Imaad Majeed

[ nonart is freedom from recursive discourse that debilitates action ]

RUMASSALAM, 2017 a meditative sound escape 4 min loop

This piece was one of my contributions for the Eternal Internet Brotherhood/Sisterhood’s gathering on May 5, 2017, at the Tagungshaus Lebengsbogen commune: The Noospheric Society, one part of the public programme of documenta 14.

Situated in the theatre room in which most of the activities took place, this piece is meant for those looking for an escape, something to calm them, to help with moving through this space.

[This photograph was taken by a German woman in Kassel, upon our request.] I met Omar when I first reached Kassel, on the last day of the documenta 14 public programme Parliament of Bodies. I had walked down from the apartment to the pizzeria, where I could not read the menu, and he was kind enough to translate to the Ethonian man behind the counter, having learnt German at the Goethe Institut. Omar is from Egypt. He is studying Electrical Engineering in Kassel. He takes me for a walk through the city to show me where the Hercules monument can be seen. He seems comfortable, as he points out a tiny speck at the horizon, but I am wary of the people who move away from us when we walk, the eyes that avert our line of vision.

A week later, I meet him again, after I have returned from The Eternal Internet Brotherhood/Sisterhood residency, just outside of the city. He takes me through one of his favourite parts of the city. He observe the park from above. He says he is confused when he sees people perform music in public spaces. "Are they musicians? Should I give them money?" he asks. I tell him they are probably playing the guitar recreationally. He doesn't understand this privilege. We pass by some graffiti. He points to it and asks me what I feel about it. I tell him that people are expressing themselves. He asks why it needs to be done on buildings that serve other purposes. I tell him that it may be a resistance to institutions. He does not agree. We find a structure that has columns and a dome. We enter it. I ask him to find the qiblah. I am curious to know whether it falls on an open space or a column. It points to a column that has a graffiti of a tiny triangle with a circle inside it and a little sketch of a campsite.

One of the columns seems to read "refugees come home". We observe it closer. It seems that a conversation is taking place on this column. I try to make him see that this form of expression may be useful. What we notice is that the original graffiti might have read: rape fugees go home The 'ap' had been painted over, the 'go' had been replaced with 'come'. "How do you fight racism?" he asks me.

We sit at a park bench in front of a man-made waterway. He tells me about how it made him sad to realize it was man-made and not a natural phenomena. I ask him, "How would you feel if God was man-made?" He did not want to follow the logic. Instead, we sat and observed how passers-by would react to our presence.

A poet publishes four volumes of poetry. A poet conceives of the reach and the limit of words. In choosing sound over meaning, the poet subverts hegemonic compulsion, hyper-signification, opting for all that can be communicated through feeling.

Aphasia facilitated through a father, who, after a stroke, found himself not quite able to speak.

Sound became a substitute for meaning. Inflection became a semantic structure. Visual nonsense with a quasi-script.

I am a Poet. ‘Word. Sound. Power’

I subvert the political gesture of meaning-making and linguistic hegemony.

That is to say that I ask readers to evolve their own non-sensical interpretation of my computer-generated visual gibberish.

Record your imagination. That is a book of poems.

No one but you speaks this language.

It is yours to read, to decipher, to interpret, and to understand.

Attached to a tongue, a poet prefers personal vocabularies and not the universal.

- Imaad Majeed, April 4, 2017

The trans struggle is one that I most relate to, having questioned and explored my identity as a teenager and young adult, following 5 years of sexual abuse.

I would not identify as cis gender, but there is a particular violence inherent to the words and deeds of some who support the trans cause when they feel they can invalidate another person's struggle by labelling them cis gender and incapable of anything more.

This song is the only song of mine that has been completely realized. Composed by me back in 2010, finally released in 2015 on the Viral Records label. If you truly want to hear me, this is where you start.

It is a tribute to Ardhanarishvara, half-Shakti, half-Shiva. It is meant to help those who wish to explore the femininity and masculinity within themselves.

Listen.

"Soren Kierkegaard's concept of self can be employed to demonstrate some psychological phenomena of child sexual abuse victims.

Their self is to a large extent determined by extreme outer circumstances i.e. the abuse and the abusers. In order to cope with the consequent psychological pain, such children employ powerful defense mechanisms which consequently, however, means that they remain longer in the abuse.

Psychotherapies are attempts to help them to create their own self and gradually come out of their abuse. However, such creation of oneself is only carried out within their concretely traumatized self."

“We only see the explosion, the divorce rates, the working life, and everything else people point to when they say, so easily, that there are no mothers anymore,” Muvindu says, “I have used an ethnographic portrait of a woman, but it is not representing or referring to ethnicity, it is about mothers these days. I’m saying that the woman in high heels can be a mother and you cannot judge her ability to be a mother on the size of her heels.”

Excerpt of my interview with Muvindu Binoy.

In 2015, I helped curate the first AK Lit Fest, with a discussion on Women In Sri Lankan Literature, the Tamil Footprint In Sri Lankan Literature, and Undoing The Stigma Of Broken English.

You can listen to these discussions in their entirety using the links below.

Women In Sri Lankan Literature https://archive.org/details/AKLitFest04FemininePresence

Tamil Footprint In Sri Lankan Literature https://archive.org/det…/tamilfootprintinsrilankanliterature

I helped set the stage for Rifai Ratheeb at a Sufi festival of a mosque on the beach in Kalmunai, earlier this month. It's a tradition that seems to be waning, given political resistance to it from opposing Muslim factions. They could use a better sound system. The rituals involve singing, chanting, and dancing with swords and knives. The fakhirs (bawas) pierce, stab and cut themselves, feeling no pain as they are given 'permission' by a murshid. The whole festival is meant to symbolize the victory in the struggle against one's own ego.