Canan “Ja’anan” Marasligil

34 - on grief and imagination

Canan “Ja’anan” Marasligil
34 - on grief and imagination

Issue thirty-four of The Attention Span Newsletter was published on 5 February 2025

Every month, I take the time to reflect and offer a glimpse of how I see and feel the world through the lens of culture, art, translation, poetry and literature.

Access all issues and subscribe on theattentionspan.com/subscribe.

Writer, Literary Translator, Artist based in Amsterdam.

Canan (she/they) publishes The Attention Span Newsletter, taking the time to reflect, to analyse and to imagine our societies through writing, art and culture; and City in Translation, fostering discourse and conversations around the art of translation.

Canan “Ja’anan” 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 “Ja’anan” Marasligil
31 - all the seconds towards love
Canan “Ja’anan” 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

Canan “Ja’anan” Marasligil
32 - may our life be vibrations
Canan “Ja’anan” 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 “Ja’anan” Marasligil
33 - culture as a bubble (or not)