Festival
Tanzquartier Wien
Tashweesh Festival

Tashweesh (Arabic for ‘Noise interference’) is an interdisciplinary art festival that focuses on bringing together feminist movements, creating a platform for artistic practices and research concerning intersectional feminism in Europe, South West Asia and North Africa. With stops at L'Art Rue in Tunis in September and at Beursschouwbourg in Brussels in early October, Tashweesh will come to Tanzquartier Wien from 7–15 October. The programme was primarily curated by Lebanese curator and artist Tania El Khoury and Tunisian curator and feminist activist Bochra Triki.

Audiences, artists and speakers from South West Asia, North Africa and Europe join a glocal conversation to imagine a feminist and connected society across seas and borders. Through performances, discussions, installations, screenings, and a night full of music, we seek common ground beyond perceived cultural boundaries. We talk about stereotypes, queer and trans utopias, gender, bodies, public space, activist strategies and feminist revolutions.

With: Ulduz Ahmadzadeh, Asma Aiad, Sophia Al-Maria, Marwa Arsanios, Kurdwin Ayub, Mirna Bamieh, Signe Baumane, Intissar Belaid, Mona Benyamin, Denice Bourbon, Camille Degeye, Nikita Dhawan, Tania El Khoury, Rana Feghali, Amel Guellaty, Jeanne et Moreau, Rima Najdi, Nancy Naous, Alexander Paulikevitch, Salma Said & Miriam Coretta Schulte, Nour Shantout, Bochra Triki

Tashweesh Sounds with: Lafawndah, Liliane Chlela, Tony Renaissance, DJ DIAMOND, Lucia Kagramanyan

In partnership with L’Art Rue (Tunis), Beursschouwbourg (Brussels) and the Goethe-Institut (Brussels)

Tashweesh is funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union and the Austrian Federal Ministry of Arts and Culture, Civil Service and Sport.

tashweeshfestival.com

Tashweesh Workshops 
Denice Bourbon: “I’m stuck, and I have so many ideas!” More
Nancy Naous: Mada for dancers More
Nancy Naous: Mada, to each body its own dance More

07.10.–
15.10.
Fri–Sat
 
Tanzquartier Wien
Festival Day 1
07.10.
Theory 
Fri
18.00

Nikita Dhawan

‘What Difference Does Difference Make?’

TQW Studios

In recent discussions on gender justice, there has been increasing focus on transnational feminist networks as facilitating ‘solidarity across borders’. In the face of growing global interdependence, the hope is that a transnational citizen’s movement could potentially galvanise global cooperation in overcoming gender violence and promoting gender equality.

In my talk, I will argue that while new modes of collective agency can emerge by drawing on gendered vulnerability as a site of political agency, ‘global sisterhood’ can inadvertently also function as a tactic of neoliberal governmentality. My talk will critically engage with the promises and limits of global gender justice from a postcolonial perspective.

Tashweesh is funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union and the Austrian Federal Ministry of Arts and Culture, Civil Service and Sport.

Details
Dance & Performance 
Fri
19.30 
80 min

Rima Najdi

I Grew an Alien Inside of Me

TQW Halle G

In this multi-media performance, Rima Najdi explores birth and revolution in tandem. Drawing from the remembered, felt experiences of mothers in labour and protesters in the street, I Grew an Alien Inside of Me asks how the body can subvert, circumscribe, and repurpose meanings of the event. Digitised loops play with rhythm, repetition, breath, and expectation and invite audiences to engage and interact with testimonies of giving birth and participating in a protest. Far from following a linear logic or a singular ontology, the cyclical, chaotic experiences of labour and finding and losing comrades in the street point to a different kind of clarity and vision that cannot be reduced to outcomes. The resulting choreography invites reflections on the most powerful of human experiences – those of giving birth and participating in a revolution.

Details
Festival Day 2
08.10.
TQW Special 
Sat
14.00–22.00

Tashweesh Cinema

TQW Studios

1) Signe Baumane, Rocks in My Pockets, 2015 (88 min)
2) Kurdwin Ayub, Armageddon, 2018 (5 min)
3) Kurdwin Ayub, Sommerurlaub (Vaginale VII), 2011 (3 min)
4) Mona Benyamin, Moonscape, 2020 (17 min)
5) Sophia Al-Maria, Tender Point Ruin, 2021 (26 min)
6) Intissar Belaid, Beyond the Silence, 2016 (20 min)
7) Alexander Paulikevitch, Tastes of Loss, 2021 (10 min)
8) Amel Guellaty, Love and Violence, 2022 (13 min)
9) Marwa Arsanios, Who’s Afraid of Ideology Part IV, 2022 (30 min)
10) Camille Degeye, Looking down from above, 2022 (28 min)

After the one-time projection of Signe Baumane’s Rocks in My Pockets, all other films will be shown in a loop.

Tashweesh is funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union and the Austrian Federal Ministry of Arts and Culture, Civil Service and Sport.

Details
Dance & Performance 
Sat
18.00
100 min

Salma Said & Miriam Coretta Schulte

Behind Your Eyeballs

TQW Studios

Through friendship and performance games, Salma Said and Miriam Coretta Schulte take us on a journey in their constructed futuristic video world. In a space designed by artist Jasmina Metwaly, between video projections and car tires, they explore the subversive video archive 858 of the 2011 Egyptian Revolution and the potential of choreographic mnemonic techniques. They travel with the audience through times and spaces on the sound of musician Leila Moon. Every evening, they invite a new visitor to share their stage and archival practice.

Details
Dance & Performance 
Sat
19.30 
80 min

Rima Najdi

I Grew an Alien Inside of Me

TQW Halle G

In this multi-media performance, Rima Najdi explores birth and revolution in tandem. Drawing from the remembered, felt experiences of mothers in labour and protesters in the street, I Grew an Alien Inside of Me asks how the body can subvert, circumscribe, and repurpose meanings of the event. Digitised loops play with rhythm, repetition, breath, and expectation and invite audiences to engage and interact with testimonies of giving birth and participating in a protest. Far from following a linear logic or a singular ontology, the cyclical, chaotic experiences of labour and finding and losing comrades in the street point to a different kind of clarity and vision that cannot be reduced to outcomes. The resulting choreography invites reflections on the most powerful of human experiences – those of giving birth and participating in a revolution.

Details
Dance & Performance 
Sat
21.00
80 min

Rima Najdi

I Grew an Alien Inside of Me

TQW Halle G

In this multi-media performance, Rima Najdi explores birth and revolution in tandem. Drawing from the remembered, felt experiences of mothers in labour and protesters in the street, I Grew an Alien Inside of Me asks how the body can subvert, circumscribe, and repurpose meanings of the event. Digitised loops play with rhythm, repetition, breath, and expectation and invite audiences to engage and interact with testimonies of giving birth and participating in a protest. Far from following a linear logic or a singular ontology, the cyclical, chaotic experiences of labour and finding and losing comrades in the street point to a different kind of clarity and vision that cannot be reduced to outcomes. The resulting choreography invites reflections on the most powerful of human experiences – those of giving birth and participating in a revolution.

Details
Festival Day 3
09.10.
TQW Special 
Sun
14.00–22.00

Tashweesh Cinema

TQW Studios

1) Signe Baumane, Rocks in My Pockets, 2015 (88 min)
2) Kurdwin Ayub, Armageddon, 2018 (5 min)
3) Kurdwin Ayub, Sommerurlaub (Vaginale VII), 2011 (3 min)
4) Mona Benyamin, Moonscape, 2020 (17 min)
5) Sophia Al-Maria, Tender Point Ruin, 2021 (26 min)
6) Intissar Belaid, Beyond the Silence, 2016 (20 min)
7) Alexander Paulikevitch, Tastes of Loss, 2021 (10 min)
8) Amel Guellaty, Love and Violence, 2022 (13 min)
9) Marwa Arsanios, Who’s Afraid of Ideology Part IV, 2022 (30 min)
10) Camille Degeye, Looking down from above, 2022 (28 min)

After the one-time projection of Signe Baumane’s Rocks in My Pockets, all other films will be shown in a loop.

Tashweesh is funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union and the Austrian Federal Ministry of Arts and Culture, Civil Service and Sport.

Details
Dance & Performance 
Sun
18.00
100 min

Salma Said & Miriam Coretta Schulte

Behind Your Eyeballs

TQW Studios

Through friendship and performance games, Salma Said and Miriam Coretta Schulte take us on a journey in their constructed futuristic video world. In a space designed by artist Jasmina Metwaly, between video projections and car tires, they explore the subversive video archive 858 of the 2011 Egyptian Revolution and the potential of choreographic mnemonic techniques. They travel with the audience through times and spaces on the sound of musician Leila Moon. Every evening, they invite a new visitor to share their stage and archival practice.

Details
Festival Day 4
13.10.
TQW Special 
Thu
17.30–22.00

Jeanne et Moreau, Rana Feghali, Nour Shantout

Tashweesh Exhibition

TQW Studios

The second week of Tashweesh will kick off with the opening of an exhibition at TQW Studios. Festival curators Tania El Khoury and Bochra Triki have invited artistic duo Randa Mirza and Lara Tabet as well as Rana Feghali, while the Austrian Association of Women Artists has selected works by Nour Shantout on behalf of TQW.

Artists Randa Mirza and Lara Tabet, based in Beirut and Marseille, have worked together under the pseudonym Jeanne et Moreau since 2018. Their artistic practice is informed by digital technologies, photography and different forms of the transfer, sharing and reception of images in the context of intimacy, politics and queerness, as well as by reflections on geopolitical events, such as the Lebanese October Revolution or the explosion at the Port of Beirut in 2020. Their most recent work is concerned with different aspects of crisis and diverse structural fields, such as forms of governing, money, health and ecology.

Milan-based Rana Feghali works with painting, textiles and fashion design. Her works focus on urbanism, politics and migration questions from a feminist perspective. She will present a new textile object alongside her previous work, Silence in the memory of drowned refugees.

Nour Shantout’s research project Searching for the New Dress looks at how embroidery is used in Shatila, a Palestinian camp in Lebanon, analysing how its use was influenced by the migration of Palestinian and Syrian women who had to find refuge there during the war. In order to design ‘new clothes’, which accurately represent the socio-political, economic and demographic changes, Shantout learnt to work with new motifs and techniques based on traditional Syrian and Palestinian embroidery.

In cooperation with the Austrian Association of Women Artists (VBKÖ)

Sat 15.10., 16.30: Tashweesh Talk
Choreographer Ulduz Ahmadzadeh, visual artist Rana Feghali and artist, activist and curator Asma Aiad talk about their experiences with art and activism and discuss the relationship, intersections and problems between the two fields. Moderation: Anna Leon (TQW Theory)

Tashweesh is funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union and the Austrian Federal Ministry of Arts and Culture, Civil Service and Sport.

Details
Dance & Performance 
Thu
19.30 
75 min

Ulduz Ahmadzadeh / ATASH عطش contemporary dance company

TARAB

TQW Halle G

In Arab and Iranian culture, “tarab” happens when a body is gripped by the music, and physical sensation is enhanced. This heightened moment, when body and music unite, is a door to ecstasy and enchanted sensuality. In TARAB, the last part of a trilogy, Ulduz Ahmadzadeh focuses on unexplored and, in some places, forbidden movement material and odd rhythmic patterns of Pre-Islamic, Middle Eastern cultural heritage. Dance and music material that has undergone multiple forms of Eurocolonial and Islamic translations, in which women, from being the primary holders, got either reduced to sexualised oriental entertainer-dancers or forbidden from practising them all together. Accompanied by the complex rhythms of the virtuoso percussionist Mohammad Reza Mortazavi, seven dancers embody these millennia-old movement materials. TARAB is about imagining a possible dialogue between those dance worlds and the contemporary dance language without shying away from the colonial dynamics between the two.

Details
Festival Day 5
14.10.
TQW Special 
Fri
15.30–22.00

Jeanne et Moreau, Rana Feghali, Nour Shantout

Tashweesh Exhibition

TQW Studios

The second week of Tashweesh will kick off with the opening of an exhibition at TQW Studios. Festival curators Tania El Khoury and Bochra Triki have invited artistic duo Randa Mirza and Lara Tabet as well as Rana Feghali, while the Austrian Association of Women Artists has selected works by Nour Shantout on behalf of TQW.

Artists Randa Mirza and Lara Tabet, based in Beirut and Marseille, have worked together under the pseudonym Jeanne et Moreau since 2018. Their artistic practice is informed by digital technologies, photography and different forms of the transfer, sharing and reception of images in the context of intimacy, politics and queerness, as well as by reflections on geopolitical events, such as the Lebanese October Revolution or the explosion at the Port of Beirut in 2020. Their most recent work is concerned with different aspects of crisis and diverse structural fields, such as forms of governing, money, health and ecology.

Milan-based Rana Feghali works with painting, textiles and fashion design. Her works focus on urbanism, politics and migration questions from a feminist perspective. She will present a new textile object alongside her previous work, Silence in the memory of drowned refugees.

Nour Shantout’s research project Searching for the New Dress looks at how embroidery is used in Shatila, a Palestinian camp in Lebanon, analysing how its use was influenced by the migration of Palestinian and Syrian women who had to find refuge there during the war. In order to design ‘new clothes’, which accurately represent the socio-political, economic and demographic changes, Shantout learnt to work with new motifs and techniques based on traditional Syrian and Palestinian embroidery.

In cooperation with the Austrian Association of Women Artists (VBKÖ)

Sat 15.10., 16.30: Tashweesh Talk
Choreographer Ulduz Ahmadzadeh, visual artist Rana Feghali and artist, activist and curator Asma Aiad talk about their experiences with art and activism and discuss the relationship, intersections and problems between the two fields. Moderation: Anna Leon (TQW Theory)

Tashweesh is funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union and the Austrian Federal Ministry of Arts and Culture, Civil Service and Sport.

Details
Dance & Performance 
Fri
18.00
120 min

Mirna Bamieh

The tongue tracing the hand tracing the earth

TQW Studios

Alongside large-scale dinner performances with the Palestine Hosting Society project, which Mirna Bamieh founded in 2018 and researches into lost recipes and food practices in Palestine, she has been developing smaller, more focused dinner experiences that weave together eating/interacting/sharing/storytelling and histories of dishes with pottery design, which she will present in Vienna for the first time. Her work has been featured on many platforms, such as Aj+, BBC, Hyperallergic, MoMA Ps1, ArteEast, Conde Nast Traveller, Chronogram, El Comodista, al Ahram and Yale Theater magazine.

Details
Dance & Performance 
Fri
19.30 
75 min

Ulduz Ahmadzadeh / ATASH عطش contemporary dance company

TARAB

TQW Halle G

In Arab and Iranian culture, “tarab” happens when a body is gripped by the music, and physical sensation is enhanced. This heightened moment, when body and music unite, is a door to ecstasy and enchanted sensuality. In TARAB, the last part of a trilogy, Ulduz Ahmadzadeh focuses on unexplored and, in some places, forbidden movement material and odd rhythmic patterns of Pre-Islamic, Middle Eastern cultural heritage. Dance and music material that has undergone multiple forms of Eurocolonial and Islamic translations, in which women, from being the primary holders, got either reduced to sexualised oriental entertainer-dancers or forbidden from practising them all together. Accompanied by the complex rhythms of the virtuoso percussionist Mohammad Reza Mortazavi, seven dancers embody these millennia-old movement materials. TARAB is about imagining a possible dialogue between those dance worlds and the contemporary dance language without shying away from the colonial dynamics between the two.

Details
Festival Day 6
15.10.
TQW Special 
Sat
15.30–22.00

Jeanne et Moreau, Rana Feghali, Nour Shantout

Tashweesh Exhibition

TQW Studios

The second week of Tashweesh will kick off with the opening of an exhibition at TQW Studios. Festival curators Tania El Khoury and Bochra Triki have invited artistic duo Randa Mirza and Lara Tabet as well as Rana Feghali, while the Austrian Association of Women Artists has selected works by Nour Shantout on behalf of TQW.

Artists Randa Mirza and Lara Tabet, based in Beirut and Marseille, have worked together under the pseudonym Jeanne et Moreau since 2018. Their artistic practice is informed by digital technologies, photography and different forms of the transfer, sharing and reception of images in the context of intimacy, politics and queerness, as well as by reflections on geopolitical events, such as the Lebanese October Revolution or the explosion at the Port of Beirut in 2020. Their most recent work is concerned with different aspects of crisis and diverse structural fields, such as forms of governing, money, health and ecology.

Milan-based Rana Feghali works with painting, textiles and fashion design. Her works focus on urbanism, politics and migration questions from a feminist perspective. She will present a new textile object alongside her previous work, Silence in the memory of drowned refugees.

Nour Shantout’s research project Searching for the New Dress looks at how embroidery is used in Shatila, a Palestinian camp in Lebanon, analysing how its use was influenced by the migration of Palestinian and Syrian women who had to find refuge there during the war. In order to design ‘new clothes’, which accurately represent the socio-political, economic and demographic changes, Shantout learnt to work with new motifs and techniques based on traditional Syrian and Palestinian embroidery.

In cooperation with the Austrian Association of Women Artists (VBKÖ)

Sat 15.10., 16.30: Tashweesh Talk
Choreographer Ulduz Ahmadzadeh, visual artist Rana Feghali and artist, activist and curator Asma Aiad talk about their experiences with art and activism and discuss the relationship, intersections and problems between the two fields. Moderation: Anna Leon (TQW Theory)

Tashweesh is funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union and the Austrian Federal Ministry of Arts and Culture, Civil Service and Sport.

Details
Theory 
Sat
16.30 

Ulduz Ahmadzadeh, Rana Feghali & Asma Aiad

Tashweesh Talk

TQW Studios

Choreographer Ulduz Ahmadzadeh, visual artist Rana Feghali and artist, activist and curator Asma Aiad talk about their experiences with art and activism and discuss the relationship, intersections and problems between the two fields. Moderation: Anna Leon (TQW Theory)

Tashweesh is funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union and the Austrian Federal Ministry of Arts and Culture, Civil Service and Sport.

Details
Dance & Performance 
Sat
18.00
120 min

Mirna Bamieh

The tongue tracing the hand tracing the earth

TQW Studios

Alongside large-scale dinner performances with the Palestine Hosting Society project, which Mirna Bamieh founded in 2018 and researches into lost recipes and food practices in Palestine, she has been developing smaller, more focused dinner experiences that weave together eating/interacting/sharing/storytelling and histories of dishes with pottery design, which she will present in Vienna for the first time. Her work has been featured on many platforms, such as Aj+, BBC, Hyperallergic, MoMA Ps1, ArteEast, Conde Nast Traveller, Chronogram, El Comodista, al Ahram and Yale Theater magazine.

Details
 
Sat
22.30 

Lafawndah, Liliane Chlela, Tony Renaissance, DJ DIAMOND, Lucia Kagramanyan

Tashweesh Sounds

TQW Halle G

Lafawndah (FR)
Lafawndah’s journey to her current incarnation as a devotional pop polymath has wound as unpredictably as her compositional style. Her traversing of musical and artistic milieus has been defined by a freedom of tone, surrealist sense of space, and assured manipulation of formal and psychological tension. With her precision-tuned debut album Ancestor Boy, she was catapulted into the vibrant centre of contemporary arts in 2019, followed by the release – via the Paris-based cult label Latency – The Fifth Season, which “is imbued with the tension and power of a live instrumental performance, at once intriguing and nerve-wracking” (Pitchfork).
She has collaborated with Laure Prouvost (French Pavilion, Venice Biennale) or Jacolby Satterwhite, scoring runways for Kenzo, Chanel and Fendi. At the same time, she left powerful impressions at her concerts at the Haus der Kunst, Barbican Center and Sónar Festival. At TQW, Lafawndah will perform her new project in a trio with percussionist Sébastien Forrester and guitarist Trustfall. Her latest show casts her tightly finessed pop songwriting inside a terse web of spidery arrangements and sharply disciplined improvisation. Against the backdrop of Forrester’s electronic percussion, the trio continues its narrative and instrumental explorations; this concert also marks the beginning of Lafawndah’s unique approach as a live flutist.

Liliane Chlela (CA/LB)
Digging deep inside Liliane Chlela’s music, one will find relentless, dark electronic beats mingled with anger and anguish. The producer, DJ and performer is widely known in the electronic and experimental scenes for her unique and audacious approach to sound, stirring audiences into pushing the limits of their auditory experiences ever further. Through her signature techniques, she explores the relationship between improvisation and the manipulation of sounds from wide-ranging musical genres. With three self-produced albums already under her belt, Chlela’s latest album Safala blends field recordings, memories and incantations with pioneering and disruptive sounds. For this live interpretation of Safala, she will tap into her heritage and birth a sonic concoction anchored in the inherited oral epistemologies of her ancestors.

Tony Renaissance (AT)
Establishing connections between soft and harsh sound spaces, Tony Renaissance is opening zones for the exploration of care and exaltation. Dealing with loss, lust, pain, desire, queer joy and transformation, Tony Renaissance’s sound seeks intensities and has peaked with the latest release Xxxerberus. Sensitively constructed vocal sample arrangements topped with spoken texts contrast rhythmic noise productions with distorted glitching vocals, pushing pulses up to 163bpm. As a co-founder of the event series The Future and a member of the Sounds Queer? collective and founder of the Vienna-based label Tender Matter, Tony is promoting and highlighting the work of queer, non-binary, Trans and gender nonconforming artists in electronic music.

DJ DIAMOND (AT)
DJ DIAMOND has found her way into the heart of the Viennese underground by always giving what you didn’t know you wanted and needed. She implemented different types of harder styles, constantly pushing the general tempo limit and comfort zone. She has steadily progressed towards hardcore and gabber by combining early sounds with newer productions. She’s been active in Viennas rave scene for five years, playing at different clubs, venues and lefty demonstrations on the way. Her shows are always intense, fun and tempo-driven.

Lucia Kagramanyan (AM/AT)
Lucia Kagramanyan is a Vienna-based DJ mostly known for her NTS radio show Panorama Yerevan, showcasing solely Armenian music in its wide variety. Lucia is researching Armenian music and making it accessible via one-hour episodes focusing on different genres or moods, mixing old and new recordings. Her balance between obscure and obvious and digger highlights as a selector/DJ can be heard on radio waves of Palestinian Radio Alhara and past guest shows on Red Light Radio, Reform Radio Bristol, Rinse Fm, Operator Radio in Rotterdam, and others. She participated in the HIYA festival that celebrates female talent from the SWANA region in 2020 and played gigs at Elevate Festival in Austria, among other events in Europe, and in her hometown Yerevan. 

Tashweesh is funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union and the Austrian Federal Ministry of Arts and Culture, Civil Service and Sport.

 

Details
 
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