Travelling [fractured] Sources: The world like a jewel in the hand

The world like a jewel in the hand is the latest film essay about imperial plunder by professor Ariella Aïsha Azoulay. The film takes the audience on a historical journey through imperial archives narrating the extraction of culture and arts from indigenous worlds. Azoulay educates the audience on how the destruction of indigenous worlds on the African continent (referencing histories a.o. in Algeria and the D.R. Congo) was foundational to constructing imperial worlds governed by colonial states such as France, Belgium and Israel.
Azoulay integrates a reflection of her own family history, being mobilised from Algerian jewish communities to settlers in Palestine, she sheds a new light on the partition of Jewish-Muslim worlds in North Africa and West Asia. Azoulay invites us to reclaim the world of skills, care for the world enshrined in stolen objects, and inhabit ruined worlds we are being told could no longer exist.

This film screening is part of Travelling [fractured] Sources. This is a partial restaging of the cancelled three-day arts and reflection festival Travelling sources, curated by Hari Prasad Sacré, Hoda Siahtiri and Arshia Ali Azmat. The focus of this festival lay on communities that involuntarily cross imperial borders and carry endangered forms of storytelling. Central to it were stories and voices of worlds intertwined with the silence of imperial history.

If you have seen the film and would like to delve a little deeper into the subject, you are also very welcome to attend Unlearning Imperial Violence, an academic conversation with Professor Azoulay on Thursday 30 November at 18:00 in Aula Q at the VUB. You can register by sending an email to tickets@kaaitheater.be.