since the massacre in orlando, i’ve been thinking about disaster capitalism and the erasure of qtpoc communities, even in death. it’s almost difficult to manage my feelings because so much of the public mourning has been really performative and harmful.
from June Jordan’s ‘Some of Us Did Not Die’
Indeed some of us did not die.
Some of you, some of us remain, despite that hatred that violence that murder that suicide that affront to our notions of civilized days and nights.
And what shall we do, we who did not die?
What shall we do now? How shall we grieve, and cry out loud, and face down despair? Is there an honorable non-violent means towards mourning and remembering who and what we loved?
Is there an honorable means to pursue and capture the perpetrators of that atrocity without ourselves becoming terrorists?
I don’t know the answer to that.
thinking beyond
Carnevale di Venezia
Here is a selection of images taken during a recent, long-weekend holiday trip to Venice.
#NigerianLivesMatter Rally
Here are some photos I took at yesterday’s Nigerian Lives Matter Rally. The rally was organised by the group Nigerian Lives Matter to acknowledge and raise awareness about the recent Boko Haram attacks in Baga, which claimed 2,000 lives. You can read more about the purpose of the rally here.
Catching Up
Hello! It’s been quite a while since my last update. Things became really full-on with final assessments all due the same day and dealing with the holidays. I have a lot of creative projects brewing, which I’m excited about. In the meantime, here are some photos I took over the holidays:
- I got a bit carried away with the side of the shed. Here’s the photo I liked best.
“i need one year.
without
the dogs of whiteness.
trying
to devour me.”
– the year (the unrelent), in Nejma by Nayyirah Waheed
#LondonToFerguson
On 26 November, a vigil was held here in London in solidarity with protestors in Ferguson against Darren Wilson’s non-indictment. I went for a number of reasons: solidarity to the protestors all across the U.S., cathartic healing for the intense pain I’ve been feeling about the constant presence of black death at the hands of the State, and curiosity about what a solidarity event would look like some 4,196 miles away from where it all began. In my first post, I noted my sadness about leaving Chicago and the U.S. at a time where I felt I was most needed. I thought this would be an opportunity for me to feel as if I was doing something useful, despite being so far away.
I am currently working on a project for the final assessment of my practical course this term. The project I’m doing looks at the relationship between political protests and social mobility and I approached the march as both a participant and documenter. This ultimately gave me a disconnected perspective. In my attempt to capture everything that was happening through video using my DSLR, and live-tweets, photos, and audio recording on my phone, I missed a lot of what was actually occurring around me. For example, I didn’t notice until I went through all the footage this week that the crowd was predominately white and that there were quite a few agitators present attempting to redirect attention from State violence against black bodies, solidarity with Ferguson, and Black Lives Matter. I’m glad I went because my curiosity of what could have happened would have made me regret the decision had I not. However, I’m disappointed that it was dominated by white lefties and wasn’t a cathartic experience of solidarity with other activists and like-minded folks here as I hoped it would be.
Below are some photos from my phone.
“…the ultimate expression of sovereignty resides, to a large degree, in the power and the capacity to dictate who may live and who must die.”
Mbembe, A. (2003). Necropolitics. Public Culture, 15(1), pp. 11-40.
When words don’t save you
Here is a series of tweets I made about finding things – particularly, this cis-hetero-patriarchal-white-supremacist-anti-black society we live in – more difficult to navigate, despite having the language necessary to describe said world. I thought having a language for this would make surviving much easier.
Zenaynay on air 