Afleveringen
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Welcome to issue twenty-seven of The Attention Span Newsletter by me, Canan “Ja’anan” Marasligil. I’m a writer, a literary translator and an artist based in Amsterdam. Every other week, I take the time to reflect and offer a glimpse of how I see and feel the world through the lens of culture, art, translation, poetry and literature.
Subscribe: www.theattentionspan.com/subscribe
Support:
When I launched the attention span newsletter, thoughtful friends convinced me to start a Patreon page. I received support for a full year from some of you, which has allowed me to pay for logistical costs. I stopped the Patreon page to simplify supporting ways to one-off payments starting at 2,50 EUR. Do support if you can and want to: via PAYPAL.
EPISODE 27 SHOW NOTESThe poem I am referring to: by Emily Dickinson, put into music by Pete Josef, “Hope”.
Ava DuVernay’s limited series When They See Us.
The book Caste: The Origins of our Discontent by Isabel Wilkerson.
Deep South: A Social Anthropological Study of Caste and Class, a groundbreaking study conducted by a black and a white couple: Allison Davis, Elizabeth Davis, Burleigh B. Gardner, and Mary R. Gardner.
Ava DuVernay turned to philanthropists to finance her film.
Origin is available for rent or purchase on different streaming platforms (Apple TV in The Netherlands).
WATCH
Talking of artists with political courage, this is also one great example: Macklemore’s protest song: HIND'S HALL. The title is a reference to pro-Palestinian activists’ renaming of Hamilton Hall at Columbia University to "Hind's Hall" in honour of Hind Rajab, the Palestinian six-year-old killed by Israeli forces. I invite you to watch the video clip online. Not only does Macklemore speak truth, but he’s one of the rare artists with such a gigantic platform in the music industry, to openly take a stand against the funding of violence by his government. I’m not sure what the others staying silent are afraid of, since Macklemore keeps giving sold out concerts in arenas across the world. He is creating solidarity with a powerful discourse of love and demand for freedom for all, against violence and hatred, he stands against polarization (see for instance this poignant video he shared on his Instagram page). We’re hungry for such care and call to love. I wish our politicians and the media would carry discourses like this one instead of dividing us all through fear.LISTEN
Where is your pride, a song by Moby with Benjamin Zephaniah. Writer, poet, professor and musician Benjamin Zephaniah died on 7 December 2023, at the age of 65, after being diagnosed with a brain tumour eight weeks previously. It was a terrible shock and immense loss. The suddenty of his death is a painful reminder of the fragility of life. Moby wrote a song last year together with Zephaniah, whom he says, on his Instagram page, is his favourite animal rights activist. Moby says about this song: “Where is your pride is a testament to Benjamin and an honour to his legacy.”READ
Souleymane Bachir Diagne is a philosopher at Columbia University, a marvellous thinker and philosopher of translation. I have recently come across his work, and now I am listening to every single interview he did (those on French public radio are excellent) and catching up with reading his rich oeuvre. I am currently reading De langue à langue. L’hospitalité de la traduction (From Tongue to Tongue. Hospitality in Translation). I cannot find an English translation of this book. He is also the author of an autobiography, Le fagot de ma mémoire, which I cannot wait to dive into. For those of you who don’t read in the French language, Bachir Diagne has also many books in English, and I invite you to explore his work. -
Welcome to issue twenty-six of The Attention Span Newsletter by me, Canan “Ja’anan” Marasligil. I’m a writer, a literary translator and an artist based in Amsterdam. Every other week, I take the time to reflect and offer a glimpse of how I see and feel the world through the lens of culture, art, translation, poetry and literature.
Subscribe: www.theattentionspan.com/subscribe
Support:
When I launched the attention span newsletter, thoughtful friends convinced me to start a Patreon page. I received support for a full year from some of you, which has allowed me to pay for logistical costs. I stopped the Patreon page to simplify supporting ways to one-off payments starting at 2,50 EUR. Do support if you can and want to: via PAYPAL.
EPISODE 26 SHOW NOTESI remember those moments that have remained engraved in my memory, listening to the music of Goran Bregović, and particularly this song, Ederlezi from the soundtrack of the film The Time of the Gypsies by Emir Kusturica, covered by Sezen Aksu in 1997, a decade after Bregović performed it as Đurđevdan with his band Bjelo Dugme (see playlist on Spotify).
On Sunday 5 May 2024, writer Percival Everett was a guest of Private Passions on BBC3 radio. His novel The Trees was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2022; an earlier book, Erasure, was adapted into the recent Oscar-winning film American Fiction (which I wrote about in issue 22 of this newsletter). His latest novel, James, is a re-telling of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, from the perspective of Huck’s enslaved friend Jim. In this episode of Private Passions, Everett shares his favourite music; jazz and blues, along with Dvorak, Schoenberg, Gustav Holst’s The Planets....
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Zijn er afleveringen die ontbreken?
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Welcome to issue twenty-five of The Attention Span Newsletter by me, Canan “Ja’anan” Marasligil. I’m a writer, a literary translator and an artist based in Amsterdam. Every other week, I take the time to reflect and offer a glimpse of how I see and feel the world through the lens of culture, art, translation, poetry and literature.
Subscribe: www.theattentionspan.com/subscribe
EPISODE 25 SHOW NOTESRachel Handler who has interviewed the director for Vulture, describes the film as “a call to arms from director Agnieszka Holland and co-writers Gabriela Łazarkiewicz-Sieczko and Maciej Pisuk — a viscerally disturbing, two-and-a-half-hour warning about the international encroachment of fascism and mass dehumanization, captured even as tragedy continues to unfold.”
In an interview with Al-Jazeera, Holland said that despite the backlash “[…] people are going to see the film. People are discussing it, people are crying, expressing very deep emotions. That is what I wanted to do, to touch the hearts and conscience of my co-citizens.”
Youssoupha’s song Mourir Mille Fois
My piece: Documenting our Humanity.
LISTEN
Podcast: Collaboration: A Potential History of Photography. In this episode of the Thames & Hudson Podcast, Wendy Ewald, Susan Meiselas and Laura Wexler – three of the co-authors of Collaboration: A Potential History of Photography – delve behind the scenes of their book in which they offer up an alternative understanding of photography as something that is inherently collaborative, and explore the countless complex relationships between photographer, subject, viewer, camera and more. It’s a fascinating conversation. I have always wondered how the subjects of the so many photographs we admire and celebrate were feeling about finding their image in a museum, a book, in someone’s private collection… So many questions the book explores and this podcast touches on.WATCH
The Hell of Auschwitz - Maus by Art Spiegelman by Pauline Horovitz on Arte TV. I read Art Spiegelman’s Pulitzer winning graphic novel more than a decade ago. It truly is one of those works that makes you grasp the power of comics as a narrative medium. I was therefore very curious what the filmmaker wanted to capture with this documentary. I found the way she puts herself in the story very interesting, and the detailed way in which she takes the viewer through Spiegelman’s process, spoke to me. It is a really well made documentary that highlights how Spiegelman has revolutionised the medium of comics.READ
Since I mention the documentary about Maus by Art Spiegelman, let me tell you more about the story. This comic book depicts Spiegelman interviewing his father about his experiences as a Polish Jew and Holocaust survivor. It represents Jews as mice, Germans as cats and Poles as pigs. It is a mix of memoir, autobiography, history, fiction, no matter what one wants to call it, it is an essential read for anyone who is interested in how personal narratives set in complex historical contexts, can be told through comics. In 1992 it became the first graphic novel to win a Pulitzer Prize. -
Welcome to issue twenty-four of The Attention Span Newsletter by me, Canan “Ja’anan” Marasligil. I’m a writer, a literary translator and an artist based in Amsterdam. Every other week, I take the time to reflect and offer a glimpse of how I see and feel the world through the lens of culture, art, translation, poetry and literature.
Subscribe: www.theattentionspan.com/subscribe
EPISODE 24 SHOW NOTESWATCH
I have rewatched Angels in America (2003) years after I had first seen it (you know, when HBO was leading the way in groundbreaking storytelling on TV). Tony Kushner’s writing didn’t age, the story spoke to me even more today than it had at the time. The miniseries (6 episodes) is based on the Pulitzer Prize–winning 1991 play of the same name (also by Kushner). Set in 1985, the story revolves around six New Yorkers whose lives intersect. At its core is Prior Walter, a gay man living with AIDS who is visited by an angel (played by the wonderful Emma Thompson). Angels in America beautifully explores political and cultural themes, from the Reagan era politics to the AIDS epidemic, touching on social and political issues we are still deep in today. The last episode even sees the main characters having a conversation on occupation and Palestine (and Kushner hasn’t changed his tune).LISTEN
I am that person who walks through life creating soundtracks for my everyday life, so I love original soundtracks for film and TV shows. Diving back in Angels in America also means going back to the soundtrack, with Thomas Newman’s brilliant score. I love Newman’s music, he also did Shawshank Redemption (yeah, I’m on that team, don’t judge), as well as Revolutionary Road (another favourite soundtracks of mine).READ
COMPLAINT! by Sara Ahmed is the book I needed to read at this moment in my life. It offered me much solace and acted, not only as a confirmation of how much work we still need to do to fight against heteronormative and white supremacist norms and structures, but also brought me hope because we’re not alone, and we have tools, definitions, and the heart to go beyond labels or experiences that may have been inflicted on us. -
Welcome to issue twenty-three of The Attention Span Newsletter by me, Canan “Ja’anan” Marasligil. I’m a writer, a literary translator and an artist based in Amsterdam. Every other week, I take the time to reflect and offer a glimpse of how I see and feel the world through the lens of culture, art, translation, poetry and literature.
You can support my work via patreon 🧡
Subscribe: www.theattentionspan.com/subscribe
EPISODE 23 SHOW NOTESIn 2021, I had interviewed writer and academic Aminata Cairo for Rekto Verso magazine. My piece was published in Dutch in Aleksandra Hrkic’s translation. I thought about Aminata Cairo’s work on Holding Space a lot these past two weeks, so I thought I would share the never published original English version with you all.
WATCH
This is a great interview with filmmaker Ava DuVernay on how film changes the way we see the world, part of the TEDx talk series. And I am not abandoning the idea of writing about her latest film Origin. I went to see it again, and I am still reflecting on it. I want to write a reflection worthy of all the care and love DuVernay has put it, so I am taking my time.LISTEN
The following episode of Free Thinking on BBC radio 3 was very interesting: Free speech, censorship and modern China, especially the part about Private Revolutions: Coming of Age in a New China by Yuan Yang. I cannot wait to read this book when it will be out in May.READ
Work Won’t Love you Back by Sarah Jaffe is a book exploring how devotion to our jobs keeps us exploited, exhausted, and alone. Don’t expect a handbook on how to separate your emotions from your job, this is not a self-help book, it’s much better and deeper. It is very well researched, offering a historical, sociological, cultural and political perspective on definitions of love related to work. It’s an excellent criticism of our capitalist systems that have been using the idea of “love” to exploit us in the workspace. -
Welcome to issue twenty-two of The Attention Span Newsletter by me, Canan “Ja’anan” Marasligil. I’m a writer, a literary translator and an artist based in Amsterdam. Every other week, I take the time to reflect and offer a glimpse of how I see and feel the world through the lens of culture, art, translation, poetry and literature.
You can support my work via patreon 🧡
EPISODE 22 SHOW NOTESThe films of Kryzsztof Kieślowski on MUBI.
I have watched The Zone of Interest, Jonathan Glazer’s Oscar winning film, at my local cinema. The film’s title refers to the term used by the Nazis to describe the immediate area around the concentration camp. As described in this Guardian interview with the director, “Played by German actors Christian Friedel and Sandra Hüller, the couple are the embodiment of the Jewish writer Primo Levi’s insistence that it is ordinary people, rather than monsters, who are capable of committing atrocity.”
WATCH
I really enjoyed watching American Fiction by Cord Jefferson, a film adapted from the book Erasure by Percival Everett (2001). It tells the story of Monk, a frustrated novelist who's fed up with the establishment that profits from Black entertainment that relies on tired and offensive tropes. To prove his point, he writes a book as expected of the White literary and media establishment to be “Black” under a pen name, and what unfolds is the whole hypocrisy of the system and the literary industry. Many moments I could imagine a version of this film set in the Netherlands, Belgium or France. Someday I may even write that version myself!LISTEN
The soundtrack of Krzysztof Kieślowski’s film La double vie de Véronique by composer Zbigniew Preisner. It is mesmerising. It will move you even more if you watch the film too.READ
Vanessa Springora’s memoir Le Consentement (which has been translated to English by Natasha Lehrer as Consent) is a very difficult read. I have dived into it (as well as in other literature about sexual abuse on minors) since actor Judith Godrèche has filed complaints against filmmaker Benoit Jacquot for rape with constraint, and another French auteur cinema favourite, Jacques Doillon for rape with violence. I wanted to write in a future issue of the newsletter about sexual abuse and abuse of power in art, cinema, literature, as it’s been bothering me for years (from Woody Allen to Roman Polanski and many more) but I haven’t found the strength yet to dive deep. It may come. In any case, Springora’s memoir is disturbing in the reality it describes and how the system has allowed all the abuse to happen, but it’s also an incredible reclaiming of one’s agency and I applaud the author for fighting back her abuser with the weapon he’s been using all his life to legitimise his predatory behaviour: literature. -
Welcome to issue twenty-one of The Attention Span Newsletter by me, Canan “Ja’anan” Marasligil. I’m a writer, a literary translator and an artist based in Amsterdam. Every other week, I take the time to reflect and offer a glimpse of how I see and feel the world through the lens of culture, art, translation, poetry and literature.
You can support my work via patreon 🧡
EPISODE 21 SHOW NOTES
Free Word closing: literaryconsultancy.co.uk/2021/04/free-word-announces-closure-tlc-moves-to-hybrid-working/
Being a Writer community of TLC: literaryconsultancy.co.uk/being-a-writer/
English PEN: www.englishpen.org
Arvon: arvon.org
Poetry Translation Centre: www.poetrytranslation.org
Meeting the Man: James Baldwin in Paris (directed by Terence Dixon) on MUBI: mubi.com/en/nl/films/meeting-the-man-james-baldwin-in-paris
Translation and Race by Corine Tachtiris www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-mono/10.4324/9781003180166/translation-race-corine-tachtiris
the afikra podcast: www.afikra.com/podcast -
Welcome to issue twenty of The Attention Span Newsletter by me, Canan “Ja’anan” Marasligil. I’m a writer, a literary translator and an artist based in Amsterdam. Every other week, I take the time to reflect and offer a glimpse of how I see and feel the world through the lens of culture, art, translation, poetry and literature.
You can support my work via patreon 🧡
EPISODE 20 SHOW NOTES
REFERENCESWalter Benjamin, The Arcades Project, trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1982).
Aminata Cairo, Holding Space: A Storytelling Approach to Trampling Diversity and Inclusion (2021).
Hélène Cixous et Cécile Wajsbrot, une autobiographie allemande(Christian Bourgois éditeur, 2016).
Teju Cole, Black Paper: Writing in a Dark Time (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2021).
Michel De Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. Steven Rendell, (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1984).
Édouard Glissant, L’imaginaire des langues (Entretiens avec Lise Gauvin 1991–2009), (Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 2010).
Chris Keulemans, Gastvrijheid, (Amsterdam: Jurgen Maas Uitgeverij, 2021).
Toni Morrison, Nobel Lecture, 7 December 1993.
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Welcome to issue nineteen of The Attention Span Newsletter by me, Canan “Ja’anan” Marasligil. I’m a writer, a literary translator and an artist based in Amsterdam. Every other week, I take the time to reflect and offer a glimpse of how I see and feel the world through the lens of culture, art, translation, poetry and literature.
You can support my work via patreon 🧡
EPISODE 19 SHOW NOTES
LISTENING, WATCHING, READINGRead
I have been reading Teju Cole for years, all his non-fiction. But I had never taken the time to dive into his fiction. This January, I treated myself to all three of his novels (one of them is said to be a novella but I don’t care for such definitions). Everyday is for the Thief (2007), Open City (2011) and Tremor (2023). It was an intense and beautiful experience to read all those books one after the other. Cole brings so many emotions out of me and most importantly, he creates that urgent space where beauty meets reflection, where imagination is always part of how we must look at the world. Cole does it so beautifully well through music, art, photography (including his own).
Watch
I have finally seen The Red Shoes, a 1948 film written, directed, and produced by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. It’s been on my list forever, but I wanted to see it in a cinema and not on a small screen. So when I saw it was playing in my local beloved cinema Kriterion, I didn’t miss the chance. The story is based on Hans Christian Andersen’s story of red ballet shoes that refuse to stop dancing. It follows aspiring ballerina Victoria Page (played by a mesmerizing Moira Shearer), who joins the world-renowned Ballet Lermontov, owned and operated by Boris Lermontov (played by Anton Walbrook), who will test her dedication to the ballet by making her choose between her career and love. Heartbreaking, very dramatic, a visual treat (especially for its time). It is also one of Martin Scorsese’s favourite films.
Listen
Ava Duvernay has directed a new film, titled Origin, based on Isabel Wilkerson’s book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, and both the film and the book are on my watch/read list. While waiting for the film to arrive to the Netherlands, I am listening to interviews with Duvernay, like this one on Radio Hour, where she tells about the process of filming, from funding to making, the urgency of the theme and why it needed to come out now and not later. A truly inspiring artist and visionary.
ABOUTCanan “Ja’anan” Marasligil (she/they) is a writer, literary translator and artist based in Amsterdam. She established The Attention Span website and its newsletter to publish their work independently: making the time to reflect, analyse and imagine.
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Welcome to issue eighteen of The Attention Span Newsletter - the first one of 2024 after a short break - by me, Canan “Ja’anan” Marasligil. I’m a writer, a literary translator and an artist based in Amsterdam. Every other week, I take the time to reflect and offer a glimpse of how I see and feel the world through the lens of culture, art, translation, poetry and literature.
EPISODE SHOWNOTES
Blues Before Sunrise, an installation by artist and filmmaker Steve McQueen.McQueen’s first feature documentary, titled Occupied City/De Bezette Stad, inspired by the book Atlas of an Occupied City – Amsterdam 1940-1945 (2019) by Bianca Stigter, who also wrote the screenplay.
My essay for online magazine SKUT (published October 2023 in Dutch and in English).
The short video I made in March 2016.
Watch
Speaking of how the magic of Orlando still haunts imaginations and yet can be critically reviewed, I want to recommend you Paul B. Preciado’s wonderful film based on Woolf’s novel, titled Orlando, My Political Biography. It is a documentary in which Preciado blurs the lines between fiction and non-fiction, and invites trans and non-binary people to the centre of the story as they perform lines from the novel. And another film I am excited about (how come I never saw it!) is the restored release of Sally Potter’s Orlando, which comes back to cinemas this week in the Netherlands.
Listen
And in my Orlando path this January, I have listened to the Historical Homos podcast where they discuss how Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West Invent the Lesbian Love Letter, and to an interview with Sally Potter on BBC radio’s This Cultural Life where she tells about the process of making the film thirty years ago.Thank you so much for listening! Feel free to share this newsletter/podcast with your friends, on your social media and more. Here’s the link to subscribe to the e-mail version: https://theattentionspan.com/subscribe
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Welcome to issue seventeen of The Attention Span Newsletter by me, Canan “Ja’anan” Marasligil. I’m a writer, a literary translator and an artist based in Amsterdam.
Every other week, I take the time to reflect and offer a glimpse of how I see and feel the world through the lens of culture, art, translation, poetry and literature.
You can support my work via Patreon.
This will be the last issue of 2023, I will take a break and will send the next issue on 17 January 2024.
I wish you all healing, love, health and beauty for the new year. I hope you can celebrate whichever festivities you believe in surrounded by your loved ones.EPISODE 17 SHOW NOTES
Listen to writer Ahdaf Soueif in Desert Island Discs - it’s an old recording (from 2012) but one I like going back to. I see Marina Abramović has recently appeared on the show as well. You can check all episodes online.
Read In the Shadow of the Holocaust. How the politics of memory in Europe obscures what we see in Israel and Gaza today by Masha Gessen in The New Yorker. (Gessen explains in an interview on Democracy Now what happened regarding the withdrawal of the Hannah Arendt prize they were going to be awarded in Germany).
Watch Anselm by Wim Wenders, a beautiful and poetic documentary about artist Anselm Kiefer. There is currently also an exhibition of his work at the Museum Voorlinden in The Hague.
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Welcome to issue sixteen of The Attention Span Newsletter by me, Canan “Ja’anan” Marasligil. I’m a writer, a literary translator and an artist based in Amsterdam.
Every other week, I take the time to reflect and offer a glimpse of how I see and feel the world through the lens of culture, art, translation, poetry and literature.
You can support my work via Patreon.EPISODE 16 SHOW NOTES
Those of us in the Netherlands have witnessed worrying election results two weeks ago. Part of me is shocked, another part of me is not surprised at all. We have seen populist discourses being normalized in many countries we thought were safely guarded behind democratic doors. Instead of penning an essay about my disappointment in the current politics, I have decided to share diary entries written and published in French in 2019 when I was in residency in the Bassin Minier, the former mining area in Northern France. The city where I was based has been governed by the far right since 2014. I felt the necessity to go back there, where I managed to find space for culture, literature, and translation among a group of resilient people. This is an edited version from the notebook entries from 2018-2019 which I have translated myself from French.
A collection of Nurdan Gürbilek’s work has been published in English in 2011 as The New Cultural Climate in Turkey: Living in a Shop Window in Victoria Holbrook’s translation.Ses etme (video clip) by Athena.
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Welcome to issue fifteen of The Attention Span Newsletter by me, Canan “Ja’anan” Marasligil. I’m a writer, a literary translator, an artist and a curator of cultural programmes based in Amsterdam.
Every other week, I take the time to reflect and offer a glimpse of how I see and feel the world through the lens of culture, art, translation, poetry and literature.
You can support my work via Patreon.
EPISODE 15 SHOW NOTES
Listen to Amal (Hope) by Egyptian producer Molotof and Tunisian singer Emel Mathlouthi, created in dedication of the perseverance of the Palestinian people (there is also a music video including English subtitles).Read Arundhati Roy’s address at the Munich Literature Festival: “If we allow this brazen slaughter to continue, even as it is livestreamed into the most private recesses of our personal lives, we are complicit in it. Something in our moral selves will be altered forever.” I also invite you to read Anne Boyer’s resignation letter as New York Times Magazine’s poetry editor.
Watch The Burning Olive Tree, the first online reading organised by Poems for Palestine, a collective of poets I am a proud member and co-organiser of. We have brought together poets and writers from around the world, reading poetry they have written in solidarity with the Palestinian people. Poems were read in Iranian, Arabic, French, English, German…
Notebook notes from Threa Almontaser: https://www.threawrites.com -
Welcome to issue fourteen of The Attention Span Newsletter by me, Canan “Ja’anan” Marasligil. I’m a writer, a literary translator, an artist and a curator of cultural programmes based in Amsterdam.
Every other week, I take the time to reflect and offer a glimpse of how I see and feel the world through the lens of culture, art, translation, poetry and literature.
You can support my work via Patreon.EPISODE 14 SHOW NOTES
Listen to this beautiful song Land of Gold by Anoushka Shankar.
Read a poem and an essay from June 2021 by Fady Joudah, a Palestinian American physician, poet, and translator: My Palestinian Poem that “The New Yorker” Wouldn’t Publish in LA Review of Books.
Watch this gorgeous concert of Sevdaliza filmed at the Arts et Métiers Museum in Paris, available on ARTE TV.
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Welcome to issue thirteen of The Attention Span Newsletter by me, Canan “Ja’anan” Marasligil. I’m a writer, a literary translator, an artist and a curator of cultural programmes based in Amsterdam.
Every other week, I take the time to reflect and offer a glimpse of how I see and feel the world through the lens of culture, art, translation, poetry and literature. Each issue has a short essay or some thoughts, a nerdy look at translation, a page from one of my notebooks, and a list of things to read, watch or listen to.
You can support my work via Patreon.EPISODE 13 SHOW NOTES
Sumanth S Gopinath, associate professor of music theory at the University of Minnesota, discusses Steve Reich in an episode of Will Robin’s Sound Expertise Podcast.
“Enough With the Solidarity Statements. Why Art Institutions Should Stop Taking Positions on Geopolitical Events They Have Nothing to Do With” by Sascha Freudenheim, published on Artnet (16 October 2023).
The book Culture Strike: Art and Museums in an Age of Protest by Laura Raicovich.
LISTENING, WATCHING, READINGListen to London-based DJ and producer Nabihah Iqbal’s music: her latest album DREAMER (2023) for instance, or discover her musical finds in the radio shows she hosts on NTS (like this latest episode from 10 October 2023 where she shares sounds she brought back from a recent trip to Lebanon; including “Remote Control” a 1980s tune from Beirut by Teddy Lane, music from The Bunny Tylers and Maya Yazbeck). And for the lucky ones among us in Amsterdam, Nabihah will perform at the Melkweg on 22 November 2023.
Read the poem Fuck Your Lecture on Craft, My People Are Dyingby Palestinian-American poet and reporter Noor Hindi (and also the poem I am referring to here above. Here is the Turkish translation Kahrolsun İş Bilirlik Ahkamınız, Halkım Ölüyor by Mertcan Karakuş a.k.a. Zakkum Kök).
Watch the documentary film The Shadow of the West (UK, 1983), written and narrated by Edward Said. Directed by Geoff Dunlop. In this film, Said examines Western attitudes to the Arabs and finds their origins in the Crusades, Hollywood and European empire building. He sees the Palestinian fate as the result of years of Western interference. This film is one of the ten episodes of The Arabs: A Living History and is available to watch on YouTube.
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Welcome to issue twelve of The Attention Span Newsletter by me, Canan “Ja’anan” Marasligil. I’m a writer, a literary translator, an artist and a curator of cultural programmes based in Amsterdam.
Every other week, I take the time to reflect and offer a glimpse of how I see and feel the world through the lens of culture, art, translation, poetry and literature.
I also invite you to support my work via Patreon.Thank you for your presence and attention!
Last summer, I wrote an essay on Etel Adnan for the Poëziekrant (translated to Dutch by Martine Wezenbeek), and my heart just told me that today is a good day to share the original English version with you. I have made a selection of photographs to accompany your reading, and the essay includes a list of references including writing and audiovisual material. My usual reading/watching/listening list, notes on translation and sketchbook page have been incorporated into this essay as accompanying resources that I hope will feed your thoughts, heart and soul.
SHOWNOTES
Essay written in Amsterdam in May 2023, published in De Poëziekrantin Dutch (translated by Martine Wezenbeek) in July 2023. Published in English for the first time in this newsletter.All translations to English in the essay, unless otherwise stated, are my own.
Books by Etel Adnan:
Surge. 2018.
THERE. In the Light and the Darkness of the Self and of the Other. 1997.
Sea & Fog. 2012.
“To Write in a Foreign Language” in Thom Donovan and Brandon Shimoda (eds), To look at the sea is to become what one is. An Etel Adnan Reader, vol. 1, New York 2014.
Van Gogh Museum exhibition catalogue:
Etel Adnan Vincent van Gogh. Kleur als taal / Colour as language. With writings by Sara Tas, Simone Fattal, Etel Adnan. Van Gogh Museum en Uitgeverij Tijdsbeeld, 2022.
(Translation to English of Sara Tas: Ted Alkins)
Interviews and hommages:
L’entretien infini - Etel Adnan - Conversation avec Hans Ulrich Obrist, Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, 2014. https://youtu.be/IiJqIVzN3z
Entretien avec Etel Adnan in Conversation avec Ricardo Karam, 2019 https://ricardokaram.com/podcasts
Dominique Eddé, “Etel, l’oiseau rare,” first published in French in L’Orient-Le Jour, 19 November 2021 (https://www.lorientlejour.com/article/1282043/etel-loiseau-rare.html) English translation by Ros Schwartz, January 2022
La beauté de la lumière, entretiens – Etel Adnan & Laure Adler. Avec Laure Adler, Hans Ulrich Obrist & Jean Frémon. Lecture par Nathalie Richard. Rencontre animée par Marie-Madeleine Rigopoulos. 18 mars 2022. https://maisondelapoesieparis.com/programme/la-beaute-de-la-lumiere-entretiens-etel-adnan-laure-adler/
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Welcome to issue eleven of The Attention Span Newsletter by me, Canan “Ja’anan” Marasligil. I’m a writer, a literary translator, an artist and a curator of cultural programmes based in Amsterdam.
Every other week, I take the time to reflect and offer a glimpse of how I see and feel the world through the lens of culture, art, translation, poetry and literature. Each issue has a short essay or reflection, a nerdy look at translation, a page from one of my notebooks, a list of things to read, watch or listen to, and a highlight from my archives.
I invite you to support my work via Patreon: http://patreon.com/theattentionspan
Thank you for your presence and attention!
SHOW NOTES
This episode of the podcast version comes with a delay as I was travelling. Below are the links I mention:
LISTENING, WATCHING, READING
Listen: Feeling in Turkish: (un)translatable. A playlist I made years ago with songs in Turkish which are so difficult to translate that the (im)possibility makes my heart ache.
Read: James Baldwin in Turkey. How Istanbul changed his career—and his life, a beautiful portrait of Baldwin in the context of his many years in Turkey, by Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi in The Yale Review.
Watch: The Club/Kulüp on Netflix. I had watched the first season of the series when it came out in 2021. Walking in the neighbourhoods around Beyoğlu today brought me back to the story which takes place in that area and shows you the cosmopolitan and multilingual history of Istanbul in the 1950s.
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Welcome to issue ten of The Attention Span Newsletter by me, Canan “Ja’anan” Marasligil. I’m a writer, a literary translator, an artist and a curator of cultural programmes based in Amsterdam.
Every other week, I take the time to reflect and offer a glimpse of how I see and feel the world through the lens of culture, art, translation, poetry and literature. Each issue has a short essay or reflection, a nerdy look at translation, a page from one of my notebooks, a list of things to read, watch or listen to, and a highlight from my archives.
I invite you to support my work via Patreon: http://patreon.com/theattentionspan
Thank you for your presence and attention!
SHOW NOTES
Citations from: Elena Ferrante. Frantumaglia. A Writer’s Journey. (Translated by Ann Goldstein) Europa Editions, 2016. https://www.europaeditions.com/book/9781609452926/frantumaglia
Reading/Watching/Listening to
Listen/ Serpentine Podcast: Intimacies considers many forms, ideas, and understandings of intimacy. Host Gaylene Gould gathers perspectives from artists, designers, writers, thinkers, and others on how we can rekindle trust, and open ourselves up to new possibilities for connection. I was particularly touched by a reminder in the first episode, of the etymology of the word “curate”, which in its essence means “to care”. https://www.serpentinegalleries.org/art-and-ideas/serpentine-podcast-intimacies/
Read/ Culture Strike: Art and Museums in an Age of Protest by Laura Raicovich. Since I’m talking about curating in this issue, I am sharing this book, in which Raicovich, a former director of the Queens Museum in New York, shows how art museums arose as colonial institutions bearing an ideology of neutrality that masks their role in upholding capitalist values. And she suggests how museums can be reinvented to serve better, public ends. There are lots of US specific cases, but most of the book can also speak to many of us working in different geographical and political contexts, it spoke to my vision as a curator of literary programmes, on many levels. https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/products/2560-culture-strike
Watch/ Dichter bij Onze Coloniale Erfenis/Closer to Our Colonial Heritage is a programme series featuring poets, writers and spoken word artists accompanying the exhibition Our Colonial Heritage on show at the Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam. They offer powerful and poignant reflections on colonial heritage and how colonialism affects our bodies, hearts, minds, relationships, life, and work. How this heritage belongs to all of us. I had the immense pleasure and honour to host one of the conversations after a performance by one of the poets, Nisrine Mbarki, and I have also translated the poems/performances of Nisrine and Joshua Timisela for these videos, made by the amazing Beyond Walls Collective, in partnership with the Tropenmuseum and Read My World. You can watch all the videos on the museum’s website: https://www.tropenmuseum.nl/nl/zien-en-doen/tentoonstellingen/onze-koloniale-erfenis/filmreeks-dichter-bij-onze-koloniale-erfenis (the website is in Dutch, but the videos have all English subtitles).
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Welcome to issue nine of The Attention Span Newsletter by me, Canan “Ja’anan” Marasligil. I’m a writer, a literary translator, an artist and a curator of cultural programmes based in Amsterdam.
Every other week, I take the time to reflect and offer a glimpse of how I see and feel the world through the lens of culture, art, translation, poetry and literature. Each issue has a short essay or reflection, a nerdy look at translation, a page from one of my notebooks, a list of things to read, watch or listen to, and a highlight from my archives.
I invite you to support my work via Patreon: http://patreon.com/theattentionspan
Thank you for your presence and attention!
SHOW NOTES
City in Translation: https://www.cityintranslation.com
Poetry Translation Centre: https://www.poetrytranslation.org
Reading/Watching/Listening to
Listen/ I started listening to Living Archives, an oral histories project co-produced by the Stuart Hall Foundation and the International Curators Forum. The project is made up of six intergenerational conversations. Each conversation considers an alternative history of contemporary Britain through testimonies shared by UK-based diasporic artists working between the 1980s and the present-day. The project will form what Stuart Hall calls a “living archive of the diaspora”, which maps the development, endurance, and centrality of diasporic artistic production in Britain. It is hosted by ICF’s Deputy Artistic Director, Jessica Taylor who invites practitioners to reflect on the reasons they became artists, the development of their practices, the different moments and movements they bore witness to, and the beautiful reasons they chose to be in conversation with each other. https://www.stuarthallfoundation.org/projects/living-archives-podcast-artists/
Read/ “Picturing things, taking a view, is what makes us human; art is making sense and giving shape to that sense. It is like the religious search for God. We are well aware that making sense and picturing are artificial, like illusion; but we can never give them up.” These are notes from 1962 by painter Gerhard Richter, published in The Daily Practice of Painting, which assembles writing and interviews between 1962 and 1993, edited and introduced by Hans-Ulrich Obrist and translated from the German by David Britt. It’s one of the many books I have been gathering from the library (I go to university libraries and the local ones and have always a dozen of borrowed books around the house). I love reading several books in parallel. The context in which I read (whether it is external or internal) always influences how I will feel a text. I admire Richter as a painter and reading his thoughts, his process and vision is just fascinating. https://books.google.nl/books/about/The_Daily_Practice_of_Painting.html?id=lPoE70v9ERQC&redir_esc=y
Watch/ I waited for weeks to find the right time to see Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer at the cinema. I would need to have had eaten before, bring water and snacks, make sure I am rested so I can make it for more than three hours seated in a cinema. But these all went out the window last week when, following a conversation which made me reflect on questions regarding integrity, moral and ethical responsibility in the positions I hold within culture, I decided to go for a walk and my steps made me cross the IJ river to the EYE Cinema where they show Oppenheimer in 70mm. I didn’t check the time once, I was deeply engaged in the complicated story, the magnitude of Nolan’s visual language, the mesmerizing music, the superb acting and flawless cinematography. Of course, there are many angles to read this film from, and I understand the different critical point of views. But in that moment, I needed that intense cinematic and human experience. I have loved many of Nolan’s films and was disappointed in a few others. This one will be added to my beloved ones. https://www.eyefilm.nl/en/whats-on/oppenheimer/976513
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Welcome to issue eight of The Attention Span Newsletter by me, Canan “Ja’anan” Marasligil. I’m a writer, a literary translator, an artist and a curator of cultural programmes based in Amsterdam.
Every other week, I take the time to reflect and offer a glimpse of how I see and feel the world through the lens of culture, art, translation, poetry and literature. Each issue has a short essay or reflection, a nerdy look at translation, a page from one of my notebooks, a list of things to read, watch or listen to, and a highlight from my archives.
If you prefer an audio experience, you can listen to me reading the newsletter to you. You can also support my work via Patreon.
Thank you for your presence and attention!
EPISODE 8 SHOW NOTES
The song “özledim” by Candan Erçetin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDHnvtc3BKM
Reading/Watching/Listening to
Read/ The British Library in London celebrated its 50th anniversary on 1 July 2023 (I honestly thought it was a centuries-old institution). This report exploring the British Library’s history, mission and work takes us behind the scenes. I find it fascinating! https://londonist.com/london/features/british-library-50-years-tour-secrets
Watch/ a 4-minute-long documentary on 93-year-old artist Dorothea Rockburne in her New York studio. This short film is part of a documentary series by Limelight that follows the lives of different New Yorkers. I came across it via an Instagram ad (one of those moments when you regain faith in the “social” of social media). The channel is the creation of 24-year-old documentary filmmaker, Josh Charow. All films are made by Josh and a small crew of friends willing to lend a hand on the projects. I was very inspired by the video and discovering an artist I didn’t know, and now I’ll follow the channel too.
https://www.instagram.com/limelightdocs/
https://youtu.be/N_FgE-lVs8s
Listen/ This one is for those of you who can understand French. I always love listening to the radio, and France Culture is one of my go-to, especially when I want to listen to documentary series or interviews. One of the programmes I love is à voix nue which focuses on a new figure every week, interviewed all week long (5 episodes) with each episode highlighting a period of their lives. A recent focus was on artist Niki de Saint Phalle. You can start listening here: https://www.radiofrance.fr/franceculture/podcasts/a-voix-nue/l-experience-du-rire-1900743 - Laat meer zien
