Frictional Conversations - The Script
Line up: yasmine eid-sabbagh, Sary Moussa, Francisca Khamis Giacoman

Join us for the third broadcasting event of Frictional Conversations - The Script by yasmine eid-sabbagh, featuring a response by Francisca Khamis Giacoman. Running at If I Can't Dance from June 20 till July 11, Frictional Conversations - The Script continues a twenty-five-year process of (counter-)archiving a large repository of photographs from Burj al-Shamali, a Palestinian refugee camp in southern Lebanon. After taking different forms over the years, the archive is (de-)materialized into a script for an experimental radio show, developed by eid-sabbagh with musician and composer Sary Moussa and her collaborators in Burj al-Shamali.

The script is performed live across four expanded reading/broadcasting events, staged from within a soft environment created from carpets donated by members of our network. During these experimental broadcasts, reading moments are interwoven with electronic music by Moussa and archival fragments, blurring the boundaries between past, present, and future. Rather than using images as static records, the script activates them as prompts for speculation and storytelling, foregrounding the memories, desires, and subjectivities of five generations of Palestinians.

Each performance is followed by a response and talk with Amsterdam-based artists, who relate to the script from the perspective of their experiences and practices. Francisca Khamis Giacoman connects the work to her own explorations of memory, time, and, oral traditions, particularly within the Palestinian diasporic condition in Latin America.

Outside these events, the carpeted environment remains open as a reading retreat (Wednesday–Friday, 12–17h) and gathering space for workshops and reading circles with Tidal Studies, Book Block Brigade, Reading Vigil for Palestine, Sobhi Khatib/BeSahara, shy*play, and Oo(y)ster Mums. 

Read more about the project and the whole 3-week programme on the PROGRAMME BOOKLET.

[ID: A special typographic rendition of the Arabic word for 'script' in a bright magenta pink is displayed over a brick red background. The typography presents spikes around the letters, making the word look electrified and emanating resonance and vibrations]