INTRODUCTION

Words by Renzo Baas

When we think of space, we put emphasis on spatial theory, on outer space, on everything ‘out there’. We conjure up thoughts of territories, of terraforming, on absence, emptiness, and excess. When we think of space, we imagine ourselves inhabiting it. When we think of the colony we shudder. We remember. We try to forget. The colony lurks, it becomes part of the spaces that proceed it. It hides and is hidden but somehow remains visible. We relegate it to the past, to history, to memory. We confront it, and we deconstruct it. When we think of space and colony, we recall them being intertwined, recall their pastness, and their perpetual projection into the future. They are futuristic and historic.

The ‘texts’ in this issue offer glimpses into what can be considered either space (transcendental, philosophical, futuristic) or the colony (its afterlife, its confrontation, its disenchantment) and how ideas around spatiality and coloniality can be made productive. The paintings by Ronni Ahmmed, for example, depict fantastical images that border on the speculative, while Bayron van Wyk’s review of the exhibition “Man of War: Leave My House” details how decolonial public space can be made productive.

In the short story “What Animals Sit outside Your Walls” by Lyn Hagan we are confronted with the question: what remains after us? How will non-human species inhabit a world we have destroyed? “What new spaces can emerge” – a question also provocatively asked by Reyazul Haque in the form of a riddle and accompanied by haunting images. Hanspeter Ammann’s photographs revel in the interplay of tenderness and violence, of intimacy and absence, desires and emptiness. Madhusree’s “Grab” echoes this, but further emphasising that some spaces remain unsafe and continue to be colonized.

The images by Alexander Limarev imagine what a space : colony might look like, although without the presence of human agents. It feels like a haunted space in outer space, of maybe the remnants of the exploration left behind by the colonising space travelers from Edward Alport’s poem “Blue Dot”. Space as practice, so to speak. This is echoed in “The Badlands” by Charu Soni, detailing new (urban) developments and their relationship to history, the local population, culture, and the environment, amongst others. In contrast, Aditya Pande shows how space has a deep temporal dimension, how it separates places and spaces from each other, how it dictates/d the relationship between metropole and periphery.

What all of the texts in this issue have in common, though, is the encounter – either through direct contact (Abir Chattopadhyay’s “Friends” or Jayaprakash Satyamurthy’s “Upgraded”), its specter (Lee Alexander’s “First Ten Years on Zebulun” and in the poems by Abdul Kalam Azad) or the imagined (“A House in the Colony” by AE Reiff). It is also about the encounter with the audience, the reader, the viewer. The multiple forms of media to represent these encounters and emphasise the fact that space (and by extension: colony) is a multifaceted, complex, and diverse articulation of our position in this world – and the worlds beyond, beautifully imagined in Irina Tall (Novikova’s) otherworldly images.

Give It A Name

A riddle with six images and a slogan on a sticker

Words and Images by Reyazul Haque

The silence water drips down on the words tongue listens to the tears flamed apart as evening flowers over bodies dreaming the life that they could have bodies frozen in fear that they could never win bodies seeped in with hatred who could have loved and be loved but no wind suffocates

What kills on street

Is adored by millions

Give it a name

Hint it is a space it is a colony

01: Johannisthal, Berlin.

January, 2023 02: Treptower Park, Berlin. January, 2023

03: Johannisthal, Berlin. January, 2023

04: Shamli Camp for the Muslim families displaced by fascist violence in Muzaffarnagar, Uttar Pradesh. January, 2014

05: Shamli Camp for the Muslim families displaced by fascist violence in Muzaffarnagar, Uttar Pradesh. January, 2014

06: Shamli Camp for the Muslim families displaced by fascist violence in Muzaffarnagar, Uttar Pradesh. January, 2014

07: Neukölln, Berlin. January, 2023