22 — 24.05
Ali Cherri Beirut-Paris
Archaic Matter: Mud, Myth, and the Politics of the Elemental
Free School
| 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.
Discursive programme
Registration required (from 30.04)
– Opening session: Politics of Land and Desert | Conversation with Ali Cherri and Radouan Mriziga | 22.05
A conversation on body and ground, from mud to desert. The session explores how terrain shapes movement, through weight, friction, and resistance.
– Conversation + film programme: Queering Mud | 23.05
A conversation and screening exploring mud as a site of transformation and resistance. The session reflects on how matter unsettles categories and reconfigures bodies, histories, and forms, through a cinematic lineage from Pasolini to Bouanani, from Amiralay to Youssef Chahine.
– Closing session: The Book of Mud | 24.05
A closing session combining readings by Lina Mounzer and a conversation between Ali Cherri and Helena Kritis, exploring mud as a material of transmission while offering a closer look at the artist’s practice.
Workshops
Registration required before 30.04, limited capacity, min. 3-sessions engagement
– Reading group with Lina Mounzer | 23.05
A collective reading session exploring texts on land, myth, and material memory. Through discussion and shared attention, the group engages with language as a way to think through the political and poetic dimensions of matter, while working with clay, shaping forms by hand in response to the texts.
– Dance workshop with Leu Wijee | 23.05
Drawing from Leu Wijee’s practice, the session explores how bodies attune to the rhythms of the earth. Through repetition and collective movement, gestures emerge from cycles, duration, and shared temporalities.
– Visit to Decoratelier with Jozef Wouters and Barry Ahmad Talib | 24.05
A visit to a working space where scenography and construction intersect. The session reflects on fabrication, scale, and material processes, looking at how environments are built and how matter is shaped for performance and exhibition.
– Clay workshop | 24.05
A hands-on session working with clay as a living material. Participants engage with its plasticity, exploring how gestures, pressure, and touch shape form, while reflecting on clay as a carrier of memory, labour, and transformation.
22.05
- 18:00 → 20:00
- Discursive programme
- Politics of Land and Desert | Conversation with Ali Cherri and Radouan Mriziga
- Book ticket
23.05
- 13:00 → 15:00
- Workshops
- Registrations closed
- Reading group
- 15:30 → 17:30
- Workshops
- Registrations closed
- Dance workshop
- 18:00 → 21:00
- Discursive programme
- Queering Mud | Conversation with Peter Limbrick + films
- Book ticket
24.05
- 13:00 → 15:00
- Workshops
- Registrations closed
- Visit Decoratelier
- 15:30 → 17:30
- Workshops
- Registrations closed
- Clay workshop
- 18:00 → 20:00
- Discursive programme
- The Book of Mud | Readings by Lina Mounzer + discussion between Ali Cherri and Helena Kritis
- Book ticket
Presentation: Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Théâtre Les Tanneurs
A project by and with Ali Cherri
