Here an interview, within the programme POST IT (Rai Radio 1), to the artist Wissal Houbabi, curator Frida Carazzato (Museion), and curators of the exhibition "Lucia Marcucci. L'Offesa" at Ar/Ge Kunst, Francesca Verga e Zasha Colah, here in dialogue with Alessandra Tortosa.
POST IT is a programme by Giuliano Tonini, curated by Alessandra Tortosa.

This is an archive of sounds that can’t be heard from within a prison cell. All sounds are recorded by former prisoners in Palestine and family members of people in detention, in order to answer the question “what sounds people inside would like to hear?” The project emerged in a moment of further confinement for detainees due to the Covid-19 regulations that didn’t allow any visit to prisoners. From that there was the necessity to reproduce those sounds in prison: either familiar sounds from the home of a detainee (specific objects that can be recognised by the owner) or sound that can’t be heard inside (like nature, the markets in Tulkarem and Ramallah or simply non-existing inside objects like iron cutlery and glass cups) the sounds are combined with music (also chosen by the same people), voices messages and testimonies from detention, in Arabic, Italian, English and names of friends still detained, to whom the work is dedicated.

The audio is inserted into the context of the exhibition 'Die Fliege is a fly in volo' at Ar/Ge Kunst and further develops the necessity of clandestinely-made works to come to life. Art and life exist in prison, beyond the narrative of exclusion.

LISTEN HERE

"Hearing is a way of touching at a distance"

00:00 Lorenzo - Playing the piano.
01:02 Fulla - Birds.
01:13 Radi - How time goes by in prison.
01:40 Majid - reciting names of friends and students from the Birzeit University now in detention. This work is for them.
02:08 Sami and Amani - On the night he was arrested.
02:26 Suhail - Ya Thalam el Sijn, Makadi Nahhas .
02:47 Aman - Generator, from their home.
04:33 Aman - Reciting names of friends now in detention. This work is for them.
05:39 Aman - Generator, from their home.
06:17 Aman - Garden tap, from their home.
06:25 Karim - Voice message.
06:57 Karim - On family visits when he was detained.
07:25 Aman - Tableware and kitchen sounds from their home. No pottery, iron cutlery nor glass are allowed in prison, thus all tableware inside is made out of plastic.
07:59 Kids playing.
08:02 Lorenzo - Playing the piano.
08:59 Sara’s sounds.
09:09 Aman - Light switch, from their home.
09:27 Aman - Kettle, from their home.
09:48 Aman - Voice message explaining the generator’s function.
10:01 Majid - Her grandmother talks about the planting season.
10:09 Ramallah market, February 2020.
10:29 Karim - Voice message.
11:03 Karim - The silence of Tulkarem empty streets, March 2020.
12:00 Fulla - Call to prayer, Tulkarem.
12:49 Birezit field recording - The university is open, February 2020.
13:37 Dogs barking.
13:52 Majid - Farm animals.
14:28 Majid - Grandmother.
14:40 Aman - Her message to her husband in detention.
14:40 Lorenzo - Playing the synth.
15:05 Kids playing.
16:02 Anita - A mother’s message to her son.
16:14 Aman - Rusty door, from their home.
16:31 Fulla - A man selling vegetables during the lockdown, Tulkarem, March 2020.
16:54 Quran reading recorded from the radio
17:16 Lighter
17:22 Lit a cigarette, Birzeit University, February 2020.
17:29 Ibrahim in a Ramallah cafe.
17:34 Aman - Plates and kitchen sound from their home. No pottery, iron nor glass are allowed in prison, therefore all cutlery inside is made out of plastic.
17:57 Ghassan - Voice message.
18:16 a Ramallah cafe, March 2020.
18:16 Your Throats, Sameh Shqair.
19:16 Aman - Stirring the spoon in a glass cup. No iron cutlery nor glass cups are allowed in prison.
19:29 Birzeit University field recordings.
19:38 Birzeit University field recordings.
19:54 Lorenzo - Playing instruments.
20:26 Kids screaming.
21:07 Aman - Second message to her husband.
23:37 Fulla - She goes to the Tulkarem market during Ramadan.
24:25 Fulla - Pickles are very popular during Ramadan.
24:34 Fulla - Ramadan drinks.
24:44 Rain.
25:18 Fulla - Chocolate.
25:31 Aman - Marbles: “this is something Nael put with his hands on our roof. They are still here, waiting for him, after six years”.
25:33 Karim - Voice message.
25:52 Male Hbibti Madjatch, Cheb Khaled.
28:35 Waves from the North Sea, recorded in The Hague, The Netherlands. Upon request of Palestinian friends who can’t reach the Mediterranean Sea anymore.

In this interview, reported in the first half of Rai Radio 1 programme POST IT, artist Htein Lin, Sabine Holzknecht, Director Helfen ohne Grenzen EO, Zasha Colah and Francesca Verga, curators of the exhibition Die Fliege is a fly in volo at Ar/Ge Kunst, were in dialogue with Alessandra Tortosa. Htein Lin connected from Yangon, where he was for the opening of his solo exhibition.
POST IT is a programme by Giuliano Tonini and curated by Alessandra Tortosa.

We dedicate this session of Reading Rivers, to the book How to imagine, A narrative on Art, Agriculture and Creativity, about the project Agricola Cornelia S.p.a., a rural utopian commune to the north of Rome, which worked from 1973 to ’81, to bring agriculture and art into synergy. Reading Rivers takes up Baruchello’s rhizomatic way of thinking and visualising place, and juxtaposes the voices of Baruchello and Martin with the texts of artist Emma Smith and anthropologist Anna Tsing, who both describe places as a web of relationships. How can imagination help us visualise a place as an open-ended structure or assemblage?

In parallel to the exhibition programme of ar/ge kunst, the fifth Reading Rivers session lends new depth to the experience of the archive as a living entity. An archive can be considered a system of classification that compiles and orders various forms of knowledge, be these ideas and visions or physical objects. Drawing on text excerpts from the natural sciences and cultural studies, we leave behind the notion of a stable and unchanging archive and allow ourselves to be propelled instead by the thought of an archive constantly expanded by the power of our imaginations, fiction, and interrelation.

After an introduction by the public programme curators, participants take a walk together on the banks of the Talvera, while listening to a 40-minute podcast in English. The texts cover issues such as the role and operation of a geological archive, possible artistic approaches to an archive, and the earth itself as an archive in which soil, sediment, iron and stones serve as major records for climate research. Thus, the archive becomes a place that not only explains the past but also has a transformative political impact on the present day. The walk ends with a brief discussion of the questions raised by the podcast.

Reading Rivers #4 will take a deeper look at the exhibition Plant Plant at ar/ge kunst (27.11.21 – 12.02.22), and at the artistic practice of Vienna based artist Katrin Hornek, who always advocates a more complex conception of nature and culture in her work.

We are located in a drained swamp, upon which a factory was built, due to its proximity to the flowing river. It was fertiliser that flowed through the steel pipes. Until the 1940s, the Montecatini in Sinigo, a suburb of Merano, produced tons of artificial fertiliser. The marshland became an industrial zone and a village grew.

What if we were to understand this landscape as a body and perceive our human body as a fluid organism within it? This relationship between the bodies, the human and the earthly, is investigated by artist Katrin Hornek in her solo exhibition, which opens at ar/ge kunst on 26.11.2021, starting from the local history and the interwoven ammonia production.

The cosmovision of the Mapuche people within which the human is perceived as part of the earth he/she lives on and not its owner is at the centre of the second Reading Rivers session. Inspired by the summer exhibition Silver Rights by Elena Mazzi, which is currently on view at Södertälje Konsthall in Sveden the reading group will investigate this animistic perspective that contrasts with colonial approaches to land and soil. Together we will explore this field of tension and counter-read various excerpts to place them in dialogue with artistic practices and the local context.

Reading Rivers is an ongoing reading group that deepens and expands on the exhibitions and artistic practices shown at ar/ge kunst. The selected texts relate to that by reading them through the lens of soil and its relationship to human life.

Unlike a normal reading group, where participants sit down to discuss a text together, Reading Rivers invites participants to find a spot by a river. Like water in a river, texts have a clear source. Through acts of collective reading they come into contact and combine with new things before flowing together into a greater whole. They cross different landscapes, periods, characters. They come up against obstacles and find paths of least resistance to get around them. The flowing water of a river is comparable to knowledge; it is bound up with solid ground but it remains in a permanent state of flux, allowing new readings of complex contemporary questions. During this one-hour session participants will walk, read, listen, talk and interact with each other on the banks of a river of their own choice.