The Funambulist

04/09/2025

🎂✨ We are happy to share with you our new issue, “Ten Years of The Funambulist” (September–October 2025), where ten guest editors address the magazine’s blind spots across its first decade.

These guest editors include Michaëla Danjé, Xan Coppinger, Lissell Quiroz, Kai Bosworth, Sara Greavu, Andrea Francke, Giuliana Vidarte, WAI Architecture Think Tank, Ana María León, and Koni Benson.

Additionally, this issue proposes a text about the usefulness of The Funambulist’s contents and editorial orientation by regular contributor Sinthujan Varatharajah, as well as descriptions from four readers, Adam Arca, Yamina Sam, Kimberly F. Monroe, and Juli Reithinger, about the issue they deemed most useful for their work and organizing.

In the News from the Fronts section, you can read a text on the continuity of plantation logics in the Dominican Republic’s tourism industry by Luisa Jimenéz, a description of the Brazilian state policies regarding the country’s semi-arid region by Leonel Olimpio, and an analysis of the use of spoil tips for antifascist and working-class organizing in the French miner city of Saint-Étienne by Thomas Goumarre.

The cover artwork is by Lori Micu.

https://thefunambulist.net/shop/61-ten-years-funambulist

Ten Guest Editors Address the Magazine’s Blind Spots Across its First Decade

26/08/2025

We are excited to announce that our new issue "Ten Years of The Funambulist" (September–October 2025) is going to be out in ten days from now!

Until September 04, we offer the possibility to preorder the print+digital version of our forthcoming issue, where ten guest editors address the magazine's blind spots across its first decade.

On August 13, 2015, in the e-flux headquarters in New York’s Lower East Side, Léopold, alongside contributors and friends Sadia Shirazi, geunsaeng ahn, and Minh-Ha T. Pham, launched The Funambulist magazine, after five years of existence of The Funambulist as a blog (and later, a podcast). Ten years later, we propose an issue to celebrate this anniversary and take a pause to reflect on our trajectory. Rather than engaging in a self-congratulatory exercise, this issue favors an introspective one, insisting on what we could have done better this past decade.

The cover artwork is by Lori Micu.

Pre-order our 61st issue now to receive your print copy at the earliest.

https://thefunambulist.net/shop/61-ten-years-funambulist

23/08/2025

Separated by 18,000 kilometers, continental Malaysia and Honduras could hardly stand any further from each other geographically. In contrast, this text by Semine Long-Callesen and Nancy Dayanne Valladares traces bridges between the two territories through British colonial and, later, US imperial past and present histories of botanical displacement and agricultural endeavors.

Read more in our current issue "The Colonized & the Atomic Bomb" (July–August 2025).

Separated by 18,000 kilometers, continental Malaysia and Honduras could hardly stand any further from each other geographically. In contrast, this text by Semine Long-Callesen and Nancy Dayanne…

22/08/2025

Since late 2023, calls for solidarity with the Congo, particularly from the diaspora, have become increasingly pressing. Countless social media posts talk about hundreds of thousands—even millions—of killings in Kivu, genocide, a Rwandan invasion, Western extractivism… This text, commissioned from Onesphore Sematumba, who fled Goma a few hours before the invasion of the city by the M23, is the first outcome of our long learning process of a “political blind spot”—obscured by our understanding of the Great Lake region through an imaginary mostly influenced by the 1994 genocide of the Tutsi in Rwanda. We wanted a reference text that would allow us to unravel the multiple layers of complexity in the situation, which Onesphore has generously provided.

(Translated from French by Léopold Lambert)

Read more in our current issue "The Colonized & the Atomic Bomb" (July–August 2025).

TRANSLATED FROM FRENCH BY LÉOPOLD LAMBERT Since late 2023, calls for solidarity with the Congo, particularly from the diaspora, have become increasingly pressing. Countless social media posts talk…

20/08/2025

In her final year architecture thesis, Zara Metin presented an illustrated analysis of her grandmother’s neighborhood, “Les 3000,” in the northeastern banlieues of Paris. She describes the drastic destruction that the large housing project has experienced these past years, as well as the daily resistance of its residents, who are always reconstructing forms of architectural expressions of their intimacy.

(Translated from French by Léopold Lambert)

Read more in our current issue "The Colonized & the Atomic Bomb" (July–August 2025).

TRANSLATED FROM FRENCH BY LÉOPOLD LAMBERT In her final year architecture thesis, Zara Metin presented an illustrated analysis of her grandmother’s neighborhood, “Les 3000…

13/08/2025

The Funambulist magazine turns ten today!

On August 13, 2015, Léopold was joined by early contributors and friends Sadia Shirazi, geunsaeng ahn, and Minh-Ha T. Pham at the e-flux headquarters in New York’s Lower East Side to launch the magazine’s first issue, 'Militarized Cities.' Indeed, The Funambulist magazine might be ten-years-old today, but the editorial platform, comprising podcast and blog, is five years older.

For an independent publication, this age is simultaneously young and old, which means we have had enough number of years to make some mistakes, to dwell in our blind spots, and to be fenced in by our limitations, and we have a lot many years to look forward to in order to address each of these challenges and to continue expanding our political imaginaries.

We are grateful to our more than 700 contributors as well as over 4400 subscribers in English, French, and Spanish whose support has made this journey possible.

08/08/2025

When encountering the “Dig Up the Sun” map created by Roger Peet in 2022, it became obvious that it would have to be featured on the cover of this issue. A few years before us, Roger mapped the interconnection of the US nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Euro-American colonialism, and the extracted colonized land, in particular in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In this text, he provides us with the context in which this cartographic research was done, following the path of his father, Terry Peet, who worked for the CIA in Congo in the 1960s.

Read more in our current issue "The Colonized & the Atomic Bomb" (July–August 2025).

When encountering the “Dig Up the Sun” map created by Roger Peet in 2022, it became obvious that it would have to be featured on the cover of this issue. A few years before us…

06/08/2025

The 1945 defeat of Japan was meant to signify Korean liberation. In Manchuria, anticolonial and communist Korean guerillas were joined by the Soviet Union and Mongolian armies in August 1945, and proceeded to oust the Japanese from Korea. The US, however, imposed a partition of the peninsula following the 38th parallel, which was crystallized by the “bombing holocaust” of the Korean War starting 1950. In this conversation, Christine Hong provides useful historical context to understand the significance for Korea of the few weeks/years that followed the US nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Read more in our current issue "The Colonized & the Atomic Bomb" (July–August 2025).

A CONVERSATION WITH CHRISTINE HONG The 1945 defeat of Japan was meant to signify Korean liberation. In Manchuria, anticolonial and communist Korean guerillas were joined by the Soviet Union and…

04/08/2025

Hawaiian language and knowledge scholar Jonathan Kay Kamakawiwoʻole Osorio describes the US invasion and subsequent militarization of Hawaiʻi, the role the kingdom was forced to play during the Pacific War, as well as the interconnectedness produced by US imperialism.

Read more in our current issue "The Colonized & the Atomic Bomb" (July–August 2025).

Among the friends and comrades who were invited to the June 2024 visit in Denendeh, when the idea of this issue emerged, was Jamaica Heolimeleikalani Osorio. The following text is written by her…

29/07/2025

In June 2018, Lou Cornum gave a lecture for “Future Perfect” at Data & Society Research Institute in New York. In it, they drew links between several geographies and their peoples, who have been affected by the slow and accelerated deaths of uranium and the atomic bomb. They insisted more particularly in the parallel between the history of Dene workers of Port Radium and that of their own Diné elders—despite being geographically distant, Dene and Diné (Navajo) people share an Athabaskan language—who were subjected to similar deathly radiation. Through this commonality, they coined the manifesto notion of “Irradiated International” that links communities and nations evoked throughout this issue. As such, it was important for us to include an excerpt (the final third) of Lou’s lecture in it.

Read more in our current issue "The Colonized & the Atomic Bomb" (July–August 2025).

In June 2018, Lou Cornum gave a lecture for “Future Perfect” at Data & Society Research Institute in New York. In it, they drew links between several geographies and their peoples…

28/07/2025

On August 6 and 9, 1945, two US military aircrafts left the south Mariana islands of Tinian and Guåhan and went on to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In the two decades that follow, the fallout of the 67 US nuclear bombings (designated as “tests”) in Micronesia led to deadly health complications for Indigenous people of the region, in particular in Guåhan, from where Chamoru writer and activist Kia Quichocho wrote this text.

Read more in our current issue "The Colonized & the Atomic Bomb" (July–August 2025).

On August 6 and 9, 1945, two US military aircrafts left the south Mariana islands of Tinian and Guåhan and went on to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In the two decades that follow…

25/07/2025

When talking about colonized people who found themselves involved against their will in the US military infrastructure that culminated in the 1945 nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it is crucial not to elude colonized Korean laborers who were displaced under duress from Korea to Japan, where dozens of thousands of them were killed by the Bomb. Lisa Yoneyama draws a line between this history back to Dene Country where we started the issue.

Read more in our current issue "The Colonized & the Atomic Bomb" (July–August 2025).

When talking about colonized people who found themselves involved against their will in the US military infrastructure that culminated in the 1945 nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki…