Mahmoud Darwish Chair

‘Literature Talk: Writers from Black Arabia’

Nedjma HBenchelabi — Thu, 11 Aug 2022 11:31:18 +0000

Writers from a region at the intersection of two cultures. Sudan and South Sudan are home to a number of great writers who are rarely heard here. Bozar brings them together for a special evening. The authors will read from their work and talk to Xavier Luffin, translator and professor of Arabic literature at ULB. Themes they will deal with are the country of origin, exile, Arabic, but above all the universal language of literature.

According to The Guardian, Abdelaziz Baraka Sakin (Sudan, 1963) is one of the most important writers from Sudan. The author had to flee for his life and now lives in exile in France. Although his work is banned in his homeland, it is enormously popular and widely read. In 2015, an English translation of The Jungo: Stakes of the Earth and Birth was published.

Stella Gaitano (Khartoum, 1979) is a writer from South Sudan. She is known for her short stories, which often deal with the harsh living conditions of people from South Sudan. Since the country’s independence in 2011, she also writes about life in her new nation.

Hammour Ziada, a Sudanese writer who lived in exile before the fall of Omar al-Bashir’s regime, won the Naguib Mahfouz Prize in 2014 for his novel The Longing of the Dervish, which was also shortlisted for the Grand Prix du roman arabe. He is the author of four novels and a collection of short stories, one of which, The Drowning, has been adapted for the screen.

Nedjma HBenchelabi — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 16:30:47 +0000

The conference not only celebrates Darwish’s oeuvre and its interaction with its modern literary, intellectual, and political reality, but also explores its global literary impact. It examines the tensions that shaped Darwish’s language and kept fluctuating – in the ear of its listener, as it once fluctuated in the throat of its poet – between meaning and nothingness, tragedy and lyricism, the individual and the collective, and also, between Palestinian particularity and universal humanity. The conference also addresses Darwish’s creativity as a symbolic, patriotic, Arab and national revolutionary figure, and as a basic reference for modernist poetry in general and for committed poetry in particular. Hence, the conference examines how Mahmoud Darwish’s legacy has been employed, represented, and interpreted, in the past and in the present. Attention is turned as well to criticism of the systematic employment of Darwish, his works, and his patriarchal framing, which has led to the marginalization and silencing of other poetical and literary genres, as a drift away from commitment to political action.

Organised by Qattan Foundation in partnership with Darwish Chair Among others.

Dalida as a Cinema Icon and the Face of Egyptian Nostalgia

Nedjma HBenchelabi — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 16:08:44 +0000

Lecture Performance & screening by Amr Kamal (Cairo/New York)

The Egyptian-born Franco-Italian singer Dalida is renowned worldwide for her top-selling musical records. But in Egypt, she was a national symbol. Before emerging on the French stage, Dalida made her debut in Egyptian cinema. In 1986, Dalida returned to her birthplace to reflect on her past and star in the film The Sixth Day by Youssef Chahine. In this talk, we will follow Dalida’s journey from Egypt to France and back again to make her last film. Dalida is a figure of Egyptian nationhood and the diaspora. Her image reflects Egypt’s cosmopolitan and colonial past.

The presentation of this evening is conceived by Amr Kamal. He is Associate Professor of French and Arabic at City College New York and at the Graduate Center. Kamal’s research focuses on the literature and culture of the Arab world and the Mediterranean from the nineteenth century to the present. His recent research is titled, Iconography of Displacement: Deconstructing Colonial Imagery in Contemporary Mediterranean Cinema.

Amr Kamal is one the four grantee of the open call for arts organized by the Mahmoud Darwish Chair, Bozar, A. M. Qattan Foundation, Camargo Foundation and Mucem, with the support of Boghossian Foundation for Brussels residency.

Followed by Q&A , moderated by Nedjma Hadj Benchelabi

‘Literature Talk: ”You Have Not Yet Been Defeated“: Writers from Egypt’

Nedjma HBenchelabi — Thu, 11 Aug 2022 11:23:28 +0000

A political and poetic evening about the role of authors under repressive regimes. Egyptian poets and philosophers reflect on the living history of ancient Egypt. Writing serves as an act of resistance and a way to remember oppression, but it also forms the foundation for new ideas for a different future. The evening’s title is based on the book of the same name by Alaa Abd el-Fattah, an independent philosopher and political prisoner, who was published in English last year. The line is a lovely metaphor for the fight for justice, as well as a message of hope.

With Lina Attalah, Ahdaf Soueif & Iman Mersal

Lina Attalah is co-founder and editor-in-chief of Mada Masr, an independent Egyptian online newspaper. Awarded in 2020 by The Times and the Knight Foundation, she is particularly active in the fight for press freedom.

Ahdaf Soueif is the author the bestselling novel The Map of Love, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and numerous outher novels, of which 8 are translated in English. As a journalist she has been a key political commentator on Egypt and Palestine, and throughout the 2011 uprisings in Cairo she reported front the ground for The Guardian and appeared on television and radio. She is also the founder of the Palestine Festival of Literature, PalFest.

Iman Mersal is generally considered as one of the most important Egyptian poets living today. She is the author of several books of poems and a collection of essays, How to Mend: Motherhood and Its Ghosts. This fall the New York publisher Farrar Strauss & Giroux will publish The Treshold, a selection of her poems in English translation. She is Professor of Arabic Language and Literature at the University of Alberta, Canada.

Raeda Saadeh in residency at Camargo Foundation & Mucem

Nedjma HBenchelabi — Thu, 11 Aug 2022 11:08:32 +0000

The project will consist of a series of performative pieces focusing on the formative feminist historio-mythological figures and the way the narratives they have set in motion, are relevant to the Palestinian as well as global feminist cultural identity today. The performances will be taking place in historical locations significant to the narrative of European cultures, while highlighting the way the colonizing cultural orientalism has shaped our own self-perception. The performances will be staged, then documented and presented as large-format photographs, video and holographic media for specific exhibiting spaces.

The rationale for the project is to show the possibilities for an extended mythological basis for the Palestinian and regional women’s historical narrative, beyond the constraints of present conflicts, patriarchy, orientalist and folkloric views, class and domestic struggles. The emancipatory potential of the heroines chosen will be wide and universal, showing the way for a potentially independent, yet a globally and culturally relevant and authentic feminine/feminist-Palestinian narrative. These “performed heroines” will still share some common traits, opposing the constraints we have willingly accepted as women in Palestinian society with the accompanying weight of the expectations that are upon us daily – the bearers, the feeders and mourners of men. We share their economies, beliefs, mythologies, histories and struggles. But it is the contribution to the history and culture which is something we are also willing to fight for, as it is the part of our “muqāwamah” – our duty to the daily struggle for freedom, as well as for our independence and emancipation. The narrative of mythologies and heroism is forced upon us, so my position is that as an artist, i have the right the will and means to change it, shape it, and through a work of mythological fantasy create a fairer, more realistic, and inclusive history of women in struggle.

The underlying question common to all neo-historic art is not the alternative lines, revisionism or the narrative control, but the induction of empathy through the common bond between the artist and the participative society. The obligation to emancipation and freedom is not part of the oppressive limitations, if it is willingly accepted and I am happy to take that position. It opens so many possibilities, as the choices taken by artists today become the politics and education of tomorrow.

Raeda Sa’adeh

Sa’adeh was born in Umm al-Fahm in 1977. She received her BFA and MFA from Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem. She was the winner of the first Young Artist of the Year Award organized by the A M Qattan Foundation in 2000. Her work is mainly in photography, performance and video, where Sa’adeh uses her body as the core subject of most of her work. She describes her themes as such: “In my artwork, the woman I represent lives in a world that attacks her values, her love, her spirit on a daily basis, and for this reason, she is in a state of occupation – and her world could be here in Palestine or elsewhere; and despite all, she looks towards her future with a smile.” Living in Jerusalem, Sa’adeh has extensively exhibited her work internationally, including at the European Parliament, the GEMAK Museum, The Hague, the House of World Culture, the Sydney Biennial, the Sharjah Biennial, as well as at exhibitions in Austria, France, Denmark, and others. In 2015, Al-Monitor considered her among 50 people shaping the culture of the Middle East.

Camargo Foundation

Mucem

Beirut Diaries – Mai Masri

Nedjma HBenchelabi — Wed, 06 Apr 2022 20:55:31 +0000

Through the experiences of 25-year-old Nadine Zaidan who was one of the thousands of activists who gathered in Beirut’s Martyr’s square in the chaotic days immediately following the assassination of Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri in February of 2005, Beirut Diaries explores the critical transformations and crucial questions facing Lebanon at that moment of history.

Mai Masri is a Beirut-based Palestinian filmmaker who studied film at San Francisco State University, USA. She reached international acclaim with her debut feature film, 3000 Nights (2015). She is also known for her humanistic and poetic documentaries such as Children of Fire (1990) and Frontiers of Dreams and Fears (2001). Her films were screened worldwide and won over 90 international awards.

In the framework of L’heure d’hiver Beirut

The Lebanese Rocket Society – Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige

Nedjma HBenchelabi — Wed, 06 Apr 2022 20:56:54 +0000

Rounds by Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige
Rounds is a video featuring Rabih Mroué, who appears as a strangely familiar driver, filmed steering through the streets of the city. Beirut is mentioned, evoked through the driver’s stories and through sound, but never seen. Like his driving, Mroué’s stories spin in a circle.

The Lebanese Rocket Society: The strange tale of the Lebanese Space adventure by Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige
In the early 60s, during the cold war and the apex of Pan Arabism, a group of utopian students and researchers enters the race to space and create the Lebanese Rocket Society. Sometimes, and specially nowadays, dreams can overtake a tormented history.

Filmmakers Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige were both born in Beirut in 1969. They did not study art or cinema at a formal level but were drawn to both in their youth as a way to respond to the aftermath of the Lebanese civil war. Their work in several media is thematically and formally connected to their research and their lives and explores topics including traces of the invisible, the absent, the construction of the imaginary and the writing of contemporary history.

In the framework of L’heure d’hiver Beirut

UWRUBBA

Nedjma HBenchelabi — Fri, 11 Mar 2022 22:05:41 +0000

On the left, on the Mediterranean terrace, seven musicians and a mezzo-soprano; on the stage, seven dancers; in the background, the large mirror shows extracts from Jean-Daniel Pollet’s film L’Ordre, which takes as its subject the last European leprosy colony on the island of Spinalonga, off the coast of Crete, at the crossroads of East and West.

Against a background of melodies by Vivaldi, medieval polyphonic chants and rebetiko – a music of spiraling oriental blues touched by gypsy accents – Ali and Hèdi Thabet build an intense performance, in which artistic forms mingle. With the words of Raimondakis, one of the people with leprosy and one of the island’s true characters, they associate a free interpretation of the myth of Narcissus, symbol of beauty, but also of love and exile. While questioning notions of normality, rejection and attraction, the two brothers create a dialogue between music, movement and the poetry of René Char. A total art that draws from the well of Greece, in the cradle of Europe, to explore the situation of the artist examining themselves as well as the condition of actor and spectator.

Cast

Concept: Ali & Hèdi Thabet

Dramaturgie: Hèdi Thabet

Music direction: Ali Thabet

Scenography & costumes: Florence Samain

Lights: Ana Samoilovich

Sound & video: Aurélien Cros

Dancers: Laida Aldaz Arrietta, Léa Dubois, Viktoria Antonova, Julia Färber, Benfury, Artémis Stavridi & Hèdi Thabet

Vocals: Mehdi Ayachi

Lyric singer: Catherine Bourgeois

Vocals, kanun: Mourad Brahim

Bouzouki: Michalis Dimas

Violin: Stefanos Filos

Clarinet, ney, laouto, vocals: Ilias Markantonis

Vocals, guitar: Ioannis Niarchios

Baglama vocals: Foteini Papadopoulou

Production manager: Etat d’esprit productions

Coproduction: Théâtre National de Wallonie-Bruxelles, les Théâtres de la ville de Luxembourg, Maison de la culture Amiens, ThéâtredelaCité – CDN Toulouse Occitanie, Maison des arts de Créteil, la Comète – Scène nationale de Châlons-en-Champagne, Théâtres en Dracénie – Draguignan & Etat d’esprit productions

With the support of Adami, la Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles, la Chaire Mahmoud Darwich/Bozar & la Villette-Paris

Meet the Writer: Dima Wannous & Mathias Enard

Nedjma HBenchelabi — Thu, 17 Feb 2022 10:54:42 +0000

A literary meeting between an Arab writer and a French writer, each a great admirer of the other’s work.

Dima Wannous studied French literature at the University of Damascus and at the Sorbonne in Paris. She achieved international renown with The Frightened Ones, a novel that unerringly relates the impact of the Syrian dictatorship on the everyday lives of young people. Wannous is one of the most important young Arab writers, and has lived in Europe since the Syrian civil war.

Mathias Énard studied Persian and Arabic. He became known for his novels in which history, politics and literature are inextricably linked. Tell Them of Battles, Kings and Elephants (2010) is about 16th century Constantinople, Street of Thieves about the Arab Spring, and Compass (2015) about classical music and the war in Syria. The latter won the Prix Goncourt. Énard is one of the most important contemporary French writers.

Moderated by Nedjma Hadj Benchelabi (Coordinatrice du programme de la chaire M.Darwich)

Partners Paard van Troje & Tropismes Libraires

Support Creative Europe programme of the European Union

In the framework of LEILA – Arabic Literature in European Languages & la Présidence française du Conseil de l’Union Européenne

Ben Fury — Crowd

Nedjma HBenchelabi — Thu, 17 Feb 2022 10:54:38 +0000

Choreographer and dancer Benaji Mohamed/Ben Fury started exploring and developing his own breakdance technique at the Galerie Ravenstein, a hotspot of the underground breakdance scene in Brussels during the 80s and 90s. Here, he worked on his floorwork, groove, style and power moves. In 1998, he became a part of the contemporary dance scene and embarked on a journey with, among others, Hush Hush Hush, Fatou Traoré, Bud Blumenthal, Roberto Olivan, Mauro Pacagnella, Damien Jalet and Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui.
Ben Fury fuses these two worlds of artistic expression, allowing one to inspire and influence the other.

For EUROPALIA TRAINS & TRACKS, Ben Fury will return to the Galerie Ravenstein as well as the Brussels Central Station, to create a performance with 14 students of Bachelor Dans Koninklijk Conservatorium – AP hogeschool Antwerpen. The starting point for this creation is the circulation in and around a train station, a place where you watch and are watched, a place where different cultures and generations meet in different timeframes and atmospheres. Some see a missed train and the resulting waste of time as a cause for frustration, while others enjoy the freedom of this extra time gained.

Production EUROPALIA TRAINS & TRACKS, BOZAR, Mahmoud Darwish Chair & Bachelor Dans Koninklijk Conservatorium – AP hogeschool Antwerpen.