To Navigate Backward: Resonating with Zapatismo a book-within-a-book, the first of three mouvements (as in a musical composition) is a collection of essays titled When the Roots Start Moving: Chto Delat and Free Home University—investigating predicaments of rootedness and rootlessness and notions of belonging and of displacement across different geographical and epistemological coordinates.
What is lost and what is found in the process of returning home? homecomings revisits, through varying means of translation, spatial and conceptual loci of homecoming within artistic practice. This publication draws its principle inspiration from the architectural and linguistic returns and repetitions punctuating artist Hreinn Friðfinnsson’s House Project and author Georges Perec’s Espèces d’espaces. Testing the concept of “homecomings” against a number of artistic practices, this volume grows out of an imperative to act according to the referentiality hallmarked in the conceptually rigorous works of Friðfinnsson and Perec. The collected contributions oscillate between self-referential modes—creating full-circle loops within singular practices—and far-reaching trajectories, gaining momentum and associations upon every rereading. Like Perec, many works call for an attuned presence, and in so doing, proffer a homecoming at the very site of reading.