Cover Image: 'Recalling History; Sitting number 6; Conjuring A Fork of Tales' Conjuring A looted wooden box by Hagar Ophir in collaboration with Juna Suleiman, Tapiès Foundation, photograph by Natasha Christia
Travelling sources invites the audience for a storytelling evening about displacement and repair at Kaaistudios. Guests are welcome to take an itinerary in the building, navigating between forms of storytelling. First, they gather for a cup of tea in the living room of The Kitchen and in the exhibition Getting Softer by Espace Fxmme. From there on, the public can attend the storytelling Recalling History; Sitting number 6; Conjuring A Fork of Tales by Hagar Ophir in collaboration with Juna Suleiman (invited by Ariella Aïsha Azoulay) and the storytelling installation Meuse by Navid Fayaz. (For both projects you need to reserve your spot after buying your ticket, via the service mail.)
Line up of the evening
18:00 – 22:30 The Kitchen living room & Getting Softer by Espace Fxmme expo | ongoing
Getting Softer is an ongoing project by Espace Fxmme, where women meet during textile workshops to create collective curtains. They go over different themes, such as 'freedom', 'family and home' and 'motherland and origins'. Six of these curtains will be exhibited.
18:00 – 21:30 Meuse by Navid Fayaz | audio tour starting every 15min.
> after buying your ticket, you can book your slot via the reservation mail that will be sent to you.
Meuse is an audio installation unearthing the buried stories of immigration and transition and deploying them as compasses to revisit the multifaceted concept of home.
19:00 – 22:00 Recalling History; Sitting number 6; Conjuring A Fork of Tales by Hagar Ophir & Juna Suleiman | three-hour performance (with 2 breaks of 15min.)
> after buying your ticket, you can book your slot via the reservation mail that will be sent to you. You can book a ticket for either the entire performance or for separate moments.
Recalling History; Sitting number 6; Conjuring A Fork of Tales by Hagar Ophir in collaboration with Juna Suleiman (invited by Ariella Aïsha Azoulay) is a performative séance in which a family object forms the starting point to travel through Algerian history, navigating questions of colonial heritage, ancestral knowledge and displacement. Please note: the séance has a duration of around three hours (with two breaks around 15 min). The audience books time slots for different moments in the scéance or for the entire scéance.
Tickets
You can buy your tickets here.
Bios
Juna Suleiman is a Palestinian filmmaker, casting director, film editor, and actress. Since completing her studies in Cinema and Television in 2006, she has worked on numerous films, alongside her first feature documentary Mussolini’s Sister which received nominations and awards internationally.
Hagar Ophir is a multidisciplinary artist, trained as a historian, stage designer and dancer. Her works establish history as a space for action and imagination of possible presents beyond separations of time, nation-states and ideologies. Among her recent works are the internationally presented performances Recalling History I (2019), Restless Objects (2021), and Recalling History II - Gentle Revenge (2022).
Navid Fayaz is a multidisciplinary artist whose passion for storytelling and Interdisciplinary art led him to complete a postgraduate program in Digital Storytelling at KASK School of Arts Gent in 2022. His current project researches the impact of immigration on the construction of identity and a sense of belonging.
The Kitchen is a Brussels-based nomadic meeting point and laboratory for collaborative and shared reflexive praxis.
Espace Fxmme started back in 2016 at Globe Aroma. It is a platform that offers a safe(r) space for women, artists and creatives.
Ariella Aïsha Azoulay is an author, curator of anti-colonial archives, film essayist, and theorist of empires and its various technologies (from partition to photography). She is Professor of Modern Culture and Media and the Department of Comparative Literature at Brown University. Her work focuses on unlearning imperial histories, engaging with archives to generate anti-colonial knowledge and generate potential histories.
Travelling Sources
This evening is part of 'Traveling Sources' - a three-day art & reflection program on communities traveling imperial borders carrying endangered sources of storytelling. An established academic accompanies the audience in reconciling with the tales and voices of worlds silenced by imperial history. In the 2023 edition, we invite Ariella Aïsha Azoulay to guide us on an academic, cinematographic and narrative journey on stolen art exhibited in imperial museums. Azoulay invites us to reimagine how displaced communities fleeing into Europe are historically connected to the stolen objects exhibited in European colonial museums.
Curators: Hari Prasad Sacré, Arshia Ali Azmat & Hoda Siahtiri
• Hoda Siahtiri is an audio-visual and performance artist and researcher. Her artistic and educational background is in cinema and performing arts. She defines herself as a storyteller who narrates and mediates voices that have been silenced in the past. Siahtiri’s work centers around the feminine body, knowledge and ancestral heritage. She conducts a PhD-research on the singing tradition of Bakhtiari women in the west of Iran at Sint-Lucas Antwerp and University of Antwerp.
• Hari Prasad Sacré obtained a doctoral degree in educational sciences from Ghent University with his dissertation entitled Reading Illiteracy. His research discusses new forms of illiteracy arising in displaced communities travelling imperial borders. Overall, his academic and artistic work explores cultural translation as a pedagogical project for dialogue, solidarity and emancipation.
• Arshia Ali Azmat is a graphic designer, community organiser and researcher affiliated with VUB. Her artistic and graphic work focuses on linking personal and global histories through storytelling and archival explorations. She is also contributing to a research project on vacant spaces in the city and their transformation from temporary occupation sites to permanent social infrastructures.
| production Kaaitheater | co-production VUB Crosstalks & Cinema Palace | with the support of Sint-Lucas Antwerp, Constant