James R. Murphy, a math teacher at LaGuardia, New York, regarded mathematics as the most powerful and manipulable abstract language available to humans. To acquaint students who don’t “like” math with abstract and systematical thinking, he put a piece of string in their hands and taught them to make string figures.

How to spell the fight follows a thread that has been running through our fingers from centuries past till the present day, morphing from the tangible string figures that join our hands in childhood to the more elusive computational algorithms that engage our fingers today. Following this line of inquiry through various twists and turns, a conversation about collective agency emerges with the aim of rethinking current paradigms of cognition, education, and power.

Kayfa ta is a non-profit Arabic publishing initiative that uses the popular format of how-to manuals (kayfa=how, ta=to) to respond to some of today’s pertinent needs; be they skills, thoughts, sensibilities, emotions, tools or other. Kayfa ta was founded in 2012 by Maha Maamoun and Ala Younis. Kayfa ta publishes in book and exhibition formats.

Author: Natascha Sadr Haghighian
Year: 2018
Pages: 80
Dimensions: 9.5 x 15 cm
Cover: Softcover
ISBN: 978-3-95679-453-7
Language: English