years ago in the deserts of turkistan @touba - Tumblr Blog

a street post in Ann Arbor

Jenny Holzer, Selections from Truisms (1983), at the University of Michigan Museum of Art

talismans/always trying to ground myself with silver

But it seems to me that her life was a long meditation on the nothing. Except she needed others in order to believe in herself, otherwise she’d get lost in the successive and round emptinesses inside her

Clarice Lispector, The Hour of the Star, translated by Benjamin Moser

#i identified with a lot of excerpts from this book but especially this one

Pouran Jinchi, Prayer Stones (2011, top) and Prayers Stones 2 (2012, bottom), baked clay and lacquer paint (source)

#pouran jinchi

Bita Ghezelayagh, from the series “The Letter that Never Arrived,” 2013 (source).

“The Letter That Never Arrived” or Nameh-i ke hargez naresid in Persian, evokes an interrupted correspondence - personal, cultural and political. “The history of Iran is full of letters from outspoken citizens warning their leaders of the consequences of their actions,” she explains. “So, too, the lives of many ordinary Iranians, myself included, are disjointed but also enriched through distance and displacement.”Ghezelayagh rescues unwanted, often threadbare carpets from homes in the West, and remodels them as shepherd’s cloaks derived from their Middle Eastern origins. She washes, deconstructs, disfigures and re-conceives these textiles, giving them a new life and dignity by placing them on a stand, transforming a floor covering into a sculpture. “The carpets are themselves hybrids, composed of more than one decorative tradition,” she says. “I make them more so. My pieces may include fragments of different carpets of varying styles and provenances, sewn together.” She then animates the works, building meaning through layering the cloaks with metal charms and embroidery and giving them a “breastplate” made from her personal collection of pen nibs.” (via)

#bita ghezelayagh

Screenshots from the trailer for Pedram Khosronejad’s film Lion Tombstones and their Sculptors, which can be viewed here.

Excerpt from Khosronejad’s entry on lion tombstones in the Encyclopedia Iranica:

“Lion tombstones (šir-e sangi; or bardšir, “stone lion” in Lori), a type of tombstone in the form of a lion, found mostly on the graves of Lor and Qašqāʾi nomads in the west, southwest, and parts of southern Persia. These stylized, sculptured lions stare out from isolated Baḵtiāri graveyards in many valleys and along the migration routes of the tribes across the Zagros Mountains, from Lāli in Khuzestan (Ḵuzestān) to Zardkuh, the highest point of the Zagros range, in the Bāzoft district of the Baḵtiāri region. Found both individually and in clusters, they mark the graves of unknown chiefs and warriors who died in local battles.

[...]

Stone lions continue to have an enduring significance today. In the absence of a written history, they represent one way in which the Baḵtiāris are able to celebrate their past. Songs and ceremonies associated with funereal traditions, such as traditional lamentations (gāgeriva), are extremely important in recording the events of the Baḵtiāri’s past that are related to these lions. Thus the stone lions evoke for the Baḵtiāris the memory of an idealized past wrought with heroics and wars, a stark contrast to their contemporary situation.”

#pedram khosronejad

Oakland Cemetery, Iowa City, yesterday.

#this is how i spend spring break #many tombstones in disarray but also many that were well-preserved

Yitzhak Nakash, from The Shi'is of Iraq

#yitzhak nakash

Oddly enough, birds and supranatural beings are precisely what one encounters when one ventures to the site of Sultana’s pilgrimage. I decided to investigate the site myself on a visit to Morocco in 1997. The spring, with its attendant saint’s tomb, is a fascinating place. Sidi Slimane is located in the heart of the Middle Atlas. […] But what makes the site so interesting is its spiritual heterosexuality. As one wanders up a hill toward the sanctuary of Sidi Slimane, one crosses beautiful Moroccan countryside. A river flows below the sanctuary, and cats dot the walkway to the famous tomb. But Sidi Slimane’s tomb is not alone here: next to his mausoleum lies the tomb of the female Lalla (Saint) ‘A’isha al-Sudanniya. According to local lore, she liked to stay in caves by the water and was a female spirit. Sidi Slimane himself supposedly controlled birds and jinn. The entire location in which this male-female saintly couple operates functions as a pilgrimage site for the area. Lalla ‘A’isha may come out at night and is said to visit individuals who choose to spend the night at the site. I was told that this was not her grave but simply here “place.” Historically, she is said to have been a contemporary of Sidi Slimane. The spring emanates from the second cave, where Sidi Slimane himself lived.

Fedwa Malti-Douglas, from Medicines of the Soul

#remember when this was on my 2014 to read list #kind of an underwhelming read to be honest

isqineeha

City Nomads - Saudi Artist Nasser Al Salem

Nomads, by definition, leave no trace to mark their presence when they move to another location. This means that they actually have no tangible heritage but their oral traditions to mark their existence. Let this be a reminder of the way the Bedouins lived. - Nasser Al Salem

#nasser al salem

Collecting trinkets

"In Sound, I remember just one specialist, a pale, dark-haired Latin scholar, who rocked continuously in his chair whenever he read us onomopoetic phrases he had found among the classics. The murmuring of innumerable bees in immemorial elms; l'insecte nette gratte la secheresse. Fairly late in the semester, when we were asked what our papers were going to be about, this young man said he wanted to write about the sound of corpses floating through literature. Oh, the professor said, with some enthusiasm, after just a moment's hesitation, you mean Ophelia. No, the young man replied, I want the sound of the sea."

-- Renata Adler, Pitch Dark

April feels like a lifetime ago.

#things to learn: how to not let school and stress make me feel like an incompetent human being

Remnants—that word floats up in my mind as we leave the mosque and walk towards the home of the last Armenian in Everek, the old Armenian Quarter of the town of Develi. He died in 2000 and left the property to his nephew in Istanbul. We peer in the windows at the dusty rooms of a once-grand house. These buildings are remnants, and we are remnants, like scraps of fabric from a torn curtain. We are searching for ghosts, and we ourselves are ghosts come to haunt this land.

Nancy Kricorian, from "Pilgrimage as/or Resistance," in Guernica Magazine

#nancy kricorian