IMAGINING LIBERATION
(2024)
author(s): Dalia Al Kury
published in: University of Inland Norway
Imagining Liberation is an artistic research project with the aim of investigating methods in speculative nonfiction. This project begins with a question: What kind of cinematic images can arise from imagining a liberated Palestine? Dalia AlKury’s interest in staging simulated pasts in her earlier documentaries and then staging speculations of futures during her PhD research stems from a deep frustration with the lack of art imagining a world that she hopes is possible. Both practices—staging in documentary and speculative fiction—are rooted in posing the question “What if?,” to offer another possible world or narrative. Her work combines these approaches in the realization of her own method in speculative multitemporal nonfiction. Dalia AlKury approaches documentary filmmaking not as a way of documenting reality, but as a way of constructing an alternative one. Her final artistic results are informed by a long legacy of politically poetic Palestinian aesthetics and by grievances over the historical and present day witnessing of the violent ethnic cleansing of her people.
By committing to framing her vignettes in a fictional liberated Palestine, an emancipatory art making process starts to take shape. The process excavates an often-oppressed critical rage and pushes it up to the surface through different narrative tools. Imagining Liberation traces the filmmaker's confrontational journey while experimenting with staging, subverting, futuring, abstracting, and decolonizing to reach a type of catharsis in the face of a continuously fragmented diasporic existence.
By staging her own return to a liberated Palestine in different modes from writing to filming, Dalia AlKury runs into ethical dilemmas questioning her self-censorship, representation of “others” and the elusive role of cinematic catharsis. This book encompasses her critical reflection on the short films , narrative experiments and video diaries created throughout her research. The three main audio-visual works that will be shared and analyzed are Congratulations on Your Return, Levitations, and What if a Tree, What if a Crow?
Migration research in collaboration with Tamil Sri Lankan artists in the British diaspora
(2015)
author(s): Anna Laine
published in: Journal for Artistic Research
This research exposition investigates how artistic practice is used among British Tamil artists with a Sri Lankan background to explore their multiple belongings and in-between notions of homing and migrating.
It is based on eighteen months of ethnographic fieldwork in London, Belfast, and Jaffna. Through the author’s position in the overlap between art practice and anthropology, the exposition poses questions about the possibilities of an interdisciplinary approach to artistic research.
The additional overlap with the Tamil artists’ profession challenged the relationship between self and other in the research process, and knowledge has consequently been produced in a collaborative form.
IMAGINING PALESTINIAN LIBERATION
(last edited: 2025)
author(s): Dalia Al Kury
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
Note: This is a modified version of the official PhD published outcome and reflections.
Imagining Liberation is an artistic research project with the aim of investigating methods in speculative nonfiction. This project begins with a question: What kind of cinematic images can arise from imagining a liberated Palestine? Dalia AlKury’s interest in staging simulated pasts in her earlier documentaries and then staging speculations of futures during her PhD research stems from a deep frustration with the lack of art imagining a world that she hopes is possible. Both practices—staging in documentary and speculative fiction—are rooted in posing the question “What if?,” to offer another possible world or narrative. Her work combines these approaches in the realization of her own method in speculative multitemporal nonfiction. Dalia AlKury approaches documentary filmmaking not as a way of documenting reality, but as a way of constructing an alternative one. Her final artistic results are informed by a long legacy of politically poetic Palestinian aesthetics and by grievances over the historical and present day witnessing of the violent ethnic cleansing of her people.
By committing to framing her vignettes in a fictional liberated Palestine, an emancipatory art making process starts to take shape. The process excavates an often-oppressed critical rage and pushes it up to the surface through different narrative tools. Imagining Liberation traces the filmmaker's confrontational journey while experimenting with staging, subverting, futuring, abstracting, and decolonizing to reach a type of catharsis in the face of a continuously fragmented diasporic existence.
By staging her own return to a liberated Palestine in different modes from writing to filming, Dalia AlKury runs into ethical dilemmas questioning her self-censorship, representation of “others” and the elusive role of cinematic catharsis. This book encompasses her critical reflection on the short films , narrative experiments and video diaries created throughout her research. The three main audio-visual works that will be shared and analyzed are Congratulations on Your Return, Levitations, and What if a Tree, What if a Crow?
The Place of Shade [The Place of Shade (Draft) - 2024-01-11 21:37]
(last edited: 2024)
author(s): Dibble and Bjarne
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
At first, the plan was simple – to be home by Christmas. To begin to view the very concept of home as built upon nostalgia. Imagining home is a pastime of any immigrant. If, as Breton suggests, ‘The imaginary is that which tends to become real,’ what were our imaginings bringing to life?
The Place of Shade is an artistic research inquiry into contemporary Norwegian culture in South Africa. Norwegians began operating within the British colonial framework around 1840—the same period as the migration to America. Lutheran missions, whaling, farming, business and family characterise this almost 200-year Afri-Norge diasporic heritage. It has been almost entirely overlooked in visual culture, until now.
Following the depletion of Whales in the Nordic seas, Norwegian immigrants almost single-handedly established the whaling operations in Durban from 1908 onwards. Their legacy remains an integral component of the city and the province's socio-cultural fabric to this day. With this in mind, we sought out the ghosts of Larsen, Hermansen, Egeland and more from New Pier to Kwambonambi; we found them.
The project is an act of psychogeography, insofar as it hinges upon ‘the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behaviour of individuals.’ The images and text that make up the exposition are the culmination of this process. The attempt by a disparate group of individuals, at once insiders and outsiders, to understand how legacy takes shape and how it has reshaped our understanding of Home.
By living with and meeting Norwegian decedents on their farms and homesteads this project was possible. We thank all who were so kind and eager to connect again with their roots.
Installation multimédiaopen exposition comments (0)
This research exposition investigates how artistic practice is used among British Tamil artists with a Sri Lankan background to explore their multiple belongings and in-between notions of homing and migrating. It is based on eighteen months of ethnographic fieldwork in London, Belfast, and Jaffna. Through the author’s position in the overlap between art practice and anthropology, the exposition poses questions about the possibilities of an interdisciplinary approach to artistic research. The additional overlap with the Tamil artists’ profession challenged the relationship between self and other in the research process, and knowledge has consequently been produced in a collaborative form.open exposition comments (0)