Interstate Africana by WC Dunlap, 2024
WC Dunlap’s text is an ode to ancestral spirits, young and old, who roam somewhere in the realm of an imagined afterlife, or a pre-life. In celebration of homecoming, or rather homegoing, the battered souls trade wisdom, desires, and regrets as they muster enough courage to leave the interstate. “Interstate Africana” was first published in FIYAH: Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction in Autumn 2020. Translated into Arabic by Yasmine Haj.
WC Dunlap is a Black American author whose writing career spans across film, journalism and cultural critique, as well as speculative fiction.
Read the Room #3 Supplement: This Is How We Work Together, by Carine Doumit, 2024
Read the Room #3: Self Organizations: Tips & Tricks for Working Together
Supplement
Written by Carine Doumit
Commissioning editors: Krystel Khoury and Mai Abu ElDahab
Copyedited and proofread by Jenifer Evans
Design by Siwar Kraitem
Commissioned and published by Mophradat
Read the Room is the title of a series of booklets published by Mophradat about questions that affect us collectively as a community. “Us” is people everywhere who call the Arab world home, are concerned with its present, and through a wide variety of art practices aspire to take part in shaping its future.
Read the Room #4: What Is All This Dramaturgy About?, Questions & Answers with Krystel Khoury, Noor Abed, Salma Abdelsalam, and Samaa Wakim, 2024
Read the Room #4: What Is All This Dramaturgy About?
Questions & Answers with Krystel Khoury, Noor Abed, Salma Abdelsalam, and Samaa Wakim
Edited by Krystel Khoury and Mai Abu ElDahab
English editing and proofreading by Jenifer Evans
Design by Siwar Kraitem
Commissioned and published by Mophradat
The booklet follows the “Advanced Dramaturgy Workshop for Women Choreographers” led by Brazilian dramaturg Carolina Mendonça that took place November 1 to 5, 2023, with the participation of Nour Abed, Manal Tass, nasa4nasa, and Samaa Wakim, and coordinated by Krystel Khoury.
Read the Room is the title of a series of booklets published by Mophradat about questions that affect us collectively as a community. “Us” is people everywhere who call the Arab world home, are concerned with its present, and through a wide variety of art practices aspire to take part in shaping its future.
Lentil Space: Recipes From Artists’ Homes, commissioned by Mai Abu ElDahab, 2024
With contributions by Adam HajYahia and Haitham Haddad, Deena Abdelwahed, Laila Hida with Amine Lahrach, Mohamed Abdelkarim with Abla elBahrawy, Nadah El Shazly, amongst many others, this cookbook includes recipes chosen and prepared by the artists in an intimate setting coupled with stories both personal and about their art practice.
Adapted from its namesake online program produced by Mophradat from 2021 to 2023, this book is a celebration of the varied cuisine of the Arab world and its relationship with inherited food practices and the cultures of cooking and talking about food.
Lentil Space: Recipes From Artists’ Homes
Edited by Mai Abu ElDahab and Reem Shilleh
Translations by Yasmine Haj
Arabic and English
Color, softcover, 288 pages, 12.5 x 17.5 x 10 cm
Design by Studio Manuel Raeder (Manuel Raeder, Cecilia Murgia)
Co-published by Bom Dia Boa Tarde Boa Noite and Mophradat
The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions by Larry Mitchell, 2024
ِExcerpts from Larry Mitchell’s The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions, translated into Arabic by Yasmine Haj. The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions was first published in 1977 by Calamus Books and by Nightboat Books in 2019.
Larry Mitchell’s book, interspersed with illustrations by Ned Asta, is described in the book’s introduction as a world “inhabited by a mythic cosmology of revolutionary protagonists…(O)ne’s role is not determined by some narrow essentialist notion of biology, but rather by one’s allegiance to either the oppressed or the oppressor.” In the translated excerpts, bits of wisdom are offered by the oppressed. They explore the history of oppression and break it down with humor, as simple and complex as telling a bedtime story.
Please note that some of the illustrations in the book and translated excerpts contain nudity. Also important to note is that the book does not by any means use the word “faggots” to condemn homosexuality, but rather re-appropriates it to void it of its pejorative sense, engraining it in a context of abundant power and rebellion.
Larry Mitchell (1938-2012) is the author of many works of fiction. He explored queer life and radical politics in New York City’s Lower East Side and East Village in the 1980s and 90s.
From The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions by Larry Mitchell, drawings by Ned Asta (Nightboat Books, 2019).
Copyright © 1977 by Larry Mitchell & Ned Asta.
Images reproduced and translation permission of Nightboat Books.
Poetry Is Not a Luxury by Audre Lorde, 2023
Written by Audre Lorde and first published in Chrysalis: A Magazine of Female Culture, no. 3, in 1977, then in 1984 in Sister Outsider.
Essay translated into Arabic by Yasmine Haj.
Can We Rule It Out? Collective ideas for keeping sexual abuse out of art spaces, 2022
Can We Rule It Out? Collective Ideas for keeping sexual abuse out of art spaces
by Mai Abu ElDahab, Naira Antoun, Habiba Effat et al (Arabic & English), 2022
“With this collection of texts, reflections, questions, documents, we invite our readers, colleagues, and peer organizations to engage in difficult, often fraught, discussions about sexual abuse in art spaces. We do not want these conversations to always start at zero, as if a lot of work around sexual abuse hasn’t been done already. There is copious activism, scholarship, and creativity on this topic, if one wants to find it. What this publication would like to do is contribute to the work that has already been done and to be a waypost toward what remains to be done.”
Commissioned and edited by: Karim Kattan and Mai Abu ElDahab
Contributors are Adam HajYahia, Habiba Effat, Karim Kattan, Mai Abu ElDahab, Marnie Slater, Naira Antoun, and Salma El Tarzi
Notes compiled and written by Ahmed Medhat, Marina Samir, Nana Abuelsoud, and Salma El Tarzi, with edits and comments by Sahar Mandour
Translation from Egyptian Arabic of “Notes on Justice” by Yasmine Haj
Copyedited and proofread by Jenifer Evans
Designed by Loraine Furter and Naïma Ben Ayed
You can purchase the book by writing to office@mophradat.org.
Version française
Traduit de l’anglais par Solène Jabaud
Révisé et corrigé par Karim Kattan
L’écriture multigenrée que nous utilisons a été conçue par Laura Boullic pour Shed publishing
Conception graphique par Naïma Ben Ayed, Loraine Furter et Juliana Vargas Zapata
Ghost Season: A Novel, excerpt from a novel, by Fatin Abbas, 2022
Fatin’s novel looks at identity, art, and humanitarian aid through the lives of five characters who cross paths in a broken-up Sudan. The excerpt introduces the characters and their devices, a camera, a map, a kitchen, and ingenuity, and slowly delves into the nature of borders, be they national or ethnic, among others. Ghost Season was a recipient of Mophradat’s Writing Sabbaticals 2021.
Written by Fatin Abbas (out in January 2023 from W. W. Norton (US & Canada)).
Excerpt translated into Arabic by Yasmine Haj.
You can order the book online here.
Read the Room #3: Self Organizations: Tips & Tricks for Working Together, by Daniel O’Connell, Jenifer Evans, & Krystel Khoury, 2022
Commissioning editors: Karim Kattan, Krystel Khoury, and Mai Abu ElDahab
Written by Daniel O’Connell, Jenifer Evans, and Krystel Khoury
Translated from English by Yasmine Haj
Edited, copyedited, and proofread by Jenifer Evans
Designed by Siwar Kraytem
Commissioned and published by Mophradat
This booklet is designed to serve as a toolbox of suggestions and tips on how to work together for prospective Self Organizations applicants and participants. More broadly, it is an account and a reflection on the program and what it can provide beyond the scope of Mophradat. The booklet’s content, written by Daniel O’Connell, Jenifer Evans, and Krystel Khoury, is based on insightful interviews with participants of the program across its three past editions. By listening to their experiences, Daniel interrogates the conditions, practical and theoretical that give the program its relevance today, Jenifer distills their amplitude of useful suggestions for collaborating, and Krystel gathers their reflections on the program and how it can be fruitful for future self-organizers.
To purchase the booklet, please write to office@mophradat.org.
Trash Talk: On Translating Garbage, by Lina Mounzer, 2022
Originally published in The Paris Review in summer 2019, Lina’s critical text examines, with humour, the joys and sorrows of translation as a vocation. It also scans the skills acquired and lessons learned when translating art texts in specific. It sifts through the political, mental, and material sacrifices that one makes when translating “garbage”. The text was translated from English by Nariman Youssef and Yasmine Haj.
Mophradat tote bag, designed by Sarah Gephart, 2022
An edition of 200, with green and yellow handles.
Designed by Sarah Gephart, made by Oikosac, 2022.
This tote bag has been ethically produced and printed on 100% organic cotton. It is designed in Mophradat’s signature pink colour.
Please write to us at office [at] mophradat [dot] org to purchase this tote bag.
Mophradat Songs for Kids, vol. 1, Affratta, 2022
In 2021, Mophradat invited children’s writers Ahlam Bsharat, Hadil Ghoniem, and Yosra Sultan, along with musicians Huda Asfour, Rehab Hazgui, Maurice Louca, Aya Metwalli, Sam Shalabi, and Aalam Wassef, to collaborate on producing an album of progressive songs for young children. The music is made for children around the ages of four to six, the moment where their acquisition and understanding of language as form and meaning starts to take shape. The process, which took place online across countries, led to Affratta, an album of children’s music comprising six tracks.
Mophradat Songs for Kids is a project that is looking for ways for children to be offered joyful, nature-loving, non-patriarchal, imaginative, and evocative music that encourages them to be kind, curious, adventurous, and loving. Music and song are one way children learn, express emotions, hear and tell stories, and get to know their bodies. The Arab world, unfortunately, has limited offerings of musical production for children, and this project is one of Mophradat’s first attempts to engage some of the region’s most exciting musicians with this genre.
Mixed by Radwan Ghazi Moumneh (Hotel2Tango, Jerusalem in my Heart)
Mastered by Katie Tavini (Emeli Sandé, Nadine Shah, We Are Scientists)
Artwork by visual artist Jumana Emil Abboud and designer Joud Toamah
Release management & PR: Simsara Music: sarah@simsara.me
The Songs for Kids retreat was made possible in cooperation with the Allianz Kulturstiftung.
Read the Room #2: Transnationals: Who are they and what do they want? by Nadia Cherif, 2021
Written by Nadia Cherif
Artist interviews conducted by Aline Khoury,
Aly Talibab, Karim Kattan, Nadia Cherif, and Ruba Totah Editing by Karim Kattan and Mai Abu ElDahab Coordination by Reem Shilleh
Design by Siwar Kraitem
Commissioned and published by Mophradat
In line with its commitment to both new generations of artists in the region and to those who have migrated over the past decade to Europe, Mophradat has considered it necessary and timely to conduct research/qualitative analysis of the available material and resources within the organization per- taining to its community of applicants and beneficiaries, in order to ensure that the questions the organization asks and the opportunities it creates are consistent with the lived con- ditions and desires of this sizeable community. The overall objective of the research was, at first, to define and defend an approach based on a better, more comprehensive understand- ing of what is happening within and outside the region.
To purchase the booklet, please write to office@mophradat.org.
Read the Room #1 by Suneela Mubayi, 2021 (in Arabic)
To purchase the booklet in Arabic, please write to office@mophradat.org.
Why Call It Labor? On Motherhood and Art Work, 2020
Contributions by Mai Abu ElDahab, Basma Alsharif, Lara Khaldi, Mary Jirmanus Saba, and Mirene Arsanios with Nikki Columbus.
This publication comprises four essays and one conversation with contemporary artists and curators discussing their experience of becoming mothers as professionals in the arts, its reality, and effects. While their reflections represent a similar strata of art worker in terms of background, class, and career trajectory, the impact of instruments of patriarchy on rendering maternity invisible that they describe is both recognizable and insidious.
Edited by Mai Abu ElDahab
Published by Mophradat and Archive Books
Text design layout by Valerie Arif
Arabic and English
You can purchase the book from Archive Books and its distribution network, or by contacting us: office [at] mophradat [dot] org
A Slightly Deviated Star by Karim Kattan, 2019
This text was written by Karim Kattan following his participation in “Accomplices” in 2019, which took place in Delphi, Greece.
Mophradat tote bag, designed by Valerie Arif, 2019
Design by Valerie Arif
Printing by superette.nl
This tote bag has been ethically produced and printed on 100% organic cotton. It is designed in Mophradat’s signature pink colour, and is printed with a surprise design twist.
To purchase a bag, please contact us at office [at] mophradat [dot] org.
Both Sides of the Curtain (Live in Beirut), LP by Dwarves of East Agouza, 2018
A vinyl LP of delicate improvised freeform by The Dwarfs of East Agouza — Alan Bishop (acoustic bass, alto sax, vocals), Maurice Louca (organ, keyboard, beats), Sam Shalabi (electric guitar) — recorded live as part of Meeting Points: Both Sides of the Curtain in Beirut.
Produced by Mophradat and Unrock
Recorded by Fadi Tabbal
Mixed and mastered by Peter Koerfer at Ivory Tower
Artwork by Mariana Castillo Deball
Graphic design by Studio Manuel Raeder
Realization by Mai Abu ElDahab (Mophradat) and Michael Stahl (Unrock)
Recorded live in Beirut, Lebanon on April 15, 2017 as part of Meeting Points 8, commissioned and produced by Mophradat
Thanks to Sharif Sehnaoui.
Purchase from Unrock and its distribution network, or by contacting us at office [at] mophradat [dot] org
El Cerrito (Extracts) by Noor Al-Samarrai, 2018
How to Mend: Motherhood and Its Ghosts by Iman Mersal, 2018
Written by Iman Mersal
Edited by Maha Maamoun and Mai Abu ElDahab
Design: Julie Peeters and Valerie Arif
Originally published and printed in Arabic
Translated into English by Robin Moger
“If I’d been more aware and someone had asked me about “my mother’s picture” I would have shown them the bird she’d stitched onto the canvas herself. It is not aesthetic vision or skill that summons my mother’s presence in this canvas, but the slight punctum the bird gives me. I get nothing of this sort from our studio portrait. The bird’s eyes are always looking at me, as though they belong to her. The bird: motionless, for whose sake my mother sat and stitched by the window where the light came in, each pinprick a symbolic laceration in the process of its embodiment: cuts by the hundred to make it whole.”
You can buy the English copy through Kayfa-ta website or write to us at office [at] mophradat [dot] org.
Glossary of Terms by Nile Sunset Annex, 2017
How to Know What’s Really Happening? by Francis Mckee, 2016
In this post-truth era, how does one navigate the endless information available and choose a viable narrative of reality? In How to Know What’s Really Happening, Glasgow-based writer and curator Francis McKee looks at various techniques for determining verity, from those of spy agencies and whistle-blowers to mystics and scientists.
Edited by Mai Abu ElDahab, Maha Maamoun, Ala Younis
Designed by Julie Peeters and Valerie Arif
Published by Kayfa ta, Mophradat, and Sternberg Press
Available in two editions: English and Arabic
€6
You can purchase the book from Sternberg Press and its distribution network, and you could also contact us through office [at] mophradat [dot] org.
Many Englishes: On Editing and Power by Mirene Arsanios, 2017
These are the tools of the present (Beirut – Cairo), 2017
Contributions by Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Haig Aivazian, Mounira Al Solh, Doa Aly, Andeel, Mirene Arsanios, Malak Helmy, Iman Issa, Mahmoud Khaled, Maurice Louca, Jasmina Metwaly, Joe Namy, Nile Sunset Annex, November Paynter, Roy Samaha, Sharif Sehnaoui, Rania Stephan, Christophe Wavelet, and Lauren Wetmore.
This publication comprises a series of interviews with contemporary artists, musicians, and writers who are in dialogue with Beirut and Cairo. While not purporting to be an overview of the art scenes in these cities, this book begins to draw a picture of how artists think about what it means to be active in the contexts of Beirut and Cairo. It offers insight into the circumstances that structured these artists’ stories, and the often accidental influences that have shaped how their practices developed.
Edited by Mai Abu ElDahab, November Paynter, Marnie Slater
Published by Mophradat and Sternberg Press
Designed by Julie Peeters
English
€15
You can purchase the book from Sternberg Press and its distribution network, and you could also contact us through office [at] mophradat [dot] org.
Informal Operation by Ghalya Saadawi, 2016
This text was written by Ghalya Saadawi following her participation in “Accomplices” in 2016 which took place in Istanbul.
Final Vocabulary: On Searching for New Languages, edited by Mai Abu ElDahab, 2015
Contributions by Federica Bueti, Malak Helmy, Francis McKee, Haytham El Wardany, and Brian Kuan Wood
This publication comprises five essays that take an intimate look at language’s role in moments of dramatic change, and ask how to find meaning for artistic practices in these transformative conditions. Taking its cue from the aftermath of the events of the Egyptian Revolution in 2011, Final Vocabulary does not provide answers as much as it captures the spirit of the moment of searching that the writers found themselves in.
The book was developed out of a live conversation at an event called the Informal Meeting, which took place in Leuven in January 2015, where participants were asked: “Our histories and references are often in a different language (abstract or actual) than we use ourselves; what tools do you think are or might be useful to help you trust your own memories and narratives? What, if anything, do you think we might borrow from art to experiment with language in different situations?”
Edited by Mai Abu ElDahab
Published by Mophradat and Sternberg Press
Designed by Kaisa Lassinaro
Available in two editions: English and Arabic
€8
You can purchase the book from Sternberg Press and its distribution network or contact us at office [at] mophradat [dot] org.
How to Disappear? by Haytham El-Wardany, 2013
This publication proposes a set of aural exercises that show readers how to disappear, reappear, join a group, or leave a group. Its annex is a lexicon of some of the sounds that dwell in or are banished from the middle-class household.
Edited by Maha Maamoun and Ala Younis
Translated from Arabic by Jennifer Peterson and Robin Moger
Availabile in both English and Arabic.
Published by Kayfa ta and featured at Meeting Points 7, “Ten thousand wiles and a hundred thousand tricks”.