Collective Forgetting: Permission to Forget
The editorial tracks the dual axis on which the issue rests: remembrance and forgetting. When erasure will never be complete, and forgiveness is not possible, what can collective forgetting offer?
war
Between Forgetting & Remembering
Imagine, dear reader, waking up each day without a memory of those around you. Amir Nassar’s literary navigations meander between the total recall of Borges’s Funes the Memorious and the complete forgetfulness of diving into Lethe, river of the underworld. Is a life where one never forgets worth living?
Ищи Своих / Look for Your Own
The Ukrainian Telegram channel Ищи Своих began publishing difficult-to-watch images and information regarding dead Russian soldiers, as part of the effort to influence Russian troops not to participate in violent acts against Ukraine. Anushik draws after the channel's photographs, raising questions about anonymity and concealment and about the perception of war between Russia and Ukraine.
Zehra Doğan’s Hidden Drawings
In 2017, Zehra Doğan was sentenced to two years and 10 months in prison for “terrorist propaganda and inciting hatred.” An artist and journalist, it was Doğan’s painting of the city of Nusaybin in ruins, adorned by Turkish flags, that led to her arrest. Charlotte Bleicher writes about the artist’s prison works, Hidden Drawings, which have been introduced to the public in the last Berlin Biennial.
Disappearing Cities: Beirut and Berlin
A one-night event in Berlin this February brought Charlotte Bleicher to ruminate about the relationship between two cities - Beirut and Berlin. She writes about processes of cultural loss taking place in both cities, and about artistic acts of defiance against this disappearance.
Memory Pictures # 5
Her daughter had painted the view that was hanging outside the window
Of the house that was not her original one.
A Conversation With Jonas Mekas
“If you live in the past, if you can’t escape, then you cannot build a new house, a new future.” Christos Paridis talks with Jonas Mekas about memory, trauma, and the afterlife, about the war years in Lithuania and the 1960’s in New York, and about cinema.
Freeing the Child Soldiers of Salva Kiir
Among many tragic examples, the murder of South Sudanese national, Lost Boy and Canadian citizen Richard Lokeya, and the abduction of journalist Clement Lochio Lomornana (whose whereabouts are still unknown) by state actors, testify to the life-threatening risks implied in refugee justice work in South Sudan today.
Home Goods
A carpet made of concrete, a ripped duvet, and toy soldiers scattered across a single bed. East of Elsewhere's “While You Were Sleeping” housed a collection of domestic furnishings distorted and deconstructed to reflect the consequences of conflict seeping into everyday life.
Memory Pictures
Hadeel Abu Johar travels roads and lanes of near memory, hinting at what is beyond, asking questions about the tension between the image and the event and about the human search for a place and its meaning.