PASSIVITY photos on Flickr

Barbara Claussen, Modern Monoliths migrating by Northern Spark

Modern Monoliths migrating investigates the power-laden language dictating public and private space. Here, phone booths, designed for private conversation in a public place, become a repository for speech between unknown parties. Inside each booth, sloganeering voices articulate force, reward, and persuasion, showing how power is historically established and maintained. It is short, repetitive, and persuasive, yet accompanied by a subversive, whispered voice. In juxtaposition to the traditional active participation of phone booths, audience agency is undermined through a forced passivity, mirroring public and private tensions and intersections.

Geographically placed at the convergence of several types of power—river power, the political and cultural power of the city, and the onsite electrical plant—this work renders internal the external play of power.

Presented by Northern Lights.mn

Photograph Patrick Kelley, courtesy Northern Lights.mn

northernspark.org/projects/modern-monoliths.html?org=p

Barbara Claussen, Modern Monoliths migrating by Northern Spark

Modern Monoliths migrating investigates the power-laden language dictating public and private space. Here, phone booths, designed for private conversation in a public place, become a repository for speech between unknown parties. Inside each booth, sloganeering voices articulate force, reward, and persuasion, showing how power is historically established and maintained. It is short, repetitive, and persuasive, yet accompanied by a subversive, whispered voice. In juxtaposition to the traditional active participation of phone booths, audience agency is undermined through a forced passivity, mirroring public and private tensions and intersections.

Geographically placed at the convergence of several types of power—river power, the political and cultural power of the city, and the onsite electrical plant—this work renders internal the external play of power.

Presented by Northern Lights.mn

Photograph Patrick Kelley, courtesy Northern Lights.mn

northernspark.org/projects/modern-monoliths.html?org=p

Reading women in 2025 - part 2 00001 by ArtisticPonder

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Living in Transit: The Thinkers of a World in Turmoil

War looms over Europe, uncertainty seeps into everyday life, and the weight of history presses upon the present. The world is burning, and yet—there are those who seek understanding, those who bury themselves in the quiet refuge of books, the dim glow of libraries, the solitude of knowledge.

This series captures the introspective minds of young academic women—readers, thinkers, seekers. They wander through old university halls, their fingers tracing the spines of forgotten books, pulling out volumes of poetry, philosophy, and psychology. They drink coffee, they drink tea, they stay up late with ink-stained fingers, trying to decipher the world through words.

They turn to Simone Weil for moral clarity, Hannah Arendt for political insight, Rilke for existential wisdom. They read Baudrillard to untangle the illusions of modernity, Byung-Chul Han to understand society’s exhaustion, Camus to grasp the absurdity of it all. They devour Celan’s poetry, searching for beauty in catastrophe.

But they do not just read—they reflect, they question, they write. Their world is one of quiet resistance, an intellectual sanctuary amidst the chaos. In their solitude, they are not alone. Across time, across history, across the pages they turn, they are in conversation with those who, too, have sought meaning in troubled times.

This is a series about thought in transit—about seeking, reading, questioning, about the relentless pursuit of knowledge when the world feels on the brink.

Where the Thinkers Go

They gather where the dust has settled,

where books whisper in the hush of halls.

Pages thin as breath, torn at the edges,

cradling centuries of questions.

They drink coffee like it’s ink,

trace words like constellations,

follow Rilke into the dusk,

where solitude hums softly in the dark.

Outside, the world is fraying—

war threading through the seams of cities,

the weight of history pressing forward.

Inside, they turn pages, searching

for answers, for solace, for fire.

And somewhere between the lines,

between time-stained margins and fading ink,

they find the ghosts of others who

once sought, once wondered, once read—

and they do not feel alone.

Three Haikus

Night falls on paper,

books stacked like silent towers,

thoughts burn in the dark.

Tea cools in the cup,

a poem lingers on lips,

war rumbles beyond.

Footsteps in silence,

the scent of old ink and dust,

pages turn like ghosts.

ooOOOoo

Reading as Resistance

These young women do not read passively. They underline, they take notes, they write in the margins. They challenge the texts and themselves. They read because the world demands it of them—because, in a time of conflict and uncertainty, thought itself is an act of resistance.

Their books are worn, their pages stained with coffee, their minds alive with the urgency of understanding.

1. Political Thought, Society & Liberation

Essays, theory and critique on democracy, power and resistance.

Chantal Mouffe – For a Left Populism (rethinking democracy through radical left-wing populism)

Nancy Fraser – Cannibal Capitalism (an urgent critique of capitalism’s role in the destruction of democracy, the planet, and social justice)

Étienne Balibar – Citizenship (rethinking the idea of citizenship in an era of migration and inequality)

Silvia Federici – Caliban and the Witch (a feminist Marxist analysis of capitalism and gender oppression)

Didier Eribon – Returning to Reims (a deeply personal sociological reflection on class and identity in contemporary Europe)

Antonio Negri & Michael Hardt – Empire (rethinking global capitalism and resistance from a leftist perspective)

Thomas Piketty – Capital and Ideology (a profound analysis of wealth distribution, inequality, and the future of economic justice)

Mark Fisher – Capitalist Realism (on why it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism)

2. Feminist & Queer Theory, Gender & Body Politics

Texts that redefine identity, gender, and liberation in the 21st century.

Paul B. Preciado – Testo Junkie (an autobiographical, philosophical essay on gender, hormones, and biopolitics)

Judith Butler – The Force of Nonviolence (rethinking ethics and resistance beyond violence)

Virginie Despentes – King Kong Theory (a raw and radical take on sex, power, and feminism)

Amia Srinivasan – The Right to Sex (rethinking sex, power, and feminism for a new generation)

Laurent de Sutter – Narcocapitalism (on how capitalism exploits our bodies, desires, and emotions)

Sara Ahmed – Living a Feminist Life (a deeply personal and political exploration of what it means to be feminist today)

3. Literature & Poetry of Resistance, Liberation & Exile

European novels, poetry and literature that embrace freedom, revolution, and identity.

Annie Ernaux – The Years (a groundbreaking memoir that blends personal and collective history, feminism, and social change)

Olga Tokarczuk – The Books of Jacob (an epic novel about alternative histories, belief systems, and European identity)

Édouard Louis – Who Killed My Father (a deeply political and personal exploration of class struggle and masculinity)

Bernardine Evaristo – Girl, Woman, Other (a polyphonic novel on race, gender, and identity in contemporary Europe)

Maggie Nelson (though American, widely read in European academia) – On Freedom: Four Songs of Care and Constraint (a poetic, intellectual meditation on freedom and constraint)

Benjamín Labatut – When We Cease to Understand the World (a deeply philosophical novel on science, war, and moral responsibility)

Michel Houellebecq – Submission (controversial but widely read as a dystopian critique of political passivity in Europe)

4. Ecology, Anti-Capitalism & Posthumanism

Texts that explore the intersections of nature, economics, and radical change.

Bruno Latour – Down to Earth: Politics in the New Climatic Regime (rethinking ecology and politics in a world of climate crisis)

Andreas Malm – How to Blow Up a Pipeline (on the ethics of radical environmental resistance)

Emanuele Coccia – The Life of Plants: A Metaphysics of Mixture (rethinking human and non-human coexistence)

Isabelle Stengers – Another Science is Possible (rethinking knowledge and resistance in an era of corporate science)

Kate Raworth – Doughnut Economics (rethinking economic models for social and ecological justice)

Donna Haraway – Staying with the Trouble (rethinking coexistence and posthumanist futures)

The Future of Thought

These are not just books; they are weapons, tools, compasses. These women read not for escapism, but for resistance. In a time of political upheaval, climate catastrophe, and rising authoritarianism, they seek alternative visions, radical possibilities, and new ways of imagining the world.

Their books are annotated, their margins filled with questions, their reading lists always expanding. Knowledge is not just power—it is revolution.

Barbara Claussen, Modern Monoliths migrating by Northern Spark

Modern Monoliths migrating investigates the power-laden language dictating public and private space. Here, phone booths, designed for private conversation in a public place, become a repository for speech between unknown parties. Inside each booth, sloganeering voices articulate force, reward, and persuasion, showing how power is historically established and maintained. It is short, repetitive, and persuasive, yet accompanied by a subversive, whispered voice. In juxtaposition to the traditional active participation of phone booths, audience agency is undermined through a forced passivity, mirroring public and private tensions and intersections.

Geographically placed at the convergence of several types of power—river power, the political and cultural power of the city, and the onsite electrical plant—this work renders internal the external play of power.

Presented by Northern Lights.mn

Photograph Patrick Kelley, courtesy Northern Lights.mn

northernspark.org/projects/modern-monoliths.html?org=p

Nihilism is our passivity* by incandescente boy

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Reading women in 2025 - part 2 00010 by ArtisticPonder