Sometimes, he would stand up and express himself.
He wouldn’t speak, he would express.
— Frantz Fanon, “Black skin, white Masks”
A strange news came to us in Ramadan,
And they confused us with their talk.
They pulled out papers and pens
And called us by name.
They dragged us to the Germans
And caused us to be wounded by their lead.
If God wanted to give us strength,
We didn’t ask about the government.
I was wounded between two mountains
And began to cry and complain.
My blood flowed in streams,
My whole body was sullied.
I was happy that the Germans took me away,
And thought I was coming home now,
But they locked me up with locks, -
Now I’m sitting here abandoned!
They tortured me in Belgium,
And the doctors treated me badly,
They wanted to amputate my foot,
Even the doctor gave up on me.
My blood flowed in streams,
Oh my God, help me.
Sadok Ben Rashid (War Poem)
Recorded by Wilhelm Doegen in the prisoner-of-war camp
(“Half-Moon camp”) in Wünsdorf, Germany
Date of recording: 30.5.1916
The story of the protagonist Sadok Ben Rachid (Tunisian poet, singer, and prisoner of World War I) overlaps with fact and fiction. It is based on research conducted between the archive collections of the Berliner Phonogramm-Archiv, Lautarchiv Berlin, and other counter-archives, as well as Frantz Fanon’s body of work, including the play ‘Parallel Hands’ (1949). Sadok was a soldier of the North African Forces recruited by the French (1914) and used in the major battles of Europe before being captured by the Germans (1916). Following Fanon's theatrical and psychiatric thought, the performance aims to decipher the consequences of colonialism and the understanding of alienation that have produced multiple forms of relational illness. Sadok's existential sonic refusal/poem comes as an autobiographical counter-narrative, a form of resistance or rather survival, acknowledged and raises the notion of ethics and aesthetics for those who usually impersonates the voice’s subject.
Ltaief’s performance art project «The Concretely WE: Voices From Within The Camp» investigates and retraces the early phonographic sound archives that were commissioned and classified in the 1910s. These archives include prompt ethnographic recordings made by the Royal Prussian Phonographic Commission, established by Wilhelm Doegen and assisted by H. Stumme and R. Lachmann with prisoners of the First World War at the “Half Moon camp” in Wünsdorf (south of Berlin) between 1915 and 1918.
Concept, Text Mohamed-Ali Ltaief
Performance Mohamed-Ali Ltaief, Lamin Fofana & Tarxun
Curated by Barbara Boninsegna and Simone Frangi
Mophradat consortium-commissions/2023-2025
coproduction: Centrale Fies, Dro (IT) Kaaitheater Brussels (BE)
and Tanzfabrik Berlin (DE)
PARALLEL HANDS —
CO-EXISTENCE OF TIMES
AND THE GOODWILL TO LISTEN
performance
Tanzfabrik Berlin
24.02.2024
Ltaief’s research performance project «PARALLEL HANDS — Co-existence of Times and the Good Will to Listen» investigates the legacy of North African sonic archives in the collection of Berliner Phonogramm-Archiv and Ethnologisches Museum in Berlin. It specifically re-traces the early phonogram sound archives that were commissioned and classified during the 1910s and are today settled in ethnomusicological collections stored in Berlin at SMB museums. These archives include recordings made by the German Phonographic Commission, established by Wilhelm Doegen and assisted by Robert Lachmann with prisoners of the First World War, between 1915 and 1918 at the Half Moon camp in Wünsdorf (south Berlin). Some of these prisoners were Tunisian, like Sadok Ben Rashid.
This project critically investigates notions of record and archive, raising questions about ethnological field recording practices under the violence of European Colonialism; about the limits of translation, and the enduring myth of universal art doctrines.
The double showing is followed by a discussion with the artists
Concept and text: Mohamed-Ali Ltaief
Performance: Mohamed-Ali Ltaief and Tarxun
Curated by Barbara Boninsegna and Simone Frangi
Mophradat consortium-commissions/2023-2025
coproduction: Centrale Fies, Dro (IT) Kaaitheater Brussels (BE)
and Tanzfabrik Berlin (DE)
Poeisis, Praxis, and Cultures of Resistance,
or the non-established Histories of Art in Tunisia
Archive Books Berlin
Saturday 26 August 2023
Mohamed-Ali Ltaief
Lecture performance
Archive Books Berlin
Reinickendorfer Str. 17
13347 Berlin
Unpacking our Library #6
Curator Paz Guevara
5 – 6.30 pm
Reading Circle
Workshop as part of
Unpacking our Library #6
Mohamed-Ali Ltaief
By registration: malab@archivesites.org
Based on the ongoing research-based project of an artist that confronts and expands the meaning of sonic archives, Mohamed-Ali Ltaief offers a Reading Circle to share and discuss the genealogy of early ethnomusicological field recording in Tunisia, while reassembling cartographies of interwar artists in North Africa and in the diaspora. In the Reading Circle workshop, Ltaief will share a selection of readings that he refers to in his lecture performance ‘Poeisis, Praxis, and Cultures of Resistance or the non-established Histories of Art in Tunisia’, re-contextualizing cuts and ruptures during colonial times, and unraveling the multiplicity of sonic performative practices. The Reading Circle is open to everyone interested in African performance art histories and sonic performative art practices, anti-colonial and anti-fascist early political movements in North Africa, decolonial theories, and practices of transformation of archives.
7 – 8 pm
Unpacking our Library #6
Poeisis, Praxis, and Cultures of
Resistance or the non-established
Histories of Art in Tunisia
Unpacking Our Library invites Tunisian artist and author Mohamed-Ali Ltaief to re-entangle and negotiate the meaning of a North African sonic archive collection recorded during the first decade of the 20th Century by the Prussian Phonographic Commissions in North Africa, and now stored and dispersed, in part at the Berliner Phonogramm Archiv (SMB) at the Ethnologisches Museum in Berlin and in part at the Ennejma Ezzahra in Tunis. Ltaief’s Lecture performance ‘Poeisis, Praxis, and Cultures of Resistance or the non-established Histories of Art in Tunisia’ questions the dispositive of sonic archival material in those collections by displacing the Ethno-musicological illusion. Through the lecture, Ltaief revoices extended biographies and foregrounds sonic performances, confronting the static sonic archival materiality and the corporate identity of the Western aesthetic taxonomy. By shifting the sonic archive into a spatialized and performative practice, Ltaief opens those archives to art histories across Berlin, Beirut, Cairo, and Tunis. Acknowledging the intrinsic multiplicity of art as a concept of “Poiesis and Praxis’, the lecture is composed of acts of translating lyrics, retracing movements-body language, and re-locating biographies and counter archives. This lecture performance ‘Poeisis, Praxis, and Cultures of Resistance or the non-established Histories of Art in Tunisia’ by Mohamed-Ali Ltaief is a sonic-visual and geo-philosophical narrative that combines sonic testimonies with spatial strategies, border studies, and decolonial aesthetic methods. ‘Poiesis, Praxis, and Cultures of Resistance or the non-established Histories of Art in Tunisia’ by Mohamed-Ali Ltaief is part of ‘the Striated Time’ performance trilogy project and publication. With the kind support of Mophradat Consortium Commissions 2023/25, Jaou Festival Tunisia, and Ennejma Ezzahra Tunis. — Courtesy Center of Arab and Mediterranean Music (CMAM)
