The second of KAF’s gatherings in the James Gallery is Tom Haviv’s A Flag of No Nation, a series of performances and installations revolving around a nationless flag and a series of poems based on the writing of Sol LeWitt. This evening’s performance will be a collaborative engagement with the text and flag that will include readings and dance.
KAF is a reading & performance series that bridges poetry with other genres and mediums. KAF means “palm” in Arabic, Cuneiform, Farsi, Hebrew, Phoenician, Urdu, and many other languages. Kaf is the letter K in each. It signifies touch, vulnerability, intimacy. It shares its name with mount Qaf, the fabled goal of the Hoopoe and its followers in the sufi poem “The Conference of the Birds.” It is half of Kafka, the Czech author of empirical impasse, cruel absurdity. Like the Hoopoe and Kafka’s K, we travel by wandering, without preconceived destination. Tom Haviv is a student in the MFA Program in writing at Brooklyn College and will be joined with other members of KAF, including Ulku Tekten, student in the Ph.D. Program in English at The Graduate Center, for discussion following the performance.
Cosponsored by the Critical Palestine Studies Association at the Graduate Center, and supported in part by Artis Foundation for Contemporary Art.