{"id":2270,"date":"2023-03-08T12:53:12","date_gmt":"2023-03-08T12:53:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.dundee.ac.uk\/cooper-gallery-inbetween\/?page_id=2270"},"modified":"2024-05-01T10:19:46","modified_gmt":"2024-05-01T09:19:46","slug":"sophia-al-maria-january-2023","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sites.dundee.ac.uk\/cooper-gallery-inbetween\/sophia-al-maria-january-2023\/","title":{"rendered":"Sophia Al-Maria, January 2023"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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What I am Reading Now\u2026<\/strong>
Sophia Al-Maria<\/strong><\/b>
January 2023<\/p><\/div>


I\u2019m worried about the shelf above my desk. It\u2019s bearing the load of years of accumulated, uncurated (often unread) reading material. There are precious editions of hard-to-find books and magazines I should have a humidor for in this damp old ditch of a city.\u00a0The cracked spines either show my love of a book or the fact I\u2019ve gutted it for collages.\u00a0Many were picked off the cairns of discarded libraries that cropped up on neighbour\u2019s front stoops during COVID-19. I picked up\u00a0<\/span>The Right to be You<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>and wondered why it no longer sparked joy for whoever left it there with the penguin classics. There is a waterlogged copy of an exhibition catalogue I was interviewed in, a collectable copy of Doppio Senso (Italian gay porn) from the month and year I was born. The lemon-lime cover art of the Arabic translation of my first book\u00a0<\/span>The Girl Who Fell to Earth<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>is peeping out sourly at me right now.<\/p><\/div>

I haven\u2019t written for pleasure in so long, I don\u2019t know where I would begin. I am grateful I can still read for it though. I am noticing my relationship to books (and pleasure) has completely changed of late. Anxiety around the nature of facts (alternative or otherwise) in recent years has led me to feed mainly on history, biography, and self-help literature. And now as I write fiction for a living \u2013 my ability to enjoy the fantastic kind of storytelling that brought me to write in the first place has dwindled. It has become rare to find a SF or Fantasy book that doesn\u2019t read like a series pitch.<\/p><\/div>

The first one that leaps out is a text that was required reading for a Death Doula course I took in December 2020.\u00a0<\/span>Caring for the Dying: The Doula\u2019s Approach to a Meaningful Death<\/b><\/em>\u00a0<\/span>by\u00a0<\/span>Henry Fersko-Weiss<\/strong>.\u00a0I kept it because it has a drawing of dandelions on the cover and for the fact this book swept away a lot of fear and taboo I felt around talking about death and dying. Meeting and learning from those who choose to be present with the dying as a vocation has been hugely inspirational to me.<\/p><\/div>

Next, the juicy red of\u00a0<\/span>Master of the Eclipse<\/b><\/em>\u00a0<\/span>by\u00a0<\/span>Etel Adnan<\/strong>\u00a0<\/span>who remains my lodestar when I think of the course I\u2019d like the rest of my life as an artist (and a person) to take. This book in some ways was what I had hoped Susan Sontag\u2019s Regarding\u00a0<\/span>The Pain of Others<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>would be. Adnan writes about war in prose and yet it is seared into my memory as poetry. This is from the last chapter \u2018A Stream Near Damascus\u2019 in which she drinks with her brother and rests on a riverbank \u2013 \u2018The night was scintillating with stars: it looked like a mixture of black metal and distant light. I was thinking of its incredible beauty when I saw, sliding on the lowest of the streams, just where the latter was joining the river, a kind of shadowy figure in baggy pants, embracing a tree trunk the way one holds in one\u2019s arms the body of the beloved. And I still hear my brothers voice telling me, as the creature was, with the moving water, entering a zone of darkness: \u201cThere goes the giver of life, holding her in his arms and walking on the waters!\u201d\u2019<\/p><\/div>

The cult queer classic\u00a0<\/span>The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions<\/b><\/em>\u00a0<\/span>by\u00a0<\/span>Larry Mitchell<\/strong>\u00a0<\/span>became an important book for me to read aloud and to have read aloud to me in the past few years. If there is such a thing as a non-fiction fairy tale. This is it. I was honoured in 2021 to be invited to read from it in an NTS program\u00a0<\/span>Up the Beanstalk<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>hosted by Dominic Riddler which you can listen to\u00a0<\/span>here<\/b><\/a>. I cannot recommend it enough, or it\u2019s fable about characters like lilac, pine tree, heavenly blue and loose tomato and the women-who-love-women surviving and revolting in Ramrod, a city run by \u2018the men\u2019.<\/p><\/div>

LISTENS\/VIEWS<\/p><\/div>

Mirror with a Memory<\/b><\/em>\u00a0<\/b><\/span><\/a>\u2013\u00a0<\/span>Martine Syms\u2019<\/strong>\u00a0<\/span>brilliant podcast about artificial intelligence and photography. It\u2019s been out for a while but I keep visiting and revisiting it as background radiation to these reflective days.<\/p><\/div>

Divide and Dissolve\u2019s<\/strong>\u00a0<\/span>Gas Lit<\/b><\/em><\/a>\u00a0<\/span>\u2013 this album \u2026all I can say is that I never felt\u00a0heard<\/em>\u00a0by the music I was listening to the way this album does. It\u00a0feels how it feels to be alive now. At least to me.<\/p><\/div>

Witches of Scotland<\/b><\/em>\u00a0<\/b><\/span><\/a>\u2013 in which lawyer\u00a0<\/span>Claire Mitchell<\/strong>\u00a0<\/span>and writer\u00a0<\/span>Zoe Venditozzi<\/strong>\u00a0<\/span>talk to historians, archaeologists \u00a0and practitioners of all kinds to bring justice to those accused, convicted and executed as witches under the Witchcraft Act 1563. Incendiary and inspiring example of what a podcast can do.<\/p><\/div>

Also I wanted to include my friend\u00a0<\/span>Susanne Oberbeck<\/strong>\u00a0<\/span>(stage name NO BRA)\u2019s 1999 vampire movie\u00a0<\/span>The Ice People\u00a0<\/b><\/em>parts\u00a0<\/span>one<\/b><\/a>\u00a0<\/span>and\u00a0<\/span>two<\/b><\/a>. The art opening scene is \u2013 chef\u2019s kiss. I had no idea she went to America and made this movie which hits all my sweet spots! Bonus and through line from\u00a0Saoirse Amira Anis\u2019\u00a0contribution to\u00a0<\/span>What I am Reading Now\u2026<\/em>citing\u00a0<\/span>The L Word<\/b><\/em>\u00a0<\/span>as recommended watching last month, it also stars Kate Moennig.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Sophia Al-Maria<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0<\/span>is a Qatari-American artist, writer, and filmmaker living and working in London. Though her work spans many disciplines it is united by a preoccupation with the power of storytelling and myth, in particular imagining revisionist histories and alternative futures. Her practice is fuelled by the combination of critical rigour with an affective charge in explorations of language, imperialism, and counter-histories \u2013\u00a0a deep investigation and dramatisation of the socio-political, economic, and environmental present.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Reading<\/strong><\/p><\/div>

Caring for the Dying: The Doula\u2019s Approach to a Meaningful Death<\/em>, Henry Fersko-Weiss (Conari Press, 2017)<\/strong><\/p><\/div>

Master of the Eclipse<\/em>, Etel Adnan (Interlink Books, 2009)<\/strong><\/p><\/div>

The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions,<\/em>\u00a0<\/i><\/span>Larry Mitchell (Calamus Press, 1977)<\/strong><\/p><\/div>

Listening<\/strong><\/p><\/div>

Mirror with a Memory Podcast<\/i><\/a>,<\/em>\u00a0<\/i><\/span>Martine Syms (Carnegie Museum of Art, 2021<\/strong><\/p><\/div>

Gas Lit<\/i><\/a>,<\/em>\u00a0<\/i><\/span>Divide and Dissolve (Invada Records, 2021)<\/strong><\/p><\/div>

Witches of Scotland<\/i><\/a>,<\/em>\u00a0<\/i><\/span>Claire Mitchell and Zoe Venditozzi (Witches of Scotland, 2020\u2013present)<\/strong><\/p><\/div>

\u00a0<\/div>

Viewing<\/strong><\/p><\/div>

The Ice People,<\/em>\u00a0<\/i><\/span>Dir. Susanne Oberbeck (1999)<\/strong><\/p><\/div>

Part one:\u00a0<\/span>https:\/\/youtu.be\/kfaFSbTWOXg\u00a0<\/span><\/a><\/strong><\/p><\/div>

Part two:\u00a0<\/span>https:\/\/youtu.be\/lcFHJvDoyaA<\/a><\/strong><\/p><\/div>

The L Word<\/i>,\u00a0<\/span>Created by Ilene Chaiken, Michele Abbot, Kathy Greenberg (2004-2009)<\/strong><\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Please note the views published in What I am Reading Now…<\/i> are personal reflections of the contributors.
These may not necessarily represent the views of the University of Dundee.
\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

Home<\/a><\/p>\n

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about projects What I am Reading Now\u2026Sophia Al-MariaJanuary 2023 I\u2019m worried about the shelf above my desk. It\u2019s bearing the load of years of accumulated, uncurated (often unread) reading material. There are precious editions of hard-to-find books and magazines I should have a humidor for in this damp old ditch of a city.\u00a0The cracked spines …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":525,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2270","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.dundee.ac.uk\/cooper-gallery-inbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.dundee.ac.uk\/cooper-gallery-inbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.dundee.ac.uk\/cooper-gallery-inbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.dundee.ac.uk\/cooper-gallery-inbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/525"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.dundee.ac.uk\/cooper-gallery-inbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2270"}],"version-history":[{"count":36,"href":"https:\/\/sites.dundee.ac.uk\/cooper-gallery-inbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2270\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3908,"href":"https:\/\/sites.dundee.ac.uk\/cooper-gallery-inbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2270\/revisions\/3908"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.dundee.ac.uk\/cooper-gallery-inbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}