Other Lands, narrazioni non retoriche

curator
Paola Tripoli

Sudafrica
curator
Rudi Van der Merwe

artists
Lee-Ann Olwage, Ronelda S. Kamfer, Churchil Naudé

Egypt
artist
Mohamed Abdelkarim

Palestine
artist
Noor Abuarafeh

Poland
artist
Anka Herbut

Paola Tripoli
Tripoli graduated with a degree in literature and philosophy majoring in the history of theatre. During her university years she was in the CUT, Centro Teatrale Universitario; she studied theatrical theory with Fabrizio Cruciani, Ferdinando Taviani and while she was training, encountered masters such as Eugenio Barba and Leo De Bernardinis. During these years she also helped edit the quarterly journal L’Altro Teatro. Later she was involved in study activities at Bologna’s DAMS. Her early experiences include numerous projects in youth detention centres. From 1985-1989 she worked at the Festival Santarcangelo dei Teatri in various functions. During this time she was also editor of Libero Cantiere, a journal of poetry, music and theatre. In 1987 she participated actively in the ISTA section in Salento under Eugenio Barba. She has held various posts in press offices for events in Italy. As a journalist, she contributes to the arts section of many daily newspapers. In 2000 she began a job with the Corriere della Sera/Corriere del Mezzogiorno. In 2001 she moved to Switzerland where she was in charge of organizing national and international projects for the Teatro Pan di Lugano. In 2005 she was co-artistic director of the FIT Festival Internazionale del Teatro e della scena contemporanea and from 2005 was artistic manager and coordinator of the Festival Incontri Teatrali. From 2008 to 2010 she ran the press office for the Cultural Office of the Municipality of Chiasso and in 2009 she managed the press office Italy for the GDSC Giornate della Danza Svizzera Contemporanea. She was editor of the weekly Ticinosette and of the daily La Regione. She was a member of the external jury of the Premio Scenario (Italy) and member of the jury of the Premio (Switzerland). In Lugano in 2012, together with Rubidori Manshaft, she founded Officina Orsi, an artistic research project that acts on the possible space between theatre, performance art and installation. The project merges Paola Tripoli’s skills with those of Rubidori Manshaft, connected to figurative art, installations and visual poetry; it produced 12 parole 7 pentimenti, a mobile sound itinerary, and the video installation project Su l'umano sentire  which was shown in many cities in Switzerland and Italy. In 2020 she began a new research project, currently in production, entitled Gli ultimi giorni di Pompei.  She is head of TRE60Arti a project aimed at exploring art forms. In 2016 she became manager of the FIT Festival Internazionale del Teatro e della scena contemporanea di Lugano. In 2015, together with Carmelo Rifici, artistic director of the LAC, she created the editorial project I Quaderni del FIT. She is member of Expedition Suisse, RESO Rete danza svizzera, and of the committee t.punto. Together with Carmelo Rifici she is co-conceiver of Lingua Madre – A Time Capsule.

Mohamed Abdelkarim
Born in El Minya, Egypt in 1983, he currently lives and works in Cairo. His work is oriented around performance which he considers to be a method for research and a practice through which he creates texts and images that embody the forms of poetry, screenwriting, sound and video. Using and reflecting on different performance acts like narration, song, dance, seeing and doing, his work is about the rejected during times of crisis, complicating the relationship between geography and those who are fleeing. His exhibitions have been included in the Guild Master of Cabaret Voltaire Manifesta 11, Zurich, 2016; Sofia Underground Performance Art Festival, Bulgaria, 2016. As a part of his performative practice he founded tadbiqat a performance project that combines conferences, debates, lectures, critical responses and creative explorations, in addition to organizing performance evenings entitled Live Praxes.  

Noor Abuarafeh
A Palestinian living in Egypt, Noor is an artist who works mainly with video, performance and text. Her work deals with memory, history, archives and the possibility of tracing those who are absent. Her videos and performances are based on texts and they question the complexity of history as it is shaped, constructed, realized, perceived, visualized and compressed. They consider how all these components are connected to fact and fiction and the possibility of imagining the past when there are gaps in the documentation. Her socially engaged videos and art works are based on interviews, workshops and other shared activities. She has participated in the Sharjah Biennale 13 (2017), Off-Binnial - Gaudipolis, Budapest (2017), Qalandia International, Jerusalem (2016), Intermolecular Spaces, Aalborg (2016), Suspended Accounts, Mosaic Rooms, London (2016), Instant Videos Festival, France (2015), Salt and Water, Or Gallery, Canada (2014) and Tokyo Wonder Site, Japan (2013), among other exhibitions. She obtained her Masters at the ECAV, Switzerland, and a  BA at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design of Bezalel, Jerusalem. In 2016 she was a finalist for the Emerging Voices Award and won second prize in the Young Palestinian Artist Award of the Qattan Foundation.

Anka Herbut
Born in 1983, Herbut is a writer, dance and theatre dramaturg, researcher and curator living in Warsaw. Constantly crossing the boundaries between artistic practice, theoretical reflection, and socially engaged activities. The main area of her research encompasses poetry, affective language performatics, dramaturgies of resistance, feminism, and the relationships between art and politics. She is a recipient of the Grażyna Kulczyk Contemporary Choreography Research Scholarship (2019), which has provided a framework for an ongoing project Resistance Movements (Ruchy Oporu), in which she questions what bodies do and what kind of movement practices they employ to express defiance. Recently she was a resident of Biennale Warszawa, where she developed project BRAVE SPACES, in which she investigates the body agency and surveillance in the pandemic. She runs a radio broadcast Anyone who doesn’t jump about the choreographic strategies of resistance on the social radio Radio Kapitał.

Ronelda Kamfer
The young poet was born and grew up in Cape Town. She began writing as a teenager. She debuted in 2008 with Noudat slapende honde (Now That Sleeping Dogs) for the publisher Kwela which in 2009 won the Eugene Marais prize. In 2011 she published her second book Grond santekraam, again with the publisher Kwela, which won the ABSA Kanna award in 2012. Her third collection of poems Hammie (2016) received the ATKV woordtrofee the same year.

Churchil Naudé
Naudé is a South African rap singer and poet who uses the dialect of Cape Afrikaans to tell the bitter story of blacks in Cape Town. He has published two albums Kroeskop vol geraas (2015) and Kroesifaaid  (2018) and a collection of poems Drol innie drinkwater  (2020).

Lee-Ann Olwage
Olwage is a visual storyteller and photographer from South Africa. Her work is about identity, collaboration and celebration. She uses photography as a way of co-creating and celebrating. With her long term projects, she aims to create a space where the people she collaborates with can play an active role in making images whose stories are told in a positive and celebratory way.

Rudi Van der Merwe
Originally from Calvinia, South Africa, Rudi Van der Merwe studied theatre and French at the University of Stellenbosch (1996-99) while working independently in the fields of theatre, dance and television. From 1999 to 2002 he studied modern literature and cinema at the University Marc Bloch in Strasbourg and took part in ex.e.r.ce at the CCN Montpellier. Since 2004 he has been working as an interpreter with Gilles Jobin, Cindy Van Acker, Perrine Valli and Yan Duyvendak and collaborates with Ayelen Parolin, Dana Michel, Jòzsef Trefeli, Marie-Caroline Hominal and Béatrice Graf on various multi-disciplinary projects. His creations include: I’d like to save the world, but I’m too busy saving myself created in collaboration with Susana Panadès Diaz, Solstice, Miss En Abyme, Trophée and Buzz Riot. In 2014 he obtained a diploma in post-production at the CADSchool in Geneva and in 2015 a post-graduate degree in cinema at the Raindance Film School in London.