Mathaf: Interference

Providing a social and critical hub at the ICA for the first weekend of the Shubbak Festival, Interference is a three day exploration of the relationship between art, agency and agitation in the Arab world and beyond.

Through a screening, conversations with curators and artists and participatory workshops, Interference examines different kinds of catalysts and contexts for creating, interpreting and engaging with art, and poses questions about art’s relationship with contemporary politics and with modern Arab history.

Interference is presented by the ICA in collaboration with Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art.

Friday 8 July, 8pm

Microphone - Screening + Q&A with director Ahmad Abdalla, Theatre
(116 min, 2010, Digibeta)
From the award-winning director of Heliopolis, Microphone follows the story of Khaled in his return from the US to his hometown of Alexandria where he is unable to repair relationships with his past love and father. Roaming the city, he stumbles across hip-hop artists, musicians and graffiti artists who open his eyes to the underground art scene and a new generation of culture.

With an introduction by James Neil, film Curator of Parallax Media

This event is presented in collaboration with The Delfina Foundation as part of The Knowledge - Stop 3: Alexandria.

Saturday 9 July - The Interference Conversations

1:30 pm - Institution as Instigator, Theatre
There has been a marked increase in international visibility for artists from the Arab world and other postcolonial contexts in the last few decades, but has the global art playing field been leveled enough? This conversation between Gilane Tawadros and Deena Chalabi considers the founding missions of two institutions—the Institute of International Visual Arts (London, 1994) and Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art (Doha, 2010) to interrogate established structures of thought and open new lines of enquiry about culture and identity in the visual arts.

3:30 pm - Object as Instigator, Theatre
Inspired for over a decade by Mona Hatoum’s choice of soap as a medium for her work in Palestine, curator Jack Persekian delivers his presentation entitled "Nablus Soap". He draws on the ephemeral nature of soap to allude to the unsustainability of the arrangement of control over the West Bank and Gaza as delineated in the Oslo agreement maps. In discussion with writer and editor Shumon Basar, Persekian reflects on the volatile, shifting and disintegrating landscape of Palestine, and in turn, on political engagement in art.

5:30 pm - Artist As Instigator, Theatre
When you’re a globally minded contemporary artist, what happens when you also feel a responsibility to develop local art infrastructures? On this panel, Emily Jacir discusses her work teaching in Ramallah and Beirut, while Zineb Sedira and Wael Shawky share their new initiatives in Algiers and Alexandria. All three artists will discuss their roles as educators and their reasons for supplementing and/or circumventing existing systems in their respective contexts.

9pm - Interference Party with special guest DJ, Bar
Artist and experimental musician Raed Yassin takes over the ICA Bar to DJ a unique night of hybrid tunes from the Middle East, North Africa and beyond. Come and dance to his eclectic mix of covers of occidental songs or Arabic songs that used foreign languages or forms of music—including rare funk, early and recent Arabic pop, raï (a blend of influences originally from Algeria and sung in French/Arabic), and dabke, the most popular folk dance music in the Arab world.  

Sunday 10 July - The Interference Workshops

1 pm - You gotta fight for your right (to party!) or Can one be a non-Orientalist?, Theatre
Inspired by the essay European Universalism by theorist Immanuel Wallerstein, curator Nav Haq leads a workshop that uses examples of recent exhibitions and artworks in order to consider the latent issues of ‘universalism’ in the international contemporary art context. We welcome curators, students, and members of the public interested in examining the implications of this critical question, to take part in this discussion about cultural representation and the misnomer of ‘celebration’ when considering difference. A short and relatively painless reading list has also been compiled for this workshop.

4.00 pm - Reanimating Histories, ICA Studio
Egyptian artist Wael Shawky works in a range of media, including photographs, video, installations and performances. His work often involves complex, reconstructions and retellings of specific moments or periods in the history of Egypt, and broader Arab world, exploring ideas about culture, religion, hybridity and globalization. In this workshop, Shawky explores his use of historical material and his questioning role as a translator between past and present, engaging participants to think about cliché and stereotype, truth and myth. This public workshop takes place in association with Mathaf’s Artist Encounter series.