https://aneventwithoutitspoem.com An Event Without Its Poem Sat, 29 Aug 2020 21:58:49 +0000 https://aneventwithoutitspoem.com en https://aneventwithoutitspoem.com/Cover Sat, 29 Aug 2020 21:39:38 +0000 An Event Without Its Poem https://aneventwithoutitspoem.com/Cover أي حدث دون قصيدة تخلّده وكأنه لم يحدث قط Pau Catà An Event Without Its Poem Is An Event That Never Happened https://aneventwithoutitspoem.com/Title Sat, 29 Aug 2020 21:58:49 +0000 An Event Without Its Poem https://aneventwithoutitspoem.com/Title An Event Without Its Poem Is An Event That Never HappenedTowards a speculative Arab art residency proto-history Tar Izli, Ur Tamu (An event without its poem is an event that never happened) is an ancient Amazigh proverb from the Ait Atta tribe in the Moroccan Atlas region. The proverb has inspired forms and manifestations of resistance and struggle such as the Movement on Road ’96. Rooted in a long tradition of fear resistance to dominant centralizing powers, Movement on Road ‘96 is a long-term grass-roots struggle that is carried out by the Amazigh village communities of Imider (Morocco) since the eighties. Movement on Road ‘96 embodies the resistance process and a struggle for the right to water, land, and life triggered by the abusive exploitation of the region perpetrated by one of the biggest silver mines in Africa. The movement has drawn from indigenous self-governance strategies and the tradition of itinerant poets-activists to articulate and reactivate their struggle. An event without its poem is an event that never happened is dedicated to their cause.For more information see: 'Amussu: experiment for a cinema from below' by Nadir Bouhmuch, Open Democracy (2019), and 'Becoming qanat' by Francesca Masoero, talk for the Eastern Europe - North Africa and Middle Eastern Forum at Biennale Warszawa 2019. https://aneventwithoutitspoem.com/Introduction-The-Journey Tue, 07 Jul 2020 14:47:19 +0000 An Event Without Its Poem https://aneventwithoutitspoem.com/Introduction-The-Journey Introduction: The Journey الرحلة Since the 1990s art residencies, as places offering time and space for artists and researchers to create and exchange, have expanded exponentially on a global scale. In line with this unprecedented development, a comprehensive process of self-assessment has simultaneously taken place within the field. The multiplication of seminars, conferences and monographs on the theme of art residencies speaks to the newfound drive to interrogate the model’s foundations. ︎︎︎Some examples are the ‘Summer Wells’ symposia, seminars and meetings held in 2015 and 2018 at the Saari Residence (Finland); the symposium ‘Residencies Reflected,’ held at HIAP Suomenlinna in 2016 and co-organised by HIAP Helsinki International Artist Programme; ‘Reconstructing Rurality,’ organised by Rejmyre Art Lab and Nida Art Colony in 2017; Res Artis Meetings in Copenhagen, in 2017 and Rovaniemi, in 2018; ‘Hospitality and Tolerance,’ organised by SICA and Trans Artists in Amsterdam in 2010; the ‘Retooling Residencies’ international conference, organised by A-I-R Laboratory CCA Ujazdowski Castle in 2009; or the Cairo Residency Symposium, titled ‘How to develop honest reciprocity?,’ which took place in Cairo, Egypt in March 2009, to name but a few. Thanks to the studies recently undertaken within different cultural policy organisations, art residency networks and think tanks alike, we now have more comprehensive documentation of artists’ mobility within the European context. All the same, as several studies have remarked, further research is needed: both in terms of empirical data and conceptual re-imaginings. Indeed, the art residency model in the 21st-century is in need of a thorough and thoughtful re-evaluation, as processes of artistic homogenization, privilege and ecological impact are undermining the positive contributions that art residencies have achieved so far. Besides the timely debates taking place as these lines are being written, there is an essential area of inquiry that has not yet been properly addressed: that is the invisibility of non-Western approaches within the narrative that currently frames the history of art residencies. The lack of an edifying body of work critically reflecting upon the history of art residencies from a cross-cultural perspective suggests the limitation of the established narrative. A consequence of this gap is the development of a discourse that is comfortably stuck in Western-centrism and narrowly grounded in relatively simple and unchallenging approaches. The lack of complexity in the discourse that currently shapes the history of art residencies becomes evident if we consider how, willingly or not, the rich tradition that intertwines the relationship between traveling and knowledge within Arab cultures has so far been neglected. The primary aim of An event without its poem is an event that never happened is precisely to address and challenge this absence. In this task, the burdensome issue of epistemic entitlement - that is, the question of the space of enunciation from which a narrative is constructed -&nbsp; has been persistent. Is this project yet another example of the tradition whereby the Same speaks for Others without their consent? Indeed, as Edward Said pointed out thirty years ago when reflecting upon the state of knowledge and its institutions in the Arab world: ‘our history is mostly written by foreigners.’ Noting the sharp contrast between the knowledge produced by outsiders and those within the Arab world, Said affirmed that ‘we [in the Arab world] rely on personal and disorganised collective memory, gossip almost (...), a teeming history off the page, out of sight and hearing, beyond reach, largely unrecoverable.’ An event without its poem is an event that never happened is undoubtedly inflected by a particular gaze, that of the Other, the foreigner. As such, the journey on which you are about to embark cannot elude Otherness as its structuring ethos. Far from contributing to the construction of Otherness, however, the alternative history this research proposes is not told from the position of the self-assuring connoisseur, nor from that of the knowledgeable outsider. On the contrary, this narrative prefers to remain, as Said would put it, ‘concisely personal,’ tending towards speculation. Thinking about art residencies and their histories through this prism will allow for the emergence of new ways to understand and imagine alternative pasts and possible futures. Being open to discontinuity and the 'what ifs' means asking ourselves if it is possible to retool the value embedded in established discourses. Furthermore, by speculating over bygone models, this project seeks to contradict traditional modes of conceiving the history of art and its institutions. And so, An event without its poem is an event that never happened is a project framed by fragility as, in the journey between the Same and the Other, sameness will be othered. In other words, this project proposes to provincialise sameness while advocating for the emergence of other art residency histories. It is precisely the question of who is being excluded from the current genealogy that provides the starting point for this speculative proto-history of the Arab art residency proposed in the following pages. To do so, this project transgresses the methods usually found in the realm of historical analysis, adopting experimental and experiential inquiry through artistic research. This exercise requires a rethinking of seemingly self-evident terms and the institutions they name. At the same time, a set of novel concepts are introduced: they are concepts framed by mobility, the journey, and the knowledge produced through its narratives. In this way, the speculative proto-history of the Arab art residency proposed here endorses fragility both in its content and in its form. Content-wise, in the following pages the reader will find a combination of different narrative voices, namely auto-ethnographic diaries, semi-fictional micro stories, conceptual frameworks and contemporary case studies, all supported by visual content. These different voices emerge from both literature analysis and collaborative action research. Indeed, fieldwork and the practice of journeying have been fundamental as means to test, question and enquire about the art residency format within the geographical and cultural context of the Arab world. As crucial as these collaborative practices have been, the adoption of intuitive and creative approximations to research through intimate and personal accounts, has become also fundamental to the elaboration of An event without its poem is an event that never happened. In formal terms, each of these narrative voices translates into a design approach that is based on paratext and diagrammatic writing. ︎︎︎These accounts were created over the course of retreats at the El Miracle Monastery in inland Catalonia, at the CCDS–Centre Culturel et de Documentation Saharienne in Ghardaïa, southern Algeria, and during a residency as a research fellow 19/20 at Darat al Funun in Amman, Jordan (November 2019–March 2020). While paratext stresses the idea that texts are never finished but are always susceptible to further commentary, diagrammatic writing challenges the very principle of normativity within writing practice, all the while proposing alternative ways for the form to reflect content. In short, through a cross-temporal and cross-geographical approach to Arab intellectual legacies, the journey proposed here will bring the reader to the Damascene scholarly circles of the 700s, to meet the raḥḥālas, the scholarly globetrotters of the age. We will then visit the Syrian desert solitudes and the sa'ihun vagabond saints, only to continue on a sojourn to a zawiya, or Islamic monastery, to participate in the hafalat, the intellectual gatherings that spread throughout the Medieval Maghrib from the 1300’s onwards. We will then travel to the 1400s Anatolian literary salons, or majālis, finally tracing the journeys of several artists, scholars and diplomats from Meknes and Cairo to London and Paris, through al-rihla Siffariya. We will also meet their European counterparts, the grand tourists, who travelled, for example, from Nuremberg and Edinburgh to Jerusalem and Istanbul between the 17th and 19th centuries. Our journey will end at a small artists’ colony in northern Germany, at the turn of the 20th century. In other words, our history of art residencies will finish where the official one currently starts. This project aims at functioning as an unfinished constellation, laying bare the traces of a path in need of restoration. Indeed, An event without its poem is an event that never happened should not be understood as a self-rewarding narrative, nor as a conclusion. Instead, what the reader will find in the following pages is the documentation of a journey, a map in the making, the traces of a long-lasting research process. The edges that define this path will not always be discernible nor evident but want to function as dynamic guiding lines. On one side of this path, the margins open to an eclectic array of conceptual and creative landscapes in which to rest and reflect upon alternative genealogies to the journey. On the other side, finding absences and neglected structures, the wanderer will have the chance to follow detours and look for alternative routes. Through this journey, the reader will engage in eclectic encounters and anachronic dialogues, while delving into intimate sceneries. Ultimately, through an experimental archaeology of globalisation, this research seeks to demonstrate that it is only by unsettling the grounds on which established discourses currently stand that epistemic diversity can emerge. As V. Y. Mudimbe rightly states in The Invention of Africa, ‘Stories about Others, as well as commentaries on their differences, are but elements in the history of the Same and its knowledge.’ Indeed, the emergence of a common future, within and beyond the art residency field, needs to be achieved by way of a return to our shared pasts. Background image:&nbsp;© Pau Catà, Project Beyond Qafila Thania https://aneventwithoutitspoem.com/1-Exhaustion-and-Exhuberance Tue, 18 Aug 2020 13:53:47 +0000 An Event Without Its Poem https://aneventwithoutitspoem.com/1-Exhaustion-and-Exhuberance 1. الكد و الحيوية Exhaustion and Exhuberance https://aneventwithoutitspoem.com/Exhaustion-et-exuberance-Entry-Quote Tue, 07 Jul 2020 16:57:02 +0000 An Event Without Its Poem https://aneventwithoutitspoem.com/Exhaustion-et-exuberance-Entry-Quote Verwoert, J (2008) Exhaustion et exhuberance. A pamphlet for the exhibition Sheffield 08: Yes No and Other Options var i = 0; var txt = '“This slow man may turn out to be a guardian of the social equilibrium, protecting peace and sanity by preventing restless performers like you from changing things for the worse”.'; var speed = 100; window.onload = typeWriter(); function typeWriter() { if (i < txt.length) { document.getElementById("entry-quote1").innerHTML += txt.charAt(i); i++; setTimeout(typeWriter, speed); } } https://aneventwithoutitspoem.com/Rihla-1-2 Tue, 07 Jul 2020 17:06:57 +0000 An Event Without Its Poem https://aneventwithoutitspoem.com/Rihla-1-2 html { scroll-behavior: smooth; } النسيان العظيم The Great Forgetfulness Damascus, May 20, 677 Abd-Allah arrives in Damascus from Basra on a clear and sunny day at the end of spring 677.&nbsp; Although traditionally inhabited by Eastern Orthodox and Monophysites, over the last decades the city of Damascus has become home to a community of Muslims from Mecca, Medina, and the Syrian desert. They have in turn made the new capital of the Umayyad caliphate an important centre of Islamic, Christian and Aramaic thought. In the different halaqahs that are hosted throughout the city, long and intense debates on theology, epistemology and the nature of the ‘ilm are daily held. Abd-Allah ibn Abbas (d.68/687) was the cousin of Prophet Mohamed and one of the early Qur'an scholars. Back to Text︎ Circle. In general, the term refers to a group of students studying under a particular professor. In Sufism, it is used to refer to the circle formed around a spiritual leader, as well as to the circle of students or devotees who adhere to a specific course of study or set of rituals. The term also refers to the circle that may be formed by followers for contemplation.' Oxford Islamic Studies [online] Available at: http://www.oxfordislamicstudies.com/article/opr/t125/e783 [Accessed Day 16 June 2020]. Back to Text︎ ‘Ilm is the Arabic term for knowledge. In the Western world, 'knowledge' means information about something, divine or corporeal, while in Islam, 'ilm is an all-embracing term, encompassing theory, action and education. It is not confined to the acquisition of information, but also embraces socio-political and moral aspects. It requires insight, commitment to the goals of Islam and a willingness to act upon one’s beliefs. It is reported in a hadith that 'Knowledge is not extensive learning. Rather, it is a light that God casts in the heart of whomever He wills.' in Al.Islam [online] Available at: https://www.al-islam.org/journal/vol-12-no3/islamic-concept-knowledge [Accessed Day 16 June 2020]. Back to Text︎ Sitting in one of the halaqahs, together with his followers, Abd-Allah proclaims with a grave voice: - “A time will come in which every passing year will be more miserable than the one before it” The atmosphere has become tense. Abd-Allah raises his head, looks at each of the scholars in turn, and affirms: - “And I am not speaking of a year less fertile than another or of a sovereign worse than another, but of your scholars, your pious men, and your doctors, who will depart, one after the other, and who you will not be able to replace”. The imminent disappearance of the ‘ilm produces an anxiety that grips the city like a truth of life-or-death importance — afflicting not only the circle of disciples, but scholars as well as at the highest level of the state. For its impending death recalls the irremediable eclipse of knowledge after the departure of the Prophet Mohammed, peace be upon him.&nbsp; How to avoid the danger of loss that hovers over the ilm? What can be done to preserve this knowledge from corruption? How to transmit it in its original purity? These are the urgent questions the Islamic men of letters are faced with. In the midst of this confusion, Abd-Allah states:-“He who does not memorise any part from the Qur'an, he is like the ruined house”. It is this lone statement that, in the coming centuries, will shape a new tradition. Indeed, from that moment on, memorisation and genealogy will become the fundamental groundings of knowledge, justifying its transmission through direct affiliation.Indeed, because the entire Muslim Middle Ages succumbed to the ghost of the great forgetfulness, the scholars of the time cultivated a veritable cult of memory. In this widespread mobilisation, the institution of the voyage came to be seen as a shield against forgetfulness and as a guide for genealogical structures: candidates for learning who hoped to become inscribed within a prestigious genealogy of scholarship were advised to connect with the most renowned masters of their time. Those could be found in the great urban centers or in lonesome landscapes. Furthermore knowledge of language came to hold utmost importance. The common belief was that the language that remained closest to the revelation was that of the Bedouins: spoken in remote lands, it hadn't yet been corrupted. The mission of gathering the language from the mouth of the Bedouins became an obsession amongst men of letters of the time. It is in this context that hearing and direct observation came to be recognised in medieval Islam as the ultimate sources of sense-based knowledge. And so, the pursuit of such knowledge justified the practice of the journey into the desert. That is, lineage to the prophet. Back to Text︎ According to the traditionalists, the only people who had the authority to transmit Islamic knowledge were persons of thiqa, confidence and trust. From this attempt to discriminate between good and bad transmitters, there arose an entire scientific area that was designated as 'the knowledge of men.' This area of knowledge blossomed into an autonomous discipline in the 9th century. Back to Text︎ The adoption of the journey as a method for rigorous study and as a guarantee of genealogical prestige evolved in parallel with the appearance of the book as a repository of knowledge. The coexistence of the journey and the book preoccupied some, however. In the heated discussions that grew within scholarly circles, there was a strong tension between literacy and orality. The debate focused on whether the book could replace the master and function as the depository of his authority. Opponents of the book as a didactic and scientific tool also feared that its broad socialisation could actually threaten the principle of the voyage: with books available, scholars could learn from the written word and would not have to travel to the original oral source. The book and the desert thus became masters of uncertainty. Of the two, it was paradoxically the desert that turned out to be the better guide. This is why, in several scholars’ writings, the desert is much more than a mere background for the travelling experience: indeed, it takes on the status of a highly important character. Faced with this dilemma, Abd-Allah stated: - “The journey and the master is the one that should continue to reign supreme, as the books do not speak for themselves but always require an authority to enable them to speak”. Although all those reunited affirmed in approval, Abd-Allah’s arguments were demonstrated to be irrelevant. Soon after his death, the book emerged from its marginality, supported by a growing state-supported bibliophilia. And so, contrary to what was feared, the cycle of travelling was, in fact, further enlarged as the international market for books grew. Before departing to his permanent retreat in the Saudi city of at-Ta'ifon, on the slopes of the Sarawat Mountains, Abd-Allah turns his head and looks upon his beloved city for the last time. Damascus seems busy and lively, unaware of his affliction and of the great forgetfulness he sees approaching. الرحلة Rihla <img width="1024" height="768" width_o="1024" height_o="768" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/aa3bea8e750f264a67fec040c4826c2381abd4515fe03eecef7136d8d1790f5d/0.Rihla.jpg" data-mid="78449425" border="0" alt="&copy; Pau Cat&agrave;, Project Beyond Qafila Thania" data-caption="© Pau Catà, Project Beyond Qafila Thania" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/aa3bea8e750f264a67fec040c4826c2381abd4515fe03eecef7136d8d1790f5d/0.Rihla.jpg" /> Our story starts at the threshold of the existence of Islam, the late 7th century in the Christian calendar, when the rihla, or travelling as a method of acquiring and documenting knowledge, expands as a Medieval Islamic practice. Over the course of the 8th and 9th centuries, the rihla further developed around the halaqahs, the first study circles that were constituted in the larger urban centres. Such circles brought together several generations of scholars whose sole preoccupation was to search out, collect and compare traditions by travelling from one region to another in the Muslim world. The rihla differs from other travelling traditions in one fundamental aspect. In Islam, travel and the discourse that travel produced did not draw their meaning from a historical or anthropological relationship with the 'Other.' Rather than deriving from a hermeneutics of otherness, meaning emerged from an exegetic construction of the Same. The scholars’ obsession with travelling had little to do with superstition, nostalgia or tradition. Instead, it became a matter of method, helping to define a geographically and emotionally delimited space: dar al-Islam, the house of Islam. Indeed, in Muslim culture, the rihla is often valued for its integrating effects. While the pilgrimage, the hajj, led the pilgrim to Mecca and Medina, the search for knowledge brought men of letters not only to the esteemed places of Islamic teaching, such as Cairo or Fez, but also to faraway desert lands and isolated mountain communities. These men of letters often spent weeks in close contact with remote societies, uniting them with the wider association of the faithful (the umma). The fact that Arabic as a common language rapidly spread throughout dar al-Islam greatly facilitated the exchange of knowledge and tradition. Through the rihla, the raḥḥālas, the globetrotters of the age, embraced at least two distinct paradigms: the paradigm of exile and return, and the paradigm of the voyage as text or ‘Ajā’ib, whose primary purpose was to entertain the reader regardless of factual truth. Linked to both the narratives of exile and return and the Ajā’ib literary genre, an alternative way to acquire and transmit knowledge arose. This was the wijada. The root of the word wijada, formed by the consonants w, j, and d, is resonant of the Arabic words for discovery and invention. And, although they were seen with suspicion by traditional scholars, discovery and invention became central concepts in the descriptions of the Bedouins made by younger Islamic travellers from the urban cultural hotspots. For these scholars, the Bedouin — as remote bearers of pure language — had a natural ‘authenticity’, exactitude of thought, and a subtle intelligence. In fact, in the 9th century, these became the characteristics that were attributed to the ideal portrait of the nomadic Arab which, framed through exoticism, was widely shared and promoted amongst urban men of letters. This ideal was short-lived, though: a century later, it had already been dismissed. Indeed, by the 10th century, 'the sojourn in the desert lost consistency and became less appealing to the aesthetic tastes of the men of letters of the big cities. As time went by, the desert no longer seemed the conservatory of the Arabic language, nor were the Bedouins seen as its depository.' And so, the sojourn in the desert metamorphosed from the desired expedition into a lazy and nostalgic gesture that was no longer possible because of the Bedouins themselves: 'Corrupted by mixing with peasants, city dwellers, and non-Arabs, the inhabitants of the desert eventually brought on the irremediable loss of their linguistic paradise.' There was no point in travelling to document a language that had lost its authenticity. What had once been admired as the gharib al-lugha, the rare and obscure words used by Bedouins, had been lost forever. Hence, after being used for decades as informants, through an intense activity of enquiry and documentation, the Bedouin communities that had previously been portrayed as exotic transmitters, found themselves neglected. Their contact with the men of letters had supposedly corrupted their original purity. After a short-lived fascination, soon the urban scholarly idealisation of the rural and the remote came to be replaced by nostalgia for an imagined Arcadian past. https://aneventwithoutitspoem.com/Video-Siyaha-BQT Thu, 27 Aug 2020 07:09:07 +0000 An Event Without Its Poem https://aneventwithoutitspoem.com/Video-Siyaha-BQT BQT (2016) [Video, 1’14] Southern Morocco desert: Catà, P. https://aneventwithoutitspoem.com/Rihla-2-2 Fri, 28 Aug 2020 19:50:37 +0000 An Event Without Its Poem https://aneventwithoutitspoem.com/Rihla-2-2 html { scroll-behavior: smooth; } <img width="3410" height="2479" width_o="3410" height_o="2479" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/4220116b9f1ad6fb9327e4327b23f660a435d87f6885557fd3f6f9ba930daa38/0.tent.png" data-mid="81218167" border="0" alt="From Imagined Museums: Art and Modernity in Postcolonial Morocco by Katarzyna Pieprzak. University of Minnesota Press (2010)" data-caption="From Imagined Museums: Art and Modernity in Postcolonial Morocco by Katarzyna Pieprzak. University of Minnesota Press (2010)" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/4220116b9f1ad6fb9327e4327b23f660a435d87f6885557fd3f6f9ba930daa38/0.tent.png" /> Pieprzak, K. (2010, p. 168) Imagined Museums: Art and Modernity in Postcolonial Morocco. University of Minnesota Press. L’appartement 22 Expeditions and Rif Residencies (Rabat) <img width="1450" height="164" width_o="1450" height_o="164" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/a12c7c99dc9bf7641d2de3340941dcfc0dd84b3816e10c792c2fbf5ae1e417eb/lappartement22.png" data-mid="81218169" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/a12c7c99dc9bf7641d2de3340941dcfc0dd84b3816e10c792c2fbf5ae1e417eb/lappartement22.png" /> Abdellah Karroum’s nomadic curatorial practice moved one step forward in 2000, with the creation of L’appartement 22 in Rabat. He designed it specifically as a response to one of his central preoccupations: the exhibition, as concept and praxis. For him, the concept of the exhibition fundamentally rests on the idea of an outward movement, geared toward encounter and discovery: 'The movement from exhibition to expedition is in my mind the path to take to understand the function of art, and its possible autonomy, within Maghrabian societies.' Resonating with the journey of 9th - century raḥḥālas, L’appartment 22’s first expedition took place in a remote community, an Amazigh village in the Rif region. Between June and July of 2000, Abdellah Karroum, Younès Rahmoun, and Jean-Paul Thibeau rented two rooms in a local family’s house and used the flat area over a water tank for their creative projects and discussions. As Karroum explains, the point was not to educate villagers about art nor was it to turn them into spectators. Rather, the aim of the temporary residency in the Amazigh community was to invite locals and artists to engage in exchange and discussions about life and the meaning of the creative act. The project was repeated in 2001. This time, however, the expedition took place in various marketplaces in the Atlas Mountains. The artists set up a little white tent in each community in which they resided for several days or weeks and held open discussions with market-goers. What are new media in art? Is oral contact a new medium? These were the main questions that fuelled their discussions. As Karroum notes: 'In Morocco, many art practices abandon materiality. These practices do not really leave any traces or objects.' Similarly, talking about artistic production in Egypt, Jessica Winegar states that 'the work of making art is often less about the physical construction of the art object (...) [than it is about] discourse.' L’appartement 22 The first such space in Morocco, it has since inspired a number of artist-run spaces and collectives. From its first exhibition in October 2002, L'appartement 22 has consistently featured challenging and exciting contemporary arts programming, to international acclaim. Its artist residencies, workshops, lectures, symposia, film and video screenings, and exhibitions resonate in Rabat, throughout the country, and abroad. The art space functions as a cooperative. It is inspired by traditional systems of production and distribution, in which farmers collectively worked to extract olive oil and distribute it, allowing for exchange and transfer of knowledge. Through tactical curatorial practice, Abdellah Karroum created a dynamic art space that engaged the cityscape, blurred the boundaries between public and private space, and created new discursive spaces. Located across from the parliament building, on the main avenue in Rabat, Avenue Mohamed V, the space is named after the number of the apartment space it occupies in its building. At first glance, the idea of an art space in an apartment might reflect the continued dynamic of shrinking public spaces for art in Morocco: from marketplaces and museums to banks, to caves, and now to a small apartment. But for Karroum, space is a project site, a site of diffusion, and a space of encounter and discourse. Moreover, space has existed in multiple physical, virtual, and sonic dimensions since 2002, beyond the physical boundaries of an enclosed private apartment. function showNote7() { var x = document.getElementById("note7"); if (x.style.display === "none") { x.style.display = "block"; } else { x.style.display = "none"; } } function showNote8() { var x = document.getElementById("note8"); if (x.style.display === "none") { x.style.display = "block"; } else { x.style.display = "none"; } } function showNote9() { var x = document.getElementById("note9"); if (x.style.display === "none") { x.style.display = "block"; } else { x.style.display = "none"; } } function showNote10() { var x = document.getElementById("note10"); if (x.style.display === "none") { x.style.display = "block"; } else { x.style.display = "none"; } } function showNote11() { var x = document.getElementById("note11"); if (x.style.display === "none") { x.style.display = "block"; } else { x.style.display = "none"; } } function showNote12() { var x = document.getElementById("note12"); if (x.style.display === "none") { x.style.display = "block"; } else { x.style.display = "none"; } } function showNote13() { var x = document.getElementById("note13"); if (x.style.display === "none") { x.style.display = "block"; } else { x.style.display = "none"; } } function showNote14() { var x = document.getElementById("note14"); if (x.style.display === "none") { x.style.display = "block"; } else { x.style.display = "none"; } } function showNote15() { var x = document.getElementById("note15"); if (x.style.display === "none") { x.style.display = "block"; } else { x.style.display = "none"; } } function showNote16() { var x = document.getElementById("note16"); if (x.style.display === "none") { x.style.display = "block"; } else { x.style.display = "none"; } } function showNote17() { var x = document.getElementById("note17"); if (x.style.display === "none") { x.style.display = "block"; } else { x.style.display = "none"; } } function showNote18() { var x = document.getElementById("note18"); if (x.style.display === "none") { x.style.display = "block"; } else { x.style.display = "none"; } } function showNote19() { var x = document.getElementById("note19"); if (x.style.display === "none") { x.style.display = "block"; } else { x.style.display = "none"; } } function showNote20() { var x = document.getElementById("note20"); if (x.style.display === "none") { x.style.display = "block"; } else { x.style.display = "none"; } } function showNote21() { var x = document.getElementById("note21"); if (x.style.display === "none") { x.style.display = "block"; } else { x.style.display = "none"; } } function showNote22() { var x = document.getElementById("note22"); if (x.style.display === "none") { x.style.display = "block"; } else { x.style.display = "none"; } } var i = 0; var txt = '“The expedition mode is, first of all, an alternative strategy of overture; it claims the possibility of the existence of the margin as an active zone for creative encounters.”'; var speed = 100; window.onload = typeWriter(); function typeWriter() { if (i < txt.length) { document.getElementById("appartement22-quote").innerHTML += txt.charAt(i); i++; setTimeout(typeWriter, speed); } } https://aneventwithoutitspoem.com/Siyaha Tue, 07 Jul 2020 17:10:29 +0000 An Event Without Its Poem https://aneventwithoutitspoem.com/Siyaha html { scroll-behavior: smooth; } فإنك تعلم ولا أعلم You know of the how I know of the how-less Basra, March 8, 731 Rabi’a was the daughter of an extremely poor family from Basra, in present Iraq. The family was so poor that her parents decided not to waste too much energy thinking about her name. As she was their fourth child, the couple called her Rabi’a: a word that literally means 'fourth' in Arabic. When her parents died, Rabi’a was sold into slavery.It is believed that one night, her master saw a light surrounding her while she was praying. The image left the man captivated and in the morning he freed her.&nbsp; From then on, she paved her own way, pushing her body and soul onto the dusty roads of knowledge. &nbsp; Rābiʻa al-ʻAdawiyya al-Qaysiyya, or simply Rabiʿa al-Basri (717–801 C.E.), was a female Muslim Sufi saint, considered by some to be the first true saint in the Sufi tradition. Her reputation exceedd those of many Muslim men in the early days of Sufism. Back to Text︎ Asceticism is not encouraged in Islam, as its principles and practices run contrary to the religion’s emphasis on being part of the community. Nevertheless, Rabi’a shirked the idea of a regular life. Like many others at the turn of the 9th century, she slowly disappeared towards the desert, carrying but a few belongings, to practice the ‘ilm al-batin, the knowledge of that which lies within.- “I want to put out the fires of Hell, and burn down the rewards of Paradise, as they block the way to God. I do not want to worship from fear of punishment or for the promise of reward,&nbsp; but simply for the love of God”. In the desert, Rabi’a led a life of humility and even poverty, showing in this way that having a personal bond to the divine was something that both men and women were capable of striving for.Indeed, in her lifetime she never called a man her master. Rabi’a thus consciously pursued an independent lifestyle as a woman-poet, wandering through the desert in solitude. In so doing, she was following a path that many female Sufi mystics had charted before her as a means of ensuring personal salvation. -"I should be ashamed to ask for the things of this world from him to whom the world belongs, and how should I ask for them from those to whom it does not belong?" It is said that Rabi’a’s ascetic practices brought her closer to the Adbal: the society of hidden saints whose great cosmic powers allegedly allowed them to alter their psychic states and withdraw their bodies from physical laws. The legend suggests that she was even able to perform divine miracles because of the intimacy she was able to achieve with God through introspection. When she was asked how she discovered the secret, she responded: -”You know of the how. I know of the how-less.” The stories detailing the life and practices of Rabi'a of Basra show a countercultural understanding of the role of gender in society. Indeed, she was the one who first set forth the doctrine of Divine Love known as Ishq-e-Haqeeqi and she is widely considered to be the most important of the early renunciants. Hers was a model of piety that would eventually come to be known as Sufism. When Rabi’a died at the age of eighty, her only possessions were an old, patched, dress-like mantle, a pottery jug and a reed mat that doubled as her prayer rug. Some say she was buried near Jerusalem, in the Kidron Valley, her tomb becoming a cult destination throughout the Middle Ages. <img width="1024" height="768" width_o="1024" height_o="768" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/d6047882175badd3750034cc1cb4877fdcc25710abd44da7bcf612ebb9907b1a/5.Siyaha.jpg" data-mid="80192925" border="0" alt="&copy; Pau Cat&agrave;, Project Beyond Qafila Thania" data-caption="© Pau Catà, Project Beyond Qafila Thania" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/d6047882175badd3750034cc1cb4877fdcc25710abd44da7bcf612ebb9907b1a/5.Siyaha.jpg" /> <img width="1086" height="724" width_o="1086" height_o="724" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/c31a3e0064fed6afa389273b660d3b77ae47c4047427bddd9d9edc93b257d282/8.-BQT_Mbarek.jpg" data-mid="81210653" border="0" alt="&copy; Pau Cat&agrave;, Project Beyond Qafila Thania" data-caption="© Pau Catà, Project Beyond Qafila Thania" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/c31a3e0064fed6afa389273b660d3b77ae47c4047427bddd9d9edc93b257d282/8.-BQT_Mbarek.jpg" /> السياح Siyaha Even as specialists in philology, poetry and genealogy were taking great pains to learn from the Bedouins through the practice of rihla, another emerging class of learned men and women in Islam also began to focus on the desert at the turn of the 9th century. They were mystics seeking fundamental alterity in solitude. Like the other learned men, the mystics used rihla to get closer to their master thinkers. Unlike the scholars, however, the mystics soon felt rihla‘s limitations. For them, the rihla tended to lead to only one aspect of knowledge: the dhahir, or knowledge as appearance. The mystics considered themselves to be the bearers of a sort of knowledge that reached beyond obvious causes to decipher the hidden, the batin . This is how the siyaha, a new form of travel in search of knowledge, emerged. The term siyaha, or wandering, refers to the lifestyle of the hermit, 'a person who does not know how to take pleasure in the savons of food and drink, who rejects the warmth of the hearth, and who is not fixed in any one place.' The sa’ihun, or vagabond saints, travelled continually in search of I’tibar, or teaching, and istibsar, intuition. By teaching, they learned and practised the exemplary observation of the world while, through istibsar, they cultivated the intuitive faculty of penetrating the essence of beings and things.&nbsp; Islamic mysticism follows the traditions of early Christianity hermeticism and Hindu asceticism. Both traditions are essential to understanding the rise of Sufism in medieval Islam, and especially the cult of siyaha. Indeed, in addition to the monistic and pantheistic tendencies of a number of Sufi masters, such as al-Hallaj (d. 922), Ibn ‘Arabi (d. 1240), Ibn&nbsp; Sab‘in (d. 1269) and Ibn al-Faridh (d. 1353), others chose to wander in the desert and in uninhabited places, often for years and in some cases for life, without carrying provisions, in search of enlightenment and inner truth.&nbsp; Like the scholars who practiced the rihla, the sa’ihun also adopted the Aja’ib as a way to write about their travels and tribulations. These creative travelogues were a mix of personal narrative, description, opinion and anecdote. The Aja’ib brought together the mystic and the scholarly creative literary genres through the principle of autopsia. Although it is not certain that the events they described were real, 'it was even less certain that they were false. They were, above all, difficult to confirm.' The fact that the marvellous operated on the terrain of ambiguity and metamorphosis created a singular connection between the human and the divine, the visible and the invisible, the natural and the supernatural, the ordinary and the extraordinary, and the believable and the unbelievable. Whereas, by adopting the rihla as a travel genre, traditional cosmographers, geographers and historians attempted to give enigma an objective interpretation and the moralists tried to give it a subjective content, in the Aja’ib the mystics and young scholars aimed to experience enigma by imagining nature as a reservoir of symbols, the so called ayats. <img width="1000" height="707" width_o="1000" height_o="707" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/0f9eb7fb868c648b792ca7beeb3d961d788a60129a02811cea4927ead0de43b3/3.-BQT_Diary_1.png" data-mid="81004246" border="0" data-scale="60" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/0f9eb7fb868c648b792ca7beeb3d961d788a60129a02811cea4927ead0de43b3/3.-BQT_Diary_1.png" /> Ayat, or the impossibility of perception استحالة الإدراك ︎︎︎The Impossibility of Perception is a personal account created during the last stage of the project Beyond Qafila Thania, a 20-day nomadic residency through the Draa valley, from M’Hamid to Tizint in the Southern Moroccan Desert in November 2017. Beyond Qafila Thania brought together researchers from Sudan, Morocco, Spain, Catalonia, Italy and the Netherlands, working in the fields of architecture, sociology and the visual arts. Together they sought to engage with the cultural, social and geopolitical space of the Sahara desert. Southern moroccan desert, November 1, 2017 Man is also fragile here. One more element of a landscape that covers everything and to which we all have to adapt, temporarily or perpetually. However diverse they may be, strategies of adaptation share a common aspect of submission and respect towards that which is visible - but also to the invisible. These strategies are based on resilient and ancestral patience; they eschew both progress and hurry. Sand is made into mud, mud into a house, the house into a carpet, the carpet into a starry sky, the starry sky into a sea of black rocks, the black rock into a camel, the camel into a haima, and the haima into golden dunes, sand, the desert. <img width="1000" height="707" width_o="1000" height_o="707" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/854f034bcddfc34e60e6cd444ed2d25d7e7d995d4ac31ce22efba8d5391390ca/4.-BQT_Diary_2.png" data-mid="81004247" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/854f034bcddfc34e60e6cd444ed2d25d7e7d995d4ac31ce22efba8d5391390ca/4.-BQT_Diary_2.png" /> <img width="1000" height="707" width_o="1000" height_o="707" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/d24a1bf13d1263ef130809fa74799e55b6d85cebbbea7999f1859c6e5e32e1fd/5.-BQT_diary_3.png" data-mid="81004248" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/d24a1bf13d1263ef130809fa74799e55b6d85cebbbea7999f1859c6e5e32e1fd/5.-BQT_diary_3.png" /> Southern moroccan desert, November 3, 2017 Are we walking too much? How can suffering become fruit? Is this state a path? We indeed taste the limits, live them in each step, traversing arid lands, killing the snake to welcome the crow. Alone, without words, too exhausted to talk. Are we walking too much? How can suffering become fruit? Is exhaustion the path? Deep within the branches, the wind gives its silent answer: A constant warm whispering, quiet and persistent, following our walking together apart. Southern moroccan desert, November 4, 2017 The impossibility of perception is already a perception. The impossibility of perceiving the desert, this landscape, its components and functionings, is already a perception. The signs are to be found in its traces: the remaining fragments, the fragmented remains, its bones. The dried branches, big and small, growing from nowhere, everywhere, impossible to perceive, remain invisible beside their shadows: Thin black lines traced on the hot sand or the cracking land, forming new lives and phantasmagorias, move almost impossibly with the giant orbit of the sun, tracing daily circles, no one witnessing the lonely halaqahs. Movement is perceived through its traces. Cockroaches, snakes, little birds and reptiles leave their testimony: an intricate, subtle, repetitive algorithm of life, impossible to perceive, erased every day through the persistent action of the Saharan winds that slowly displace the particles of sand, moving the vast dunes silently.&nbsp; And the skeletons, the fossils, the bones of millions of years of history and yesterday, half-buried or totally exposed, tell us about the fragility of life, of meteors, ancestors, and peoples, impossible to perceive. <img width="1024" height="768" width_o="1024" height_o="768" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/ef44f9a707054fc117833fce8bd2fb2a6222b6dc14b831d7d42f0f090edeefa6/7.The-impossibility-of-perception-2018.jpg" data-mid="80192928" border="0" alt="&copy; Pau Cat&agrave;, Project Beyond Qafila Thania" data-caption="© Pau Catà, Project Beyond Qafila Thania" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/ef44f9a707054fc117833fce8bd2fb2a6222b6dc14b831d7d42f0f090edeefa6/7.The-impossibility-of-perception-2018.jpg" /> <img width="1024" height="768" width_o="1024" height_o="768" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/ac73df5c93c22c54fd3dbccd170e072d02af5dd32046715bb51adcc5dfb49ded/7.-Traces.jpg" data-mid="81210776" border="0" alt="&copy; Pau Cat&agrave;, Project Beyond Qafila Thania" data-caption="© Pau Catà, Project Beyond Qafila Thania" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/ac73df5c93c22c54fd3dbccd170e072d02af5dd32046715bb51adcc5dfb49ded/7.-Traces.jpg" /> Spring Sessions. Wonder, wander (Amman) <img width="973" height="354" width_o="973" height_o="354" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/347bc069ad487a3a17fe9b61b49b420a62069d05e3a827d929aad68cd005b64d/Spring-Sessions.jpg" data-mid="81003995" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/973/i/347bc069ad487a3a17fe9b61b49b420a62069d05e3a827d929aad68cd005b64d/Spring-Sessions.jpg" /> Although the practice of the siyaha may seem to belong to a by-gone era, the tradition of vagabond hermits is still alive in the eastern Egyptian desert as well as in the Sinai peninsula.&nbsp; An example of the contemporary surge of interest in these practices can be found in The Heritage of the Desert Fathers, a project to map, photograph, and research hermitages and the tradition of wandering currently being led by the new Institute for the Study of Christian Tradition in Ljubljana, Slovenia. More relevant to this text, however, is the interest that has been shown in artistic and curatorial practices that investigate the space of the desert. Examples include Project Qafila, developed by architect and curator Carlos Perez; Cafe Tissardmine, founded by Karen Hadfield; and the project UNSCALE–Sahara, by AA Visiting School (AAVS) in London. In one way or another, by investigating the desert, all these projects pose a challenge to conventional ways of understanding the art residency model. Likewise, with its focus on experiential immersion into the desert through the practice of walking, the project Wonder, wander curated by Spring Sessions in Amman is an interesting case in point. For its 2018 edition, Spring Sessions curated a nomadic residency program titled Wonder, wander. The project was loosely structured through a collective pilgrimage, starting from the northern tip of Jordan and ending in Sinai desert lands. Spanning a distance of more than 400 kilometres over the course of 6 weeks, the project engaged with the act of walking over a changing terrain. The aim was to contribute to the participants’ individual research and artistic practices while engaging with the transversal themes of journeying, premonition, foresight and pilgrimage. Spring Sessions Spring Sessions is an experiential learning program and arts residency based in Amman, Jordan. The program creates a collaborative environment for artistic exchange between cultural practitioners. Conceived every spring as a program of workshops, mentoring sessions, research excursions, and other activities, their purpose is to question existing paradigms by experimenting outside of traditional modes of learning, while consciously engaging with several communities. Spring Sessions also has a permanent physical space, which includes: the makan makan makan, housing a darkroom; the ‘Lesser Amman Library;’ and a guest house for artists-in-residence. Spring Sessions [online] Available at: http://www.springsessions.org/?edition=edition2019-en [Accessed Day 16 June 2020]. In the opening text of Spring Sessions’ Wonder, wander, the following exercise was proposed: &nbsp; 'The Six of Swords (journeying) – The Hermit (solitude) &nbsp; &nbsp; 1_ Consider pilgrimage, a personal and spiritual act. &nbsp; &nbsp; 2_ Then, consider a pilgrim as one who walks to a destination at which their soul will sing. Or, consider a pilgrim as a person who by walking to a destination uncovers the song that their soul is already singing. &nbsp; &nbsp; 3_When you quiet the world, can you hear it better? &nbsp; &nbsp; 4_Do all pilgrims walk in places unknown to them, though they may know the route? &nbsp; &nbsp; 5_To walk in a place unknown to you is to truly see everything. As a child, all is new. Even the mundane has meaning.&nbsp; The Empress (the abundance of nature) – The Page of Cups (art) You cannot merely walk through nature. You cannot merely observe. You are now a participant.The pilgrims, as a group, are not only for themselves: they ask others to look at them. They impress upon others the fact of their existence.Yet you are very small in a big place. You are only one among the animals and the insects, the trees and the clouds. You are only one under the low-hung moon. And how do you know what they exert upon you? The animals and the insects, the trees and theclouds, the moon? Is it just you, together, who decides when to rest and when to walk, how to walk and where to walk? Or does some fickle element move through the clouds, draw you on with its earth-deep current, guide you, as the natural thing you are? The Emperor (the political world) – The Hermit (solitude) The pilgrims say to those that see them: look, we are here!To affirm existence, to say, we are here, we fill this space, is a matter of hope. To exist is to matter.What future do you, just one small thing in a vast landscape, envision for yourself? What future do you, small things huddled together in a vast and awesome universe, envision for yourself?What does your march mean? Why does it matter? What flags do you hold aloft? What triumph?You are walking ahead, after all. Where do you walk to?' function showNote23() { var x = document.getElementById("note23"); if (x.style.display === "none") { x.style.display = "block"; } else { x.style.display = "none"; } } function showNote31() { var x = document.getElementById("note31"); if (x.style.display === "none") { x.style.display = "block"; } else { x.style.display = "none"; } } function showNote32() { var x = document.getElementById("note32"); if (x.style.display === "none") { x.style.display = "block"; } else { x.style.display = "none"; } } function showNote33() { var x = document.getElementById("note33"); if (x.style.display === "none") { x.style.display = "block"; } else { x.style.display = "none"; } } https://aneventwithoutitspoem.com/Anna-and-the-hypermobile-Icarus Tue, 07 Jul 2020 17:23:58 +0000 An Event Without Its Poem https://aneventwithoutitspoem.com/Anna-and-the-hypermobile-Icarus html { scroll-behavior: smooth; } Anna and the hypermobile Icarus آنا وإيكاروس الذي لا يهدأ ︎︎︎This text was written on my way to Barcelona airport, from where I was flying to Boston to present NACMM_North Africa Cultural Mobility Map as part of the TransCultural Exchange's 2016 International Conference on Opportunities in the Arts: Expanding Worlds. Barcelona, February 24, 2016 Comings and goings to and from the airport are almost always annoying: the sun always shines too much, the coat is always too thick, you always have the feeling of forgetting something, you are unable to remember what it is… And everything else: those close to you are left behind, farther away at each stop of bus 46, which goes too slow and stops without remedy during endless bouts of end of February, mid-week traffic. ︎︎︎ 'Although the amount of time people have spent in motion has remained constant since 1950, the shift from walking and riding bicycles to using cars and planes has increased the speed of travel fivefold. This results in the twin effect of creating both a wider and shallower environment of social activity around each person intensified polarisation between rich and poor, more anonymous and less convivial communities and the degradation of our physical environment brought about by high-speed traffic'. Adams, J (2011) The Social Consequences of Hypermobility [online] Available at: john-adams.co.uk [Accessed Day 16 June 2020]. <img width="300" height="200" width_o="300" height_o="200" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/5e110b35f1808dc164dd8d319ce2da11422e5572541f19e44109bd4a2751f076/8.Anna-and-the-hypermobile-Icarus-2016.jpg" data-mid="80369543" border="0" alt="Christina's World painting by American artist Andrew Wyeth, 1948" data-caption="Christina's World painting by American artist Andrew Wyeth, 1948" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/300/i/5e110b35f1808dc164dd8d319ce2da11422e5572541f19e44109bd4a2751f076/8.Anna-and-the-hypermobile-Icarus-2016.jpg" /> The first image that comes to my mind is the view of the vast, silent wheat fields, infinite yellows under the sun on a hot windy day. I feel almost like Anna Christina Olson in the meadows, in the middle of that hot summer of 1948, looking with terror and envy at the black mansion far away. Inside, she is paralysed. Anna’s exhaustion in the middle of such an exuberant field, and her unfulfilled desire to enter the black mansion, remind us of Icarus, the son of the master craftsman Daedalus, falling. At the heart of Icarus’ story is his attempt to escape from Crete, using wings that his father constructed from feathers and wax. As the myth would famously have it, he ignored instructions not to fly too close to the sun, and the melting of the wax caused him to fall to his death. The legend of Icarus suggests that the very idea of mere mortals using such means of travel is impious. ︎︎︎'As we spread ourselves ever wider, we must spread ourselves thinner. If we spend more time interacting with people at a distance, we must spend less time with those closest to home, and if we have contact with more people, we must devote less time and attention to each one. In small-scale pedestrian societies, everyone knows everyone. In hyper-mobile societies old-fashioned geographical communities are replaced by aspatial communities of interest: we spend more of our time, physically, in the midst of strangers'. Adams, J (2011) The Social Consequences of Hypermobility [online] Available at: john-adams.co.uk&nbsp;[Accessed Day 16 June 2020]. The myth of Icarus is usually interpreted as a tragic example of hubris, or failed ambition, an unnecessary moral lesson, or maybe the symbolic vengeance of the countryman. Icarus drowns but the world goes on,&nbsp; unaware of his life’s brevity. Not even a single trace of the myth catches the attention of those who work with their hands. As myself, Anna Christina Olson feels invisible too. <img width="2000" height="1278" width_o="2000" height_o="1278" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/4f4164a9d2dd412bf1d19193f137adcb0a1d7019fa778af743636559a9dd27bc/10.-Landscape-with-the-fall-of-Icarus.jpg" data-mid="80886364" border="0" alt="Landscape with the Fall of Icarus by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1558)" data-caption="Landscape with the Fall of Icarus by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1558)" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/4f4164a9d2dd412bf1d19193f137adcb0a1d7019fa778af743636559a9dd27bc/10.-Landscape-with-the-fall-of-Icarus.jpg" /> Landscape with the Fall of Icarus According to Brueghelwhen Icarus fellit was springa farmer was ploughinghis field the whole pageantryof the year wasawake tingling nearthe edge of the seaconcerned with itselfsweating in the sunthat meltedthe wings' wax insignificantlyoff the coastthere wasa splash quite unnoticed this wasIcarus drowning