Chin-chin Yap – författare

A powerful portrait of the greatest humanitarian emergency of our time, from the director of Human FlowIn the course of making Human Flow, his epic feature documentary about the global refugee crisis, the artist Ai Weiwei and his collaborators interviewed more than 600 refugees, aid workers, politicians, activists, doctors, and local authorities in twenty-three countries around the world. A handful of those interviews were included in the film. This book presents one hundred of these conversations in their entirety, providing compelling first-person stories of the lives of those affected by the crisis and those on the front lines of working to address its immense challenges.Speaking in their own words, refugees give voice to their experiences of migrating across borders, living in refugee camps, and struggling to rebuild their lives in unfamiliar and uncertain surroundings. They talk about the dire circumstances that drove them to migrate, whether war, famine, or persecution; and their hopes and fears for the future. A wide range of related voices provides context for the historical evolution of this crisis, the challenges for regions and states, and the options for moving forward.Complete with photographs taken by Ai Weiwei while filming Human Flow, this book provides a powerful, personal, and moving account of the most urgent humanitarian crisis of our time.

As the first cultural history of Palestinian aviation, Palestine in the Air reveals civil aviation’s role in the ‘question of Palestine’ over the past century.How do Palestinians—as individuals, communities, and as a nascent state—engage with the air? How does their systemic exclusion from aerial agency inform dominant and counter-narratives of culture and modernity?International civil aviation is a powerful tool for the disenfranchisement of Palestinian statehood, connectivity, and mobility. Yet, Palestinians have constantly sought to harness aviation as a legitimate component of modern state-building. They have also creatively appropriated aviation technologies including balloons, kites, and drones as instruments of resistance, exploiting flight’s symbolic qualities of escape and liberation to highlight the injustices of occupation.Using an interdisciplinary approach that draws on media studies, cultural studies, critical theory, diplomacy, and history, Palestine in the Air examines civil aviation’s political, social, and cultural impact upon the Palestinian quest for sovereignty. The book makes use of an unprecedented range of aviation-related sources spanning unpublished memoirs, print and image archives, interviews, art, film, literature, poetry, and stand-up comedy.