All other communists are today, International Workers' Day, in demonstrations against capitalism waving red flags and I'm in my studio painting red monochromes. I'm in hurry with this huge work that consists of 57 monochromatic paintings, each with a different red color. I'm painting it for a competition of an investment bank.

I believe that it's more important for the revolution that I do my critical art and give interviews promoting the party and the cause, than going to demonstrations to Madrid (130km from my little village) or Toledo, which is the capital city of our province (90km). I'm the only communist here in Cervera de los Montes.

Workers, peasants and intellectuals, unite against capitalism and imperialism!

Dear Riiko,

You asked about the life in Damascus. Obviously, there is pain and sadness on people’s faces. We feel tired and lost. Everyone has lost something - a father, a mother, a son, relatives, friends, at least their dreams, future, job and fortune. Most of the people don’t support any side in the war, they just want this suffering to finish.

The city is crowded from the morning till six in the afternoon. Then people prefer to go home. Evenings, nights and Fridays are dangerous. When there is a big terrorist bombing attack, the people stop moving outside for a couple of days and then they are back in the street doing shopping as usual and going to coffee shops. The restaurants are open, there is food and other stuff to buy but the prices have doubled since the beginning of the crisis. People have more time, now we prepare complicated traditional dishes for family celebrations.

Every morning I go to our family business office. I walk there because now it is dangerous to drive an expensive car. I can’t use my Mini Cooper. Many people have rediscovered biking. It is easier to move through closed streets and checkpoints with a bicycle. Actually, I don’t have much to do at the office but I try to do some archiving work to keep up the routine to continue my life.

I have to be careful not to be kidnapped because people know I’m from a wealthy family though we’ve lost practically everything in the war. Many people have left the country. My friends ask me every day why I’m not going to Europe but I don’t want to be a refugee. We are all Syrians and we must find a solution before losing the country.

Being in a war zone doesn’t mean that you stop living your life. You try to pretend that tomorrow the war ends and you will have a normal life but, suddenly, you hear that one of your friends died so you stop dreaming again and ask yourself why to have silly hopes about future. It is strange to try to do normal things with the constant sound of explosions and machine gun fire. Sometimes I want to cry and laugh out at the same time.

Now during the war, many of my friends have fallen in love, got married and they are going to have babies. I got engaged too with my long time boyfriend. Maybe you die tomorrow, so you can be brave and take important decisions in your life. Sometimes, a lost future makes you see things clearer.

Kisses from Damascus, Iman

Last fall, Tuomo and me, two Western European white male artists were drinking beer onboard M/S Superstar sailing from Helsinki to Tallinn, a traditional destination of Finnish men for cheap booze and sex.

We talked about the supposedly post-colonial and politically correct art world which, however, showcases constantly stereotypes of exotic othernesses with obscene simplicity and prejudice.

I told to Tuomo about the orientalist attitude that had been reported to me by several colleagues from the Middle East – for example an Arab female artist who had been asked to exhibit works featuring burqa imagery although she works with totally different visual and conceptual themes and a Levantine painter who was happy to exhibit in the renowned Mori Art Museum in Tokyo but complained that she was once again included in a show more for her nationality and gender than a genuine interest towards her oeuvre and attitude. Mori Art Museum advertised its exhibition Arab Express with slogans like Does the Arab World seem distant and foreign?

Why is it so difficult to understand that all artists, independently of their age, gender, race, nationality and religion, wish to be credited as good artists without prefixes like Asian, Arab, Muslim, Jew, black, female or gay?

Tuomo and me got then an idea of a show titled White Man Panorama that wouldn’t analyze white man’s burden but celebrates the clichés equivalent to burqas in orientalist shows: lager beer, team sports, dream cars and big boobs. All selected artist would be male, white, Western, straight and beerbellied.

I bussed to Madrid to buy more red colors for my monochromatic painting series 57 Varieties. Now I see 59 different reds in the studio: oil, acrylic, enamel, acrylic enamel, enamel spray, acrylic spray. Tutti frutti rossi.

I took advantage of being in the capital city and did things I can't do at home. I had lunch with Aura who is attending a meeting of international curators in the city. After a mediocre lunch at a sunny terrace, we went to Casa Encendida where I liked Albert Oehlen's paintings and then visited the galleries in Doctor Fourquet Street. I wanted to buy Bel Fullana's drawing at Louis 21 "The Gallery" (a strange name for a gallery) but luckily it was sold. I can't afford buying art but I love to collect art by trading works with other artists. I already sent a message to Bel Fullana (a beatiful name for a woman). For consolation I bought a hand-made book of Salvador Allende's last words (much cheaper than the drawing). To finish off the day, I had a drink with Abdul but a brainwashed Falun Gong member came to disturb us with anti-Chinese propaganda. I said that I'm communist but it didn't shut her up. Then I almost missed the last bus back to the village.

The propaganda of our Western governments on the Democratic People's Republic of Korea aimed at us, their citizens, is totally schizophrenic. We are told that the North Koreans are stupid, backward and underdeveloped. The capitalist-controlled press laughs that probably their missiles are decoy, made of cardboard, and that they will never be capable to build a functioning nuclear weapon.

On the other hand, our propaganda machine says that the DPRK is dangerous and can attack us any moment with nuclear warheads carried by sophisticated missiles.

We have been informed that North Korea doesn't posses any up-to-date technology but South Korea and the United States accuse them of last month's cyberattack that shut down 50000 computers and servers at South Korean broadcasters and banks last month.

Doublethink is the act of simultaneously accepting two mutually contradictory beliefs as correct. The word was coined by George Orwell in his dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.

The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them... To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just as long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies – all this is indispensably necessary.