Stone Assemblies

Stone Assemblies is an initiative that unfolded in parallel with, but independent from, the production of Sebastia, an 800-square-meter artwork and city floor by Jumana Manna in the newly rebuilt Government Quarter in Oslo.

Where Foyer Kunstnernes Hus Wergelandsveien 17 NO-0167 Oslo Directions

Stone Assemblies brings together voices thinking through the politics of stone, ruination, and dissent. Taking the political and cultural history of extraction and land struggles in Palestine and Norway as its starting point, this volume offers a set of proposals through which the politics of stone, ruination, and dissent might be reimagined.

Through essays, poems, artworks, and conversations, the several contributors gathered in this volume critically and creatively intervene into what art, language, and the workings of culture more broadly can do in and against the nation-state's normative terms of order: ceasefire, assimilation, disposability, and the vertical models of governance and memorialisation.

Shaped by a range of diasporic and Indigenous traditions, Stone Assemblies gestures towards an embrace of all that remains to be reassembled, renewed, and re-membered as we persist in our anti-extractivist, anticolonial practices of art and gathering.

The book launch will be followed by a panel discussion featuring Jumana Manna, Rana Issa, Drew Snyder, Mohamed Abdi, and Wendy Lotterman, and a concert with poet and theorist Fred Moten and composer and bassist Brandon Lopez, making incendiary music for a burning world.