Frictional conversations - The script, yasmine eid-sabbagh - If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution

From 20 June to 11 July 2026, If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution presents a new iteration of Frictional Conversations, a multi-layered project by artist/researcher yasmine eid-sabbagh. Through sonic transmissions, gatherings, and conversations, the project engages the complexity of Palestinian life and memory through the lens of Burj al-Shamali, a Palestinian refugee camp established in southern Lebanon following the Nakba in 1948.

Ongoing since 2001, Frictional Conversations refers to a negotiation process around a repository of photographs assembled by eid-sabbagh with residents of Burj al-Shamali. The collection includes thousands of family and studio photographs, as well as videos and audio recordings. Combining research, conversational practice, and performative interventions, Frictional Conversations expands the concept of the photographic image by shifting it across forms. Central to this approach is a move away from dominant visual regimes that often frame Palestinian refugees through spectacle or reduction. Instead, eid-sabbagh works through conversation and orality as ways of building resonance, intimacy, and relation.

Central to this approach is a move away from dominant visual regimes that often frame Palestinian refugees through spectacle or reduction

After several reconfigurations, Frictional Conversations – The Script turns the archive into a radio broadcast developed in collaboration with musician and composer Sary Moussa. The work translates visual material into sound and narrative, giving shape to a layered and affective listening experience. Rather than using images as static records of a closed past and an already written future, eid-sabbagh activates them as prompts for speculation and storytelling, foregrounding the memories, desires, and subjectivities embedded within them.

The result is an experimental radio play set within a DIY radio studio in Burj al-Shamali. The setting draws on the legacy of pirate radio stations—grassroots infrastructures that throughout history have served as tools of resistance, connection, and cultural preservation in various contexts of oppression and uprising. Blurring past, present, and future, the show weaves together field recordings, archival fragments, and conversations from the camp, along with an electronic music score created by Moussa. The work amplifies the voices of five generations of Palestinians who have lived in Burj al-Shamali since their displacement in 1948, offering a textured and intimate account of memory, loss, and endurance.

The radio show will be broadcast through four collective listening sessions on Saturday evenings - 20 and 27 June, and 4 and 11 July. Set within a soft, immersive environment constructed from curtains and carpetsc - many of which are contributed by members of Amsterdam’s communities - these sessions invite audiences into a shared space of attention and reflection, where sound is not only heard but also felt. Each broadcast is followed by an open conversation facilitated by local artists, drawing connections between the lived realities of Burj al-Shamali and the social and political context of Amsterdam.
Beyond these transmissions, The Script functions as a participatory space. Throughout its duration, the space hosts a library of titles connected to questions tackled by the project, as well as workshops, reading groups, and intergenerational gatherings involving artists, theorists, activists, and local community members. A symposium organised in collaboration with de Appel on 21 June brings yasmine eid-sabbagh together with other speakers to further expand on the project’s themes.

By engaging storytelling and collective listening, The Script cultivates embodied knowledge as a form of understanding grounded in lived experience, affect, and shared presence. By centring Palestinian narratives of displacement and exile, the project challenges flattened or dehumanising portrayals, creating space for dignity, complexity, and self-representation. Listening becomes a political act: a way of attending to histories that are actively suppressed, while drawing connections across different realities.

Listening becomes a political act: a way of attending to histories that are actively suppressed, while drawing connections across different realities

In a city shaped by colonial violence and straddled by many histories of migration, we hope that this new chapter of Frictional Conversations can speak to those carrying personal or ancestral experiences of displacement, while also engaging broader publics in a critical reflection on the interconnection of struggles. As the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people expands and accelerates, the project offers a space to slow down, listen carefully, and engage with the magnitude of what is unfolding.

Frictional Conversations – The Script, presented within the context of If I Can’t Dance Edition X – Body as Memory, was commissioned as part of the Consortium Commissions—a project initiated by Mophradat. The presentation is further supported by the Mondriaan Fund, AFK (Amsterdam Fund for the Arts), het Cultuurfonds, and the DOEN Foundation.

Frictional Conversations – The Script
If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution
WG-Plein 881, Amsterdam
20 June – 11 July 2026
Open Wednesday to Friday, 12PM-5PM

Sonic transmissions 
20 and 27 June, and 4 and 11 July 
8:30-10:30PM (including after talks with invited guests)

Symposium in collaboration with de Appel 
21 June (times and location TBC)

More gatherings happening throughout, 
visit www.ificantdance.org for full programme.