When you take the first step towards the unknown, you are engulfed by the darkness of uncertainty. Co-existence is possible only in the face of the unrecognised. The unknown language is a tangled mass through which you penetrate with despair. It is a structure of sense and nonsense, an architecture of traps and a source of endless uncertainty. The story you tell contains a record of fear and hope.

Aneta Szylak and Hiwa K., fragment taken from "The Darkness Wounded" published at www.przemo-wojciechowski.com

Estrangement shows itself precisely in the elimination of distance between people.
Theodor Adorno

But we are meaning in the sense that we are the element in which significations can be produced and circulate.
Jean-Luc Nancy


The concept of Estrangement developed through a series of discussions and collaborative projects between Iraqi artist Hiwa K. and Polish curator Aneta Szylak as an attempt to create a form for mutual translation and collaborative work that is not restricted to one cultural format.

Friday, June 20, 2008

Amna Suraka

Estrangement Project participants and team met on the premise of Amna Suraka in Sulaimany, Red Security Building from the time of Saddam. Today it remains a site of memory and several culture and art organizations, such as war crimes museum, cabinet of curiosities and contemporary art exhibition space.

Here we discussed the evaporation of political issues from Kurdish contemporary art, urgencies of embracing memory and history issues and relation between esthetics and politics.


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