Between 12th and 17th of March, the workshop “Post-2011 Arab Diaspora and Home-Making in Berlin” took place at Werkstatt der Kulturen in Berlin Neukölln. It has been inspired by Yassin Al Haj Saleh’s (Senior EUME Fellow of the Gerda Henkel Foundation 2019) essay “Freedom: Home, Prison, Exile…and the World” that has been published by al-Jumhuriya in March 2016.
The workshop was convened by Dina Wahba (Freie Universität Berlin) and Nayera A. Soliman (Freie Universität Berlin, BGSMCS), organized in a cooperation between Mayadin al-Tahrir and Europe in the Middle East - The Middle East in Europe (EUME), a research program at the Forum Transregionale Studien, and funded by the Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung.
Yassin Al Haj Saleh (Senior EUME Fellow of the Gerda Henkel Foundation 2019) in conversation with Nayera A. Soliman (Freie Unversität Berlin) on “Freedom: Home, Prison, Exile…and the World”
Blogbeitrag zu Home-Making Workshop
Through a collaboration between scholars and artists, the workshop aimed to examine the various ways leaving home can represent a disruption in one’s life but also possibilities for new connections and practices for home-making.
In the first two days and a half, the speakers discussed with the participants the different meanings and entanglements of home, the dreams and traumas related to migration and displacement and the different home-making practices and tensions that appear in host-societies.
During the last three days, participants worked with art mentors to create a storytelling performance, podcasts and art installations reflecting the discussions, the questions and their personal experiences.
The participants were MA students, PhD candidates, activists, artists and researchers from diverse backgrounds who live and study in Berlin or elsewhere. They worked together for six intensive days, composed and agreed on a manifesto (see photo below).
On March 17th, in a public event, they shared stories related to home and migration in a storytelling performance, two podcasts and art installations. The stories are about loss, home, mothers, prison, borders, airports, travel, migration and war.
As part of the workshop Yassin Al Haj Saleh gave the open keynote lecture on “Writing in Exile” on March 17th. Co-organizer Nayera A. Soliman interviews him in this audio-recording about the above mentioned essay on the concepts of home and freedom. The interview is about the idea of home after the Arab revolutions.
Further information about the workshop: Please find the agenda for the public event on 17th of March and the poster here.
The article in Arabic
https://www.aljumhuriya.net/ar/34733
The article in English
http://www.yassinhs.com/2017/04/03/yassin-al-haj-saleh-on-freedom-home-prison-exileand-the-world/
Bios
Yassin Al Haj Saleh
is a Syrian writer and thinker. He has been a fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin 2018-19, and since March 2019 is a Senior EUME Fellow of the Gerda Henkel Foundation.
His most recent book in English language is: The Impossible Revolution: Making Sense of the Syrian Tragedy, London 2017.
Nayera A. Soliman
She is currently PhD fellow at Berlin Graduate School for Muslim Societies and Cultures, Freie Universität Berlin. Her research project is questioning the concept of home through studying the 1967 forced migration in Suez Canal cities in Egypt. Graduate from the Political Science Department, Cairo University in 2012, she had her Master’s degree in political sociology from Sorbonne University in 2013.
Arabic Version
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