Kyung-hwa Choi-ahoi

April 3, 2022

Natalia and Sergey

Yesterday we rang the bell at the guest apartment where they have found a place to live with our construction community for the past week.

Natalia opened the apartment door and faced us. We met for the first time. Wordlessly, we handed her a bag of wheat flour. After handing it to her, we ran the text translated into Ukrainian in the audio from the cell phone.

Because we can’t speak Ukrainian or Russian, we prepared in google translator for it, so that we can communicate with Natalia and Sergey why we visited them.

The artificial machine voice from the cell phone was running:

This is Kyung-hwa from Korea and Niko from Greece. We heard that you need the wheat flour and sunflower oil. Here is wheat flour. Tomorrow we will bring you sunflower oil.

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Alisa Berger

Anne Brunswic

La Permanence 8. Malika.

Même décor. C’est l’été. La lumière est filtrée par des rideaux rouges. Les examinateurs s’éventent de temps en temps.

Entre une Africaine longiligne vêtue d’un long voile noir qui la couvre jusqu’aux pieds chaussés de tongs. Sous le voile noir, un autre plus clair enserre son visage très fin. Elle tient un nourrisson contre sa poitrine et, de temps en temps, entrebâille son voile pour lui donner le sein. Malika vient de Mauritanie.

Malika : – L’avocat, j’appelle, il répond pas. C’est dans douze jours, je sais pas quoi faire.

Les examinateurs : – Il faut qu’on regarde ensemble la décision de rejet de l’Ofpra. (Ils lisent). A l’Ofpra, ils n’ont pas cru que vous avez subi un mariage forcé. Ils n’ont pas cru aux violences de votre mari. Ils ont pensé que vous êtes partie parce qu’il a pris une seconde épouse mais pas parce qu’il vous maltraitait. Ils rejettent tout ce que vous avez dit.

Malika : – Mais j’ai dit la vérité !

L’examinateur : – Quand votre père vous a annoncé que vous alliez être mariée avec votre cousin Soleiman, qu’est-ce que vous avez dit ? Comment vous avez réagi ?

Malika : – J’ai rien dit. La fille doit obéir. Une fille qui n’obéit pas, c’est le déshonneur. C’était décidé depuis que j’avais 5 ans. Mon père et mon oncle étaient d’accord.

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Emma Woffenden

Katja Stuke

»Putin, in Tehran, gets strong support from Iran over Ukraine; Russian President Vladimir Putin met Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan Saadabad palace, in Tehran, Iran, Tuesday, July 19, 2022.» Washington Post

Aurelia Mihai

The Black Square is an iconic painting by Kazimir Malevich from 1915. Part of the collection of the Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

“Roskomnadzor, the Russian service for supervision in the field of communication, information technology and mass communication, explicitly warned against the use of symbols that could be “ambiguous” – flags of foreign nations (for example, blue-yellow), birds (for example, the white dove) or black squares – after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

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Manuela Morgaine

Brazilian Indian chef Raoni for forty years he has been fighting to defend the lungs of his land: the Amazon rainforest. Today our forests are burning and I can see his face I met a few years ago in Paris, his face and his labret lip which says that we alone are bearers and that we can change the world. When he was 15, Raoni started wearing a labret, an ornamental disk which warriors wear on their lower lip when they want to show they are ready to die for their land.

Natacha Nisic

SE Barnet

Catalina Swinburn

June 28 to July 5, 2022

Neringa Naujokaite

Alisa Berger

Follow Olesia’s activities on IG: https://www.instagram.com/olesiaonykiienko/

There she posts about the donations and acquired equipment. Thank you!

Donations Link to support Olesia’s work – Paypal: olesia.onykiienko@gmail.com

Valeria Troubina

Catherine Radosa

SE Barnet

June 21 to June 28

Emma Woffenden

Womens Factory Weekend, a sample.

The intention was to gather those of us who have utilised the Crown Letter, as many as possible, together in one space at one time. This ex bobbin making factory/storage space/design and sculpture studio in rural France is a place I have occupied for 18 years and this is most likely to soon end. The building needed to see a last gathering within this era, a last party, a last burst of creativity, of laughter, of music, voices, conversation and dancing, to be drawn, filmed and photographed to show off its beautiful brutal structure. We made it echo and shake, and we melted in the heat, we also had to submit to it. In this way I saw the Crown Letter carry me again.

Catherine Radosa

Luise Schröder

Anne Brunswic

En chair et en os

Il fait chaud on étouffe descendons au ruisseau

les pieds dans l’eau glacée

le cul

ça gêne quelqu’un si j’enlève mon soutif

je vais chercher mon maillot de bains je ne me sens pas prête à me montrer nue demain peut-être

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Manuela Morgaine

Liza Dimbleby

Drawings from the bobbin factory, after lunch, Bourg-Argental, June 17th 2022.

Anne Dubos

Michelle Deignan

Kasia Ozga

Ruth Maclennan

SE Barnet

Natacha Nisic

Dettie Flynn

Woman’s Weekend Factory
Emma Woffenden’s studio Bourg Argentail, France, June 202

Liveful performance with camera
XXXI mins. ; a tad long but every bit worth it

Ivana Vollaro

Aurelia Mihai

June 14 to June 21

Catherine Radosa

Aurelia Mihai

Alisa Berger

Katja Stuke

A Tree in Pokrowsk
(Google Street View Feb 2022) Jun 7, 2022

Manuela Morgaine

MAY 24 TO MAY 31

Aurelia Mihai

Katja Stuke

No Tree, A Glitch in Mariupol (Google Street View 2015) Apr 14, 2022
»Trees in Ukraine« inspired Jerry Gordon, musician in Osaka: Listen to his tracks »»

Catherine Radosa

Plantes résistantes II (Resistant plants II)
(8/5/2022, Triangle de Gonesse, participatory happening and photographic series)

Ruth Maclennan

These two saplings sprouted from acorns I collected in the park last year, or the year before. They’ll need more room soon, so I’ll plant them out together. They grow slowly and could live for four hundred years or more. These are common oak – English oak, Pedunculate, Quercus Robur. In England however, many of the oak groves were cut down to build ships to fight Napoleon and have never fully recovered. The oak is also the most common tree in Ukraine, Dub. The D is important – Dodona was an ancient Greek city, loved by Zeus, appointed to be his oracle, where doves lived in the hollow of an oak. A place for prophecies and prophetesses.

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Valeria Troubina

Manuela Morgaine

Icaros & Profetes – Tribute to Vangelis Βαγγέλης Evángelos Odysséas Papathanassíou – Agría March 29 1943- Paris May 17 2022. 

MAY 3 TO MAY 10

Aurelia Mihai

Katja Stuke

Emma Woffenden

Last Thursday evening I arrived in Kingston upon Hull, and as I walked along through this port city I was struck by an architectural mosaic on a run-down building. It is vast, over a million pieces of Italian glass mosaic. My brother tells me they are going to demolish it and I want to save it, later in a bar a local tells us it’s been saved for now and listed.

It had been the front façade of the Co-op shop, it represents the fishing trawlers that along with transport vessels once filled the harbours in more plentiful times. Across the centre “the success of industry” is written and the masts by chance spell out HULL.

I see some beautiful Victorian architecture and find myself in a stunning Minster hosting a beer festival, but I’m told much of the cities architecture had been bombed. Later I read an overview of this heavily bombed city, 95% of houses damaged 5,000 destroyed, 14 schools or hospitals, 8 cinemas, 27 churches, 42 pubs, several oil and flour mills, 280,000 square metres of factories, 1,200 people killed. I think about Mariupol the film footage we see and wonder what it’s ‘overview’ will turn out to be.

Alisa Berger

Manuela Morgaine

If he could reach you.

“We were one day on an intelligence mission in Boutcha, and a soldier dressed in the Ukrainian uniform stopped our car. My friend Ihor saw a Russian army T-shirt sticking out of the soldier’s collar, and he opened fire. The man collapsed but the Russians were ambushed in three or four different places and they fired in turn. Ihor was shot, I was injured in the arm but it is thanks to him that we survived, “says Sacha, 27, a volunteer alongside Yuri, after leaving his job as a mason and the city of Khmelnytskyi.

Anne Brunswic

La permanence 4 (2).

Latifa revient avec une femme voilée de noir portant un masque chirurgical. Pieds nus dans des sandales en plastique.

Latifa : ­ Elle veut demander l’asile. Elle sait pas comment.

L’examinateur : – On va vous aider, ce n’est pas très compliqué. Vous êtes en France depuis combien de temps ? (Conciliabule en bambara.)

Latifa traduit. – Elle est là depuis pas longtemps.

L’examinateur (agacé) : – Pas longtemps, c’est un mois ? un an ?

Latifa traduit. – Un mois ou deux.

L’examinateur : – Vous avez quitté le Mali quand ?

Latifa traduit. – Elle dit cette année, fin du 2e mois.

L’examinateur : – Ça fait fin février. Et du Mali, elle est allée où ? En Algérie ? en Libye ?

Latifa traduit. – Non, à Bamako elle a rencontré un monsieur, il l’a aidée et il l’a emmenée en Turquie.

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Liza Dimbleby

Valeria Troubina

Из размышлений на тему собственного положения … и наблюдения за всем происходящим со стороны. У меня тогда в 14м году в Луганске было именно такое ощущение, я вроде бы ни при чем, и даже в безопасности, но глубоко под водой и нечем дышать, а мимо, на поверхности проплывет лодка жизни, которая похожа одновременно и на пулю по конфигурации и на гроб … и даже думаешь что можно вынырнуть на свет, но зрелище завораживает как сон!

This is a reflection on my own situation … and my observation of everything that is happening from the outside. In 2014, in Lugansk, I felt like I wasn’t involved, that I was safe, but that I was somehow deep underwater and couldn’t breathe, and that life, like a boat, floated by on the surface. Here it looks like a bullet or a coffin… and it seems like you could swim up into the light, it is like a vision in a dream!

Michelle Deignan

Liza Dimbleby

Ruth Maclennan

The following is a letter I wrote to the curator I was working with in 2013.

‘I have decided on a title for the exhibition. The title is ‘The faces they have vanished’. It is inspired by a quote from a film maker in 1937, about the faces that appear in films vanishing, and reappearing, only to vanish again, so evoking the magic of the moving image, and also its spectral quality. For me ‘they have vanished’ suggests the faces of poets and artists, that we know from photographs – who appear so distant in the photographs but whose writings are so immediate and contemporary. It suggests the artists and poets, and many other unknown people, who were ‘disappeared’ during the Soviet period (Mandelshtam et al). ‘The faces’ is somehow impersonal, and yet a face is personal, unique.

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Katja Stuke

Alisa Berger

Natacha Nisic

Anne Brunswic

La permanence 4.
Même décor. Même bruit de fond. Les masques chirurgicaux des examinateurs pendent sous le nez, ou sous le menton. Entre une jeune femme africaine, longiligne, voile noir, jupe longue noire, anorak noir, masque chirurgical. Elle s’approche timidement de la table, dépose une feuille.

L’examinateur : – Asseyez-vous ! C’est vous, Mme Fatoumata K. ? Vous avez reçu une convocation à l’OFPRA pour le 25 mai à 9 heures. (La jeune femme fait signe qu’elle ne comprend pas.) C’est un entretien où vous expliquez pourquoi vous demandez l’asile.

Fatoumata (à voix basse) : – Pas bien français. Soninké. Bambara.

L’examinatrice sort, revient avec un Africain vêtu d’un costume crème, environ 40 ans. Il se tient debout, à une certaine distance de Fatoumata qui garde les yeux baissés.

Au ton de sa voix et à son attitude, on devine que ce monsieur est ravi de s’acquitter d’une mission de confiance. Explications longues en bambara.

Le monsieur : – Le 5e mois, elle comprend, mais le 25,  elle ne connaît pas bien.

L’examinateur : – C’est dans un mois. Dites-lui bien d’arriver au moins une heure avant le rendez-vous. De notre côté, on va voir si on trouve un bénévole pour l’accompagner. Je note son numéro de téléphone et on va la rappeler.

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Manuela Morgaine

Nadia Lichtig

Alisa Berger

This radio episode, which was made together with @aemlx.global, is focussing on our friends musicians and DJs from Ukraine, and their activities of resistance since the beginning of the war that Russia started against Ukraine.
Artists: Oleh Shpudeiko @heinali , Alexey Shmurak @alexey-shmurak , Emilia Kurylowicz @aeglobal , Olesia Onykiienko @nfnr_music , John Object @johnobject , Anna Khvyl @anna-khvyl

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Katja Stuke

Nadia Lichtig

Catalina Swinburn

The determination of the stars to which some of the Egyptian temples, sacred to a known divinity, were directed, opened a way to a study, of the astronomical basis of parts of the Egyptian mythologies. It became obvious  that the mythology was intensely astronomical, and crystallized early ideas suggested by actual observation of the Sun, Moon, and stars.   The excavations revealed that several times in its history the complex had been razed to the ground to be re-erected and expanded on the same spot, yet each time with a slight change of orientation. The orientation of the temples must have been determined by certain stars, whose position in the sky changed over time, and this orientation was so quintessential that the temples of the earlier complexes had to be re-erected several times. It was not dilapidation that motivated the repeated construction work, but a religious necessity to follow the stars in the orientation of the temples. This is explained by the temples having been rebuilt upon old foundations, a thing which can be proved to have occurred. In the case of the Egyptian temples, the stated date of foundation of a temple is almost always long after that at which its lines were laid down in accordance with the astronomical ritual. No wonder, then, that the same thing is noticed in Greece.—From the N.Y.Sun,March,1894.

Anne Brunswic

La permanence (3).

Même décor. Les deux examinateurs.

Entre un couple de Russes, 35 ans environ, jeans, allure artiste, accompagnés d’une fillette blonde portant un nœud rose dans les cheveux. L’enfant gambade dans la salle puis revient en réclamant des câlins à sa mère.

L’examinatrice : – Si vous parlez français ou anglais, ce sera plus commode pour mon collègue.

Lui : En anglais, ça va.

Elle : – Pour moi, c’est mieux en français.

Suite des échanges tantôt en français, tantôt en anglais, tantôt en russe.

L’examinateur : Vous venez d’où ?

Lui : On est de Moscou. On est arrivés il y a deux semaines.

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Maricarmen Merino

Manuela Morgaine