Join our first reading group to read extracts from two issues of The Funambulist on the theme of utopias and dystopias. Editor Léopold Lambert, academic and writer Sophia Azeb and artist Leila Abdelrazaq. Together, we will read excerpts from the magazines’ issues Futurisms (August 2019) and States of Emergency (May 2020) and share responses.

In her piece entitled Who Will be When We Are Free? On Palestine and Futurity, Sophia Azeb focuses on what Palestinianness will mean when Palestine is free. Examining the dissemination of iconic Palestinian photographs within the diaspora, Leila Abdelrazaq examines portraiture and the politics of self-representation. She argues that, in colonial context, photos originally thought as precious records of lives past and present can become limiting images and shrink political imagination.

Image: Leila Abdelrazaq, Khalid Ra’ad’s ‘Bedouin Woman and Child’. Courtesy of Leila Abdelrazaq.