For two decades, Bouchra Khalili’s work has articulated contemporary migratory trajectories, colonial continuum, and the politics of memory of internationalist struggles and collective emancipation. In An Audio Family Album, Bouchra Khalili continues her investigation of Al Assifa’s methodology based on the dying tradition of Al-halqa, the oldest performing art in North Africa. Collaborating with a younger generation of members of the same communities living nowadays in Europe, she proposes an online archive of voices, bringing together stories of emancipation that have helped shape the memories and contemporary strategies of diaspora struggles and that, through this process, are passed on from one generation to the next.

Episode #5: Notes on Oral Feminist Storytelling avec Ikram Ettarrahi

EN - Ikram is a visual artist exploring the legacy of oral storytelling from the Rif region of northern Morocco. Starting from the work of Fatima Sadiqi – a Moroccan feminist scholar – Ikram meditates on the many anonymous women who “orally” wrote and perpetuated the memory of anticolonial struggles. Among the most famous epic poems on anticolonial history, and the Rif War in particular, is Dhar Ubharran. Ikram concludes with a performance of fragments of the poem in its original language of Tarifit.

FR - Ikram est artiste. Elle explore dans son travail l’héritage des cultures narratives orales de la région nord-marocaine du Rif. Se basant sur les recherches de Fatima Sadiqi (une universitaire féministe marocaine), Ikram entame une réflexion sur les apports des nombreuses femmes qui ont “écrit” oralement, et donc perpétué, la mémoire des luttes anticoloniales. Dhar Ubharran est l’un des poèmes les plus épique et connu célébrant l’histoire anticoloniale, et plus particulièrement la Guerre du Rif. Ikram termine son intervention en récitant des fragments de ce poème dans sa langue originelle : le Tarifit.

NL - Ikram is een beeldend kunstenares die de erfenis van de orale tradities uit de Rif-regio in Noord-Marokko onderzoekt. Ze buigt zich over de vele anonieme vrouwen die “mondeling” schreven en zo de antikoloniale strijd bestendigden. Ze neemt hiervoor het werk van Fatima Sadiqi, een Marokkaanse feministische academica als startpunt. Eén van de meest bekende en epische gedichten over antikoloniale geschiedenis en meer bepaald over de Rif Oorlog is Dhar Ubharran. De performance waarmee Ikram afsluit bevat fragmenten van het gedicht in de originele taal Tarifit.

A project by Bouchra Khalili, initiated and coproduced by Kunstenfestivaldesarts 2020 in the context of The Diasporic Schools.

More info: https://kfda.be/en/festivals/2020-edition/programme/an-audio-family-album/