Bad news leads to double good news…

Just when I thought I’d found the perfect writer for my ‘Special Attention’ publication, there was an email from Michael Uwemedimo saying that he regretted having to cancel but that he was locked in a car-boot somewhere in England as part of a Hostile Environments Training which his subsidy-givers have insisted he take before returning to his filming in the depths of the Niger Delta and therefore wasn’t able to write… (Still, perhaps he will find a way to collaborate on the wider ‘Special Attention’ project when he’s escaped his kidnappers…)

Anyway, in my ensuing panic (the deadline is hurtling towards me at breakneck speed) I mailed the first names relating to the relevant topics that I could think of and, amazingly, Loïc Wacquant has offered to collaborate by allowing me to use texts excerpted from his writings (on incarceration, the penal state, race as a principle of social vision and division etc).
Plus today, Rob van Kranenburg is going to write a piece centred around the photos of the abandoned police station – incorporating his work on biometrics and his rant ‘The end of the Netherlands in twelve steps’.
So politically the project is in really good hands!
Now just need someone to write something relating to the art side of the project, but now I don’t need them to deal with the other socio-political issues that ought to work out. Meanwhile, big grin on my face about the way this is going, and I have to get back to reading my way through Loïc’s books…

This entry was posted on Monday, January 18th, 2010 at 4:57 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. The entry is tagged under dai, detroit, publication, Rob v K, special attention, Wacquant. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.