The learning program is a place where we can practice the questions the New Radicalisms festival brings to the surface starting with the subtitle of the festival: ‘but…where are you really from?’ to all the ones that emerge from this question we often hear and ask.
It is structured in a series of workshops with moments of reflection in between. The workshops use the festival as an experimentation ground to test ideas and attitudes. We will focus on the topic of stereotypes, the words we use, archiving and nostalgia with the guidance of professional artists.
Apply here or text / voice note to Whatsapp[+31682428524] for more info.
Stereotype factory 🏗️
Introduced by Ghita Skali and Salim Bayri:
This workshop looks at how the media use, reinforce and abuse stereotypes. Which strategies are applied, how easy is it to create new stereotypes? Is there such a thing as an objective and neutral point of view?
The aim of this workshop is to analyze these strategies and apply them to the very busy festival. Can you create a rumor about a drink in the bar that cures xenophobia?
What what واط Lexicon 📖
Words and semantics create new realities. What words are needed to complement the reality we live in? How do we relate to the words that are imposed on us? How do words create a division and how can we create nuances that are more appropriate to our worlds of experience? In this search, all participants will create new words and these will be presented on a large screen at the festival.
How to keep 📂
Introduced by Ghita Skali
To capture something with a photo, video, writing or any other way is to have control on the story of what you want to capture. For example, when the French Empire invaded North Africa they extensively took pictures of the locals. But, was it to celebrate the culture, or to have more control?
Centered around the question of archiving and documenting. This workshop invites participants to choose an activity of the festival and find ways to document it. Why is it worth documenting it? Are you stealing or preserving? for how long? What are the parts neglected when we document? What other ways other than visual and sonic you can keep an activity? Is the activity in the smoking area more interesting than the talks and debates?
Nostalgia Funeral➿
Introduced by Golrokh Nafisi
For the Learning Program, Golrokh invites the participants to bring an object, idea, image that they consider nostalgic. We will collectively cast the nostalgia out of it by using it, thus bringing it from a frozen past, to the present.
For Who? 🌐
Everyone is welcome to participate within the maximum of people we can accommodate. Although the festival has a focus on people with a connection to the WANA region as visitors, migrants, expats or third culture kids. So if the questions of the festival speak to you, or you feel a certain urgency, you are welcome.
To participate🏓:
Fill in this form: We are curious to your answers to the following questions.
- When was the last time you were asked: “but… where are you really from?’’
- What brings a nostalgic feeling to you?
For questions you can text, or send a voice note to Whatsapp[+31682428524].
Timetable
Thursday 30/06
13:00 – 15:00 Workshop: Imaginary Places by Muhcine Ennou*
17:30 – 18:30 Introduction learning program (explanation of all workshops)
18:30 – 19:00 Official opening speech / start New Radicalisms Festival
Friday 01/07
12:00 – 21:00 Learning program nest opening hours
16:00 – 18:00 Gathering/discussion (dinner afterwards)
Saturday 02/07
12:00 – 21:00 Learning program nest opening hours
13:00- 14:30 Workshop: An alternative history of the internet by Aryani Hessami*
16:00 – 18:00 Gathering/discussion (dinner afterwards)
Sunday 03/07
12:00 – 15:00 Nostalgia Funeral (with lunch break)
12:00 – 21:00 Learning program nest opening hours
16:00 – 18:00 Gathering/reflection moment (dinner afterwards)
From Friday till Sunday the learning program nest is open, there is always someone from our team to guide you. Organizers/hosts Salim Bayri, Ghita Skali, Golrokh Nafisi, Ziya and Hanane Mouhdi.
* Suggested by the learning program team, part of the workshops of the New Radicalisms festival.
About the hosts:
Salim Bayri makes sculptures in virtual reality while hanging out in obsolete online chatrooms where strangeness, blasphemy, and pulling each other’s leg are common practices. As a polyglot, Bayri can enter many of the different rooms where diasporas gather. He is currently programming a mistranslation machine that he calls the ‘Hadra Collider’ where words collide inside his throat.
Ghita Skali is a visual artist that uses odd news, rumors and propaganda to disrupt institutional power structures such as the western contemporary art world, state oppression and government politics. Her work often ends up as a strong critique with outcomes that penetrate channels that go beyond the exhibition space taking the form of informal trade of goods, legal documents, and things you take home for a warm night tea.
Ziya Görer is born and raised in Rotterdam and currently works as a social worker and a youth worker in the south of the city. He is also a personal trainer and movement coach. Together with Sammie Sedano, they are the co-founders of CultNorth, an organization centered around talent development for the youth in the north of Rotterdam. Ziya enjoys being involved in the development between different cultures and communities. With CultNorth he organizes all sorts of events, creating opportunities for self-development and enabling the youth to work on the things they are passionate about.
Golrokh Nafisi draws, paints, sews and brings people together in performances that look like collective processions. Her project ‘Manifesto Against Nostalgia’ sets out to question the usage of the word ‘nostalgia’ in relation to the current socio-political rhetoric that relies on the glorification of a past that never truly existed. The performance adopts a site-specific linguistic form each time accompanied by folk music that has different forms from singing to the choir to playing an ancient instrument to chant. The audience is invited to become an integral part of the event, as witnesses of this nostalgic dissidence.
The workshops will mostly be in English but the hosts speak (all together) Dutch, Arabic, Turkish, Darija, French, Spanish and Lebanese.
This program is a collaboration between (A)WAKE and Cult North and supported by Creative Industries Fund, VSB, Prins Bernard Culture Fund and Gemeente Rotterdam.