Friday March 15 * 8pm * $10 * ORDER TICKETS
As part of SOUND HEALS ALL WOUNDS, Rhizome presents a night of performance devoted to expressions of refugee experiences specifically of the Palestinian Diaspora.
Huda Asfour will open the evening with a solo performance, followed by Zombie Frequencies of the Palestinian Diaspora by Mike Khoury and Leyya Mona Tawil of Detroit. Discussions with the artists will take place as part of the presentations.
Zombie Frequencies of the Palestinian Diaspora is a live performance work of sound and dance that depicts the forced emigration and deliberate refugee status of Palestinians throughout the last 70 years. Our objective is to create a Palestinian-American narrative that reaches Palestinians and non-Palestinians alike, to share, document, and establish context for how and why the diaspora has taken place. The forced diaspora has consequences that are both personal and sociological and are worthy of exploration through performance. The work is informed by our experience as the descendants of refugees and immigrants, and our experience with victims of multiple generational conflict creating new refugees out of the old refugee population. We intend to tell the story of being an "other", not fitting in culturally, and the long-term consequences of the diaspora on the human condition, in the states and abroad. Since our practice involves electro-acoustic music and choreography, our vision is to draw metaphoric parallels between a traditional instrument, the violin, and electronic effects such as synthesizer and tape delays relating to the Arab attribute of circular patterns that have neither beginning or end. Together, with audiences included, we create a narrative that other indigenous people can identify with and share a story of healing and resilience that is so vital today.
LEYYA MONA TAWIL [b.1975] is an artist working with dance, sound and performance practices. Tawil is a Syrian Palestinian American, engaged in the world as such. Leyya has a 23-year record of choreographies and performance scores that have been presented throughout the US, Europe and the Arab world; highlights include Irtijal18 (Beirut), After the Last Sky Festival (Berlin), New York Live Arts: Live Ideas (NYC), The Lab (San Francisco), Bimhuis (Amsterdam) and Sonic Circuits Festival (Washington DC). She is a 2018 Kone Foundation Saari Fellow (Finland) and an AIRSpace Artist at Abrons Art Center (NYC). Tawil is the director of DANCE ELIXIR organization and ArabAMP, a nomadic platform for the work of Arab Experimentalists.
MIKE KHOURY (b. 1969) is an improvising violinist, researcher and economist. His primary work involves the application of quantitative methods from the social sciences to improvisation. Khoury has performed or recorded with Faruq Z. Bey, Dennis Gonzalez, Wolfgang Fuchs, Simply Saucer, and Alex Cline. He currently performs with The Redford Civic Symphony Orchestra, Inscribe, in duo with Leyya Tawil, in duo with Ben Hall and as a member of the group Devotional. Khoury is the author of a chapter in an anthology of the Arab Avant Garde and is the curator of the Entropy Stereo label and performance space. He currently records and produces artists from his Redford, MI studio and laboratory.
HUDA ASFOUR is a performer, composer and engineer who has worked, studied, and collaborated with artists in Tunisia, Gaza, Ramallah, Egypt, Lebanon and the United States. In 2004, Huda, together with Tamer Abu Ghazaleh, co-founded Jehar band, a musical experiment which molded Arabic folk and the classical Levantine Arabic repertoire from their traditional presentations into reinterpretations that would be relatable to young Palestinians emerging from the siege of the Second Intifada. Huda’s debut release ‘Mars, Back and Forth’ (2009) is another progressive experimentation and reinterpretation of familiar Arabic styles alongside a compelling push for the inter-stellar home, self, and futurism. For Huda, Mars was her “search for home and for identity: a trip to a world without borders, undefined by labels and boundaries. The god of war, that shaped [her] early years, from the mountains of Lebanon where [she] was born during the Israeli invasion, to the early years of the Second Intifada (uprising) in Ramallah."