Qalqalah قلقلة, NOA

Feminist School: Losing Ground

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Losing Ground: On Disappeared Art Institutions And Their Ghosts

Why small art spaces can make a difference

Small-scale, independent art spaces are not to be underestimated as players in an art field that seeks to facilitate both local and transnational gatherings. They, more than anybody else, try to create the conditions in which artistic research and work can occur. Quite a few of these initiatives have been successful, but many of them have disappeared again. What remains of the ideas, the connections and the objects that they established?

Qalqalah قلقلة, a platform of editors and curators, and NOA (Not Only Arabic), a performative magazine, investigate the afterlife of such independent places at Almost Summer. How, why and for whom were these initiatives created? What kind of artistic institution did they strive to become? What relationships did they establish, what myths did they start and last but not least: who gets to tell their stories? In BUDA, both platforms take you through their investigations.

Video Exhibition | Sat 1.07 & Sun 2.07 | 10:30-17:30 | free

Video exhibition curated by Line Ajan and Salma Mochtari, with works by Salim Bayri, Walid Raad, Ghita Skali and Emma Wolukau-Wanambwa.

Performance | Sat 1.07 | 17:30-17:55 | free

A NOA magazine inter-twined performance, with Lara Pigorsch, Yasmin Moalem and Mounira Al Solh. The performance is partially and gently interactive

Artists Lara Pigorsch and Yasmin Moalem met in Mounira Al Solh’s performance class at the School of Fine Arts in Kassel. There, Lara Pigorsch has been experimenting with forms of collaboration via bodily soothing and inter-weaving gestures; and Yasmin Moalem has recently been exploring short poems, uttered in plural mother tongues, as a performative gesture.

In line with their bodily and verbal works, the two of them come into a dialogue, inspired by the third edition of NOA Magazine, revolving around language and prejudice. Initiated by Mounira Al Solh, NOA #3 developed around the years during which the artist had to pass a Dutch Integration Exam, during a migration process that lasted at least a decade. In doing so, Lara and Yasmin’s collaboration extends into sharing a need for collaborative spaces, that might contain and allow intangible practices, such as time based performances. Extending those spaces across various contexts such as art schools, art institutions, festivals, and temporary artist-run spaces, they act as pop-up practices, gently intruding institutional settings.

Collective conversation | Sun 2.07 | 11:00-13:00 | pay what you can

Collective conversation with Azar Mahmoudian, Marnie Slater, Mounira Al Solh, Line Ajan and Virginie Bobin.

During this conversation, curator Azar Mahmoudian, artist Marnie Slater, artist Mounira Al Solh and curators Line Ajan and Virginie Bobin will revisit different experiences of setting up, activating, funding, maintaining, protecting as well as closing down independent project spaces and collectives. How were these various initiatives shaped, namely in response to the surrounding political contexts? Who constituted them and how did they impact the bodies of their members? Who did they wish to address and how did they play along, or refuse, imperatives of visibility, efficiency and communication? How can we mourn them when they come to closure? How do their memories resonate with, and continue to inform, our ways of operating in the arts and the affective bonds that weave through them?

The Feminist School is part of the European programme apap – FEMINIST FUTURES, a project co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union

Qalqalah قلقلة (FR/SY/MA/LB/NL) is an editorial and curatorial platform, founded in 2018 in France. It is dedicated to the production, translation and circulation of artistic, theoretical and literary research in three languages: French, Arabic and English.

Line Ajan is a curator, writer and member of Qalqalah قلقلة. She is currently a Curatorial Fellow at Mudam Luxembourg. She writes for various publications and contributes regularly to Art Asia Pacific and to Mediapart’s podcast L’esprit critique. Previously, she has worked and curated exhibitions and screening programs at MCA Chicago, ArteEast, Imane Farès gallery and afterhours.

Virginie Bobin develops collaborative projects that take the forms of exhibitions, publications, workshops, seminars, texts, translations or ongoing conversations with artists, curators, researchers and art students. She is a co-founder of Qalqalah قلقلة and a PhD-in-practice candidate at the Akademie der bildenden Künste (Vienna, 2018-2023).

Salma Mochtari is a researcher, curator and member of Qalqalah قلقلة. In addition to discursive and editorial programming, her curatorial practice is based on forms of collective production through workshops, translation or fiction writing. As a research affiliate at Clermont Art school, she studies what the Black radical traditions do to the artists, curators and art practitioners who work with them.

NOA (not only arabic) magazine is a periodical magazine in limited editions, co-initiated by Mounira Al Solh. Viewing of the magazine can only be arranged by appointment or by direct inscription, at specific or secret locations, such as a hotel room, or a library.

Mounira Al Solh is a visual artist embracing video and video installations, painting and drawing, embroidery, and performative gestures. Narration, story-telling are engaged and committed to an ongoing witnessing in feminist issues, wars, languages and mother-tongues, migrations, and a constant search for the self, as part or as opposed to social and cultural obligations and imposed contexts.

Marnie Slater (b. Aotearoa New Zealand) is a visual artist who lives in Brussels. She is co-curator of Buenos Tiempos, Int. and a team member of Mothers & Daughters – A Lesbian* and Trans* Bar*. Marnie is currently teaching on the AdMa program at St Lucas School of Art, Antwerp, where she is also undertaking a year-long research project on process tools for queer, feminist and anti-racist collaborative art making.

Azar Mahmoudian is an independent curator and educator. She runs the summer school, For a Summer Yet to Come, in Tehran and nearby places. Her other attempts with self-organised spaces and study gatherings include co-organising kaf (Tehran, 2010-2015), and the multi-chapter programs, Staging a Change and Shifting Panoramas (Tehran and Berlin, 2017-2020).

Yasmin Moalem is a German-Iranian artist with a background in political science and activism. In her art, she explores and analyses political and individual topics such as socio-economic correlations, experiences as a first generation migrant in Germany and the relation to her inner self.

Lara Pigorsch is a choreographer and visual artist. After her state training as a contemporary dancer, she studied art, music and media studies. Since 2020, she has been studying visual arts at the Kunsthochschule Kassel in the performance class. She worked as a choreographer and dancer at documenta 15 and her work Isolation was awarded at the Vibra Video Festival program.