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, as well as Frantz Fanon’s body of work, including the play ‘Parallel Hands’ (1949), and counter-archives. 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, acknowledging and raising the notion of ethics and aesthetics for those who usually impersonate the voice’s subject. Ltaief’s performance project «The Concretely WE: Voices From Within The Camp» investigates and re-traces the early phonographic sound archives that were commissioned and classified in the 1910s. These archives include prompt ethnographic recordings made by the Prussian Phonographic Commission (Germany), 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 with Lamin Fofana and Tarxun
«The Concretely WE: Voices From Within The Camp»
performance part of «The Striated Time» performance trilogy project.
With the kind support of the Mophradat consortium-commissions/2023-2025
Co-production Centrale Fies, Dro (IT), Kaaitheater Brüssel (BE),
and Tanzfabrik Berlin (DE) ph Alessandro Sala and Roberta Segata,
courtesy Centrale Fies
