CANCELLED - Travelling sources, between two cups of tea

In light of recent events, it is not possible for Jewish Algerian-Palestinian professor Ariella Aïsha Azoulay, who was born and raised in colonised Palestine, to come to Brussels. Therefore, after careful deliberation with Travelling Sources' curators Hari Prasad Sacré, Arshia Ali Azmat & Hoda Siahtiri, we have decided to cancel the three-day festival.

Read the curators' statement here.

Travelling sources invites the audience for a storytelling evening about displacement and repair at Kaaistudios. Guests are welcome to take an itinerary in the building, navigating between forms of storytelling. First, they gather for a cup of tea in the living room of The Kitchen where they can also view the exhibition Getting Softer by Espace Fxmme. From there on, the public can attend the storytelling Recalling History; Sitting number 6; Conjuring A Fork of Tales by Hagar Ophir in collaboration with Juna Suleiman (invited by Ariella Aïsha Azoulay) and the storytelling installation Meuse by Navid Fayaz. (For both projects you need to reserve your spot after buying your ticket, via the service mail.) Throughout the evening, the audience can return to the living room to listen to The Kitchen's Learning Palestine-Algiers broadcast.

PROGRAMME

18:00 – 22:30 The Kitchen living room & Getting Softer by Espace Fxmme expo | ongoing
 

• Together with the Palestine Learning Group, the Kitchen proposes Learning Palestine-Algiers, a broadcast weaving together the militant histories and present of anti-colonial liberation struggles in Palestine and Algiers. The program pulls together archival sound fragments from lectures, interviews, book presentations, storytelling, songs, poetry and chants. Learning Palestine-Algiers transforms the Living Room into a listening space, as it streams live from Radio Alhara.
• Getting Softer is an ongoing project by Espace Fxmme, where women meet during textile workshops to create collective curtains. They go over different themes, such as 'freedom', 'family and home' and 'motherland and origins'. Six of these curtains will be exhibited.

18:15 – 21:30 Meuse by Navid Fayaz | audio tour starting every 15min.

> after buying your ticket, you can book your slot via the reservation mail that will be sent to you.
 

• Meuse is an audio installation unearthing the buried stories of immigration and transition and deploying them as compasses to revisit the multifaceted concept of home.

19:00 – 22:00 Recalling History; Sitting number 6; Conjuring A Fork of Tales by Hagar Ophir & Juna Suleiman | three-hour performance (with 2 breaks of 15min.)

> after buying your ticket, you can book your slot via the reservation mail that will be sent to you. You can book a ticket for either the entire performance or for separate moments.
 

• Recalling History; Sitting number 6; Conjuring A Fork of Tales by Hagar Ophir in collaboration with Juna Suleiman (invited by Ariella Aïsha Azoulay) is a performative séance in which a family object forms the starting point to travel through Algerian history, navigating questions of colonial heritage, ancestral knowledge and displacement. Please note: the séance has a duration of around three hours (with two breaks of around 15 min). The audience books time slots for different moments in the scéance or for the entire scéance.

• Juna Suleiman is a Palestinian filmmaker, casting director, film editor, and actress. Since completing her studies in Cinema and Television in 2006, she has worked on numerous films, alongside her first feature documentary Mussolini’s Sister which received nominations and awards internationally. 

• Hagar Ophir is a multidisciplinary artist, trained as a historian, stage designer and dancer. Her works establish history as a space for action and imagination of possible presents beyond separations of time, nation-states and ideologies. Among her recent works are the internationally presented performances Recalling History I (2019), Restless Objects (2021), and Recalling History II - Gentle Revenge (2022). 

• Navid Fayaz is a multidisciplinary artist whose passion for storytelling and Interdisciplinary art led him to complete a postgraduate program in Digital Storytelling at KASK School of Arts Gent in 2022. His current project researches the impact of immigration on the construction of identity and a sense of belonging.

• The Kitchen is a place always in the making in the centre of Brussels, an assembly of sorts, where we hang out, cook and gossip, where we broadcast, reprint and study,  where our open secret is being plotted.

• Espace Fxmme started back in 2016 at Globe Aroma. It is a platform that offers a safe(r) space for women, artists and creatives.

• Ariella Aïsha Azoulay is an author, curator of anti-colonial archives, film essayist, and theorist of empires and its various technologies (from partition to photography). She is Professor of Modern Culture and Media and the Department of Comparative Literature at Brown University. Her work focuses on unlearning imperial histories, engaging with archives to generate anti-colonial knowledge and generate potential histories.