War
WHOOOO
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A story about a lonely railway guard on a desolate steppe. « In the cursed August of 1991 the radio informed Kasatonov that there was a state of emergency in the capital. Then it fell silent, as if the receiver had broken. »
When the world makes rags of us
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He spoke of painting like a starving man speaks of food. On Józef Czapski, Memories of Starobielsk and the art of observation.
Flags & bones
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On Curzio Malaparte’s Europe — and ours. The midcentury novelist read anew, on war’s aftermath and transatlantic romance. What was, or is, « postwar Europe », anyway?
Of human children & language children
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The first word I ever wrote was stsikukha: « pisser ». This is how my nanny Frosya called me to my face. On poetry and pathos in a bastard tongue.
Skinned alive
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Imagine your therapist assigned you to write your autobiography, after which you decided you were cured, so your therapist published it as revenge. Zeno’s Conscience turns 99.
No pity
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The documentary When spring came to Bucha reaches beyond common representations of war and one-dimensional victimhood.
Planes, tanks & automobiles
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You could tell the US army had arrived because the local garages had sold out of whiskey. Old maps, new wars & vanishing memories along the Polish-Ukrainian border.
What is a pillar?
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In 2010, OMA was invited to take part in a competition for the Damascus National Museum. It was part of a concerted effort toward a political « rapprochement » with Bashar al-Assad. Three months later, the entire effort was cancelled. Civil war was about to break out.
On paths not taken
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« Genocide Studies » is a house with many rooms. It accommodates and even encourages a broadening of its central concept. And like all academic fields, it presumes its object of study will always be there.
Ukraine yesterday & tomorrow
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Ukraine didn’t become an epicenter of world history all of a sudden; it became an epicenter again.
Who will speak European? A puzzle
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Brussels is a concave mirror that returns a concentrated (and somewhat distorted) reflection of the projection of its continent.