Canan Marasligil

42 - sailing (hi)stories

I have always loved the ocean; wide, wild, an endless dreamscape of possible escape. Filled with beauty, violence and mystery, the ocean has been carrying humanity’s fears and hopes for millennia. Yet, we know so little about it. Scientists still make discoveries about its habitat. Our Western societies have yet to truly face their own history of crossings in the name of God and Gold. There is always the greater narrative and the personal stories. Both are entwined. …

Canan Marasligil
42 - sailing (hi)stories
Canan Marasligil

41 - chasing wonder, reflected

I wanted to write a lengthy essay about the recent SAIL event in Amsterdam—[…] about the wounds woven into all our histories, and about how we search for beauty in a broken world—how violence and beauty coexist in that fragile space.

But then summertime sadness arrived, carried by shifting winds: warmth fading into chill. We’ve reached that moment when you wrap a scarf around your neck yet still insist on one last ice cream of the season, holding onto the hope of one more outdoor swim before it all disappears. For me, it always brings a deep melancholy. The essay on decolonising SAIL will have to wait…

Canan Marasligil
41 - chasing wonder, reflected
Canan Marasligil

40 - elsewhere is here

Our obsession with impact exhausts me.

Everything must be measured, analysed, optimized—our choices now data-driven. As if it weren’t enough that arts and culture got caught in this trap, imprisoning imagination inside charts and PowerPoint presentations, we’ve also adopted the vocabulary of capitalism to define our friendships and love stories: we invest emotions, calculate risks before opening our hearts, swipe, like, and treat one another like commodities. The space for genuine discourse has been swallowed by the clickability of headlines and reels.

Canan Marasligil
40 - elsewhere is here
Canan Marasligil

39 - movement as inheritance

I have always dreamed of seeing the world. From an early age, I yearned for movement —physically, emotionally and intellectually. Travel was never simply a holiday; it was where I found myself. It was also always an invitation for humility: a reminder that there is more to this world than the environment we find ourselves in. Seeing new landscapes, feeling unknown languages, dancing through the unfamiliar rhythms of new cities and streets always mirrors something within me. The simple act of moving from one place to another, even for short distances, would awaken my imagination. Movement has shaped me and my work, and has deeply influenced the way I practice translation. 

Canan Marasligil
39 - movement as inheritance
Canan Marasligil

38 - san francisco diary (part 4)

It is in California that Etel Adnan started to write and paint in leporellos. In the early sixties, the poet and painter left Lebanon “by running all the way to California. An exile, which lasted for years,” she writes in In the Heart of the Heart of Another Country (City Lights Books, 2005), a haunting exploration of identity, history, displacement, and war from an Arab American perspective. California, for Adnan, was not just a destination, but a space where thoughts could unfold like a leporello—accordion-like, nonlinear, alive.

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38 - san francisco diary (part 4)
Canan Marasligil

37 - san francisco diary (part 3)

LOVE OUR PEOPLE LIKE YOU LOVE OUR FOOD the mural says, listing the elements needed in the manner of ingredients in a recipe: accountability, respect, understanding, love, empathy and listening. Produced by the Mandarin Institute and artist Vida Kuang in 2021, this mural in Chinatown San Francisco is a call to action for people to examine how they’ve consumed Asian food and culture, and actively acknowledge the labour, history and colonization of Asian peoples. “Love our people like you love our food” is a recipe for solidarity. It also includes all the ingredients for translation.

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37 - san francisco diary (part 3)
Canan Marasligil

36 - san francisco diary (part 2)

“[T]he majestic expanse of the Pacific seacoast has imperceptibly worked its way into my dreams, remaking me, stripping me down, and perhaps thereby liberating me.” Czesław Miłosz writes in “Facing Too Large an Expanse”, one of the many short essays I’ve been devouring from Visions from San Francisco Bay (translated by Richard Lourie).

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36 - san francisco diary (part 2)
Canan Marasligil

35 - san francisco diary (part 1)

“6 7 3 9”, she said from behind the counter to the man who shyly stepped inside the coffee shop as a Radiohead song was playing. He was one of the thousands of unhoused people living in the city. I hadn't been in San Francisco twenty-four hours yet, and…

Canan Marasligil
35 - san francisco diary (part 1)
Canan Marasligil

33 - culture as a bubble (or not)

On Sunday night, as the two slow weeks between Christmas and the New Year drew to a close, I felt sad and frustrated. It was time to leave my bubble and return to reality, I thought. This bubble had been a space of freedom—an empty calendar where each day unfolded in the moment. It was filled with culture: ….

Canan Marasligil
33 - culture as a bubble (or not)
Canan Marasligil

32 - may our life be vibrations

que notre vie soit vibrations is a wish I have encountered this past summer in one of the art installations spread across a beautiful estate […]of organic winery, architecture and art, where artists from around the world are commissioned to create artworks in conversation with the location where they will settle their vision in.

Artists include Ai Weiwei, Louise Bourgeois, Yoko Ono, Richard Serra, Bob Dylan, Tracey Emin, Siobhán Hapaska, Michael Stipe, Prune Nourry, Sophie Calle, Tadao Ando and many more. Whether they’re a building, like the galleries imagined by Oscar Niemeyer, Renzo Piano or Richard Rogers, or sculptures and installations, the works are monumental and an invitation to root oneself in the space. The connection with nature transforms an artistic journey into a spiritual one. The wish, may our life be vibrations, accompanies me throughout my own exploration of this extraordinary place. 

READ ON

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32 - may our life be vibrations
Canan Marasligil

31 - all the seconds towards love

What a world have we been building, since I sent the last issue of this newsletter last summer. It was issue 30, on Humility and Imagination. I feel none of these two words are part of our mainstream discourses, and it worries me. So here I am. Trying to do my part, attempting to contribute to a narrative of connection and most importantly, trying not to get distracted by voices carrying nothing else but void —from news headlines, algorithms to incompetent politicians.

I promised I would return with new thoughts, reflections, spaces for imagination…

READ ON

Canan Marasligil
31 - all the seconds towards love
Canan Marasligil

30 - On humility and imagination

Read issue thirty of the Attention Span Newsletter, published on 3 July 2024,

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30 - On humility and imagination
Canan Marasligil

28 - No Words

Read to issue twenty-eight of the Attention Span Newsletter, published on 5 June 2024,

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28 - No Words
Canan Marasligil

27 - Ava DuVernay's Political Courage

Read and listen to issue twenty-seven of the Attention Span Newsletter, published on 22 May 2024,

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27 - Ava DuVernay's Political Courage
Canan Marasligil

26 - Hidrellez

Read and listen to issue twenty-six of the Attention Span Newsletter, published on 8 May 2024,

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26 - Hidrellez
Canan Marasligil

25 - To Die a Thousand Times

Read and listen to issue twenty-five of the Attention Span Newsletter, published on 24 April 2024.

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25 - To Die a Thousand Times
Canan Marasligil

24 - Walk in my Words

Read and listen to issue twenty-four of the Attention Span Newsletter, published on 10 April 2024.

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24 - Walk in my Words
Canan Marasligil

23 - On Holding Space

Read and listen to issue twenty-three of the Attention Span Newsletter, published on 27 March 2024.

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23 - On Holding Space
Canan Marasligil

22 - The Mirror of our Lives

Read and listen to issue twenty-two of the Attention Span Newsletter, published on 13 March 2024.

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22 - The Mirror of our Lives
Canan Marasligil

21 - Dreaming of a Home for the Free Word

Read and listen to issue twenty-one of the Attention Span Newsletter, published on 28 February 2024.

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21 - Dreaming of a Home for the Free Word
Canan Marasligil

20- From the Streets to the Page: On Multilingualism and Hospitality in Literary Translation

Read and listen to issue twenty of the Attention Span Newsletter, published on 14 February 2024.

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20- From the Streets to the Page: On Multilingualism and Hospitality in Literary Translation
Canan Marasligil

19- and a lot of tenderness

Read and listen to issue nineteen of the Attention Span Newsletter, published on 31 January 2024.

Canan Marasligil
19- and a lot of tenderness