Every gathering with a foretold script. The security barriers mark a neutered zone for dissent. Finally though, there is this one day in Brooklyn. The air is traversed (by bridge) and the marchers walk from one bank to another. It isn’t a miracle but it is beautiful. x number of women and men for x hours holding a green banner. No fist, no barbed wire, no peace symbol. Distance rescues it from exhausted protest imagery.
Naeem Mohaiemen (b. 1969, London) works in Dhaka+New York. He researches utopia/dystopia slippage and failed revolutions. Mary Walling Blackburn (b. 1972, California) works in New York. She is founder of Anhoek, an experimental all-women’s school. The text that accompanies the video, from which the paragraph above is excerpted, may be read at the Web site of Art Dubai Journal 6 (November 2009).
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