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+++Kader Attia, Maria Hlavajova, Wietske Maas [eds.]+++

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Fragments of Repair is the fourth publication in BAK’s publishing series BASICS which revisits fundamental questions and urgencies of our time — the “basics” — and seeks to develop afresh the building blocks of lexicons, tactics, scenarios, and relations that enable action in contemporary conditions.

Today’s entwined crises, from ecological catastrophe to the climate of permanent warfare, reveal deep-seated wounds that issue from historical colonialisms and present-day authoritarianisms, economic disparity and growing racial violence, and the abuses inflicted on vulnerable populations and the planet. To address this disquieting chaos, Fragments of Repair, co-conceptualised by artist and curator Kader Attia with curators and researchers Maria Hlavajova and Wietske Maas, offers a collection of long- and short-form essays, visual essays, and conversations on decolonial repair as both a tool and a tactic of engagement with the current state of the world.

The book, which includes major voices such as that of Achille Mbembe and Ruth Wilson Gilmore, develops Attia’s ongoing inquiry into the possibility of enacting “repair” in the acute context of brokenness, which brings chronic uncertainty, social isolation, exhaustion, loss, and fear into sharper relief. What pathways could repair, rather than return to past ways? How can we develop collective tools for emancipation and resistance? And, in the face of what is irreparable, how can we meaningfully address wounds and scars, which are deeply tied to European modernity?