Read the Room - Day #3

FREE 7.30pm What’s All This Dramaturgy About? with a response by Castélie Yalombo Lilonge and friends

A drink and launch of Mophradat’s latest booklet from the series Read the Room that looks at the different scopes of dramaturgy within choreographic practice, in the presence of some of the contributors. Castélie Yalombo Lilonge and several friends perform a text in response to the booklet.

8.30pm Nothing Will Remain… Other Than the Thorn Lodged in the Throat of this World 
Performance by Haig Aivazian and Noor Abed  

In a collaboration commissioned by Mophradat for Read the Room Festival, Haig Aivazian and Noor Abed guide the audience through a collective sonic experiment. Sifting through recorded poems, songs, and recitations, the pair have composed a medley made up of guttural sounds, hums, hisses, sighs, whistles, whispers, mumbles, gasps, coughs...Through a loose choreography mirroring the porosity of sound transmission, they will ask the audience to activate mouths and larynxes, in a call and response exercise that will have them listening ‘in the moment’ to the very resonance they generate. This will be an attempt to create a space of collective synchrony and action, a moment in constant formation where the room is traveled and transformed by vibration, where the audience becomes a choir and their bodies a resonance chamber. 

9.30pm Makimakkuk Live 

Experience a unique live performance blending genres such as Palestinian folk, experimental, hip-hop, electronic, and ambient. The artist's concept of Sovereign Hop/SoveRap/Rapsiyade—a term they coined—reflects their creative freedom and commitment to self-determination. This revolutionary subgenre integrates diverse influences and rhythms to assert indigenous sovereignty and resist the effects of colonialism and cultural homogenization. Through original compositions, live rapping, singing, spoken word, and DJing, the performance explores themes of self-expression, justice, and mental health, challenging conventional genre boundaries and celebrating cultural identity. 

Haig Aivazian is an artist living in Beirut. Working across a range of media and modes of address, he delves into the ways in which power embeds, affects, and moves people, objects, animals, landscape and architecture.  

Noor Abed is a Palestinian artist who works at the intersection of performance and film. Her practice examines notions of social choreographies and collective formations, combining forms of the ‘staged’ and the ‘documentary’. 

Based in Ramallah, Makimakkuk is a Palestinian music producer, performing artist, MC, and selector; a music blender. 

Mophradat is a Brussels-based association that creates opportunities for artists from the Arab world through an inventive approach to funding, commissioning, collaborating, and gathering. Launched by Mophradat in 2023, New Agents is a programme that brings together a group of people from across arts fields from the Arab world, whose practices are singular, future facing, and committed to public engagement, to work towards a joint project. The New Agents are Bayan Kiwan, Dani Arbid, Nour El Safoury, Sara Bouzgarrou, and Siwar Krai(y)tem.