22 — 24.05
Ali Cherri Paris
Archaic Matter: Mud, Myth, and the Politics of the Elemental
Free School
L'Envers (Compagnie Mossoux-Bonté)
| English | Free participation
Ali Cherri's temporary school is built around mud and clay. In his work, these materials are never neutral but convey memory, violence, and transformation. Trained as a visual artist and filmmaker, Cherri has long worked with earth, debris, and archaeological fragments, exploring the history written in materials and landscapes that bear traces of conflict, exploitation, and displacement. These three days focus on the politics of land, in a time when, from Palestine to Indonesia to the DRC, it is subject to dispossession, contamination, liquefaction, and extraction.
While the language of “soil” is increasingly appropriated by the European far-right, Cherri approaches mud as plastic matter that can transmit, transform, and reshape without erasing what it holds. The school will investigate the unstable mixture of earth and water through clay workshops, field explorations, and mythology from Gilgamesh to the Golem. There will also be debates with other festival artists and a screening programme dedicated to films on mud, archaeology, and labour. Mud emerges as a bearer of gestures, narratives, and political fantasies that pass from hand to hand, creating a space where the shaping of matter can awaken shared, situated knowledge.
22.05
- 18:00 → 20:00
- Discursive programme
- Registration required (from 30.04)
- On Soil and Mud | Opening presentation
23.05
- 13:00 → 15:00
- Workshops
- Registration required (before 30.04), limited capacity, min. 3-sessions engagement
- Reading group with Lina Mounzer
- 15:30 → 17:30
- Workshops
- Registration required (before 30.04), limited capacity, min. 3-sessions engagement
- Dance workshop with Leu Wijee
- 18:00 → 21:00
- Discursive programme
- Registration required (from 30.04)
- Queering Mud | Conversation with Peter Limbrick + film programme
24.05
- 13:00 → 15:00
- Workshops
- Registration required (before 30.04), limited capacity, min. 3-sessions engagement
- Visit Decoratelier with Jozef Wouters and Barry Ahmad Talib
- 15:30 → 17:30
- Workshops
- Registration required (before 30.04), limited capacity, min. 3-sessions engagement
- Clay workshop
- 18:00 → 20:00
- Discursive programme
- Registration required (from 30.04)
- The Book of Mud | Readings by Lina Mounzer + conversation between Ali Cherri and Helena Kritis
Presentation: Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Théâtre Les Tanneurs
A project by and with Ali Cherri
