The Utopia that Grows from the Ashes

Grief and loss(es) are part of our daily personal and political life. When and where do we find common ground and utopia in a post-pandemic world? In an environment of climate change, political tensions, spreading of extreme right-wing ideas, but also geopolitical conflicts that constitute major challenges for the future? And while whistle-blowers continue to be consciously silenced? 

With this talk, we would like to acknowledge the grief and loss that people deal with on a daily basis in a bruised and bleeding world. Since 2020 and even before that, we have been grieving lost ones, experiences, sources of income, qualitative housing, ways of finding and being community, or other valuable and tangible things. It is this everyday social vulnerability of facing a world in a state of deterioration, that we want to talk about. And about utopia, the power of imagining other worlds, in spite of everything.

• Samira Saleh is a spoken word performer, Agogical Sciences student and organizer. She grew up with three backgrounds, an Egyptian background from home, a Moroccan in her immediate circle and a dominant diasporic background with Dutch roots, whose roots were pulled out of the ground to find a new foothold in Belgium. Her artistic language is one that is direct, unfettered and uncompromising. She translates what she sees, experiences and witnesses as a Muslim woman and a woman of colour in our society.

• Yasmina Reggad is an independent curator, performance artist, author and playwright based in Brussels (Belgium). She holds a Master's degree in Medieval History from La Sorbonne (France). She is currently curator of the French Pavilion at the 59th Venice Biennale (Italy), artistic director of the Bienal das Amazônias (Brazil) and curator at aria (artist residency in algiers, Algeria).
Yasmina Reggad also works as a dramaturg and has collaborated with choreographer Ioanna Angelopoulou, dancer-choreographer Trajal Harrell, and performance artist Carlos Azeredo Mesquita.

• Dr. Ama Kissi is a researcher, licensed clinical psychologist, public speaker, and a DE&I consultant. The thread that ties her work together is her deep-seated passion for alleviating human suffering and particularly that experienced by minoritized individuals.