Feminist voices from Southwest Asia, North Africa and Europe come together to speak out and perform during the second edition of the Tashweesh festival.

Reizend als een artistieke estafette vanuit Tunis, zullen de ruisende fluisteringen tussen 28 september en 8 oktober de podia van Beursschouwburg bestijgen, voordat het festival verder trekt naar Wenen. Met zowel een gemeenschappelijk programma als stads-specifieke projecten worden publiek, artiesten en sprekers samengebracht voor een conversatie over visies van een feministische, verbonden samenleving, over zeeën en landsgrenzen heen. 

In her opening lecture, writer Fatima Daas (La Petite dernière, 2020) will tackle questions of deconstructing identity and (re)building bridges and feminist alliances. Nadia Kara will host a series of talks to engage participants on topics ranging from the reclaiming of domestic space to the perspectives of Arab women in the music industry, while a kiosk will offer readers a chance to peruse books and zines selected by several Brussels’ feminist collectives. 

The festival will tickle more than our brains, though, with an emphasis on performance art and radical cinema shining a light on emergent creators and their embodied, postcolonial perspectives on revolution, creation and the charged potential of the archive. Rima Nadji will present her intense choreographic meditation on birth and revolution, I Grew an Alien Inside of Me, drawing on the real experiences of mothers and street protesters, while Salma Said and Miriam Coretta Schulte give new theatrical life to the video archive 858, a testimony of the 2011 Egyptian Revolution, with Behind Your Eyeballs. Parvin Saljoughi will present her experimental choreography, Temporarily Closed, on displacement and memory. 

Tashweesh Cinema will compile a selection of 12 short and not-so-short films in Beursshouwburg’s cosiest, freely accessible space, while Maqam.tv welcomes the Belgian premiere of Marwa Arsanios’ latest chapter in a series of films (Who is Afraid of Ideology) exploring the collective potential of land struggles in Lebanon. Deepening some of these pressing issues, we go back to women cinematographers of the 20th century with Assia Djebar’s filmic essay on resistance, grief and memory, The Nouba of the Women of Mount Chenoua. 

 “Our vision is less about the finished pieces, and more about the process, the collaboration, the motivation, the aesthetic and political potentiality of each and every artist. The festival does not claim to give voice to artists and activists, but rather to learn from them by conversing with their practices.” Co-curators Tania El Khoury & Bochra Triki

Next to Tashweesh’s many voices, the festival will open the exhibition Listening through the cracks, where Ghita Skali, Basma Alsharif and Golnesa Rezanezhad invite us to imagine different relations to time, delving into the rhythms of an unwritten story. In fact, the festival’s central ethos of speaking out may not be decoupled from the act of listening in. Through a collective listening session, We Dreamt of Utopia but Woke Up Screaming dives into Yasmina Reggad’s sound archive to engage with the wealth of alternative archives produced by the Pan African Space Station’s broadcast from the 1960’s to the present. 

Last but not least, Tashweesh’s quest for a common ground will find a cathartic closure on Beursschouwburg’s rooftop with DJ Haram’s specific blend of bass-heavy Jersey club and Middle Eastern mahraganat.

“We aim to bring together bodies in celebration, in decolonization, in deconstruction of patriarchal laws and rules, as a way to re-think feminisms in a collective, intimate, and inclusive plurality.” 

No more background noise, let's speak out!
tashweeshfestival.com

TASHWEESH FESTIVAL at Beursschouwburg
from 28/09 until 08/10 
Opening on 28/09 from 17:00 in Beurscafé
Closing Party on 08/10 from 22:00 on the rooftop

Full programme on Beursschouwburg's website.