slow travel

On 1st December PLATFORM's Agitpod mobile cinema will set off on it's return journey from Bristol to London, why not join us?  Read more

As one of five C Words Co-Realizers one of my jobs is to reflect on the events which take place in the gallery. Yet, within the walls of Arnolfini I find it hard to find intellectual space or critical distance from the work.  Read more

Agitpod is a solar-powered cinema system mounted on a quadricycle. It was designed by students at Southwark College in a mobile eco-design project led by PLATFORM. Agitpod is designed to show agitational propaganda and is being cycled from Tower Bridge in London to Arnolfini Centre for Contemporary Arts, Bristol - for C Words, a season of ecological and social justice events.It leaves on Wednesday 23rd September and will arrive in Bristol between 26th-29th September.  Read more

We moved to Yarmouk Camp the other week.

The first month in Damascus, I lived in an ancient house in the middle of the Old City in Damascus, half a block from the enormous Omayed Mosque. Sitting on our roof terrace at dusk, I blogged while watching the bats swoop and dive around the Bride’s Minaret and Jesus’ Minaret, chasing bees only slightly smaller than my thumb. The mosque was the academic and political centre of the Omayed’s empire, as the armies rode west, conquering all of North Africa and Spain (even reaching the Rhone valley in France) in the 7th and 8th century.  Read more

Travelling by train across Europe & Turkey was a beautiful and exciting way to get to Syria. Without the teleport effect of airplanes, mountain ranges are more than bumps on a flat surface and the Danube remains a mighty river rather than just yet another waterway.

How did I get to Syria:  Read more

After a cushy night on the Ankara – Adana Mavi Cukurova night train, we jumped straight into a coach headed east to Antakya. Once the grand city of Antioch benefiting from trade routes running between Europe & South Asia, medium-sized Antakya is the last Turkish town before Syria, and the source of an ongoing border dispute between Syria and Turkey.  Read more