The GEM Collective

How we build home

This is an audio version of How we build home, written by Azeezat Johnson with Wasi Daniju, and introducing the work we are doing together on exactly what it says: the ways we build home. You can read the full essay here [https://gemcollective.org/?page_id=340].

Hijab On/Webcam Off - Episode 1

Welcome to the first episode of Hijab On/Webcam Off [https://gemcollective.org/?page_id=561], a Geographies of Embodiment research collective series. Hijab On/Webcam Off is a project reclaiming conversations around hijab from the mainstream where it is often the prerogative of non-Muslim, white supremacist, patriarchal and secular-imperialist narratives; or a topic of discussion among Muslim men where it becomes a symbolic reference to Muslim women.  During the COVID-19 pandemic many of us experienced the intrusion of workplace and other  meetings and events into our personal spaces be they homes, bedrooms or anywhere else via webcams. With this came the expectation that our cameras should be on. For those of us who wear hijab, this created conditions where we had to put our hijabs on even within our personal or familial spaces because of intrusion from outside. This got us thinking about the line between the public and private, indoors and outdoors, as well as considering questions of performance and performativity. This project will explore these themes and more. Primarily, as Muslim women, we are creating space to have the sorts of conversations we want to, around hijab. “Hijab” has become a term loaded with assumed meaning and assigned solely to the headscarf Muslim women wear, despite not bearing such specific or singular meaning within the Quran or sunnah. One outcome of this reductive focus is that Muslim women are made to live our journeys with Islam and relationships to Allah in exceptionally public ways that often have punitive repercussions from wider society and the state’s surveillance mechanisms. Visit our webpage [https://gemcollective.org/?page_id=561]here. We invite you to contribute to the conversation, too, by sending in a voice-message reply through the Anchor.fm website or app.

Embodied and Messy - Part 4

The recordings in this series began as a sequence of journal entries between Azeezat Johnson, Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan, Audrey Sebatindira and Shereen Fernandez. Our entries were feeling through our intentions and hopes in creating GEM as a space, and what Geographies of Embodiment meant to us. A year later, members have both left and joined us. As a result the entries in this installation were written by Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan and Azeezat Johnson, though we were always in conversation with others, too. Both of us are thinking through what it means to dream with our bodies, and how we might imagine worlds that tend to our different realities. Importantly, we see the Embodied and Messy GEM Journal as an open-ended dialogue: we hope it creates opportunity for others to journal and share your own in-conversation pieces with us, too. Join our mailing list at www.gemcollective.org, or follow us on twitter @gem_collective to join in and follow unfolding reflections and installations that grow from this.

Embodied and Messy - Part 3

The recordings in this series began as a sequence of journal entries between Azeezat Johnson, Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan, Audrey Sebatindira and Shereen Fernandez. Our entries were feeling through our intentions and hopes in creating GEM as a space, and what Geographies of Embodiment meant to us. A year later, members have both left and joined us. As a result the entries in this installation were written by Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan and Azeezat Johnson, though we were always in conversation with others, too. Both of us are thinking through what it means to dream with our bodies, and how we might imagine worlds that tend to our different realities. Importantly, we see the Embodied and Messy GEM Journal as an open-ended dialogue: we hope it creates opportunity for others to journal and share your own in-conversation pieces with us, too. Join our mailing list at www.gemcollective.org, or follow us on twitter @gem_collective to join in and follow unfolding reflections and installations that grow from this.

Embodied and Messy - Part 2

The recordings in this series began as a sequence of journal entries between Azeezat Johnson, Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan, Audrey Sebatindira and Shereen Fernandez. Our entries were feeling through our intentions and hopes in creating GEM as a space, and what Geographies of Embodiment meant to us. A year later, members have both left and joined us. As a result the entries in this installation were written by Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan and Azeezat Johnson, though we were always in conversation with others, too. Both of us are thinking through what it means to dream with our bodies, and how we might imagine worlds that tend to our different realities. Importantly, we see the Embodied and Messy GEM Journal as an open-ended dialogue: we hope it creates opportunity for others to journal and share your own in-conversation pieces with us, too. Join our mailing list at www.gemcollective.org, or follow us on twitter @gem_collective to join in and follow unfolding reflections and installations that grow from this.