Mo’min Swaitat
Saturday 10th August
11AM – 4PM: Theatre and performance workshop. (Ages 14-25)
7PM – 8.30PM: Artist talk and listening session (All welcome)
FREE
Join London-based Palestinian artist, theatre and film maker Mo’min Swaitat on an exploration of heritage and folklore through the use of masks, objects, storytelling, movement, gestures and sound.
Mo’min’s artist talk will focus on the Palestinian Sound Archive exhibition he is currently showing at London’s Southbank Centre and listening to tracks from the collection.
More info:
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About Mo’min
Mo’min Swaitat is a London-based Palestinian artist, theatre and film maker who trained at the Freedom Theatre (Jenin) and arthaus (formerly LISPA) in London/Berlin, specialising in the Jacques Lecoq method of physical theatre, mask work and mime. He is the founder of Majazz Project.
Workshop and listening session
The workshops will explore listening as an embodied tool through which we can unlock histories, memories and folklore. It will look at how material culture houses sounds, stories and sensations, and work with participants to explore their own heritage and lived/ancestral histories through the use of objects, storytelling, movement, gestures and sound. It will also explore the concept of the archive, what it means to us, who can access it, and what embodied responses it can bring up. This is inspired by Momin’s own background as a Palestinian Bedouin artist who comes from a long line of musicians and oral storytellers, and his experience in establishing the first Palestinian-led record label, focused on reworking, reissuing and reexamining sounds from the Palestinian archive.
Palestinian Sound Archive
Palestinian Sound Archive is a celebration of music, spoken word and album artwork from historic Palestine, mainly from the 1960s-1990s. It is part of Majazz Project, a Palestinian-led record label and research platform founded by actor, director and filmmaker Mo’min Swaitat in 2020. Over several years, Mo’min amassed an extensive archive of cassettes and vinyl records from Palestine and beyond, spanning everything from field recordings of Bedouin weddings to revolutionary albums from the First and Second Intifadas, instrumental tracks, poetry, soul, folk songs and jazz. Many of these were acquired from a former record label in Mo’min’s hometown Jenin, in the north of the West Bank. Palestinian Sound Archive was born out of the archive and is focused on sampling, remixing and reissuing vintage Palestinian and Arab albums, shedding new light on the richness and diversity of Palestinian and Arab cultural and musical heritage. Mo’min comes from a long line of Bedouin musicians and storytellers, and the archive references his rootedness in music as a means of celebrating one’s culture and sense of belonging. He plays everything from jazz to funk, soul to dabke, field recordings to spoken word, folk to electronic music from Palestine, the broader region and across the Global South.
Palestinian Sound Archive was first supported by Jerwood Arts has since been featured at: ICA, Nottingham Contemporary, Bertha Dochouse, Ritzy Cinema, Moth Club, Grow Hackney, murmur (Amsterdam) Royal Institute of Arts (Hague), KAAP (Oostende), Dubai Expo, Sharjah International, Reel Palestine (Sharjah and Dubai) Rubadub (Glasgow), NTS Radio, Radio Flouka, Roots Radio, Netil Radio, Radio Raheem, Miko Club (Milan) Triennale (Milan), Tasmeem (Doha), Milan Fashion Week, London Short Film Festival, Southbank Centre, the institute Rotterdam and many more.