There is something to be said about occupying time

Adelita Husni-Bey October 26, 2016 0

Naira: Revolution is a process but in language you refer to it as an event. If you refer to the 18 days as revolution in the past tense, “when the revolution happened”, and “after the revolution”,  “INAUDIBLE WORD 4:56 after it’s finished”, it is a very different notion of reality.

Lina: I am growing very aversive to the notion of ‘unfinished’, I have asked some copy editors not to use it because I didn’t understand that before but more than ever as means of resisting the ongoing state of depression after June 30 among us, and deeming that the revolution has failed, I think it is inscribed in my head more and more that it doesn’t make sense to think that the revolution is a story that needs to end ever happily or sadly. It is a state of mind. It is a condition. It’s not something that is supposed to finish.

Adelita: Do we want to write temporality?

Heba: Unfinished.

Adelita: Unfinished.

Heba: Actually, what you said reminded me of something which we can either think of it as finished and failed or unfinished. So maybe, failed, unfinished.

Lina: There is something more and more naïve about this word ‘unfinished’.

Naira: Why? Because you think it implies something INAUDIBLE WORD 7:30.

Lina: Yea.  I call us collectively naïve. It is the state of naivete that revolution also  produces because it is an event that produces impatience. It also produces these illusions that things were really bad and all of a sudden, they will be so good because there is a revolution and part of that is this whole counter reaction; which is it failed, it is unfinished. We need to shift the paradigm to something else. It is no longer something that happened and that has a promise. It is a condition.

About the author: Adelita Husni-Bey View all posts by
Adelita Husni-Bey stages workshops and produces publications, radio broadcasts, archives and exhibitions focused on using collectivist and non-competitive pedagogical models within the framework of urban studies. In her 10 years of practicing as both an artist and a pedagogue, Adelita has worked with activists, architects, journalists, jurists, schoolchildren, spoken word poets, students, and teachers on unpacking the complexity of collectivity and role-making. To make good what can never be made good: what we owe each other. Recent solo exhibitions include: A Wave in the Well, Sursock Museum, Beirut, 2016, Movement Break, Kadist foundation, 2015, Playing Truant, Gasworks, 2012. She has participated in The Eighth Climate, 11th Gwangju Biennale, 2016, Ennesima, Triennale di Milano, 2015, Undiscovered Worlds, the High Line, 2015, Really Useful Knowledge, Reina Sofia museum, 2014, Utopia for Sale?, MAXXI museum, 2014 and has held workshops and lectures at ESAD Grenoble, 2016, The New School, 2015, Sandberg Institute, 2015, Museo del 900, 2013, Temple University, 2013, Birkbeck University, 2011 amongst other spaces. She is a 2012 Whitney Independent Study Program fellow and is currently working on chapter III of ‘White Paper’, a project based on the changing face of legislation in relationship to private ownership and the commons in cities.

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