In the basement is a poem I wrote about a specific site on Habib University campus in the course TEXT + IMAGE: Experimental Writing in the Arts, taught by Zahra Malkani in Spring 2018.
The poem questions the nature of Habib University's security infrastructure and what it says about the campus spaces, who gets to use it and how, talking about a specific space that stands in juxtaposition to the rest of the heavily militarized, surveilled campus:
the carpenter's corner in the basement.
. . . . .
On this heavily militarized, surveilled, insecure campus,
this is the only place that is not.
No bureaucracy operates here
Anyone who enters it is respected, and welcomed in this space.
But this space, by no means, claims to be a safe space,
unlike the rest of the campus that ironically claims to be one,
with locked doors, traps, spikes and disembodied eyes,
a space safe and secure from whom, really?
This space has none of it; anyone can access it.
It has truly been the Maker’s Space,
the real, open, Playground, unlike the one that pretends to be.
Feel free to use this space to create, co-create, procreate.
O student of the liberal arts,
create
liberally.
in the basement.
