The Team
Fehras Publishing Practices and Qalqalah قلقلة have been collaborating since the group exhibition Qalqalah قلقلة : More than one language, at the Centre régional d’art contemporain Occitanie- Mediterranée (March September 6, 2020) around a project questioning heterolinguality (a term borrowed from researcher Myriam Suchet, coining the presence of other languages in a language) - here Arabic (in its dialectal versions) in French in the Southern region. This research will continue in the fall of 2021 between Marseille and Cassis, in the framework of the residency co-sponsored by the Camargo Foundation, the Frac Provence-Alpes-Côte-d’Azur, and the Goethe Institut.
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Fehras Publishing Practices +
Fehras Publishing Practices (Sami Rustom, Omar Nicolas and Kenan Darwich) is an artist collective founded in Berlin in 2015. The collective is researching the history and presence of publishing and its entanglement in the socio-political and cultural sphere in the Eastern Mediterranean, North Africa, and the Arabic diaspora, focusing on the relationship between publishing and art historiography. It questions the role of translation as a tool facing cultural domination in its traditional and modern forms, as well as a tool for creating solidarity and deconstructing colonial power. Fehras observes publishing as a possibility for creating, transferring and accumulating knowledge and therefore initiates projects that carry different forms such as exhibition, film, book, lectures, performances. Projects i.a. Borrowed Faces, Stories of Publishers during the Cold War ; n.b.k., Berlin (2019), Disappearances. Appearances. Publishing, EMST, Athens (2018), Soapy post-modern bathwater, Sharjah Biennale 13, Tamwuj, Sharjah, AE (2017), Waiting Trajectory, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (2017).
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Qalqalah قلقلة +
Qalqalah قلقلة, represented by Victorine Grataloup for this project, is an editorial and curatorial platform dedicated to the production, translation and circulation of artistic, theoretical and literary research in three languages: French, Arabic and English. Founded in 2018 in France by Virginie Bobin and Victorine Grataloup, in the midst of a political and intellectual context, and a media coverage marked by reactionary, authoritarian and discriminatory speeches and acts, Qalqalah قلقلة asserts a feminist, inclusive and intersectional stance. It relies on translation as a tool for the production and reception of situated knowledge, capable of making visible the relations of power and the possibilities of invention and affection that are at play between languages, temporalities and contexts that are marked by the colonial legacy, conflicts and contemporary revolts. Its editorial committee is currently composed of Line Ajan, Virginie Bobin, Montasser Drissi, Victorine Grataloup, Vir Andres Hera and Salma Mochtari.
Victorine Grataloup is a curator, co-founder of the platform Qalqalah قلقلة as well as the curatorial collective Le Syndicat Magnifique, dedicated to emerging creation. She studied art history and theory at EHESS (Paris), Humboldt Universität (Berlin) and Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne, where she now teaches, and worked at Palais de Tokyo, KADIST, Bétonsalon - centre d'art et de recherche and Cneai before curating independently. Her work is transdisciplinary and collaborative, at the intersection of artistic and social issues at the crossroads of languages. She is interested in the political and affective stakes of artistic practices, in collective imaginaries and minority representations, in desirable and hospitable institutions.
LIP SING FOR YOUR ART
As part of their Collaborative Residency in the Aix-Marseille-Provence Metropolitan Area, the Camargo Foundation, the Frac Provence-Alpes-Côte-d'Azur, and the Goethe-Institut Marseille welcome the artist collective Fehras Publishing Practices (Sami Rustom, Omar Nicolas, and Kenan Darwich) and the independent curator Victorine Grataloup (Qalqalah قلقلة) in November 2021 in Marseille and Cassis. During their residency, the team will work on the project LIP SING FOR YOUR ART, which focuses on the transformations that classical Arabic is undergoing in society and in the field of contemporary art.
Since 2016 Fehras Publishing Practices has been conducting research under the project title Institutional Terms on the transformations that the classical Arabic language is undergoing in society and in the field of contemporary art, particularly through the appearance of words deriving directly from English to the detriment of pre-existing Arabic words, testifying to the power relationships at work between languages. This investigation took a performative turn when Fehras began to collaborate with Qalqalah قلقلة : the trio has since been examining the question of translation and the linguistic power relations manifesting themselves over bodies, culminating in the exhibition Qalqalah قلقلة: more than one language (Crac Sète, Kunsthalle Mulhouse) in the production of an original piece taking the form of a karaoke installation: «institutional criticism that could be sung», to use the artists’ expression. «We developed songs from exhibition catalogs and art books, combining melodies of internationally famous songs with lyrics (bilingual Arabic and French or English) dealing with the gap between global and local, the role of institutional funding, and the notion of language transformation.»
In the fall of 2021, between Marseille and Cassis, the joint residency of Fehras Publishing Practices and Qalqalah قلقلة co-sponsored by the Camargo Foundation, the Frac Provence-Alpes-Côte-d’Azur and the Goethe Institute will further this research and work. The French Mediterranean area, a gateway to successive migrations and a heterolingual territory, will constitute the basis of a research project that will densify through encounters with researchers as well as with civil society associations, in collaboration with the research group Situations Post from Villa Arson.
The residency will culminate in a screening of Soapy Postmodern Bathwater, a film by Fehras Publishing Practices followed by a discussion with the artists, Qalqalah قلقلة and researcher Tiphaine Samoyault held at the Frac Provence-Alpes-Côte-d’Azur in November 2021 [LEARN MORE]..
