Welcome to issue twelve of The Attention Span Newsletter by me, Canan “Ja’anan” Marasligil. I’m a writer, a literary translator, an artist and a curator of cultural programmes based in Amsterdam. Every other week, I take the time to reflect and offer a glimpse of how I see and feel the world through the lens of culture, art, translation, poetry and literature. I also invite you to support my work via Patreon. Thank you for your presence and attention!Last summer, I wrote an essay on Etel Adnan for the Poëziekrant (translated to Dutch by Martine Wezenbeek), and my heart just told me that today is a good day to share the original English version with you. I have made a selection of photographs to accompany your reading, and the essay includes a list of references including writing and audiovisual material. My usual reading/watching/listening list, notes on translation and sketchbook page have been incorporated into this essay as accompanying resources that I hope will feed your thoughts, heart and soul.SHOWNOTESEssay written in Amsterdam in May 2023, published in De Poëziekrantin Dutch (translated by Martine Wezenbeek) in July 2023. Published in English for the first time in this newsletter.All translations to English in the essay, unless otherwise stated, are my own. Books by Etel Adnan:Surge. 2018.THERE. In the Light and the Darkness of the Self and of the Other. 1997. Sea & Fog. 2012.“To Write in a Foreign Language” in Thom Donovan and Brandon Shimoda (eds), To look at the sea is to become what one is. An Etel Adnan Reader, vol. 1, New York 2014.Van Gogh Museum exhibition catalogue: Etel Adnan Vincent van Gogh. Kleur als taal / Colour as language. With writings by Sara Tas, Simone Fattal, Etel Adnan. Van Gogh Museum en Uitgeverij Tijdsbeeld, 2022.(Translation to English of Sara Tas: Ted Alkins) Interviews and hommages:L’entretien infini - Etel Adnan - Conversation avec Hans Ulrich Obrist, Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, 2014. https://youtu.be/IiJqIVzN3zEntretien avec Etel Adnan in Conversation avec Ricardo Karam, 2019 https://ricardokaram.com/podcastsDominique Eddé, “Etel, l’oiseau rare,” first published in French in L’Orient-Le Jour, 19 November 2021 (https://www.lorientlejour.com/article/1282043/etel-loiseau-rare.html) English translation by Ros Schwartz, January 2022La beauté de la lumière, entretiens – Etel Adnan & Laure Adler. Avec Laure Adler, Hans Ulrich Obrist & Jean Frémon. Lecture par Nathalie Richard. Rencontre animée par Marie-Madeleine Rigopoulos. 18 mars 2022. https://maisondelapoesieparis.com/programme/la-beaute-de-la-lumiere-entretiens-etel-adnan-laure-adler/

Welcome to issue eleven of The Attention Span Newsletter by me, Canan “Ja’anan” Marasligil. I’m a writer, a literary translator, an artist and a curator of cultural programmes based in Amsterdam.  Every other week, I take the time to reflect and offer a glimpse of how I see and feel the world through the lens of culture, art, translation, poetry and literature. Each issue has a short essay or reflection, a nerdy look at translation, a page from one of my notebooks, a list of things to read, watch or listen to, and a highlight from my archives.I invite you to support my work via Patreon: http://patreon.com/theattentionspan Thank you for your presence and attention!SHOW NOTES This episode of the podcast version comes with a delay as I was travelling. Below are the links I mention: LISTENING, WATCHING, READINGListen: Feeling in Turkish: (un)translatable. A playlist I made years ago with songs in Turkish which are so difficult to translate that the (im)possibility makes my heart ache. Read: James Baldwin in Turkey. How Istanbul changed his career—and his life, a beautiful portrait of Baldwin in the context of his many years in Turkey, by Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi in The Yale Review. Watch: The Club/Kulüp on Netflix. I had watched the first season of the series when it came out in 2021. Walking in the neighbourhoods around Beyoğlu today brought me back to the story which takes place in that area and shows you the cosmopolitan and multilingual history of Istanbul in the 1950s.

Welcome to issue ten of The Attention Span Newsletter by me, Canan “Ja’anan” Marasligil. I’m a writer, a literary translator, an artist and a curator of cultural programmes based in Amsterdam.  Every other week, I take the time to reflect and offer a glimpse of how I see and feel the world through the lens of culture, art, translation, poetry and literature. Each issue has a short essay or reflection, a nerdy look at translation, a page from one of my notebooks, a list of things to read, watch or listen to, and a highlight from my archives.I invite you to support my work via Patreon: http://patreon.com/theattentionspan Thank you for your presence and attention!SHOW NOTES Citations from: Elena Ferrante. Frantumaglia. A Writer’s Journey. (Translated by Ann Goldstein) Europa Editions, 2016. https://www.europaeditions.com/book/9781609452926/frantumagliaReading/Watching/Listening toListen/ Serpentine Podcast: Intimacies considers many forms, ideas, and understandings of intimacy. Host Gaylene Gould gathers perspectives from artists, designers, writers, thinkers, and others on how we can rekindle trust, and open ourselves up to new possibilities for connection. I was particularly touched by a reminder in the first episode, of the etymology of the word “curate”, which in its essence means “to care”.  https://www.serpentinegalleries.org/art-and-ideas/serpentine-podcast-intimacies/Read/ Culture Strike: Art and Museums in an Age of Protest by Laura Raicovich. Since I’m talking about curating in this issue, I am sharing this book, in which Raicovich, a former director of the Queens Museum in New York, shows how art museums arose as colonial institutions bearing an ideology of neutrality that masks their role in upholding capitalist values. And she suggests how museums can be reinvented to serve better, public ends. There are lots of US specific cases, but most of the book can also speak to many of us working in different geographical and political contexts, it spoke to my vision as a curator of literary programmes, on many levels. https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/products/2560-culture-strikeWatch/ Dichter bij Onze Coloniale Erfenis/Closer to Our Colonial Heritage is a programme series featuring poets, writers and spoken word artists accompanying the exhibition Our Colonial Heritage on show at the Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam. They offer powerful and poignant reflections on colonial heritage and how colonialism affects our bodies, hearts, minds, relationships, life, and work. How this heritage belongs to all of us. I had the immense pleasure and honour to host one of the conversations after a performance by one of the poets, Nisrine Mbarki, and I have also translated the poems/performances of Nisrine and Joshua Timisela for these videos, made by the amazing Beyond Walls Collective, in partnership with the Tropenmuseum and Read My World. You can watch all the videos on the museum’s website: https://www.tropenmuseum.nl/nl/zien-en-doen/tentoonstellingen/onze-koloniale-erfenis/filmreeks-dichter-bij-onze-koloniale-erfenis (the website is in Dutch, but the videos have all English subtitles).

Welcome to issue nine of The Attention Span Newsletter by me, Canan “Ja’anan” Marasligil. I’m a writer, a literary translator, an artist and a curator of cultural programmes based in Amsterdam.  Every other week, I take the time to reflect and offer a glimpse of how I see and feel the world through the lens of culture, art, translation, poetry and literature. Each issue has a short essay or reflection, a nerdy look at translation, a page from one of my notebooks, a list of things to read, watch or listen to, and a highlight from my archives.I invite you to support my work via Patreon: http://patreon.com/theattentionspan Thank you for your presence and attention!SHOW NOTES City in Translation: https://www.cityintranslation.comPoetry Translation Centre: https://www.poetrytranslation.org Reading/Watching/Listening toListen/ I started listening to Living Archives, an oral histories project co-produced by the Stuart Hall Foundation and the International Curators Forum. The project is made up of six intergenerational conversations. Each conversation considers an alternative history of contemporary Britain through testimonies shared by UK-based diasporic artists working between the 1980s and the present-day. The project will form what Stuart Hall calls a “living archive of the diaspora”, which maps the development, endurance, and centrality of diasporic artistic production in Britain. It is hosted by ICF’s Deputy Artistic Director, Jessica Taylor who invites practitioners to reflect on the reasons they became artists, the development of their practices, the different moments and movements they bore witness to, and the beautiful reasons they chose to be in conversation with each other. https://www.stuarthallfoundation.org/projects/living-archives-podcast-artists/Read/ “Picturing things, taking a view, is what makes us human; art is making sense and giving shape to that sense. It is like the religious search for God. We are well aware that making sense and picturing are artificial, like illusion; but we can never give them up.” These are notes from 1962 by painter Gerhard Richter, published in The Daily Practice of Painting, which assembles writing and interviews between 1962 and 1993, edited and introduced by Hans-Ulrich Obrist and translated from the German by David Britt. It’s one of the many books I have been gathering from the library (I go to university libraries and the local ones and have always a dozen of borrowed books around the house). I love reading several books in parallel. The context in which I read (whether it is external or internal) always influences how I will feel a text. I admire Richter as a painter and reading his thoughts, his process and vision is just fascinating. https://books.google.nl/books/about/The_Daily_Practice_of_Painting.html?id=lPoE70v9ERQC&redir_esc=y Watch/ I waited for weeks to find the right time to see Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer at the cinema. I would need to have had eaten before, bring water and snacks, make sure I am rested so I can make it for more than three hours seated in a cinema. But these all went out the window last week when, following a conversation which made me reflect on questions regarding integrity, moral and ethical responsibility in the positions I hold within culture, I decided to go for a walk and my steps made me cross the IJ river to the EYE Cinema where they show Oppenheimer in 70mm. I didn’t check the time once, I was deeply engaged in the complicated story, the magnitude of Nolan’s visual language, the mesmerizing music, the superb acting and flawless cinematography. Of course, there are many angles to read this film from, and I understand the different critical point of views. But in that moment, I needed that intense cinematic and human experience. I have loved many of Nolan’s films and was disappointed in a few others. This one will be added to my beloved ones. https://www.eyefilm.nl/en/whats-on/oppenheimer/976513

Welcome to issue eight of The Attention Span Newsletter by me, Canan “Ja’anan” Marasligil. I’m a writer, a literary translator, an artist and a curator of cultural programmes based in Amsterdam. Every other week, I take the time to reflect and offer a glimpse of how I see and feel the world through the lens of culture, art, translation, poetry and literature. Each issue has a short essay or reflection, a nerdy look at translation, a page from one of my notebooks, a list of things to read, watch or listen to, and a highlight from my archives. If you prefer an audio experience, you can listen to me reading the newsletter to you. You can also support my work via Patreon. Thank you for your presence and attention!EPISODE 8 SHOW NOTESThe song “özledim” by Candan Erçetin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDHnvtc3BKMReading/Watching/Listening toRead/ The British Library in London celebrated its 50th anniversary on 1 July 2023 (I honestly thought it was a centuries-old institution). This report exploring the British Library’s history, mission and work takes us behind the scenes. I find it fascinating! https://londonist.com/london/features/british-library-50-years-tour-secrets   Watch/ a 4-minute-long documentary on 93-year-old artist Dorothea Rockburne in her New York studio. This short film is part of a documentary series by Limelight that follows the lives of different New Yorkers. I came across it via an Instagram ad (one of those moments when you regain faith in the “social” of social media). The channel is the creation of 24-year-old documentary filmmaker, Josh Charow. All films are made by Josh and a small crew of friends willing to lend a hand on the projects. I was very inspired by the video and discovering an artist I didn’t know, and now I’ll follow the channel too.https://www.instagram.com/limelightdocs/ https://youtu.be/N_FgE-lVs8s Listen/ This one is for those of you who can understand French. I always love listening to the radio, and France Culture is one of my go-to, especially when I want to listen to documentary series or interviews. One of the programmes I love is à voix nue which focuses on a new figure every week, interviewed all week long (5 episodes) with each episode highlighting a period of their lives. A recent focus was on artist Niki de Saint Phalle. You can start listening here: https://www.radiofrance.fr/franceculture/podcasts/a-voix-nue/l-experience-du-rire-1900743  

Welcome to issue seven of The Attention Span Newsletter by me, Canan “Ja’anan” Marasligil. I’m a writer, a literary translator, an artist and a curator of cultural programmes based in Amsterdam.Every other week, I take the time to reflect and offer a glimpse of how I see the world through the lens of culture, art, translation, poetry and literature. Each issue has a short essay, a nerdy look at translation, a page from one of my notebooks, a list of things to read, watch or listen to.This podcast is made for those of you who prefer an audio experience. You can also support my work via Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theattentionspan Thank you for your presence and attention!EPISODE 7 SHOW NOTES:From Cohen to Carson: The Poet's Novel in Canada by Ian Rae: https://www.mqup.ca/from-cohen-to-carson-products-9780773532762.php Family Ties by Aysel Bodur: https://ayselbodur.com/art/family-ties/ Maurice Carlos Ruffin’s Newsletter, Sitting in Silence: https://mauricecarlosruffin.substack.com The Queen’s English: The LGBTQIA+ Dictionary of Lingo and Colloquial Expressions (2021) by Chloe Davis https://www.thequeensenglishus.com Reading/Watching/Listening toListening/ A conversation “What kind of language are we left with” held between Mirene Arsanios and Celina Su, recorded in February 2021 for the Invitation to Species Podcast. The poets, both “motherless mothers without mother tongues,” discuss the lineages of their languages, liminal subjectivities and the impossibility of “we” in light of differentially distributed access to resources. Together, they consider how our social relations are being rewritten and disrupted in a time of ongoing crisis and disaster. https://podcasts.apple.com/nl/podcast/mirene-arsanios-and-celina-su-what-kind-of-language/id1509316924?i=1000522987507&l=en-GBReading/ Poetry again! And since I mentioned a podcast she was on, let me recommend Celina Su’s poetry collection Landia (2018), which I had come across to in the unique and fragile bookshop Perdu in Amsterdam. You can read one of Su’s poetry on the Poetry Foundation website: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/celina-su Watching/ I was very sad to hear about Jane Birkin’s death two weeks ago, aged 76 (and then we lost Shuhada' Sadaqat – aka Sinead O’Connor, aged 56, which was another shock). When a famous person dies, commemorative documentaries, articles and all sorts of content come out. ARTE TV is broadcasting this documentary about Birkin from 2019, by Clelia Cohen. It’s poignant to watch now after we know she is gone:   https://www.arte.tv/en/videos/089088-000-A/jane-birkin-simply-an-icon/

Welcome to issue six of The Attention Span Newsletter by me, Canan “Ja’anan” Marasligil. I’m a writer, a literary translator, an artist and a curator of cultural programmes based in Amsterdam.Every other week, I take the time to reflect and offer a glimpse of how I see the world through the lens of culture, art, translation, poetry and literature. Each issue has a short essay, a nerdy look at translation, a page from one of my notebooks, a list of things to read, watch or listen to.This podcast is made for those of you who prefer an audio experience. You can also support my work via Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theattentionspan Thank you for your presence and attention!EPISODE 6 SHOW NOTES:Read/ Wavelength – Longitud de onda, by Cristina Lucas. I came across this book at the Kranenburghmuseum shop, where Lucas’s exhibition The Environment is us, is on show. I must admid I haven’t read the book yet, but I browsed through and it’s very well designed, with photographs of the artists’ work. What interests me particularly are the different essays in it, which touch on capitalism, the environment and climate change, how Lucas is looking at the mechanisms of power, analysing fundamental structures in politics, economics, in society. So, this book definitely is on my radar. https://mudamstore.com/products/cristina-lucas-wavelengthWatching/ Right now, I am obsessed with a Turkish soap called Kizilcik Serbeti (which has been translated as Cranberry Sorbet but also as “One Love”), and I am definitely going to write about it in a future issue of this newsletter. It’s a kind of Romeo and Juliet story set in Istanbul, today, where the children of two families coming from totally opposite social backgrounds get married. The young woman is from a liberal, so-called “modern” family and the young man is from an ultra-conservative and mega rich family. They’re not enemies like the Montague’s and the Capulet’s, but their views of the world clash a lot, which creates a lot of (melo)drama. It’s perfect as a soap but also gives an interesting perspective on today’s highly polarised societies (Turkey in this case, but we could definitely read it from other places too). https://youtube.com/@kizilcikserbetidiziListening to/ Whenever I feel a bit lost, especially in my creative practice, I turn to poet, musician, writer Patti Smith who reminds me that what matters is to keep doing the work. I love this conversation between Patti and Malcolm Gladwell in this episode of the podcastBroken Record. It’s from March 2022 but never gets old:https://open.spotify.com/episode/05Rsbe8yTl3VEjOKqJaoJ6?si=KYKp87i9R_OZJLE-M-Y6QA

Welcome to issue five of The Attention Span Newsletter by me, Canan “Ja’anan” Marasligil. I’m a writer, a literary translator, an artist and a curator of cultural programmes based in Amsterdam.Every other week, I take the time to reflect and offer a glimpse of how I see the world through the lens of culture, art, translation, poetry and literature. Each issue has a short essay, a nerdy look at translation, a page from one of my notebooks, a list of things to read, watch or listen to.This podcast is made for those of you who prefer an audio experience. You can also support my work via Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theattentionspan Thank you for your presence and attention!EPISODE 5 SHOW NOTES:Read / “Since the start of the war, I have developed a cough – it chokes me as soon as I try to say something long and meaningful.” Ukrainian novelist Victoria Amelina had written in her “Diary of Silence” (Translated from the Ukrainian by Yulia Lyubka and Kate Tsurkan). Amelina died on 1 July from injuries sustained in a Russian missile strike on a crowded restaurant in eastern Ukraine. She had been collecting stories about Russia's war crimes and wrote several testimonies of the war. I am sharing her Diary of Silence as a way to honour her memory, you can read it in online literary magazine Apofenie: https://www.apofenie.com/letters-and-essays/2023/3/21/diary-of-silence?fbclid=IwAR3aB_q_ET47y0eBNJdVR20dzyTgEICXBeSZtxCzTgVNkUMzH5msiOm8p_Q Listen/ A wonderful conversation with adrienne maree brown (a writer and activist, a.o. author of Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Shaping Worlds) on Krista Tippett’s podcast on being: https://onbeing.org/programs/adrienne-maree-brown-we-are-in-a-time-of-new-suns/ Watch/ I love this interview with writer and essayist Siri Husvedt on the tenth edition of the Rendez-vous littéraires rue Cambon [Literary Rendezvous at Rue Cambon] which was held at the Metrograph Theater, in New York City. These Literary events are organized by CHANEL and Charlotte Casiraghi, ambassador and spokesperson for the brand. Yes, it is an excellent branding strategy for CHANEL, but honestly, I don’t really mind it because the quality of the conversation is quite good, so check it out for yourself: https://youtu.be/I5rlaYCE2hk

Welcome to issue four of The Attention Span Newsletter by me, Canan “Ja’anan” Marasligil. I’m a writer, a literary translator, an artist and a curator of cultural programmes based in Amsterdam.Every other week, I take the time to reflect and offer a glimpse of how I see the world through the lens of culture, art, translation, poetry and literature. Each issue has a short essay, a nerdy look at translation, a page from one of my notebooks, a list of things to read, watch or listen to, …This podcast is the audio version of the newsletter. You can access all issues of the newsletter on The Attention Span website: www.theattentionspan.com/subscribe You can support my work on Patreon: www.patreon.com/theattentionspanEPISODE 4 Show notesWork Show Grow: https://www.workshowgrow.com Vilém Flusser’s Gestures (Translated by Nancy Ann Roth): https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/gestures My Gestures on Instagram: @my.gesturesReading/Watching/Listening to• Black and White: Three Poems by Nisrine Mbarki (translated from Dutch by Michele Hutchison) published on Words Without Borders in their May 2023 edition. If you can read Dutch, I would also urge you to dive into Mbarki’s poetry collection oeverloos. I just finished writing an essay about the work of this tremendous poet I have the immense chance to call a friend. https://wordswithoutborders.org/read/article/2023-04/black-and-white-three-poems-nisrine-mbarki-michele-hutchison/ • To Tell a Story (1983). https://youtu.be/MoHCR8nshe8 Whenever I feel a bit lost and am yearning for listening to people taking the time to respond to one another and reflect on the world in a deep conversation, I watch this conversation on storytelling between John Berger and Susan Sontag. • AI Meets World, Part One. On the WHY IT MATTERS podcast. https://podcasts.apple.com/nl/podcast/why-it-matters/id1482132871?i=1000616204051https://podcasts.apple.com/nl/podcast/why-it-matters/id1482132871?i=1000616204051 I have been interested in AI (especially in relation to automated translation) for years now, but I have not dived into what it means and how it works, enough to form any kind of reflection. So, I am starting to gather information, knowledge and experiences so I can participate in this important conversation, someday in the near future hopefully, with tools and not just based on fear of the unknown. This episode is a good start.

Welcome to issue three of The Attention Span Newsletter by me, Canan “Ja’anan” Marasligil. I’m a writer, a literary translator, an artist and a curator of cultural programmes based in Amsterdam.Every other week, I take the time to reflect and offer a glimpse of how I see the world through the lens of culture, art, translation, poetry and literature. Each issue has a short essay, a nerdy look at translation, a page from one of my notebooks, a list of things to read, watch or listen to, and a highlight from my archives. This podcast is the audio version of the newsletter. You can access all issues of the newsletter on The Attention Span website: www.theattentionspan.com/subscribe You can support my work on Patreon: www.patreon.com/theattentionspanEPISODE 3 SHOW NOTESPrivate Passions with writer Kit de Waal, on BBC 3 (www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001md33): I loved listening to Kit de Waal sharing these musical moments from the classical repertoire and telling stories about her life and writing. My heart melted when I heard her first choice: Sergey Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor (first movement), but I will let you discover the track list for yourselves (oh, and if you’re in Amsterdam 14-16 September, Kit de Waal is coming to the Read My World Festival). No Dogs or Italians Allowed by Alain Ughetto is a superb animation film (trailer: youtu.be/185HUoBzYfc) that tells the story of migration of an Italian family from Northern Italy to France in the beginning of the 20th century, through the eyes of the grandson, the filmmaker himself. I love animation films in general, this format really allows – just like in comics – to identify with the characters and the story in a more direct way than with films where the actors are real people. To link to my film suggestion, I’ll mention Scott McLoud’s Understanding Comics from 1993 (scottmccloud.com/2-print/1-uc/). Comics scholars and afiscionados out there, apologies, I know we all have it in our libraries already. But I also am sure many of you may not have come across this scholarly book written in the format of a comic, yet. So, if you would like to understand comics, and what I meant about connecting to characters by identifying more directly with them if they’re “drawn” (or made of papier-mâcher like in Ughetto’s film), then I do recommend McLoud’s book. Martin Scorcese’s Essay in Harper’s Bazaar: https://harpers.org/archive/2021/03/il-maestro-federico-fellini-martin-scorsese/