Join us for a rally activated by the war on Ukraine that condemns all wars, military occupations, and racist violence. This is an opportunity to be in community with diverse voices speaking their truth.
All posts by maraahmedstudio
The following is a portion of the correspondence between Mara Ahmed and Claudia Pretelin. Ahmed is an interdisciplinary artist and activist filmmaker based on Long Island, New York. Claudia is an art historian, independent researcher, and arts administrator based in Los Angeles, California. Their correspondence is a collage of text, images, and references both literary and cultural. It is intimate and global, straddling distances between Mexico, Pakistan, Belgium and the US.
Pleased to return to the Witness Palestine Film Festival, on Sunday June 13 at 3pm, to interview filmmaker Mats Grorud and the Chair of the Centre for Palestine Studies at SOAS, Dr. Dina Matar. We will be talking about ‘The Tower.’
Le 1er février 2021, tu as tiré ta révérence. Seul, en compagnie de ton vieux chat, Indy. Pour moi, plus rien ne sera jamais comme avant. J’ai la sensation qu’on m’a amputé d’une part de moi. C’est douloureux. Nous deux, c’est une histoire qui remonte loin. 65 ans d’amitié.
[On February 1st, 2021, you bowed out. Alone, with your old cat, Indy. For me, nothing will ever be the same. It feels like a part of me has been amputated. It’s painful. The two of us, it’s a story that goes back a long time. 65 years of friendship.]
A 50-minute presentation (including film clips) that talks about racial microaggressions through the lens of my upcoming film, The Injured Body (slated to be released later this year). The presentation will be followed by a 10-minute exercise (sparked by a multimedia piece involving dance, music, film footage and text), and we will conclude with a 15-minute group discussion that parses the group’s responses.
Listening to the reflections from The Warp & Weft has been rich and relatable. Stories of people’s shifts to a more introspective, slower and more connected existence, but also surrounded by grief, fear, racial unrest and confusion. Listening to Mara Ahmed’s moving “Connectedness” piece sparked something inside of me.
So I must confess, I am everything. I am the galaxy of galaxies. Agreed that philosophers have wrongly pointed out the errors of my theorem, that testimony is unscientific, that knowledge only arrives when two or more people can experience it. But I tell you, I am the universe.
I was moved by all the stories and by the rawness of people’s experiences along with their willingness to share. I couldn’t single out just one so, in the spirit of Mara’s work and her vision for this project, I wove them all together into this piece to create a tapestry of people, places, languages and realities because we are all many stories.
I have often wondered why traveling down an open road provides me with a certain freedom and healing seldom felt elsewhere. Though we may travel down the same highways, and drive past the same mile markers, the aging structures and familiar visited rest stops, each of us imprints our own impressions of a world based on our own experiences, leaving footprints of our own story in the landscape.
I was driving today listening to a random playlist when a song from ‘Les miserables’ began to play. I found myself overcome with emotion. While music often impacts me, it wasn’t that. See, when I was 20, my mom took me to see that live, in person, in a theater.
Over the last few months, I have allowed myself to pause a little and introspect, to understand my own mind. I guess the pandemic and a few major changes in my relationships have forced me to do so.
I remember growing up as a young girl in the 90s obsessed with Disney princesses and the classic damsel in distress mentality. I would swoon over the dashing princes and men who would save the day, and of course my life wouldn’t be complete without the color pink!
