- Screening of the video by Michael Rakowitz & Robert Chase Heishman 

 I’m good at love, I’m good at hate, its in between I freeze (2023) takes form as a video filmed at the Alhambra Palace Hotel in Ramallah, Palestine. The project charts the historical context and aftermath of a concert that never happened. In 2009 Leonard Cohen was scheduled to perform in Israel. Because of increasing pressure from pro-Palestinian voices to dissuade Cohen from performing in Israel, a parallel event in Palestine was organized. Amid protests and claims that the latter concert was a token show of solidarity and a hollow attempt to appease demonstrators, the concert was boycotted and eventually canceled. This story engages Cohen’s personal grappling with art and politics, the cultural histories of Palestine and Israel, and the ethical dilemmas faced by performers under the conditions of a boycott.

Talk with Michael Rakowitz, on 20 September, 5.30pm at Restaurant La Commune.

- Screening of three films by Manthia Diawara

EDOUARD GLISSANT: One World in Relation       

In 2009, Manthia Diawara followed Édouard Glissant across the Atlantic with her camera. This poetic meditation continued in Martinique, Édouard Glissant's native land. These journeys gave rise to an intellectual biography in which Glissant develops his theory of Relation and the concept of the ‘Whole World’.

ANGELA DAVIS: A World of Greater Freedom

Angela Davis: A World of Greater Freedom examines the life and work of the North American activist Angela Davis. It is not a biography. Manthia Diawara's camera follows Angela Davis as she wanders through a forest of giant redwoods, works in her garden or walks her dog, all the while reflecting on a myriad of fundamental issues such as freedom, resistance, rebellion, remaking our world, radical black thought, music, (inter)nationalism, (Southern) feminism... 

NEGRITUDE: A Dialogue Between Wole Soyinka and Senghor

Using archive footage, Manthia Diawara organises an imaginary dialogue between Léopold Senghor, one of the founders of the concept of Négritude, and Wole Soyinka, the Nobel Prize-winning Nigerian writer. Soyinka describes his film as ‘an exploration of the relevance of the concept of Négritude, in the face of its many detractors, not only to the decolonisation and separation movements of the 1950s and 1960s, but also to our understanding of the artistic scene’.

- Screening of a video by Jumana Manaa and Sille Storihle

The Goodness Regime (21 mins, 2013) is an experimental documentary written and directed collaboratively by the artists Jumana Manna and Sille Storihle. With the help of a cast of children, the film investigates the foundations of the ideology and self-image of modern Norway – from the Crusades, via the adventures of Fridtjof Nansen and the trauma of wartime occupation, to the diplomatic theatre of the Oslo Peace Accords. The Goodness Regime was shot in Norway and Palestine, and combines the children's performances with archive sound recordings including US President Bill Clinton speaking at the signing of the Oslo Accords, and Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik's New Year address to the Norwegian people in 2000. The film attempts to capture the apparatus that perpetuate the image of Norway as a peacemaking nation and absolve the nation from the power structures it upholds. The Goodness Regime premiered at Kunsthall Oslo exactly twenty years after the conclusion and signing of the Oslo Agreement by Israel and the PLO in August and September 1993, and has since then been shown in a number of exhibitions and festivals around the world.