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carefully and cleverly, 2024
21 minutes, multimedia essay reading/performance
this reading is of one of three essays in a forthcoming nonfiction book, the product of a two-year research grant for the project “domesticity of wanderers”. supported by alserkal arts foundation, this research project uses autoethnographic and creative visual methods to tread and sift through stories of ajaminess and migration across the arab/persian gulf. borrowing from historical knowledge on the ethnic group known as “the hawala”, defined as “the wanderers” or “those who transform”, it asks the question of how/whether ajami identity, in all the movements of its people, is preserved and encapsulated in the domestic space.
this essay, titled “carefully and cleverly” speaks to the tensions and violent collisions of disclosing private and domestic migratory histories to a public space where these stories were previously rejected or erased. it challenges possibilities of academic and institutional instrumentalization through employing tactile tools of concealing viusal content in family archives, inviting the audience to consider reversible consent in storytelling.
this piece was performed at the research convening “domestic departures: (im)mobility, loss, and resilience in an uncertain world” in alserkal avenue in dubai, uae. november 2024.
photographs by nino consorte / seeing things. domestic departures: (im)mobility, loss and resilience in an uncertain world. research convening 2024, alserkal arts foundation.