Resistance At Boiling PointPart of the event series Tongue Twisting Dinners, organized and hosted by Eathouse Collective (Vlada Predelina, Jake Caleb, Ulufer Çelik and Merve Kılıçer).
An Other World
30 June 2023

This session brought together voices from Iran, Lebanon, Armenia and Turkey. This region, also referred to as S.W.A.N.A., continues to be affected by entangled geo-politics, oil trade, religious dogma and wars on territorial integrity. Many artists, researchers and historians who raise their voice to address ongoing injustices and criticise hegemonic powers, are often silenced and therefore have to create alternative methodologies and forms of resistance. Diana Al-Halabi’s research unfolds through various mediums and brings in different histories of the region. Veronika Babayan transfers women’s generational knowledge through her artistic practice that deals with antagonistic histories. Whereas JINA Collective is a feminist leftist activist group and community that emerged from the Woman, Life, Freedom Revolution in Iran.

For the dessert Veronika made a collection of words and phrases in Armenian, Arabic and Farsi from fruit leather. In discussion with Diana, she had noticed that many words of endearment in these languages contain synonyms of death, tragedy and violence. There is an internalisation of suffering within the language, however these become used in everyday phrases of affection, support and care.