This article was originally published in a shortened version on 7 February 2014 at Waging Nonviolence. Available here. — Last week China observed the lunar New Year. The Spring Festival is celebrated with two weeks of fireworks and food, when hundreds of millions of Chinese travel home to be with their families, but this year … More In China: Citizenship on Trial
Amid the usual frenetic pulsing throngs of passing subway patrons, Beijing denizens and tourists rushing from the sliding doors of subway cars to be the first ones up the escalator to make their connections or meetings, I examined my reflection in a glass partition waiting for the train to pass. After the train rushed away, … More Toothless Tigers in the Subway: An Animal Rights Campaign in China
This is the third entry in a series on semiotic analysis, Uyghurs, and public space in China. For earlier entries please see, Deconstructing ‘Minzu’, and Museumized Signification, China and Representational Violence. Or visit my index at the top of the page for all previous articles dealing with Symbolic Power, the politics of representation, China, Xinjiang, Uyghurs, and … More Perusing Walls in China: Posters and Symbolic Power
Following the three year anniversary of the Urumqi protests and the recent supposed Hotan plane hijacking attempt, which the Uyghur Human Rights Project warns should be viewed with extreme caution, it seems pertinent to introduce a little of the visuals behind China’s rhetoric of ethnic harmony. It is the same rhetoric of ethnic harmony, also … More Visualizing an Imagined Community
Considering that in the last just over two months I have drifted through six countries, from leaving my short home in North Africa, to a whirlwind through the UK, to a long awaited visit to the US, to a return to China, my mind has been pulled taught through myriad urban and individual landscapes, through … More Urban Exploration Gallery by Urbanartcore
“It’s romantic, it’s nostalgic, it’s wistful, it’s provocative. It’s about time, nature, mortality, disinvestment.” – Greco Recently I came across an exploratory article on the voyeuristic art of “ruin porn.” In a somewhat humorous similarity of terms to riot porn, the ruin porn of today elicits the hedonistic drive, the aesthetic: both intellectual and sensuous, … More RUIN PORN AND DERELICT DEBBIE
As I prepare to change continents again, to resettle in a new environment, I am too itinerant for thorough introspection and retelling tales of wandering; however, one thing that has been growing more salient in my observations and thoughts is the awareness and concern over disparate urban landscapes. The questions linger as to what layout, … More Shared Spaces and Thinking Streets
Amid rising cries of Degage, get out, the people of Tunisia ousted their despotic President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who fled the country with his kleptocratic wife Leila Trabelsi. It was 14 January 2011 and for some the Tunisian revolution had succeeded and ended, for others perhaps it had only begun. In the days … More From Street to Home, the Art of Resistance in Post-Trabelsi Tunisia
A few nights ago, sometime late after dinner had been prepared and consumed, dishes washed and returned to their perches, I returned to the kitchen, to the stove, to heat water for some tea. As I turned the gas release nozzle to the left a rush of escaping gas began that hissing song, revealing a … More Words from the Setting of a Cafe
