98TALK

Wagons Libres

By Sandra Iché

Friday May 25, 7pm

In French

In 2000, Sandra Iché writes the story of L’Orient-Express, a Beirut-based francophone magazine from the 1990s, founded and directed by the historian and journalist Samir Kassir. 10 years later, Sandra Iché conducts a new series of interviews with the former contributors of L’Orient Express. This time, however, the interviewees follow a method designed to prevent speech from reproducing the real, a real doomed by the “Arab misfortune”. Rather, the protocol of the interviews lends itself to fiction: the interview takes place in 2030, where we stand today and remember the past. Wagons Libres was written for the stage. It is a spatial and a deconstructed performance of the documentary apparatus where each element is deployed in single units- aural and visual archives, work notes, voice-over, testimony, framing and focus. At 98weeks, Sandra Iché will present a version of Wagons Libres, a talk-fiction pervaded by questions around the construction of history and the acts of narration.

 

Sandra Iché studied History and Political Sciences at Université Paris I-Panthéon Sorbonne. In 2004, she joins The Performing Arts Research and Training Studios (P.A.R.T.S), an art school in Brussels directed by Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker. In September 2006, she joins the dance company Maguy Marin/Centre Chorégraphique National de Rillieux-La-Pape and performs with the company internationally. She is one of the founding members of LIEUES, an experimental art space in Lyon, and of Rodéo, an interdisciplinary magazine for academic and artistic research.

98VIDEO

Female Trouble and Cookie Mueller

Screening + Reading

Presented by Chloe Griffin

Wednesday May 9, 7pm

In English

 

"Cookie Mueller was a writer, a mother, an outlaw, an actress, a fashion designer, a go-go dancer, a witch-doctor, an art-hag, and above all, a goddess. Boy, do I miss that girl." -John Waters

 

Cookie Mueller was a first-wave John Waters actor, a notorious scene figure, a chronicler of the New York 80’s art scene and a counter-culture icon. Her short stories and other writings published in the rare editions of Hanuman Press, in the Native Agents series by Semiotext(e), and anthologized by Serpents Tail have been enshrined as cult classics of non-conformity. Her image continues to draw attention in Waters’ films, the No Wave films of Amos Poe and Eric Mitchell, and in the work of photographer Nan Goldin. Cookie died of AIDS in 1989.

The evening will include a screening of Female Trouble, a reading from Cookie's short stories and a presentation by Chloe Griffin of her research into the life of Cookie Mueller through interviews and dialogues.

 

Chloe Griffin is an artist based in Berlin presently living in Beirut. She has been working on a book project about Cookie Mueller since 2006.

98TALK

"The poetics of scrap"

Presentation by Prof. Dr. Rosemarie Buikema

at 98weeks project space

MAY, 2, 2012

6.30 PM

In this lecture I will explore the ways in which the materiality of an artefact may produce effects in the performance of content. I will especially demonstrate how South African artists nowadays respond to the stories revealed in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (1997), and point to the fact that a lot of South-African artists are using scrap materials in order to shape their comments on the divided past. While doing so, I will elaborate on my thesis that the political effect of the arts is intrinsically intertwined with the way in which the materiality of the artefact is deployed.

Rosemarie Buikema is professor of Art, Culture and Diversity at Utrecht University (Utrecht, the Netherlands). She chairs the UU Graduate Gender programme and is the scientific director of the Netherlands Research school of Women’s Studies. She has widely published in the field of feminist and postcolonial theory, especially on the topic of political transitions and the arts. Her latest co-edited publications are Doing Gender in Media Art and Culture (Routledge 2009, with I. Van der Tuin) and Theories and Methodologies in Feminist Research (Routledge 2011, with G.Griffin and N. Lykke). See also www.genderstudies.nl and www.graduategenderstudies.nl

98VIDEOS

‘Summer 70’, 1970-71

Directed by Nagy Shaker and Paolo Isaja

In Italian; English subtitles.16mm, b&w, 63 min.

Screening presented by Chloe Griffin

Friday April 6, 7pm

Nagy Shaker was studying stage design in Rome and Paolo Isaja ran a ciné-club that specialized in experimental cinema when they met in Rome. They decided to collaborate on their respective film projects, and with the help of friends, they launched into production, casting an American nurse of Italian descent who was in Rome at the time. The film, a meditation on freedom at the turn of the 1970s, utilizes the full vocabulary of experimental cinema to evoke youthful experimentation and energetic abandon. The two alternated between directing and filming. Soliman Gamil authored the terrific musical score and Renzo Rossellini sponsored the production and financed the print.

98TALK

Thursday, 22^nd, March

6:30pm at 98Weeks

What is the magnitude of the Salafism and the Muslim Brotherhood in the Arab spring in general and in Syria in particular?

Hazem al Amin will discuss the importance of the Salafist phenomenon in the Arab Spring and the way it has been used by the Syrian regime as a tool of fear and intimidation, as well as the regime’s historical support for Salafists and their role in aiding Jihadists in Iraq and Lebanon.

Al Amin will also talk about the Islamists in general, including the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria, particularly the ambiguity of their absence from the revolutionary process on the ground, coupled with their rather conspicuous presence in the Syrian National Council.

ما هو حجم الظاهرة السلفية والأخوان المسلمين في الربيع العربي عموماً وفي سوريا وخصوصاً؟

سيقدم حازم الأمين عرضاً عن حجم الظاهرة السلفية في الربيع العربي وعن سعي النظام السوري للتهويل بها، وكان هو نفسه قد دعمها في السابق كما استثمر في السلفية الجهادية في العراق ولبنان لسنوات.

وسوف يتحدّث أيضاً عن الاسلاميين عموماً ومنهم الاخوان المسلمون في سوريا وعن موقعهم غير الواضح والمحدّد، لا سيما وانهم غائبون عن وقائع الثورة في الداخل وحاضرون في المجلس الوطني السوري على نحو لافت.

As a journalist, Hazem al Amin currently directs the section for investigative reporting in the daily al-Hayat. He worked as an itinerant correspondent in areas of crisis such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Jordan and Lebanon. He is also known for closely following developments in various Islamic movements in both the Arab and Islamic worlds with a special focus on violent Salafi movements, namely movements that call for a radical return to ancestral ways and values. In 2011 he published “Alsalafi Alyatim”, the Palestinian aspect of the "international Jihad" and the "Alqaida", (dar alsaqi).

حازم الأمين (1966)، صحفي وكاتب لبناني، عمل مراسلاً متجوّلاً في مناطق الأزمات مثل العراق وغزّة وأفغانستان ولبنان وكتب تحقيقات ميدانيّة عن السلفيين والإسلاميين في الأردن واليمن والبلقان. في 2011 صدر له كتاب "السلفي اليتيم"، الهويّة الفلسطينيّة لتنظيم القاعدة، (دار الساقي). يدير حازم الأمين حالياً قسم التحقيقات في صحيفة "الحياة" اللندنيّة.

"Arab thought and the Arab spring" is a series of talks inviting scholars, writers, philosophers and artists to reflect on the status and conditions of intellectual thought in the Arab world in the midst of the current uprisings.

98 TALK

"the role of women in the arab spring"

25 february at 6:30pm

Jumana Merhy

In her talk Jumana Merhy will touch upon different questions concerning the role of women and feminist movements in the arab spring, while focusing on the main concerns of these movements with the rise of islamism and its governance. Merhy will also touch upon some of the problematics that define the dynamics of these feminist movements.

Jumana Merhy is a feminist activist part of the "Democratic Association of Women"

(with simultaneous translation into english)

المرأة في الانتفاضات العربيّة

ستتحدث جمانة مرعي في محاضرتها عن دور المرأة والحركات النسويّة في الربيع العربي، مركزة على الهم الأساسي وهو وضع المرأة في ظلّ صعود الحركات الإسلاميّة وتولّيها السلطةوستتناول مرعي أيضاً بعض الإشكاليّات التي تعرِّف ديناميّات تلك الحركات النسويّ

جمانة مرعي ناشطة نسوية في إطار التجمّع النسائي الديموقراطي

ترجمة فورية إلى الإنكليزية

WDYP?

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THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT AND YOUR PARTICIPATION -98weeks team