Discover our artistic director Jan Goossens
From September 22 to October 8, 2023
L'Art Rue
Video
"Hello, Dream City spectators. My name is Jan Gossens and together with Selma & Sofiane Ouissi founding artists of L'Art Rue and with our distinguished and warmly welcomed co-curator Hoor Al Qasimi for the upcoming 2023 edition of Dream City. I will now share with you our programme of new works of Dream Guests and Dream Concerts. As always, the new artworks are made in and for Tunis. Artists from around the world but especially from Tunisia have spent two years working on these projects in exchange, in dialogue with the Medina, with downtown Tunis, with its spaces, its social and political issues, its populations, and most of these works will not go elsewhere, in any case not in this form. It is new works of art made for and with Tunis. There is a very strong presence of Tunisian artists in this edition, both established and newcomers. I warmly invite you to go and see in the coming weeks Bird, the piece made by Selma and Sofiane who are in edition of Dream City for the very first time.
At Dar Hussien, Sofiane Ouissi will dance with birds and invite us to develop a new, another relationship with living beings other than humans. It is going to be absolutely special, not to be missed. Jalila Baccar accompanied by Essia Jaibi, will present Stigma, a brand new text in which Jalila tackles once again her intense relationship with Palestine and the Palestinian people. What does it mean for an entire country and people to be erased from the face of the earth? It is promising to be a political but also an intense human statement. I Couldn't See the Moon is what promises to be an exciting, rich exhibition by Fakhri El-Ghazal, distinguished visual artist from Tunis, who will share with us his entire production of the past few years. During the pandemic, Fakhri started experimenting with ink and bleach drawings.
And all of this production produced during and coming out of the pandemic, reinforced with video animations, will be shared with you during Dream City for two weeks every day to be seen. Leyla Dakhli is a fantastic researcher today based in Berlin but from Tunis and she comes with her dream collective of researchers to share with us at Dar Ben Achour the entire programme, the entire production of maps, of maps of dignity that they have produced coming out of their research of the past years, research focusing on popular uprisings since the 1950s in the southern Mediterranean. And of course there are also young artists, Dream City also accompanies new generations. Fetah Kiari and Houssem Bouakroucha are two fantastic and very gifted dancers and choreographers from Tunis who will present their first piece together on the roof of the Presbytery in the heart of the Medina.
And finally, musician Khalil Hentati will take us on a long trip, a long voyage through the entire country and its musical traditions and forms and will share that with us in the form of a cinema concert, so music but also images of all the musicians, all the places, all the traditions that he visited. These Tunisian artists are joined by fantastic creators from other countries who have also engaged with Tunis and the Medina and I just want to mention a few of these works. Andrew Graham is a British-French choreographer who will be presenting Lines, an inclusive dance, a project made with performers that are both professional and amateur, that are young or slightly older, mothers and children on stage, so a performance at the Stade, the sporting ground of the Hafsia, a performance that very clearly shows that dance is open to everybody, that everybody can be a dancer and a performer.
It is promising to be a rich and very moving human and artistic adventure. There is one of the first performances of Sami Baloji, great visual artist and photographer from Lubumbashi in Congo. And he has now assembled around him a cast of fantastic multidisciplinary performers, musicians, a fantastic writer, and together they will tackle a piece of history, the first diplomatic and political exchanges between the Congo and Tunisia, and make that resonate with today's political situation in which, of course, the relationship between these countries, between the various peoples of Africa, is also a hot and for us very important topic.
We do not disregard climate change at L'Art Rue. The international group behind Natural Contract Lab will present the results of two years to build a strong civic coalition around Lake Sijoumi and bring all kinds of inhabitants, experts together for that lake to be protected, for that lake to be preserved, for that lake to be properly taken care of, as we should do with our entire natural environment. And this project shows that artists and cultural workers also have an important role to play in that. Atlas / The Mountain is a new piece, a new solo piece, that basically deals with the same question. Radouan Mriziga, Brussels-based Moroccan choreographer and regular guest of Dream City is again working with the results and the rich heritage of Amazigh cultural history, now focusing on the mountain, the Atlas Mountain as a place of refuge, as a sanctuary place, and it will be fantastic to see Radouan back on stage again at Dar Lasram.
Goûal is a co-creation of French and Tunisian performers, starting from the Alaoui Moroccan-Algerian war dance, reserved traditionally to men, that Filipe is now opening to a mixed cast of fantastic male and female French and Tunisian performers. These are all the new works that we are presenting, these are all the works that we are inviting you to come see during Dream City because you will not see them anywhere else, but as usual we also add invitations to that, so we have a fantastic Michael Dissanka coming from Kinshasa with his new piece dealing and speaking about patriarchy. Neci Padiri will be presented at the Rio Theatre. Nasa for Nasa is a company of two young dancers and choreographers, female choreographers from Cairo, who will be with us. And Tania El Khouri is by now an established creator from Lebanon that has made new work for Dream City in the past, and will now be with us with The search for power about the electricity crisis in her hometown of Beirut that of course resonates with what we are living and experiencing around the world.
Additionally, for these dream guests, we have really established reference artists. So Dream City is very happy to have Rabih Mroué, the great Lebanese artist, to come with his non-academic lectures. And Teresa de Keersmaeker, a really important reference choreographer from Brussels in Belgium, will be performing Bach's Goldberg Variations together with the absolutely stunning pianist Alain Franco. And finally, Floé by Jean-Baptiste André is a beautiful circus piece, one body, one big object in the public space of Place de la Victoire.
And finally, of course, music, party, are also important elements of Dream City. we will be with fantastic African musicians and singers at the Hafsia and at the Théâtre Municipal. It is very important for us to have AlSarah, a great singer from Sudan who was in Dream City last year but at the Municipal with us now in the heart of the Medina at Place de la Hafsia and we are also very proud that Sona Jobarteh, a great singer and only female cora player from the African continent, from the Gambia, will be with us at Théâtre Municipal and finally also a great French electronic rock band Al Qasar at the Hafsia on the first Saturday of the festival. So a rich mix of new works, of invited performances, of concerts.
We will have a festival ShiftLeyli every night at the Hotel Saint-Georges in the Lafayette area with great musical programming as well. There will be room for public debates during the Ateliers de la Ville Rêvée also focusing on climate change. So there is new cultural and artistic impulses, there is room for party and music, and we will also think and exchange and try all of us together to have a good time, to come together in the safe space and the shared space that Dream City tries to offer and out of that safe space and out of that shared space we will dream of a better future.
Jan Goossens, Artistic Director."
