Meeting Points 7: Antwerp

Ten thousand wiles and a hundred thousand tricks
Curators: What, How and for Whom/WHW
Organizers: Young Arab Theatre Fund/YATF
October 25, 2013 – February 16, 2014 (M HKA)

The title of the project, Ten thousand wiles and a hundred thousand tricks, is a quote taken from “Wretched of the Earth” (1961) by Franz Fanon, a philosopher and a revolutionary, written as a reflection on the Algerian revolution and entitled after the opening lines of the Internationale, the song of the world workers’ movement. In the aftermath of the shockwaves of popular rebellion reverberating across the Arab world since 2011, Fanon’s book opens up a series of important questions pertaining not only to assessments of popular mobilization in the Arab world and the role of the West in the light of current attempts at stabilization that actually entails keeping dictatorship’s state apparatus in place, but also to popular mobilizations unfolding around the world since the beginning of structural crisis of capitalism. Fanon’s reflections on anti-colonial struggles, his unforgiving analysis of the nature of nationalist movements once in power, assessment of violence, centrality he places on the class struggle, his critique of nationalist movements as based in Westernized notions of proletariat and assertion of urbanized lumpenproletariat as ‘spearhead of the revolutionary movement’, endorsement of international consciousness against exclusiveness of identity politics, and of organizational structures as safeguards against ‘pitfalls of spontaneity’, offer relevant tools that could be fruitfully employed for understanding present constellation.

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Meeting Points is a multidisciplinary contemporary arts festival focused on the contextualized presentation of art from the Arab World. The 7th edition of Meeting Points is a series of successive exhibitions titled “Ten Thousand Wiles and a Hundred Thousand Tricks” and taking place from September 2013 to June 2014 in several cities of Europe, Asia and the Arab world: Zagreb, Antwerp, Hong Kong, Moscow, Beirut, Cairo and Vienna.

Meeting Points 7 started in September 2013 in Gallery Nova in Zagreb, Croatia, where the exhibition included works by Filipa César, Iman Issa, Rajkamal Kahlon, Kayfa ta & Haytham El-Wardany, Maha Maamoun and Jumana Manna.

Further stations of Meeting Points 7, planned for 2014, are: Hong Kong (in partnership with Para Site), Beirut (in partnership with Beirut Art Center), Cairo (in partnership with Contemporary Image Collective), Moscow (in partnership with the V–A–C Foundation and the Presnya Museum) and Vienna (in partnership with Wiener Festwochen).

Participating artists
Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Marwa Arsanios, Kianoush Ayari, Filipa César, Céline Condorelli, Alice Creischer, DAAR, Paul De Vree, Simone Fattal, Robert Filliou, Simohammed Fettaka, Karpo Godina, Sharon Hayes, Adelita Husni-Bey, Iman Issa, Sanja Iveković, Maryam Jafri, Rajkamal Kahlon, Anton Kannemeyer, Kayfa ta & Haytham El-Wardany, Runo Lagomarsino, Maha Maamoun, Jumana Manna, Azzeddine Meddour, Tom Nicholson & Andrew Byrne, Anatoly Osmolovsky, Artavazd Peleshian, Marta Popivoda, Kerim Ragimov, C K Rajan, Alexander Rodchenko, Edgar Morin & Jean Rouch, Luc Tuymans, Mona Vǎtǎmanu & Florin Tudor.