Image notes

Tarsh amulet scroll (10th century): Qur’anic verses block-printed on a long strip and carried as a protective amulet. The tarsh engravers of the medieval Islamic world, Ghurabāʾ (early Romani communities), pioneered block-printing centuries before Gutenberg and Fust appropriated print.
Painting of a disputation: books flying through the air into a fire while scholars and clergy watch

Image notes

Pedro Berruguete, The Disputation of Saint Dominic and the Albigensians (c. 1493–1499), Museo del Prado. Books condemned as heretical are thrown into the fire.

The body keeps the true archive.

A library usually means a room full of records. Ours had to fit inside the body: books burn, archives are falsified, borders close. What survives is what could be carried in the step, the song, the knowing.

These letters are the shelves: essays on embodied history, Romani culture and dance, with the sources and further reading beside them.

The Library

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Library | Gypsy Fires | Dance History, Romani Culture & Embodied Liberation