In Praise of the High Shadow
Based on a poem by Mahmoud Darwich, written in 1982 during the siege of Beirut, a poem written after the Sabra and Shatila massacre, read in Algeria in 1983 before the Palestinian National Council.
In 2024, the Palestinian video and performance art biennial /si:n/ (8th edition) is forced into exile. It will be hosted by the 37 Festival Les Instants Vidéo.
The biennale will open on October, 20 in Marseille in Friche la Belle de Mai, made up of 2 Palestinian and 2 international video art programmes, a video installation and a panel discussion.
But it will also be travelling the world, welcomed by other Museums of solidarity (for now, in Ethiopia, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Jordan, Lebanon, Canada, USA…).
Inspired by *the tri-continental, anti-imperialist solidarity movements of the 1960s and 80s, at the crossroads of militant, artistic and museological practices that created a very particular form of museum of solidarity, without walls, and more often than not, museums in exile (in support of the people of Chile, Nicaragua, South Africa and of course Palestine), the A.M.Qattan Foundation and Les Instants vidéo launched a call for solidarity to Palestinian artists, and one to international artists (* Past Disquiet, exhibition curated by Kristine Khouri & Rash Salti)
The Biennial refuses to remain silent, or to be silenced. Nor will it abandon the territory where it was born. It will make a stopover in Ramallah, Jerusalem and Golan Height.
The Biennial will not leave the stage. ACTION ! Let the images flow. Let the pictures speak for themselves.
The biennial will be written in the same way as a film, through editing. The images will invite spectators to get in motionto discover other territories. They will offer forms and spaces of resistance to erasure and invisibility.
And for a poetics of relation, we will cultivate the power of light towards artistic and cultural solidarity in the slightest spaces of the biennale.
/si:n/, the mathematic sign to express the unknown, X in French and in English and a nice letter in Arabic. The spectator see it as an arabic letter but in phonetic it covers two meanings in English: scene and seen (to see). The name /si:n/ bears in itself the will of the festival to be a space of encounters between cultures.
For the record
2008: The festival is the fruit of a collaboration based on active participation in shaping a vision between a group of institutions organising and/or hosting the festival, in Palestine and in Marseilles. It gathered A.M. Qattan Foundation, Les Instants Vidéo Numériques et poétiques, Khalil Sakakini Cultural Centre, Al Mahatta Gallery, Franco-German Cultural Centre, soon joined by Al Ma’amal Foundation for Contemporary Art (Jerusalem), International Academy of Art, Palestinian Art Court-Al Hoash, Birzeit University Museum and virtual Gallery, and the French Cultural Centre in Gaza.
First event of this kind in Palestine, the festival is organised every two years, in different cities (Ramallah, Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Gaza…) and intended to become an important international platform capable of attracting distinctive local, Arab and international participations, and a forum for meeting, dialogue, knowledge and production. The festival presented international video art screening programs, multimedia installations, live performances, artists’ talks and master lectures and an artistic workshop.
