D’EST Cycle #2: Post-Socialism as Method: Hader Halal [With Regard to Presence] Sessions

Image: D’EST Postsocialism as Method. Anti-Geographies of Collective Desire. Schloss Biesdorf & District * School Without Center, Summer 2023. Photo: Laura Leppert

D’EST Cycle #2: Post-Socialism as Method. Anti-Geographies of Collective Desires

Hader Halal [With Regard to Presence] Sessions
co-hosted by Fehras Publishing Practices with krëlex zentre, Nha San Collective, Ulrike Gerhardt and Suza Husse at Flutgraben e.V., Berlin

8 and 9 DECEMBER 2023
Flutgraben e.V., Am Flutgraben 3, 12435 Berlin

Video art programs
Trời quê hương trong xanh như lời hát [The Hometown Sky is as Blue as a Song] with works by Nguyễn Văn Song, Nguyễn Duy Anh, Síu Phạm, Nguyễn Tan Hoang, Vu T. Thu Ha, Quynh Dong

Postsocialist Time Slips with works by Nazira Karimi, Bakhyt Bubikanova, Gulzat Matisakova, lucine talalyan, Anna Shahnazaryan / Tigran Khachatryan / Lara Aharonian / Lala Aslikyan / Are՛Martirossian / Olya Azatyan / Sevan Petrossian a.o., Katya Katipa-apai Nikonorova & krёlex zentre

Performances, gatherings, workshops, food, music, print shop, massages, publications
with contributions by Archive of Gestures/Elske Rosenfeld, AK Knol, Aziza Ahmad, Aziza Kadyri, Dilda Ramazan, Farkhondeh Shahroudi, Fehras Publishing Practices, Iskandar Ahmad Abdalla, Kim Bode/N*A*I*L*S*hacks facts fictions, krëlex zentre, Jules de Bog, Nancy Naser Al Deen, Nha San Collective, Nino Bulling, Quynh Dong, Shaunak Mahbubani, Sina Ahmadi, Suza Husse, Ulrike Gerhardt, Vu T. Thu Ha and friends

D’EST is a nomadic platform and online archive for video art, experimental, and documentary film that maps artistic forms of historiography at the intersection of postsocialist, queer-feminist, and decolonial narratives and imaginaries. On December 8 and 9, Fehras Publishing Practices launches their D’EST chapter-in-progress Hader Halal [With Regard to Presence] and co-hosts the second public manifestation of Postsocialism as a Method. Anti-Geographies of Collective Desires. “Hader Halal” is a compound phrase in Arabic that places the present, whether it is time, body, or matter, in the foreground as an urgent need. On the occasion of the Hader Halal Sessions, the Cine Moon Mobilé, created by Aziza Kadyri and Kim Bode/N*A*I*L*S*hacks facts fictions for D’EST’s nomadic video art programs, takes residence at Flutgraben. Here the hybrid vehicle and mobile shelter accommodates a constellation of screenings, workshops, gatherings around food and music, a print shop, massages and performances.

The phrase “Hader Halal”, which translates as “with regard to presence”, was coined by the owner of a small Aleppo-based bookstore and collector of publishing archives and private libraries in Aleppo out of concern for their disappearance. Fehras’ Hader Halal series critically investigates publishing strategies and cultural and archival practices in the Eastern Mediterranean and North Africa during the postcolonial period, seeking to reclaim forgotten collective memory in the region and rewrite narratives of modern Arab cultural history from a queer, migrant, and feminist perspective.

For their D’EST chapter, Fehras initiate collective fabulations in response to their collection of the quarterly literary journal Lotus: Afro-Asian Writings. Lotus journal was first published in 1968 in Cairo by the Permanent Bureau of the Afro-Asian Writers Association, an entity of the Afro-Asian Peoples Solidarity Organization. It published poetry, short stories, plays, cultural studies, book reviews, artworks, illustrations, resolutions and documents of the association in Arabic, English and French. A milestone outcome of several Afro-Asian Writers conferences (Tashkent 1958, Cairo 1962, Beirut 1967), the journal mirrors the interconnectedness of hopes, liberation struggles and resistance of Afro-Asian peoples. Fehras propose to interact with these inspirational experiences from the past, especially those of the feminists behind the Afro-Asian Solidarity Movement and their Afro-Asian Woman Bureau, to enact publishing as a solidarity practice in the urgencies of the present.

As part of Postsocialism as a Method. Anti-Geographies of Collective Desires the Hader Halal Sessions make a space for being present together and through interconnected legacies of socialist imaginaries and life worlds from different and sometimes contradictorily situated geographies that continued and/or emerged despite coloniality, totalitarianism, and capitalism. While during the day workshops, a printmaking station and performances initiate gatherings and processes of publishing and creating ephemera through friendship, memory, solidarity and re/imagination, each night presents a different video art chapter of D’EST’s cycle #2 Postsocialism as a Method. Anti-Geographies of Collective Desires: Postsocialist Time Slips consists of six video works from Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Armenia curated by krёlex zentre. The screening chapter offers a series of falling-outs from the present, a sequence of short ruptures in the linear time grid of the modern capitalist order of things with a special focus on hidden histories and unimaginable futures. Creating glimpses of desire, nostalgia, sex, death, humor and chaos, Nha San Collective’s chapter Trời quê hương trong xanh như lời hát [The Hometown Sky is as Blue as a Song] gathers sonic memories of the late 1980s and early 1990s through the music and audio-visual image-worlds within films and video works by Vietnamese artists living in Vietnam, USA, and Switzerland.

With the workshop contribution of the research platform Archive of Gestures embodiments of revolt and revolution in East Germany and Eastern Europe get entangled with the forgotten stories from the Cold War from Central Asia, Vietnam, North Africa and West Asia and their creolizations in post-migrant Germany and Europe which D’EST traces in it’s second cycle. Resonating with Flutgraben’s historical location in East Berlin on the former border dividing East and West, Elske Rosenfeld’s workshop Archive of Gestures: Speaking takes its starting point from a collection of topical manifestos, statements and demand papers published by groups and individuals in the revolutionary autumn and winter of 1989/90.

Program

FRIDAY 8 DECEMBER

8 and 9 DEC from 12 pm
Ciné Moon Mobile & Anti-Geographies of Collective Desires Music Mix
Roaming habitat with video and music station and bar
by Aziza Kadyri and Kim Bode/NAILS*hacks facts fictions
Collective music mix by Fehras Publishing Practices, krёlex zentre, Nha San Collective, Suza Husse

The Ciné Moon Mobile is a hybrid vehicle and mobile shelter for D’EST’s nomadic video art programs, for the narratives, images, gatherings, dreams, and reflections of the cycle “Post-Socialism as Method. Anti-geographies of Collective Desire.” Developed by Aziza Kadyri and Kim Bode / NAILS*hacks facts fictions in collaboration with D’EST, the hybrid sculpture draws inspiration from the history of the anti-colonial ciné-trucks that circulated in various non-aligned countries from the 1950s onwards, showing resistance films and generating local collective film productions. The name and textile based iconography of the Ciné Moon Mobile conveys Aziza Kadyri’s artistic engagement with the feminist legacy of her great-grandmother Oybibi’s 9 moons dowry. Oybibi – whose name translates as “the moon lady” – cut up the dowry and sent the moons to different strands of her extended family. Using the moons and indigenous techniques and narratives stored in them from the Jizzakh region in Central Asia, the artist draws a rhizomatic web of relationships of women* and their stories and resistances from 1920 to the present in contemporary Uzbekistan.

8 and 9 DEC from 12 pm
Legeparty [dissident friendship print shop]
with Nino Bulling & AK Knol, Aziza Ahmad & Suza Husse

Nino Bulling and AK Knol together with Aziza Ahmad and Suza Husse are setting up a riso fanzine print shop for D’EST comakers and friends to create spontaneous publications from the first three chapters of Cycle #2 Postsocialism as Method. Antigeographies of Collective Desires by Fehras Publishing Practices, krёlex zentre, Nha San Collective as well as reflections from the collective process and the nomadic habitat Cine Moon Mobilé. The dissident friendship print shop is inspired by East German underground publishing practices of the 1970s and 1980s where Legeparties [layering parties] were used in dissident circles to lay out and staple samizdat publications together from mimeographed individual sheets, usually over the course of several nights.

The resulting publications will be published as part of the POST-OST (aka Dissident Stories from the GDR and pOST-Deutschland) publishing series co-initiated by District*School Without Center, D’EST and Archive Books.

8 and 9 DEC from 12 pm
post-ost corpoliteracy massages and chats
with amateur Jules de Bog
please register at info@d-est.com until 7 DEC
Embark on a unique massage and chat offering guided by the amateur therapist Jules de Bog, as they seamlessly weave the principles of corpoliteracy and post-ost expertise into an intuitive experience that deepens your body knowledge and embraces matters of care.

(This text is a generous contribution from GPT-3, a Natural Language Processing model trained using internet data to generate any type of text. GPT-3 was prompted with some keywords about the session.)

8 DEC 2 to 6 pm
Hader Halal [With Regard to Presence]
Closed workshop by Fehras Publishing Practices with Iskandar Ahmad Abdalla, Farkhondeh Shahroudi, Kenan Darwich, Nancy Nasr Deen, Sami Rustom, Shaunak Mahbubani, Sina Ahmadi, Suza Husse, Ulrike Gerhardt and friends

As part of Fehras’ new series Hader Halal [With Regard to Presence], the workshop focuses on the archival collection of the quarterly literary journal Lotus: Afro-Asian Writings gathered by Fehras. This journal was first published in 1968 in Cairo by the Permanent Bureau of the Afro-Asian Writers Association, an entity of the Afro-Asian Peoples Solidarity Organization. Lotus was a milestone outcome of several Afro-Asian Writers conferences (Tashkent 1958, Cairo 1962, Beirut 1967). The journal mirrors the interconnectedness of hopes, liberation struggles and resistance of Afro-Asian peoples. It published poetry, short stories, plays, cultural studies, book reviews, artworks, illustrations, resolutions and documents of the Afro-Asian Writers Association in Arabic, English and French. Bringing this historical and inspirational experience from the past can help us to reflect on publishing as a solidarity practice.

The workshop is closed for Fehras and D’EST friends. It will result in a zine publication to be launched in spring 2024.

8 DEC 7 pm
Hader Halal [With Regard to Presence]
Dinner and traces from workshop and zine making

Fehras and D’EST are cooking Hader Halal [With Regard to Presence] foods that transport elements from the series critical investigation of solidarity practices within publishing strategies and cultural and archival practices in the Eastern Mediterranean and North Africa during the postcolonial period. Gathering around a meal, we will share some stories, music, and materials from the workshop session.

8 DEC 8 to 9.30 pm
Postsocialist Time Slips
Film and video programme curated by krёlex zentre
Works by Nazira Karimi, Bakhyt Bubikanova, Gulzat Matisakova, lucine talalyan, Anna Shahnazaryan / Tigran Khachatryan / Lara Aharonian / Lala Aslikyan / Are՛Martirossian / Olya Azatyan / Sevan Petrossian a.o., Katya Katipa-apai Nikonorova & krёlex zentre

That’s how we escaped and found ourselves on the rooftop of a residential building, at the clandestine queer ceremony where everything that was got married with everything that wasn’t but could have been, and probably, will.

Postsocialist Time Slips offers a series of falling-outs from the present, a sequence of short ruptures in the linear time grid of the modern capitalist order of things. The screening chapter is a one-hour trip consisting of six video works from Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Armenia. Time slips reveal a previously unseen aspect of the past, present, or future with a special focus on hidden histories and unimaginable futures.

SATURDAY 9 DECEMBER

8 and 9 DEC from 12 pm
Ciné Moon Mobile & Anti-Geographies of Collective Desires Music Mix
Roaming habitat with video and music station and bar
by Aziza Kadyri and Kim Bode/NAILS*hacks facts fictions
Collective music mix by Fehras Publishing Practices, krёlex zentre, Nha San Collective, Suza Husse

8 and 9 DEC from 12 pm
Legeparty [dissident friendship print shop]
with Nino Bulling & AK Knol, Aziza Ahmad & Suza Husse

8 and 9 DEC from 12 pm
post-ost corpoliteracy massages and chats
with amateur Jules de Bog
please register at info@d-est.com until 7 December

9 DEC 4 to 6 pm
Archive of Gestures: Speaking (cancelled due to sickness)
workshop with Elske Rosenfeld
in German and English languages, please register at elskerosenfeld@gmail.com until 5 December

ARCHIVE OF GESTURES is a research platform and archive in progress about the embodiment of revolt and revolution by Elske Rosenfeld with District*School without Center. Its starting point is the lived experience of the democratic uprisings in East Germany and Eastern Europe of 1989/90. Revolutions and revolts from 1989/90, via the new wave of uprisings and occupations from 2011 until today have manifested the futures they wrested briefly from their dystopian present/s in and between the bodies they gather. After the revolution, these same bodies turn into archives of new ways of being that common historicizations cannot yet or no longer capture in words. The GESTURES assembled here are, sometimes collaborative, searches for visual, textual, somatic ways of approaching this stored up, emancipatory knowledge – for releasing onto the present a political impulse that has not yet been spent.

This workshop on the gesture “Speaking” takes its starting point in a collection of topical manifestos and statements and demand papers published by groups and individuals in the autumn and winter of 1989/90 in the course of the processes of self-democratization in the GDR. In the workshop participants are invited to respond to selected texts from this collection and propose interconnections to lived and/or imagined experiences of resistance and political transformation.

9 DEC 7 to 9 pm
How to return to gold (cancelled due to sickness)
Performance, instant noodles, cassette tapes
with Nha San Collective, Quynh Dong and friends

Tear a piece of gold leaf into the bowl of instant noodles, pour boiling water
Play, stop, take out the cassette tape, turn to the other side
Remember coral eyeshadow she wore

Quynh Dong & Nha San Collective invite to a happening with situations given on a sheet of paper. Visitors are encouraged to roamings, listenings and dreamings over foods, music and magic to start their own return to Đổi Mới [Renovation]. Đổi Mới describes cultural and social shifts in relation to the economic reforms initiated by Vietnamese government in 1986 with the aim of changing from a centrally-planned to market-oriented economy.

9 DEC 9 to 10.30 pm
Trời quê hương trong xanh như lời hát [The Hometown Sky is as Blue as a Song]
Film and video programme curated by Nhà Sàn Collective
Works by Nguyễn Văn Song, Nguyễn Duy Anh, Síu Phạm, Nguyễn Tan Hoang, Vu T. Thu Ha, Quynh Dong

The screening chapter Trời quê hương trong xanh như lời hát [The Hometown Sky is as Blue as a Song] consists of sonic moments of 1990s Vietnam within films and video works by Vietnamese-born diasporic artists living in Vietnam, USA, and Switzerland. Lively sonic memories of that era of the late 1980s and early 1990s ripple through the music and audio-visual imageworlds resonating from this screening chapter. ​​The collective and personal experiences of this free market economy and globalization era echo through a never-ending stream of songs, creating glimpses of desire, nostalgia, sex, death, humor and chaos.