Betraying Utopia
ved UKS, Oslo
2. juni kl. 15-17
‘each palestinian structure presents itself as a potential ruin’ – Edward Saïd
A conversation between Rana Issa, Nadim Khoury and Jassem Hindi
How to betray utopia? How has it betrayed us?
This is the question haunting this open conversation between three Palestinian thinkers and activists. They will talk about what Utopia means to them, what weight it has in their lives, the price Palestinians have paid for the realization of the zionist utopia. How has the idea of utopia betrayed the Palestinians and what techniques of survival have we invented? We will also invoke middle eastern poetry and literature as a political practice of imagination – as a place to heal and a place to think. Utopia betrays Palestinians, and Palestinians betray utopias, a collective daydream constantly interrupted by the news, a conversation fragmented by the necessity to leave, to switch language, identity, companions.
Jassem el Hindi (b. Saudi Arabia) is a French Palestinian Lebanese artist and performer based in Norway. He examines the double bind of haunting and hospitality, in the company of death poems and distorted folk art. His work is based on broken dances, broken objects, broken texts, cast in nervousness and necessity.
His latest dance pieces are based on arab death poems – works by Etel Adnan, Nazik El Malaika, with western counterparts: Aase Berg, CA Conrad, Tor Ulven – in order to generate baroque, cruel, cosmological worlds. His work often starts with a death poem and a set of iconographic material. Aside from his solo work, el Hindi also creates sound pieces for numerous choreographers around the world.