Poeisis, Praxis, and Cultures of Resistance,
or The Non-Established Histories of Art in Tunisia

Mohamed-Ali Ltaief
Lecture performance

Saturday 26 August 2023

Archive Berlin
Reinickendorfer Str. 17
13347 Berlin

Unpacking our Library
A programme curated by Paz Guevara

5 – 6.30 pm

Reading Circle
Workshop as part of
Unpacking our Library #6
Mohamed-Ali Ltaief
By registration: malab@archivesites.org

Based on the ongoing research-based project of an artist that confronts and expands the meaning of sonic archives, Mohamed-Ali Ltaief offers a Reading Circle to share and discuss the genealogy of early ethnomusicological field recording in Tunisia, while reassembling cartographies of interwar artists in North Africa and in the diaspora. In the Reading Circle workshop, Ltaief will share a selection of readings that he refers to in his lecture performance ‘Poeisis, Praxis, and Cultures of Resistance or the non-established Histories of Art in Tunisia’, re-contextualizing cuts and ruptures during colonial times, and unraveling the multiplicity of sonic performative practices. The Reading Circle is open to everyone interested in African performance art histories and sonic performative art practices, anti-colonial and anti-fascist early political movements in North Africa, decolonial theories, and practices of transformation of archives.

7 – 8 pm

Unpacking our Library #6
Poeisis, Praxis, and Cultures of
Resistance or the non-established
Histories of Art in Tunisia

Unpacking Our Library invites Tunisian artist and author Mohamed-Ali Ltaief to re-entangle and negotiate the meaning of a North African sonic archive collection recorded during the first decade of the 20th Century by the Prussian Phonographic Commissions in North Africa, and now stored and dispersed, in part at the Berliner Phonogramm Archiv (SMB) at the Ethnologisches Museum in Berlin and in part at the Ennejma Ezzahra in Tunis. Ltaief’s Lecture performance ‘Poeisis, Praxis, and Cultures of Resistance or the non-established Histories of Art in Tunisia’ questions the dispositive of sonic archival material in those collections by displacing the Ethno-musicological illusion. Through the lecture, Ltaief revoices extended biographies and foregrounds sonic performances, confronting the static sonic archival materiality and the corporate identity of the Western aesthetic taxonomy. By shifting the sonic archive into a spatialized and performative practice, Ltaief opens those archives to art histories across Berlin, Beirut, Cairo, and Tunis. Acknowledging the intrinsic multiplicity of art as a concept of “Poiesis and Praxis’, the lecture is composed of acts of translating lyrics, retracing movements-body language, and re-locating biographies and counter archives. This lecture performance ‘Poeisis, Praxis, and Cultures of Resistance or the non-established Histories of Art in Tunisia’ by Mohamed-Ali Ltaief is a sonic-visual and geo-philosophical narrative that combines sonic testimonies with spatial strategies, border studies, and decolonial aesthetic methods. ‘Poiesis, Praxis, and Cultures of Resistance or the non-established Histories of Art in Tunisia’ by Mohamed-Ali Ltaief is part of ‘the Striated Time’ performance trilogy project and publication. With the kind support of Mophradat Consortium Commissions 2023/25, Jaou Festival Tunisia, and Ennejma Ezzahra Tunis.