture, despite us coming from the same country. Suddenly time passed and all of the family was in the other room speaking about unspeakable truths of abuse... I would in between hear things like “Yes...but you know the most demons actually live in Mecca...”

Immediately aware of the impact that religion, support of religion comes into context when dealing with family relationships.

After ordering burgers for them and hearing my mum cater and care for them. I waited around...

She came back and told me the husband had some sort of Brain damage. That he falls/trips sometimes when he’s walking. That he has temper issues. She also told me about how the wife really cares for her husband. That her dad doesn't want her to live with him anymore, but she wants to, and they have been married for 7 years and nothing like this ever happened until last year, until this brain problem. She explained how he didnt hit her, but he abuses her verbally... in public too. I guess im just disturbed. I supposed these things happen all the time. And this is less of an extreme version of how severe problems like abuse can get in families, in relationships, hell with anyone. But mental abuse seems to be coming up for me a lot. I don’t think people really understand how mental abuse can create a form of social anxiety that makes you unable to articulate all those feelings you are made to block out. I can’t imagine how that sweet simple-minded wife must have felt, powerless in front of her husband because who would she be, to the family, without her husband? It is a struggle for women in cultures that are male-dominating to be reduced to mental and verbal abuse. But perhaps it is wrong of me to say these things, as the husband did validate his sickness. That he does have something seriously wrong. And in that case I suggest he gets that looked at by a specialist. The wife and her sisters are going back to Pakistan on Tuesday. My mom told them to go and the husband to stay and concentrate on his work in the office. And told them its good to have time apart. I’m just worried about the impact this will have on my dad and his work. I don’t feel like someone who is sick in that way should be working. He should focus on his health. And i know my parents will do whatever they can to make sure he gets better and his wife is safe and in good hands.

Notes on Bitter Lake (Adam Curtis)

So sad tbh. Not sure how such religious extremism can exist. But then again. The minds of afgans have been manipulated, taken for granted, cheated, lied and forgotten about too. So their blind trust in violence and dictatorship and faith seems like a survival tactic. But also I have even most distrust for American and British politics... banks and the military. Because what's happening in Afghanistan, syria, Iraq and even here to an extent (bahrain) is a clear example of how you cannot give a country, that has no where near the size of industrialisation, education and democracy straight away from your modern point of view ... because it will fail every fking time. It's like that scene from embrace of the serpent. When the "white" is so reluctant to give the compass to the tribe member. Because the "white" anthropologist knows it is a knowledge way ahead of their time and they will forget about what their roots are, how their nature works. It's the same sort of concept I feel, something along the same line. But man. Afghanistan has been through A LOT. It seems like all the superpowers in the world thought they could change it, America and Britain wanted democracy there so many times, soviets thought they could change it into a communist country. Like it's insane. And this whole taliban, Isis, whatever group... these are all those children who suffered from a fear of the of control from nations they knew nothing about. Coming into their homeland, trying to teach them about things they hadn't even grasped in their own LIFE yet. Its no wonder they go into recluse, back into villages, into their tribes... as a way to show their difference. Giving up to western standards. And if I can come to this conclusion. Than so can the politicians. So can the army and so can all the people involved in there who see these men. Obviously loosing control because they have nothing else to live for but their country and their so called Islamic state. It's just really sad to see the lives of so many men and women living so far in the past, probably feeling manipulated as fuck by white people that instills even more bigotry and hatred in them that they never asked for. It just started with one country being more rich and deciding to modernise another developing country. It started with innocence. And turned to war. I sympathise with no one. I feel human natures need for power has led us to these unforgettable crimes against one another. And we can't change anything but we can sure as hell stop fighting already.

#bitterlake

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