Tag: LAAF 2021

Photo of K. Eltinae


Photo of K. Eltinae
Photo: Mario Pardo Segovia

K. Eltinaé is a Sudanese poet of Nubian descent, raised internationally as a third culture kid. His work has been translated into Arabic, Greek, Farsi, and Spanish and has appeared in World Literature Today, The Ordinary Chaos of Being Human: Many Muslim Worlds (Penguin), The African American Review, Muftah, among others. He is the winner of The 2019 Beverly Prize for International Literature (Eyewear Publishing) and Muftah´s Creative Writing Competition At Home in the World and the recipient of the Visionary Arts Memorial Reza Abdoh Poetry Prize 2021, He is also co-winner of the 2019 Dignity Not Detention Prize (Poetry International). He currently resides in Granada, Spain. His debut collection The Moral Judgement of Butterflies is forthcoming this spring from Black Spring Press. More of his work can be found at: https://www.instagram.com/k.eltinae.

 


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Photo of Nour Sokhon

“Volatile Grounds” is an auditory installation which is part of a performative installation entitled The Great Report, which took place in Kampnagel, Hamburg (2020).

“Volatile Grounds” embodies the privatisation of lands and the mismanagement of waste. The incessant neglect in which our hand in nature and lack of respect towards the environment caused this situation to escalate, and is one that requires our urgent attention. We have already reached a critical point where the repercussions of our actions have led to mass suffering, such as high levels of food and water contamination, medical setbacks, and further detrimental effects towards the people. We cannot continue with this downward spiral lest it leads to the further demise of the entire country and its citizens.

 

“…we hear from time to time that someone got into the hospital and was cured getting out he contracted a virus so this virus contracted is due to the storage of the psychotoxic that’s in the hospitals and there are some apartments within Beirut where are stored these kind of psychotoxics” — Anonymous

 

The soundscape is composed of interview material collected in 2019 from anonymous activists a few months before the start of the revolution in Beirut, Lebanon. The content centres around the waste management crisis and land reclamation issue present in the region. The raw and manipulated field recordings work as metaphors to convey the constant disharmony present in the country. For instance, crow sounds are used to represent death and the abyss. On the other hand car horns describe the sonic environment of the country and that change needs to happen in order for it to stand back on its feet. The sonic score maintains a high level of density throughout most of the composition, similar to how the country’s citizens have been honking at the politicians for years. Coincidently during the early production phase of the project in October 2019 the revolution broke out in the country, which unveiled concealed truths that these anonymous activists had shared in the interviews.

 

We give thanks to all the anonymous activists that have contributed their time to “Volatile Grounds” and The Great Report.


Photo of Nour Sokhon
Photo: Omar Sfeir

Nour Sokhon is a Lebanese interdisciplinary artist based in Beirut, Lebanon. Her creative practice is centered around exploring different methods of working with artistic research including interview material, field recordings and recorded material from an organized site specific intervention. The research is then translated into sound/music compositions, performances, interactive installations and moving image work.

In 2014, Nour achieved an undergraduate degree in Fine Arts from the American University in Dubai, and in 2017 she culminated a large scale project; a documentary entitled ‘People on Sound’, as part of her Master’s degree in Sound for the Moving Image at the Glasgow School of Art in the UK.

In 2019, Nour received the Emerging Artist Prize at the Sursock Museum in Lebanon, for a moving image piece entitled ‘Revisiting: Hold Your Breath’. She is currently completing the Sound Art 2020 scholarship that she was awarded by Lower Saxony and the University of Fine Arts in Braunschweig, Germany. Nour has exhibited her artwork in Beirut, Dubai, London, Glasgow, Paris, Hamburg, Madrid, Zurich, Juterbog, Sellasia and Beirut. She has also performed in Frankfurt, Berlin, Beirut, Dubai, Paris, Montreal, Melbourne, Sellasia, Bern, Soustons and in different festivals such as the Al Quoz Arts Festival (Dubai, UAE), the Other Worlds Festival (Blackpool, UK), the Network Music Festival 2020 (online) and This Is Not Lebanon (Frankfurt, Germany). She is a member of two sound collectives, Tse Tse Fly Middle East and Heya.


Credits:

Interview Material: Moritz Frischkorn & Nour Sokhon

“Volatile Grounds” (Sound installation): Nour Sokhon

Artistic Director: Moritz Frischkorn

Photographer: Robin Hinsch

Live Performance/ Co-creation: Maria F. Scarano / Scenography: Vladimir Miller / Sound/Music: Katharina Pelosi / Dramaturgy: Heiki Bröckerhoff / “Logistics of Paradise (Video, Text, Installation): Paula Hildebrandt / “Wahala” (Photography, installation): Robin Hinsch / Video: Bianca Peruzzi / Light: Rucarda Schnoor / Production Management: Annalena Kirchler / Cooperation Research: Lucie Schröder / Video editing “Logistics of Paradise”: Anna Fiedler / Participation stage design: LU’UM


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Photo of Intissar Belaid

Palm trees steadfastly standing 

In the face of a poisoned sky 

And a sea sometimes dying and sometimes resisting 

A train, loaded with pesticides, overtakes pedestrians

Some of whom curse the train,

Others have no choice but to bow their heads  

And curse later

 

A journey – captured in one take – that goes back along part of the phosphate road to the city of Gabès, located in the southeast of Tunisia. Gabès is unique in that it is both an oasis and a seaport overlooking the Mediterranean.

 

Since its establishment in the 1970s, the chemical complex has caused environmental damage to the city of Gabès, where phosphate is processed for export to Europe. Every day the complex pours tonnes of its toxic waste into the sea by the city’s bay.


Photo of Intissar Belaid

Intissar Belaid is a filmmaker and visual artist based in Tunisia. She explores different techniques in the fields of cinema and arts. Her work revolves around tackling concepts like perception and time, human and nonhuman history, as well as collective and individual memory, through an artistic approach that adopts divergent points of view.
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Intissar investigates a variety of disciplines in order to question a generation in relation to its memory in a current socio-political context. Through this questioning, she traces what remains of an event, an era, a history.

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It feels crucial now to reach out and remind us that we are all we need. Our salvation lies within us: within our systems, our cultures, our indigenous ways of life. We are told that we must exist within systems created to destroy us; that we need these systems to survive. This is a lie. Now, how will you act upon what you know?


Photo of Juliana Yazbeck
Photo: Samuel Black

Juliana Yazbeck is an award-winning actor, writer & musical artist. As an actor, she is best known for her roles as Niqabi Ninja in Sara Sharaawi’s play Niqabi Ninja, Roza Salih in Glasgow Girls (National Theatre of Scotland) and Yara in the Emmy-winning series Shankaboot (BBC World Service).

Juliana’s debut record SUNGOD was awarded PRS Foundation’s Women Make Music Award. Juliana recently played a sold-out show at London’s Electric Ballroom (2020). In 2019, Juliana played London’s ULU alongside Sudanese icon AlSarah, headlined the National Theatre River Stage and Liverpool Arab Arts Festival, and was nominated for the Arab British Centre’s Award for Culture.

Juliana also writes regularly. Her words feature in gal-dem magazine and on Medium.com.

Twitter: @julianayaz


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Fatim Benhamza’s project Positive Pandemics is now available to view online at LAAF’s website.

A series of three digital illustrations that present utopian and dystopian visions of Casablanca’s environmental future, the project aims to raise awareness of the impact of ‘bad’ politics on the climate crisis in the Arab region.

This online project is part of Liverpool Arab Arts Festival 2021 and is available until November.

You can see Fatim’s work here: www.arabartsfestival.com/events/fatim-benhamza-positive-pandemics/

Liverpool Arab Arts Festival (LAAF), the UK’s longest running festival of Arab arts and culture, returns in July 2021 for its 23rd edition. The multi-artform programme of live and online events is an artist-led response to the complexities of the climate emergency in the Middle East and North African (MENA) region today.

The first wave of festival events encompasses July and August, with events for September, October and November being released later in the year. LAAF’s launch programme features the world premiere of Eating The Copper Apple by poet lisa luxx; Grounds for Concern, a new installation by visual artist Jessica El Mal; Trauma Then, Trauma Now by Youcef Hadjazi at the Royal Standard; the premiere of Blue Spaces by music collective هيHeya; the return of the ARTISTS | IDEAS | NOW series of talks, as well as a new film programme running throughout the festival.

Our Women on the Ground: Essays by Arab Women Reporting from the Arab World is a panel of leading female journalists featured in the book. LAAF has commissioned the first episode of a new podcast What Happened in Baghdad by Kamel Saeed, which presents a fascinating audio journey of discovery into the creatives that once called the Iraqi capital home.

Key projects later in the festival include an ambitious new LAAF commission, 22, which will bring together 22 Arab artists, activists and creatives from across the MENA region nations to create an artistic anthology in response to the climate emergency. Threads is a new multidisciplinary performance and digital work bringing together three Arab women artists – Omeima Mudawi-Rowlings, Alia Alzougbi and Rihab Azar – as they weave together stories of migration, disability and the passage of time.

The dire impact of the climate crisis is already being disproportionately felt in the MENA region, an area which has faced unprecedented climatic events in recent years. Scorching temperatures, rising sea levels and dwindling natural resources increasingly threaten a region already confronting the continuing realities of conflict and colonialism. From performance to visual art, LAAF 2021 will provide a platform to express the lived experiences of those often excluded from climate conversations, while addressing interconnected issues such as imperialism, climate justice and capitalism.

Jack Welsh, Festival Programme Manager, said: “Across four months, our programme will engage, inform and creatively reimagine our future direction with respect to the climate emergency. Artists and performers from across the Arab world will ask what the international community can learn from those who are already stepping up to respond to the crisis on their doorstep? How can we establish a collective approach to dealing with this enormous challenge?”

Founded in 1998, Liverpool Arab Arts Festival takes place each year in leading arts and cultural venues across Liverpool. This year’s programme will include a mix of physical and online events, continuing LAAF’s mission to celebrate the best in Arab arts and culture, while connecting physical audiences in Liverpool with digital audiences around the world.

In response to the global COVID-19 pandemic, the 2021 festival is for the first time expanding from its usual two-week period to a longer festival, spanning almost four months from July to November. Further events for autumn will be announced later this summer.

The emergency is here.

Join us from 16 July – 14 November 2021 for the 23rd Liverpool Arab Arts Festival – an artist-led response to the complexities of the climate emergency in the Middle East and North African (MENA) region today.

The climate emergency is the greatest threat to our planet. Its dire impact is already being disproportionately felt in the MENA region, an area which has faced unprecedented climatic events in recent years. Scorching temperatures, rising sea levels and dwindling natural resources increasingly threaten a region already confronting the continuing realities of conflict and colonialism.

This year’s festival presents a multidisciplinary range of artist-led responses to the climate emergency. From performance to visual art, the festival provides a platform to express the lived experiences of those often excluded from climate conversations, while addressing interconnected issues such as imperialism, climate justice and capitalism.

Across four months, our programme will engage, inform, question, and creatively reimagine our future direction. It asks: what can we learn from those already stepping up to respond? How can we do more? How do we collectively deal with the challenges that communities are already experiencing?

In response to the ongoing global Covid-19 pandemic, the festival will – for the first time – run until November 2021. It will continue LAAF’s mission to celebrate the best in Arab arts and culture, connecting physical audiences in Liverpool with audiences around the world online.

Further information on festival events and participating artists and performers will be released across our social media and website in the coming weeks!

Liverpool Arab Arts Festival (LAAF) is inviting artistic proposals for our 2021 festival.

The devastating impact of climate change is being felt across the world. Global warming is fuelling extreme weather events, rising sea levels, intense heat, natural disasters, environmental degradation, food and water insecurity, mass migration, and conflict.

These consequences are already daily experiences for many within the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.

Our 2021 festival will respond to how climate change is impacting MENA communities who are already experiencing the destruction of their environments and land due to conflict and colonialism.

Thanks to everyone who has submitted a proposal. Applications are now closed. We will be in touch with all applicants by mid January 2021.