Artistic Program

10/11/09 – 20:00
Literature Conference by Rachid El-Daif (French) + debate
Theme: Identity

10/11/09 - 22:00
Film: Une Chanson dans la Tête | by Hany tamba (Lb/F 2008)

11/11/09 – 20:00
Literature Lecture by Lina Mounzer (English) + debate
Theme: The Voyeur in the Mirror: Negotiating Arab Self-Representation in Western-Language Literature

11/11/09 – 22:00
Film: Je veux voir

13/11/09 – 20:30
Concert by Ziad El Ahmadie Quartet

14/11/09 – 16:00
Workshop by Ziad Ahmadieh, Introduction to Arabic Music

14/11/09 – 20:00
Concert Rima Khcheich

Location : De Centrale, Kraankinderstraat 2, 9000 Gent.
More info & tickets: www.decentrale.be



10/11/09 - 20:00
Literature Conference by Rachid El-Daif 

Theme: Identity (French)
Followed by a debate

« L’identité m’apparait comme un texte que le lecteur interprète selon sa culture ou son désir. Elle peut être ce que l’on a peur d’être ou ce que l’on a honte d’être… Notre identité peut être définie par l’autre qui nous regarde. »

11/11/09
Literature Lecture by Lina Mounzer (English)

Followed by a debate
Theme: The Voyeur in the Mirror: Negotiating Arab Self-Representation in Western-Language Literature

How can the Arab writer walk the tightrope between the desires of a market which seeks easy answers, and their own attempts to portray their societies in a way that is true to life: that is, complex, paradoxical, subtle and nuanced? This is a question that rings particularly true for Arab writers who write in Western languages, presupposing a Western audience for their work. They become “others” both to the Western world, as well as to their own societies, whose primary language is, of course, Arabic. This “othering” also happens vis-à-vis the self, with the awareness of the responsibility of having to represent an entire culture as a writer, rather than one’s own particular vision of the world. This talk will attempt to address all the myriad elements of this situation, ultimately questioning the role and responsibilities of a writer towards her society, towards her audience as well as to her own aspirations for her work.

Music
13/11/09 – 20:30
Ziad El Ahmadie Quartet

Ziad El Ahmadie: Oud (Lebanon)
Samer Zaghir: Drums (Lebanon)
Jeremy Chapman: saxophone (Britain)
Miles Jay: Double bass (USA)

Issued from and close to traditional Arabian music. Ziad has constantly broadened his researches towards present time music and contemporary creation.

The Ziad El Ahmadie Quartet is a creation of a great lively music scene of Beirut. Ziad (Oud and vocals) has been a key musical figure in Beirut since 1992 and have three successful albums: Bilbal (2003), Beyond Traditions (2006) and Silent Wave (2009). In this last album/project, Jeremy Chapman & Miles Jay brought their own influences, western classical, Jazz and rythms of North African music. This meeting between the warm and elegant dance of the Oud, the purity of the flute and soprano saxophone, and the deep and vibrant rhythms of the double bass transports the soul in a contemplative and evocative voyage where the silences suspend the breath and every note fills the journey with precision.

14/11/09 – 16:00
Workshop by Ziad Ahmadieh, Introduction to Arabic Music.

A workshop on the history and background of Arabic music will be presented by Ziad El Ahmadie. Paticipants will be introduced to Arabic scales, rhythms and forms in an active way. Musicians are invited to bring their instruments with them.

14/11/09 – 20:00
Concert Rima Khcheich

Rima Khcheich, vocals (Lebanon)
Yuri Honing, saxophone (Holland)
Maarten van der Grinten, guitar (Holland)
Tony Overwater, double bass (Holland)
Joost Lijbaart, drums (Holland)

Rima Khcheich, one of the most talented Lebanese singers of the uprising generation, is well renowned for having given its rebirth to the Andalousian form called Muwashah, as well as to the traditional Arabic repertoire of the 19th and 20th Century that she both teaches and explores.

In 1998, Khcheich met the Dutch jazz musicians of the Yuri Honing Trio, featuring Yuri Honing (saxophone), Tony Overwater (double-bass) and Joost Lijbaart (drums). They performed together in Beirut, at Al Madina Theater. The chemistry was instant and the Orient-Express CD project was created. On her solo debut album, “Yalalalli” released in 2006, Khcheich transgressed traditions by recording old Arabic Muwashah. Accompanied by Tony Overwater on double bass, the stunning result was highly praised by many of the specialized jazz magazines.

In the summer of 2006, Khcheich traveled to The Netherlands to perform in the War and Peace Conference in Amsterdam, alongside with Tony Overwater, Yuri Honing, Maarten van der Grinten and Joost Lijbaart. The trip was an instant success and the group immediately committed to a collaborative effort for the album Falak, accompanied by the acclaimed Lebanese percussionist and 'riq' player, Ali El-Khatib.

This event will feature Rima Khcheich along with her Dutch partners and they will perform songs from her album Falak, as well as rearranged songs from the traditional Arabic heritage.

Biographies

Rashid Al-Daif is a Lebanese novelist and Professor of Arabic Literature and Linguistics. He writes in Arabic and has been translated into 11 languages.

His early novels, most notably Passage to Dusk (1986) and Dear Mr. Kawabata (1995) are set during the Lebanese War and shed light on man’s inherent capacity for hostility and aggression. His most recent works, such as To Hell With Meryl Streep (2001), are witty attacks on the inner structures of Arab societies, whose apparent cover of modernity hides unobvious archaisms. Behind the façade of autobiography, those novels, amusingly yet somehow brazenly, shed light on male/female relations in the East.

Al-Daif’s work breaks the boundaries of genre, remaining ever illusive of classification. He is a unique voice that has excelled in merging Arabic and Western literary traditions, combining several contemporary and sometimes classical writing trends to create his own vision of a fragmented world where human beings make unsuccessful attempts to put the pieces together.

Very popular in the Arab World and beyond, his work is known for its simplicity of style aimed at subverting the rhetorically flamboyant nature of the Arabic language- which represents a philosophical inherited vision of the world that runs contrary to Al-Daif’s forward looking view- placing him in the forefront of literary modernity. In these works, the bed is a major trope embodying the struggle between tradition and modernity.

Al-Daif’s novels have been adapted for both the screen and the stage: Passage to Dusk (1986) was turned into a film in Switzerland and The Obstinate (1983) into a Lebanese film. To Hell With Meryl Streep (2001) was performed at the Rond-Point in Paris (June 2007). Last year a Belgian group performed, Fais voir tes jambes Meryl Streep, a challenging play in Brussels and Beirut based upon three novels by Al-Daif.

Lina Mounzer was born in Beirut, Lebanon, and has lived there for most of her life, save for a few formative years in Canada, which amputated her mother tongue and led to her strange position as an Arab living in the Middle East but writing exclusively in English.

Her first short story, "The One-Eyed Man", appeared in "Hikayat: An Anthology of Lebanese Women's Writing", published by Telegram books. She is a regular contributor to Bidoun magazine, a review of contemporary art and culture in the Middle East, where she writes personal essays about growing up in Beirut. Her work has also appeared in the second Goldfish Anthology, published in 2008.

In 2005, she received the Chevening-Said foundation fellowship which enabled her to travel to the UK and complete her MA in Creative and Life Writing at Goldsmiths College in London. Since coming back to Beirut in 2006, she has been teaching Creative Writing at the American University of Beirut. She is currently writer-in-residence at the Vector Association in Iasi, Romania, for the months of November and December 2009, where she is working on her first novel.