Felipe Steinberg
Saodat Ismailova (online)
Lara Khaldi (online)

Evagoria Dapola
Gema Darbo
Anna Gorchakovskaya
Arianna Kalliga
Viktoria Khokhlova
Daniela Medina Poch
Mireia Molina Costa
SITAAD / Leyla Degan & Naima Hassan
Magdalena Zotou

Conceptual note, or a first trigger:

Then I wondered:
how does the place become
a reflection of its image in myth,
or an adjective of speech?
And is a thing's image stronger
than the thing itself?
If it weren't for my imagination
my other self would have told me:
you are not here!

Mahmoud Darwish
excerpt from
NOT AS A FOREIGN TOURIST DOES

Methodologies:
Introduction session, collective interventions and exercises (indoors and outdoors), thinking together/with sites.

Noor Abed (b. 1988, Palestine) works at the intersection of performance, media and film. Her works create situations where social possibilities are both rehearsed and performed. Abed’s work has been screened and exhibited internationally at Anthology Film Archives, New York, Gabes Cinema Fen Film Festival, Tunisia, Jihlava International Documentary Film Festival, The New Wight Biennial, Los Angeles, Leonard & Bina Gallery, Montréal, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, Ujazdowski Centre for Contemporary Art, Warsaw, The Mosaic Rooms, London, and MAXXI - National Museum of 21st Century Art, Rome, among others. In 2020, she co-founded, with Lara Khaldi, the School of Intrusions, an independent educational collective in Ramallah, Palestine. Abed is currently a resident at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam 2022-24 and was recently awarded the Han Nefkens Foundation/Fundació Antoni Tàpies Video Art Production Grant 2022.

www.instagram.com/noor_abed/

Felipe Steinberg is an interdisciplinary artist whose work considers constructed meanings of the local and the global through processes of de-contextualization and re-contextualization. He enlists various types of media and systems of circulation to explor the thickness between social spaces and interpersonal encounters. His work has bee presented in venues such as Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Museu Oscar Niemeyer, Curitiba, Brazil; Museu de Arte Moderna Aloísio Magalhães, Recife, Brazil; Socrate Sculpture Park, New York; Anthology Film Archives, New York; Khalil Sakakini Cultural Center, Ramallah; Visual Arts Center-University of Texas, Austin; 1After320, New Delhi; and SESC, Ribeirão Preto, Brazil. He has been awarded the Idea Fund Prize - The Andy
Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts (2017), and support from the Houston Arts Alliance
Artists Individuals Grant Program (2018), among others. Steinberg is the co-founder of
ACCA, Art and Culture in Contexts of Authoritarianisms, a working group studying,
discussing, and articulating collective and individual responses to contexts of
authoritarianism with a special focus on Brazil.

https://felipesteinberg.info

Saodat Ismailova lives and works in Tashkent and Paris. She is recognized as an important voice of the first generation of Central Asian artists who came of age in the post-Soviet era. She studied at the Tashkent State Art Institute and Le Fresnoy in France. In 2004 her documentary Aral. Fishing in an Invisible Sea (which she made with Carlos Casas) won Best Documentary at the Turin Film Festival. Her feature film 40 Days of Silence (Chilla, 2014), supported by Cinefoundation, premiered at Berlinale Forum and was selected for Cannes Film Festival. In 2013 she presented her first video installation at the Venice Biennale, and in 2022 her work was selected for The Milk of Dreams, the main exhibition at the Venice Biennale. In response to her selection for Documenta fifteen, she initiated research group Davra to support, develop and empower voices from Central Asia.
Works by Ismailova are in the collections of museums including Centre Pompidou,
Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and Almaty Museum of Modern Art.

Lara Khaldi is an independent curator and critic from Jerusalem, Palestine, living
temporarily in Amsterdam. She was part of the curatorial team of documenta 15. Until
recently she was the head of the Media Studies Programme at Alquds Bard College,
Jerusalem and a tutor in the Disarming Design MA program, at Sandberg Institute, 2020-
2022. Khaldi is appointed as the new director of the contemporary art space de Appel in Amsterdam, starting from January 2023.

Module II | 5-11 June
Mentor: FRAUD (Audrey Samson &  Francisco Gallardo)

Nishat Awan

Annie Albagli
Giulia Colletti
Yasamin Ghalehnoie
Pietro Lo Casto
Valentina Mandalari
Tawfik Naas
Blqees Zuhair

Conceptual note, or a first trigger:

Addressing the historiographical invisibility (Aixelà Cabré, 2020) alluded to in Ahmed Morsi's poetry, where certain disappearances, whilst remembered, are not inscribed in History, how can we account for the plurality of Mediterraneans, even those effaced? Through our art-led enquiry, EURO-VISION, we have been thinking with and through the EU's Critical Raw Materials Initiative, tracing its operations as political technology of racial capitalism and governance of resources.

Developmental historians have pointed that this initiative can be traced back to the 1983 G7 summit in Williamsburg, Virginia, USA. This event is perhaps better known for its arms control agreements with the Soviet Union, as well as constituting the first participation of the EU commission in the inter-governmental forum. The Williamsburg Declaration is perhaps lesser known for its foundational role in creating the free trade environment that currently sustains commodity markets, and with it, raw material trading.
However, this is only a part of a story that arguably began with the Berlin Conference (1884-85), often referred to as the partition of Africa, or with earlier 19th century imaginaries such as the French trope depicting North-Africa as ‘The Granary of Rome’, providing the republic the discursive foundations for its protectorates in Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco. France, self-appointed successor of the Roman Empire, tasked itself with the transformation of the Sahara desert into a modern Garden of Hesperides. Other extractive imaginaries include German architect Herman Sörgel’s Atlantropa, a mega dam infrastructure, effectively a sea-land grab across the Med, designed to facilitate access to resources in the southern continent as well as hydroelectricity.

These powerful fantasies often circumscribed the Med as a syphon, institutionalising the colony’s role as purveyor of raw materials.
Later, based on the notion of Eurafrica, the European Economic Community (predecessor of the European Union), was explicitly predicated upon the exploitation of African resources, which could be better accomplished through the community’s coordinated effort (Hansen & Jonson, 2013, Samson and Gallardo, 2021). Another trope was the California-Morocco analogy in order to usher in large scale citrus cultivation. Nowadays, Morocco houses a dynamic and evolving digital ecosystem, servicing the outsourcing of EU Border surveillance.

Methodologies:

By examining these genealogies together, through archival materials and selected readings, we aim to make-sense of the extractive visions by co-developing terminology through a collective glossary, and begin to imagine otherwise by reclaiming some of these terms, and by creating vocabularies which might subtend a Mediterranean plurality.

FRAUD (Audrey Samson & Francisco Gallardo) is a London-based duo whose spatial practice is concerned with modes of thinking materially about decolonization as a geosocial process, thinking with the ways in which we might encourage relations of solidarity which promote the inseparability of land, water and body. Audrey is a Senior Lecturer in the Art Department at Goldsmiths. Somerset House Studios alumni, the duo has been awarded the State of Lower Saxony – HBK Braunschweig Fellowship (2020), the King’s College Cultural Institute Grant (2018), and has been commissioned by Contemporary Art Archipelago (2022), the Istanbul Design Biennial (2020), RADAR Loughborough (2020), and the Cockayne Foundation (2018). Francisco is an architect who was awarded the Wellcome Trust People Awards (2016) and authored ‘Talking Dirty’ published by Arts Catalyst (2016). He is a studio tutor in architecture at Loughborough University. The duo’s work is part of the permanent collections of the European Investment Bank Institute (LU) and the Art and Nature Center - Beulas Foundation (SP).

www.euro-vision.net
www.instagram.com/la_fraud

Situated between art and architectural practice, Nishat Awan’s research and writing
explores the relationship between geopolitics and space through a focus on migration and
displacement. She is interested in forms of spatial representation, particularly in relation to the digital and the limits of witnessing as a form of ethical engagement with distant places.
Currently, she leads the ERC funded project, Topological Atlas, which aims to produce
visual counter-geographies of the fragile movements of migrants as they encounter the
security apparatus of the border.
In 2015 she was an ISRF early career fellow working on the project, Edges of Europe,
exploring European belonging through migrant experience. Her book, Diaspori Agencies (Routledge, 2016) addressed the subject of how architecture and urbanism can respond to the consequences of increasing migration. She has also addressed alternative modes of architectural production in the co-authored book Spatial Agency (Routledge, 2011) and the co-edited book Trans-Local-Act (aaa-peprav, 2011).

https://nishatawan.me/

Hasan Özgür Top (online)
Vincenzo Estremo

Nour Bishouty
Sarri Elfaitouri
Zilan Imsik 
Kumjana Novakova
Adrian Schindler
TRANSIT GROUP / Aya Bseiso & Reem Marji

Conceptual note, or a first trigger:

Through a situated investigative methodology rooted in critical whiteness studies, I am interested in exploring the specific imaginary that constitute the Euro-Mediterranean as a hegemonic space, shaped by colonial continuities, neo-imperialist interests, and necropolitical dynamics. As a collective but highly personal exploration of notions of positionality, resistance, and accountability, I wish to scrutinise the uses and abuses of history within nationalist ideologies and international relations across the Euro-Mediterranean, with a focus on media events, political performance and technologies of war, vision, and communication.

Methodologies:

Mixed format - screenings, readings, collaborative activities and 1-1 sessions.

Aim: to collectively develop a creative investigative toolkit.

Alessandra Ferrini is a London-based artist, researcher and educator. Experimenting with the expansion and hybridization of the documentary film, her research questions the legacies of Italian colonialism and Fascism, with a specific interest in the past and present relations between Italy and the Mediterranean region. Her work has featured in international exhibitions, including: 5th Casablanca Biennale (2022-23), ar/ge kunst (Bozen, 2022, solo show), Maxxi Museum of XXI Century Art (Rome, 2022), MOMus-Museum of Contemporary Art Thessaloniki (2021), Manifesta 13 Paralléles du Sud (Marseille, 2020), Museion Bozen (2020), Sharjah Film Platform (2019), Istanbul Biennal collaterale (Depo 2019), 2nd Lagos Biennal (2019), Manifesta 12 Film Programme (Palermo, 2018), Villa Romana (Florence, 2018 and solo show 2019), Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo (Turin, 2018, 2020, 2021 and 2022). Her long-term research-based project Gaddafi in Rome was the winner of the Maxxi Bvlgari Prize 2022 and was the recipient of the 2017 Experimenta Pitch Award at the London Film Festival (British Film Institute). She is a PhD candidate at the University of the Arts London and a Research Fellow at the British School at Rome. Her writing has been published internationally and featured in Everything Passes Except the Past - Decolonizing Ethnographic Museums, Film Archives and Public Space edited by Jana Haeckel for Sternberg Press (2021).

www.alessandraferrini.info
www.instagram.com/alessandra.ferrini

Hasan Özgür Top is a visual artist and filmmaker based in Istanbul. Departing from the context of Turkey and the larger Mediterranean, his research delves into the mechanism of propaganda, exploring the relationship between ideology and iconology. His wore explores the ways in which the relations between image, text, mythology, ideology and theology takes shape in politics. Top held his first solo exhibition in Lima and his works have been exhibited and screened in Istanbul, Berlin, Shanghai, New York and Vienna. He graduated from Marmara University, Faculty of Fine Arts, Painting Department in 2014 and 2019. In 2020, Top received his MA from the Dutch Art Institute.

www.hasanozgurtop.com

Vincenzo Estremo holds a Media and Film Studies Ph.D at Università di Udine and
Kunstuneversität Linz, at the moment, is post-doc at Quadriennale of Roma. In 2022, he spent a research period at the Film-Maker Cooperative in New York thanks to the project
Italian Council and within the program Mekas100! He is a theorist of the moving image
and lecturer of exhibited cinema studies at NABA Milan, he additionally teaches Aesthetics at Università San Raffaele Roma 5. Estremo collaborates with several Art Institution in Europe and co-direct the book series Cinema and Contemporary Art (Mimesis International). He writes for Flash Art Italia and International. His books are: Extended Temporalities. Transient Visions in Museum and Art (Mimesis International 2016), Albert Serra, cinema, arte e performance (Mimesis Edizioni 2018), Teoria del lavoro reputazionale (Milieu Edizioni 2020). Soon will be published his next book: Indistinzione (PS editore 2023).

Francesca Castagnetti
Antonio Sotgiu
Sakiya (Tareq Khalaf)
Spontaneus Lab (Penelope Volinia & 
Nicolò Pagnanelli)

Soha Mohsen
Dilşad Aladağ
Hanieh Fatouraee
Irtiza Malik
Shreya De Souza
Sophie Sabet
Nada Rosa Schroer
Nuha Innab
Hiba Sleem
Mare Spanoudaki
Omar Adel Fathalla

Conceptual note, or a first trigger:

“E da quel giorno, l’uomo selvatico abbandonò la valle” / “And since that day, the wild creature disappeared from the valley” is a two-week long module inviting to explore the uncanny, the magical, the political, and the ways we can engage with them through collective and vernacular pedagogical processes.

Once upon a time, the valleys surrounding Biella were populated by magical creatures carrying and sharing wisdoms embedded in and embodied by its soil and seeds, its waters and rocks. Today Biella is often perceived by its inhabitants as a city-archipelago, a fragmented territory notwithstanding its relatively limited geography.

As we witness the loss of collective memories and ways of knowing, societal fractures, environmental depletions and life extractions, this module looks for the political in the fantastical and summons it back, while exploring and testing ways in which we can be-come together otherwise.

Adopting a situated perspective, we will draw from fables/ing, politics and forest ecologies, exploring forms of listening and learning from the territories we inhabit, and how we could bring back the wisdoms and creatures deeply embedded in forest and river ecologies. Based on intimate and sensitive cartographies developed during the two weeks, we will investigate how to design spaces to gather and be together, places to shelter the left-over and the left-aside.

This double module is an experiment in collaboration, bringing together the research, practice and methodologies of QANAT and Silent Pedagogies. Led by Francesca Masoero & Shayma Nader, QANAT is a collective platform exploring the politics and poetics of water and the ways in which manifestations of commoning come to form in Morocco, Palestine and beyond. Initiated by Nouha Ben Yebdri at MAHAL, “Silent Pedagogies” evolves and revolves around modes of transmission in the field of contemporary art drawing from contextual and non-institutionalized cultural manifestations and learning institutes.

Methodologies:

Walking, journaling, storytelling on pluriversality, collective reading, constructing  structures/houses, re-enchantment & hospitality to the invisible, cooking, playing…

Qanat is a collective platform that explores the politics and poetics of water to reflect and act (up)on the multiple contextual understandings and forms of (re)production of the commons in Morocco, Palestine and beyond. Drawing from various forms of knowledge and acts of resistance and solidarity to dominant environmental narratives and injustices, QANAT aims to create spaces through which we can speculate upon new collective imaginaries to design new spatial and epistemological configurations for our cities. The collective develops archives of resonant reflections and actions that knit together local struggles into transnational patterns for nourishing debates across dispersed localities. QANAT was initiated at LE 18, Marrakech.

www.qanat.org
www.le18marrakech.com

Francesca Masoero works as a curator, cultural organiser and researcher. She is part of LE 18, a cultural space in Marrakech (Morocco), where she initiated QANAT. With a background in critical theory and political economy, she explores notions resistances in multiple forms, including testing collective-making processes within and beyond the art field, and researching the politics and poetics linked to watery worlds and to forms of being together otherwise. Since 2019, she has also been collaborating extensively with the Dar Bellarj Foundation (Marrakech - Morocco).

Shayma Nader is an artist, curator and translator from Palestine. For the past few years, she's been developing and organising workshops and projects focussed on forging and reactivating memories of and in the land through collective walking, listening and fictioning to move towards decolonial and land-centred imaginaries and practices. She is a member of Qanat; a collective platform exploring the politics and poetics of water, and a PhD candidate in artistic research at ARIA at Sint Lucas School of Arts and University of Antwerp.

MAHAL is a non-profit organisation created in Tangier in 2019, by the Tangeroise curator Nouha Ben Yebdri. It has been established as a platform whose principal mission is to respond to the structuring needs of the contemporary art scene in Morocco, by conceiving and practising alternative ways to navigate the challenges specific to the context.
Today, the organisation develops two main projects: Mahal Art Space, an independent exhibition space that promotes and supports emerging artists and cultural practitioners in the early stages of their careers; and Silent Pedagogies, a long-term program for reflection and artistic experimentation around transmission and mediation practices, questioning the objectives, methodologies and impact of actions and activities that accompany and sometimes shape contemporary creation, at both academic and institutional levels.

https://www.instagram.com/mahalartspace/

Nouha Ben Yebdri is an independent curator, founder and director of MAHAL, a non-profit organisation whose mission is to respond to and accompany the needs of the emerging contemporary art scene in Morocco, from its headquarters in Tangier. Her curatorial practice focuses on the reflection and conception of projects around issues related to the development of art spaces, institutionalisation procedures, mediation/outreach protocols, and the impact that these spaces have on their environment; as well as the study of contextual factors that influence the conception of the terms and dynamics that unfold through these processes and places. These efforts are conveyed and put into practice through the programming of the independent space Mahal (or also known as Mahal Art Space) and Silent Pedagogies - بيداغوجيات صامتة , a program that questions the curricula of artistic training in Morocco and analyzes the relationship of art spaces with the different audiences it hosts and works with.

Conceptual note, or a first trigger:

Gestures of Untranslatability  / 
Conducted by curator, editor and translator Virginie Bobin and artist, film-maker and educator Vir Andres Hera, Qalqalah قلقلة’s module departs from the geographical framework of Neither on Land not at Sea to problematise our situated relationships to the languages we speak, learn, or lose, from both political and affective perspectives. How could we deterritorialise our uses of languages, while acknowledging both the relationships of domination and extraction that they sustain; and their potential to forge paths for deviation, commoning and resistance? During the module, we wish to experiment with collective modalities of writing, translation and editing (texts, images, sound, etc); and with translation and untranslatability as gestures and methods to critically investigate language(s). We will also ask how fiction and storytelling can help us to articulate heterogenous and minor positions with modes of collective enunciation; and shake up identity and linguistic categories. Lastly, we will reflect on the formation of collectives as spaces of care (shelter) and as spaces of risk (conflict) where diverse, heterogenous positions come in contact, affect each other, and transform each other while generating bonds and alliances in the face of shared struggles.