From Witness From Speech From Image: On Etel Adnan’s The Arab Apocalypse and Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s Dictee
Summer Farah | Critic at Large This essay is also available as a print zine through Open Books. All proceeds will be sent to Gaza Poets Society. The Arab Apocalypseby Etel AdnanLitmus Press, 2007 First Published by Post-Apollo Press, 1989 Dicteeby Theresa Hak Kyung ChaUniversity of California Press, 2022First Published by Tanam Press, 1982 In a Western Art History course, I learned to read images—to follow the eye, from the top left corner to the bottom right as if I was reading a page of words in English, but to let the artists’ lines guide and redirect my focus. To understand what the image is doing by identifying these moments of departure. I also learned art history as a comparative practice: to speak of an era is to put a collection of paintings next to each other and make conclusions about the time, to consider the world that presses into the frame. Before I am an editor, poet, critic, or any kind of writer, I am a reader; I want to follow the feeling. Reading …