Read the Room Festival
Despite and in spite of these worst of times, we claim every space we can, use our voices, celebrate our imagination, and continue our work. We want to gather with our friends, allies, and publics and provoke, reflect, and inspire as it is our dream/right/ambition/effort/role to do.
October 17, 18, 19, 2024
Kaaistudios
Brussels
Day tickets are for sale here.
We invite you to gather for a festival with Cheb Mimo, Common Ground, Haig Aivazian with Noor Abed, Kid Fourteen, Leila Delicious, Makimakkuk, Mona Benyamin, Nadah El Shazly, New Agents, Samaa Wakim, and more…
“Read the Room” is Mophradat’s biennial festival produced in partnership with Kaaitheater. The festival is an experimental place filled with desires and projections, but the future it presumes is for many today inconceivable as a time and place to come. Nonetheless, by coming together for three distinct evening programs, the festival claims an emotional gathering space – where visual artists, performers, musicians, and writers come together to make work with each other and with audiences, navigating and locating shared memories, feelings, and words. You can read more about the program and the artists here.
October 17, 2024
8.00pm Moonscape
Video by Mona Benyamin, 2020
Arabic with English subtitles, 17 mins
Exploring the relationship between hope, nostalgia, and despair, Moonscape is a short film which takes the form of a music video for a ballad performed by a male and female duet. The song traces the story of a man called Dennis M. Hope, who claimed ownership of the Moon in 1980 and founded the Lunar Embassy.
8.40pm Listening Along With Cheb Mimo
Music and English spoken, 60 mins
Cheb Mimo takes the audience on a deep dive into some of the lesser-known genre and subgenres of North African music starting with what is known as the Proto-Rai Underground. By playing some of the records and cassette tapes he has found in local shops and personal collections, Mimo shares his exploration of the many different and complex twists and turns that music takes from its origins to becoming its modern progeny.
10pm Nadah El Shazly Sings the Classics
Music, 30 mins
On Mophradat’s invitation, Nadah El Shazly sings some of the classics of the Arab world’s rich pop music vernacular. With her voice, she creates a space for the memories and emotions that bring this community together in their shared joy in music, as well as the intimacy and familiarity that comes with having a common language.
October 18, 2024
8pm The New Agents Variety Show
Performance, English spoken, 120 mins
The New Agents Variety Show is a night in four acts: Samaa Wakim delivers “Nauseating Delirium,” a new collectively-written script for and on the occasion of the show, by the New Agents, a segment of burlesque and its antagonisms by Leila Delicious, the culinary and the macabre come together in an experiment by Common Ground, all with the live musical accompaniment and select tracks by Kid Fourteen. The New Agents are Bayan Kiwan, Dani Arbid, Nour El Safoury, Sara Bouzgarrou, and Siwar Kraytem.
October 19, 2024
7.30pm What’s All This Dramaturgy About?
Publication launch, English, 30 mins
The launch of Mophradat’s latest booklet from the series Read the Room that looks at the different scopes of dramaturgy within choreographic practice, in the presence of some of the contributors.
8.30pm Nothing Will Remain… Other Than the Thorn Lodged in the Throat of This World
Performance by Haig Aivazian with Noor Abed
English and Arabic spoken, 35 mins
In a collaboration commissioned by Mophradat for Read the Room Festival, Haig Aivazian and Noor Abed guide the audience in a collective sonic experiment. Sifting through recorded poems, songs, and recitations, the pair have composed a medley made up of guttural sounds, hums, hisses, sighs, whistles, whispers, mumbles, gasps, and coughs.
9.30pm Makimakkuk Live
Concert, 45 mins
Experience a unique live performance, blending genres such as Palestinian folk, experimental, hip-hop, electronic, and ambient. Through original compositions, live rapping, singing, spoken word, and DJing, the performance explores themes of self-expression, justice, and mental health, challenging conventional genre boundaries and celebrating cultural identity.
Read the Room Festival is curated by Mophradat (Mai Abu ElDahab with Krystel Khoury), its production coordinated by Felipe Steinberg and managed by Niamh Moroney, its administration coordinated by Nicky Tsianti, and is co-produced by Kaaitheater and Mophradat.
All proceeds from ticket sales will be used towards Mophradat’s “Living Stipends for Palestine” initiative.