INHYAR (BREAKDOWN) Noise from the Underground

Curated by Shirine Saad

With support from Columbia University’s Incite Institute

Visuals by Tracy Chahwan

This event brings together leading artists in experimental and underground Noise practices, deploying poetic practices to resist and denounce politics of total destruction. Trans Punk Poet Cyborg Andrea Abi-Karam, musician and dancer Leyya Mona Tawil, dancer and scholar Nora Alami, singer Israa Shalaby, and DJ and writer Shirine Saad will explore the power of BREAKDOWN after the end of the world.

As we stare at mass death and the plunder and erasure of native ecologies and histories, we dance in the ruins, alchemizing life, love and resistance. Artists from the Arab world and diaspora forge new communities in DIY and underground spaces, inventing languages to defy devastating grief. Reimagining ghazals, muashahat, maqamat, queer erotica, sacred cosmologies, sci-fi utopias and dystopias, intoxicating Sufi and Zar rituals, and the deep legacy of militant art throughout the region, remixing Punk, Techno, Rap, Grime, echoing protests from Gaza to Khartoum, Tehran, and Cairo, amplifying noise and fatal pollution, they articulate radical poethical visions amidst apocalypse and despair.

• Andrea Abi-Karam
• Leyya Mona Tawil
• Nora Alami
• Israa Shalaby
• Shirine Saad

Andrea Abi-Karam is a trans, SWANA, punk poet-performer cyborg, workshop facilitator, and activist. Their chapbook, THE AFTERMATH (Commune Editions, 2016), queers Fanon’s vision of how poetry fails to inspire revolution. Under the full Community Engagement Scholarship, Andrea received their MFA in Poetry from Mills College. With Drea Marina they co-hosted Words of Resistance [2012-2017] a monthly, radical, QTPOC open floor poetry series to fundraise for political prisoners’ commissary funds. Selected by Bhanu Kapil, Andrea’s debut EXTRATRANSMISSION (Kelsey Street Press, 2019) is a poetic critique of the U.S. military’s role in the War on Terror. Andrea toured with Sister Spit in 2018 and has performed at RADAR, The Poetry Project, The STUD, Basilica Soundscape, TransVisionaries, Southern Exposure, Counterpulse, & Radius for Arab-American Writers. They have taught workshops at the New York Public Library, San Francisco Public Library, Naropa University, Rock Paper Scissors, Wesleyan University, Barnard College, Seattle University, Bay Area Trans Writers, and FARR Concordia. With Kay Gabriel, they co-edited We Want It All: An Anthology of Radical Trans Poetics (Nightboat Books, 2020). Chosen by Simone White, Andrea’s second book, Villainy (Nightboat Books, 2021) reimagines militant collectivity in the wake of the Ghost Ship Fire and the Muslim Ban. Villainy was a 2022 Finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in Transgender Poetry. They are a recipient of the inaugural 2023 Jerome Alternates Grant Award& are the Spring 2024 Black Mountain Institute UNLV Breakout Writer. They are currently writing a poet’s novel about crushes.

https://andreaak.com

Leyya Mona Tawil [Lime Rickey International] works in sound art, dance, and hybrid transmissions. Tawil is a Syrian, Palestinian, American engaged in the world as such. Her works have toured throughout Europe, the Arab region, and the US. Performances, residencies, and commissions include ISSUE Project Room (NYC), Abrons Arts Center (NYC), Today is our Tomorrow Festival (Helsinki), ZVRK Festival (Bosnia), British Council/Wysing Arts Centre (UK), Sharjah Art Foundation (UAE), Serendipity Arts Festival (Goa), and the Arab American National Museum (Dearborn). Lime Rickey International's FUTURE FAITH was nominated for a 2019 “Bessies” Award in Music (NYC). She is the founding director of Arab.AMP - a platform for experimental music, live art, and ideas from the SWANA diaspora and our allied communities. Tawil is on the curatorial team of the Arab American National Museum (Dearborn), Southern Exposure (SF), Daring Dances (Ann Arbor)​ and also directs TAC Temescal Art Center (Oakland).

Nora Alami is a Moroccan American experimental artist and creative producer. Dance is her tool for conducting research, building community, and organizing politically. Her artistic projects join disparate realities through sensuality, embodiment, text, and materiality. Bringing together the personal and the conceptual with the absurd, she researches desire, alterity, and nostalgia for a sense of belonging never quite experienced. She has been awarded 2024 MANCC Forward Dialogues 3, 2023/24 CUNY Dance Initiative, 2022 Triskelion Artist Residency, 2021 BRIClab: Performing Arts Residency, 2021 JACK Artist Residency, and 2021 Rest and Restore at The Petronio Center, and the 2017/18 New York Live Arts Fresh Tracks Choreographic Residency,. Her choreography has been presented at LaMaMa Moves!, Danspace Project’s DraftWork series, Triskelion Arts, Houston Metropolitan Dance Center, Center for Performance Research, New York Live Arts, and Movement Research at Judson Church. She has performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, River to River Festival, and toured with Jadd Tank at the 2018 Focus on Mediterranean Choreography platform in Italy. She holds a Masters degree in Performance Studies from Northwestern University.

https://movementresearch.org/people/nora-alami/

Israa Shalaby is a Palestinian singer and songwriter who recently relocated to NYC. Her new single release featuring American Producer Carmen Rizzo is a mixture of Sufi style with experimental organic sounds. Israa’s songs are a powerful testament of the free spirit. She is known for her raw, honest lyrics and her ritual-oriented performances.

https://soundcloud.com/israa-shalaby-1

Shirine Saad is a Beirut-born journalist, programmer and DJ focusing on culture and social change. They recently taught Arts Journalism and Criticism at Brown University, where they were the Founding Editor of a new multimedia arts journal, MOVEMENTS. They are a PhD candidate in Philosophy, Art and Social Thought at the European Graduate School. Their theoretical essay on Arab feminist and queer art is forthcoming at Routledge; a volume dedicated to the same topic is forthcoming at Saqi books.

Saad is an Advisory Council Member at Recess Art in Brooklyn and has worked as Interim Programming Director at music organization National Sawdust. They have programmed and DJd events for Creative Time, BAM, the Brooklyn Museum, The Brooklyn Library, National Sawdust, Soho House, The Rockaway Hotel, Miss Lily’s; launched the Rockaway Beach Reggae Jam, Gyal Tings Soundsystem and Hiya.

www.shirinesaad.com

Host or Publisher INCITE @ Columbia University