In a conversation with the Wire, Indian scholar Homi Bhabha discussed our ability to adapt to COVID-19 curfews and living with/through Zoom. He touched upon the condition of the ‘Unprepared Citizen’. Bhabha proposes that the current tendency of individuals to specialise in a particular field without potentially expanding their knowledge into different fields, aspects of life and cultures, results in a feeling of inability to navigate emergent circumstances beyond an individual’s capacities. As a result, governmental and international health organisations adopted solutions requiring compliance instead of working together and proposing alternative solutions to these organisations. When society does not question decision-making institutions, the latter will not necessarily enhance their performance. This separation from decision-making generates feelings of scepticism in the role of individuals in their society, and so they adapt by creating identities confined to certain circles.
In this workshop, we will explore the notion of the ‘unprepared’ by hosting individuals from various disciplines to expand the understanding of the relationship between themselves, the audience and society in general. We will focus on the relation of the production process and programming to the Palestinian/Arab question, and the relevance of this process and its outputs to a public and collective question.
The workshop consists of 10 sessions focussed such various themes as withdrawal, disappearance, limitation, boredom, reconciliation, synchronisation, sufficiency, seclusion, festivity, attachment, dominance and citation. Eight sessions include guests across disciplines, including Homi Bhaba, Rabie Zreiqat, Madhusree Dutta and Maha Maamoun. Each seminar is 60 minutes long, including discussion, and is open to the public.
The workshop takes place the hour following the seminar. Concepts will be deconstructed through collective and interactive readings, reflections and reviewing examples of projects. Each participant can present their ideas for projects, exhibitions, screenings, radio programmes, etc., for discussion. These conversations are also 60 minutes long, intended exclusively for the participants of the workshop. The 10 sessions will be held online via Zoom at 6pm on Saturdays and/or Mondays of every week between 23 October and 13 December. Sessions will be held in Arabic with simultaneous English translation.
First Conversation: Introductory meeting with curator Ala Younis
Date: 23 October 2021
Reading material: On Unpreparedness | Interview with Homi Bhabha
Subject: Interview with Homi Bhabha for the Wire Magazine
Ala Younis: Ala Younis is an artist, curator and publisher, whose work investigates archives, film remains and artistic practices. Her projects have been shown at the Venice, Istanbul and Gwangju Biennials, at the New Museum in New York, the Institut du Monde Arabe (Paris), Darat al Funun (Amman), and the Contemporary Image Collective (Cairo), amongst other venues. She has curated several shows and film programmes, as well as Kuwait's first national pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2013 and the project ‘Museum of Manufactured Response to Absence’.
Second Conversation: Rabiee Zureiqat
Date: 25 October 2021
Reading material: Vandana Shiva "Principals of Earth Democracy" (Arabic).
Subject: Qamh al-Barakah [al-Barakah Wheat] project for collective cultivation of wheat in Amman, which addresses popular and rural knowledge and how to utilise expertise related to local ecologies to inspire sustainable solutions to the most urgent economic and social challenges facing us today.
Rabiee Zureiqat: Zreiqat founded the Zikra Initiative for Popular Learning in 2007. The organisation has been exploring the rich knowledge of rural and popular communities and was awarded the UNESCO-Japan Prize on Education for Sustainable Development in Paris
Third Conversation: Ala Younis
Date: 1 November 2021
Reading Material: Judith Butler, "Bodies in Alliance and the Politics of the Street" | Haytham Wardany, "The Book of Sleep" (Arabic) | Marwan Pablo "Ghaba", Ghaba review, Ghaba deeper review
Subject: Withdrawal, the relationship between organizations and the public, the motivations to participate in cultural activities, being tired of, and the treatment of sleep as a revolutionary act or resistance.
Fourth conversation: Madhusree Dutta
Date: 8 November 2012
Reading material: Curating Political Art | Ala Younis, The Exhibition | "China/Avant Garde Art" Translated by Ala Younis
Subject: Is it possible to produce for a much broader constituency that we know of?
Madhusree Dutta: Dutta is an internationally prominent figure in the fields of art and culture. She is known for organising various cultural and art projects, including exhibitions and biennials targeting wide and diverse audiences. Dutta is also known for her academic contributions and reflections on artistic and exhibition production processes in contemporary contexts.
Fifth conversation: Ala Younis
Date: 8 November 2021
Reading material: Hito Steyerl, "In Defense of the Poor Image" | Deepak Unnikrishnan, Temporary People
Subject: Interaction with the public, imagining the relationships between "art with the public" and "the distance between them" and "the relationship between art and art", answering questions about "the channel art passes through", "who is the enemy of art", "one word to describe the enemy" and so on. The participants created drawings, and we read together texts on various subjects and experiences.
Sixth conversation: Maha Ma'moun
Date: 13 November 2021
Reading material: Dear Animal (2016) | Notes on "Dear Animal"
Subject: Animals in film, the relationship with animals in these films and their treatment as a substitute for human actors, especially during times of social and political crisis.
Maha Ma'moun: Ma’moun is an artist who works primarily with text, photography and video. She is interested in examining the form, function and currency of common cultural, visual and literary images. She also works on publishing and curatorial projects.
Seventh conversation: Elaine W. Ho
Date: 20 November 2021
Reading material: Publishing Maneuvers Symposium, Publishing as Artistic Practice
Subject: The path that an idea takes before it turns into outcome, and the practices, influences and material processes necessary for the production process.
Elaine W. Ho: Ho works between the realms of time-based art, experimental publishing and urban practice, using multiple vocabularies to explore the micropolitics, subjectivities and alter-possibilities of an intimate, networked production. She is the initiator of the artist-run project space HomeShop (2008-13, Beijing), and more recent collaborations that ask questions about the sociopolitics of syntax amidst the architectures of late capitalism.
Eighth conversation: Shumon Basar
Date:
Reading material: Free Thinking | Me. You. Us. Them | The Extreme Self | Season Ending (The Day of Forever)
Subject: The concept of ‘The Extreme Reversal’ in the last decade, reflecting the reversed relationship between people and their smart phones, the role of capitalism and modernity in this reversal and the concept of ‘The Extreme Self’, or the orientation towards extreme individualism and its role in disintegrating and endangering societies
Shumon Basar: Basar is commissioner at the Global Art Forum in Dubai; editor-at-large at TANK magazine; contributing editor at Bidoun; adjunct curator at Art Jameel; and member of Fondazione Prada’s Thought Council.
Ninth conversation: Khalid Abdallah
Date: 4 December 2021
Reading material: Swimming backwards | Actor Khalid Abdalla Speaks About Collecting Footage from Tahrir Square
Subject: Encounters, improvisation and unpreparedness, and the Arab world’s—especially the Egyptian community’s—state of disorientation, shock and inability to plan for the future.
Khalid Abdallah: Abdallah is known for such films as The Kite Runner (2007), United 93 (2006), The Square (2013) and In the Last Days of the City (2016). He is a founding member of the Mosireen Collective in Cairo, dedicated in 2011 to supporting citizen media across Egypt.
Tenth conversation: Sanaz Sohrabi
Date: 8 December 2021
Reading material: One Image, Two Acts
Subject: Western archives and the challenges of working with personal or middle eastern portrayals, and the contested historical role that visual representations of oil have played in shaping ideas about colonial petro modernity, postcolonial sovereignty, and resource nationalism in Iran.
Sanaz Sohrabi: Sohrabi’s work at large engages with the politics of recovery in photographic archives and the role of photography and film as technologies of public-making and subject positioning. Sohrabi received her BFA from University of Tehran College of Fine Arts (2011) and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago with a merit scholarship (2014). Currently a doctoral candidate and supported by Fonds de Recherche du Québec Société et Culture at Concordia University, Montréal.