In 2018, under the pretext of "border control," a Belgian police officer shot at a moving van without warning, killing two-year-old Mawda Shawri, who was in her mother's arms. The feature film ‘hold on to her' (2024, 80’) shows how, in 2023, a group of documented and undocumented activists gathered to stage a collective hearing of Mawda’s case. The film intertwines their reflections, expanding the traditional framework of what a court considers "legally relevant" evidence. It challenges the narrow forensic logic typically employed in legal settings, insisting instead on centring language and emotions often disregarded by standard legal procedures.
The film’s dialogues are interspersed with experimental vocal poetry. Marcus Bergner, Mahmoud Hamzeh Beshtawi, Mirra Markhaeva, Lázara Rosell Albear, Naomi van Kleef, and Khaled Zead created the vocal music for the film. A set of words and images captures traces of their collective creative process. These works underscore the importance of vocal presence in the process of shared acoustic attunement during the collective hearing, giving voice to feelings of grief, mourning, and commemoration.
Two texts on the walls, titled ‘hear' (2022), are excerpts from a listening workshop led by sound designer Kwinten Van Laethem in spring 2022 at the Aire de Bois de Gard rest area near Mons. This location, along the E42 highway, is a significant part of the crime scene in Mawda’s case. The collective began its creative process with this workshop, which explored the ephemeral act of listening to a place once marked by deadly police violence, though now stripped of any visible traces. It was a performance of collective hallucination, an entirely imaginary shared experience. While it failed to leave a concrete mark on the site itself, it provided guidance when, later in the studio, the group attuned together to continue the sonic work of memorialisation.
In the display cases, a series of colourful drawings by the collective, ‘musical score drawings' (2022), are exhibited. These drawings depict the musical scores composed and used in a playful, improvisational manner during the creative process.