Century’s Container [2016]
The Muslim is the century's container for the other; but the definition is also always changing, while the expulsion impulse stays constant—just ask Polish Jews, Iraqi Kurds, Bengali Hindus, Turkish Armenians, Japanese Americans. The same year we are horrified at the whitelash tornado of Trump (after Brexit, before Le Pen), the Bangladeshi government pushes Rohingya refugees back into Myanmar and toward certain danger under the eyes of Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi. This video includes excerpts from Judith Butler, Toby Rollo, Mona Saeed Kamal, Hari Kunzru, and Sham-e-ali Nayeem. It was created for State of Emergency: Politics, Aesthetics, Trumpism, a public forum organized by Andrew Weiner that took place at New York University on December 10, 2016.
Global information flows are unpredictable, multi-directional, and inconsistent. Each nation has a local Reynard figure-- bamboozling the origin as much as recipient. Events occur in adjacency to remind us that double standards are global. Every community cursed with inversion of sight: ever larger areas of blindness.
And what is a "Muslim" anyway? Are you one? Am I one? It's now the 21st century's all-purpose container for every form of other: black, brown, migrant, woman, queer. But the definition is also always changing, while the expulsion impulse stays constant- just ask Polish Jews, Iraqi Kurds, Bengali Hindus, Turkish Armenians, Japanese Americans.
Muslim is not an empty container. All-purpose is not the same as empty, I think; better to say infinitely elastic, enough to be occupied positively, and hijacked negatively by, respectively light and dark. Statistics tell another story. 30% of American Muslims are White, 23% are African-American; 76% of Arab-Americans are Christian and other religions. Poet Sham e-ali-Nayeem says, "Islamophobes don't care how pious you are. They don't even care if you are Muslim!"
[Excerpt from video Century’s Container, written for post-election Sense of Emergency (organized by Andrew Weiner, NYU) and Parliament of Bodies (curated by Paul Preciado, Documenta 14).