Pyramids of the Gaza Triangle
When:
—
Venue:
Birkbeck 43 Gordon Square
'Pyramids of the Gaza Triangle' is the Original Soundtrack to the Project (OSP) of 'Refrain...' Part I - A sonic-cinematic immersion in Iraqi and Arab Nihilism.
Installed as a parallel session in the foyer to the Birkbeck Institiute of the Moving Image (BIMI) cinema, will be the world premiere of this cutting edge 2025 experimental, avant-garde, electronic soundtrack. The OSP attempts to capture through abstracted sonic art the tragedy unleashed on Iraq in the devastation and aftermath of two Gulf-Wars. The OSP further explores the wider implications for the Arab world of the on-going century long catastrophe imploding the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT).
The mystical title 'Pyramids of the Gaza Triangle' is an opaque reference to the other seemingly unconnected Gaza which existed as an Empire in Southeastern Africa from 1824 until its defeat by the Portuguese in 1895. The territories which comprised the Gaza Empire are now partitioned three ways between South Africa, Zimbabwe and Mozambique. Interestingly one of the eleven provinces of present day Mozambique is actually called 'Gaza'. The reference to 'the Pyramids...' carries the connotation of asymmetric power and sphere's of stratification and fundamental inequality. And it is this historical association with incommensurable injustice in the face of overarching power which signifies the devastating ruins of present day Gaza in the OPT. A composition in the soundtrack entitled 'Handala through the Triangle' imagines the great Najir al-Ali's character encompassing South Africa, Zimbabwe and Mozambique - torn as they variously have been with slavery, colonisation and Apartheid.
The 'Refrain...' title of the overall project is taken from the name of an English translation of an Arabic poem by the exiled Iraqi Professor Amal Al-Jubouri. This harrowing poem charts the story of a lady whose beloved is passing. Her cries reverberate in a world which refuses to accede to her demands that her only love must refrain from dying. 'Refrain...' deposits an equally analogous and defiant yet solemn intervention in the face of the totalised harm engendering permacrisis that afflicts the Arab world. Nowhere is this more pronounced and nowhere are the consequences more defined than the ongoing devastation and ruin that is Gaza today.
This multidisciplinary creative industries project is part of the Democratic Futures Media Ecology (De-FmE) series which seeks to address the economic, sociological, environmental and philosophical challenges of the age through sonic, cinematic and wider artistic cultures of experimentation and performance praxis. The sound installation is accompanied by a book launch of three publications by Amal Al-Jubouri. She was on 'Saddam's list' but managed to find refuge in Europe after attempts on her life by agents of the Ba'athist regime. Amal will recite her poetry in the parallel cinema event while the following three books will be available for sale in the foyer:
1)Amalism : The philosophy of Hope and Bygone Era
Publisher : R.N London Books (English)
2) From Baghdad to Oxford: Avi Shlaim and the deconstruction of the Israeli Narrative (Arabic)
3) Hagar Before Occupation, Hagar After the Occupation: poems in Arabic & translated into English, 2011, Alice James Books.
Contact name: Matthew Barrington
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