PARALLEL HANDS
— CO-EXISTENCE OF TIMES
AND THE GOOD WILL TO LISTEN
performance
the story of the protagonist Sadok Ben Rachid (Tunisian poet, singer, and prisoner of World War I) overlaps with fact and fiction. It is informed by research conducted between the archive collections of Berliner Phonogramm-Archiv, Lautarchiv Berlin, and other counter-archives, as well as Fanon’s body of work, and the play “Parallel Hands” (1949). Through his work, Fanon deciphers the consequences of colonialism and his understanding of alienation that produced multiple forms of relational illness. Sadok's existential sonic refusal/poem comes as an autobiographical counter-narrative, a form of resistance, or rather survival, acknowledged and raises the notion of ethics and aesthetics for those who usually impersonate the voice’s subject.
Ltaief’s research performance project «PARALLEL HANDS - Co-existence of Times and the Good Will to Listen» investigates the legacy of North African sonic archives in the collection of Berliner Phonogramm-Archiv and Ethnologisches Museum in Berlin. It specifically re-traces the early phonogram sound archives that were commissioned and classified during the 1910s and are today settled in ethnomusicological collections stored in Berlin at SMB museums. These archives include early recordings (Weimar Republic) made by the German Phonographic Commission, established by Wilhelm Doegen and assisted by Robert Lachmann with prisoners of the First World War, between 1915 and 1918 at the Half Moon camp in Wünsdorf (south Berlin). Some of these prisoners were Tunisian, like Sadok Ben Rashid.
This project critically investigates notions of record and archive, raising questions about ethnological field recording practices under the violence of European Colonialism; the limits of translation, and the enduring myth of universal art doctrines.
In the frame of LIVE WORK FELLOWS 2023-2024.
Initiated in 2013, Live Works is a platform dedicated to live contemporary practices that contribute to deepening and broadening the idea of performance, following the current evolution of performance and its styles. Live Works offers annual fellowships to 6 artists selected via Open Call every year and includes different creative residency periods at Centrale Fies and in partner institutions at an international level. Live Works sees performance as a workspace and as an instrument and cultural exercise. Starting from the notion of performance in the visual art practice, the project is unique in its particular attention to hybrid research, underlining the openness and fluidity of performance, its social and political implications, and its level of public understandability.
The works are funded by Centrale Fies, Dro (IT)
Concept & Text Mohamed-Ali Ltaief
Performance Mohamed-Ali Ltaief and Tarxun
«PARALLEL HANDS — Co-existence of Times and the Good Will to Listen»
performance part of «The Striated Time» performance trilogy project.
With the kind support of the Mophradat consortium-commissions/2023-2025.
Co-production Centrale Fies, Dro (IT), Kaaitheater Brüssel (BE),
and Tanzfabrik Berlin (DE)
Courtesy Berliner Phonogramm-Archiv
Photography Harriett Meyer
