both sides of the curtain

An ongoing choreography in the frame of MEETING POINTS 8: BOTH SIDES OF THE CURTAIN

Both Sides of the Curtain unfolds in letters, situations, objects, meanings, and sounds. What began in Cairo lands now in Brussels, and moves on to Beirut for the spring. A conversation between many bodies, minds, cities, and times, Both Sides of the Curtain behaves like an improvisation although it’s also a score. This slippage and arbitrariness – an everyday cause for invention for an artist in the Arab world – makes for an artistic production that thrives on instability and masters elasticity.

Imagined as a walk into a music album, Both Sides of the Curtain brings mutable artistic practices together. Artists convene and bring in their own tracks if disguised in different mediums – sculptures, videos, performances, concerts, publications. As they come together, the masquerading continues musically, lyrically, sensually, and also in readings and study sessions, screenings, and talks. As it’s infused with frequencies and energies, Both Sides of the Curtain might dream up new materials to work from, build language from (for thinking about the present), build new relationships from, and will accumulate references with a growing whirlpool of authors, performers, dancers, musicians, artists, and publics.

Both Sides of the Curtain conjures an artistic production that wants to blend into the sonic, the sung, and danced; that withstands the sanctity of the temple and the uncertainly of the dance club; that needs to move, talk, escape, imagine, dream, and gather through other bodies and other tongues, speaking up for a desire to listen in and to hear things differently.

With special thanks to Anne-Claire Schmitz and Objectif Exhibitions