Was Tun? A video reply from Yusuf Islam.

In recent weeks I've been deliberating the Documenta 12 team's first leitmotif "Is modernity our antiquity?" As regular readers will know, I've taken the position that the Terror of History, as the late University of Chicago Professor Mircea Eliade coined it, leaves the question somewhat in tatters. While the team has also raised the more insightful question, "Which modernity and whose antiquity?", this line of questioning still marginalises those cultures wholly and voluntarily outside the Western paradigm.

On this rather beautiful spring morning here in Leipzig, I have decided to address the question today by simply shutting down my Powerbook and going for a walk. I leave you with something you'll likely enjoy much more than my usual pontification: a prayer for peace. Here Yusuf Islam (Cat Stevens) performs Heaven / Where True Love Goes at the Nobel Peace Prize Concert in Oslo, Norway, 11 December 2006.