October 2022, the floor mural ‘Longing to cross the horizons’ arrived at the slope of the historical shipyard of NDSM in Amsterdam. The painting features one sentence from a letter that was found in the pocket of an anonymous migrant who drowned in 2015. His words wash up now at NDSM, where large trade and transport ships were built and launched into the water in the subsequent legacies of the colonial company VOC.

The floor mural reads:
شكراً لك ايها البحر الذي استقبلتنا دون فيزا ولا جواز سفر
(Thank you dear sea for receiving us without a visa or passport)

Washing up on the European coastlines, are the bodies of those who fled from wars, economic and ecological crises, which cannot be seen independently from the political history and the neocolonial legacies of the North-South power dynamic. This floor mural adds to NDSM’s sea-trade narrative, and echoes a deep collective suffering of many refugees who lost their lives crossing the sea.

At and near this site, several activities, meetings and events will be organized throughout 2022 - 2023.

Location via Google Maps

This project is developed in collaboration with We Sell Reality | Artistic advisor: Arthur Kneepkens and Fadwa Naamna | Designed by: We Sell Reality, Haitham Haddad, Tewa Barnosa and Hilda Moucharrafieh | Painted by: We Sell Reality, Farouk Ebaiss, Hilda Moucharrafieh and friends | Technical advice: Thamon Ihsan van Blokland (Urban Painting) | Video documentation: Yara Yuri Safadi and Wael Kadlo | Photography: Moon Saris | Musical performance: Esmail Bnaoe and friends | Produced by: Roxanne Jurriaans

This project is produced as part of Stadskunstenaars programme at Over het IJ, with the support of Stichting NDSM, and made possible with the generous support of Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst, Fonds voor Cultuurparticipatie, VSB Fonds, and Gemeente Amsterdam Stadsdeel Noord.

Video Walk, 2018
in collaboration with Dina Mohamed

Walk through Amsterdam while exchanging your view with a person in Cairo.

Experience the changing image of Amsterdam and Cairo in relation to recent shifts in their respective political climate. The walk is layered with testimonies from people who were directly involved in the 2011 Egyptian revolution and the student protests and squatters’ evictions in Amsterdam. This period forms a pivotal moment in the political climate of both cities, as waves of resistance rose against austerity measures and the authoritative regime.

We all share memories of these events, while the shifting political agendas are geared towards intentionally erasing the traces of our struggles, pushing away our urgent voices.

Tracing Erased Memories is a one-on-one site-specific multimedia walk, which has been performed thus far in Amsterdam (2018, 2020) and London (2019). It is a winner of the International Bursary Award at Amsterdam Fringe Festival in 2018, and nominated for the Offies Award in London 2019.

Multi-disciplinary performative installation, 2019
in collaboration with Paula Chaves

In response to melting ice caps and global capitalism, DOWN is UP is a self-initiated long- term artistic research which dives into the contemporary scenarios of eco-geo-political warfare while being inspired by ancestral pre- colonial narratives and practices, utilised as a subversive force against the incinerating, extractivist machineries run by the egocentric North. As a strategy, we bring the DOWN - the South and that which has been rendered invisible - UP to the geo-surface of our consciousness, thus inverting the logics of orientation as cemented by the dominating and ruling view of world order.

Through an ecosystem combining voices from indigenous environmental activists to non- western cosmogonies, reversed cartographies and queer erotica, the aim is to present an inverted lexicon of order, thus questioning the fixed relations established under totalitarian systems of knowledge production. The normal is rendered absurd and the threatened voices of the South create an acoustic environment, pulsing what has been made invisible and obsolete. These dissident voices have been drowned in the depths of the oceans, buried within what now became archeological earth sediments and frozen within icebergs.

The first manifestation of this research took form as a juxtaposition between a contemporary art exhibition and a performative theatrical space, resulting in an experience composed of seven different artworks commissioned and curated by Hilda Moucharrafieh and Paula Chaves. Through an ecosystem of interactive, participatory and performative installations, the public is engaged with thoughts, actions and wanderings of social solidarity, linking climate concerns to collective experiences of social imagination and sustainability.

CREDITS
Concept, Creation and Choreography: Hilda Moucharrafieh and Paula Chaves
Installations: Sam Bachy, Rhian Morris and Silvana Hurtado
Illustrations: Jane Porter (Jack Bucket)
Ethnography and Amerindian Cosmogonies: Natalia Chaves
Voice Recordings: Levina van Winden and Nadia Bekkers
Soundscape: Lijuan Klassen
Photography and Video registration: Wael Kadlo
Light design and Technical support: Dana Claasen
Artistic advice: Arthur Kneepkens
Production management: Lijuan Klassen

This work is produced by Hilda Moucharrafieh and Paula Chaves in co-production with Over het IJ Festival as part of ROEF Festival 2019 and supported by Stichting Stokroos and Stichting Gilles Hondius Foundation.

Participatory installation, 2018

‘To Measure is To Know’ is the credo in Western society. If something is not measurable, it does not seem relevant. This participatory installation aims to investigate how quantification of the immaterial is assessed and judged, according to what, by whom and for what purpose.

Anubis, a half man half animal creature from ancient Egyptian mythology, is associated with mummification and the afterlife. One of his roles is the ‘Guardian of the Scales’. When one dies, Anubis measures if a person is worthy of entering the afterlife by weighing their heart against a feather. If the heart is heavier than a feather, it would be devoured by Ammit, a goddess with the head of a crocodile, body of a lion and hind legs of a hippopotamus. She was called the ‘Eater of Hearts’ waiting upon a hearty meal, and once she devours the heart the soul is believed to become restless forever. If the heart is as light as the feather, it will be placed back in the body and the person could ascend to a heavenly existence and a voyage towards immortality. 

This story and image from Book of the Dead, is used as a catalyst into the conversation at a table. Participants are asked to contribute to the research by answering the questions while stitching on a fabric made of counted measure. Each day a special guest* is invited. Egyptologists, behavioural economist, researcher in data practices, and a cultural program maker joined in conversation during 10 days, to discuss this image and its notions from their field of expertise.

To what extent does measurement and quantification determine our assessment of situations, people, performance, success.. all what is material, and all what is immaterial. 

Anubis decides the heaviness of one’s heart based on immaterial weights, such as greed, hate or unrequited love. Capitalism reversely rewards these individual immaterial traits.

Is there a way to look at reality differently, in order to escape the datafication, quantification and therefore the capitalisation of our lives?

* Guillén Torres, Juan Ramírez, Lucia Langerak, Marwan Aboul Magd, Maud Slingenberg, Sjoerd van der Steen

Performance, 2017
in collaboration with Dina Mohamed

April 2017, Dina and Hilda sat to discuss their work process. The conversation quickly turned into big ideas about challenging The System and finding a way out. But their actual struggle was first to get out of bed.

Despair became a symptom of late capitalist society. A despondency that is orchestrated by structures so complex they can subsume any resistance. We are preoccupied with a certain view of life that is advocated in order to perpetuate the survival of these structures. We perceive the value of life through jobs, titles, certain notions of success, or the price number on our death. 

In thinking about capitalism as a life system and its interest in ‘life value’, two entities are investigated: life insurance policies and in-case-of-emergency procedures. The work attempts to write movements based on algorithms used by life insurance companies, and in advised body positions for in-case-of-emergency situations. How does an algorithm price our life depending on the time of death while also protecting us from possible death scenarios? We are trying to understand how data collection and algorithms are influencing our very movements, and our perception of life, and our agency towards it. 

Interactive Installation, 2016

Between the illusion of free movement and the limitation at the axis of the swing, the body experiences the liminality between places and borders. 

A site-specific interactive installation featuring a swing hanging at the edge of a sea container at the banks of the IJ river of Amsterdam. The shown image on the screen inside the container is determined according to the movement of the swing. 

This project was made in support of Over Het IJ festival 2016 in Amsterdam.

Interactive designer: Pépé Heijenberg
Video recording in Beirut: Samer Bou Saleh.

Durational Installation, 2016
 

8 silver helium balloons, fishing wire, chicken eggs

Over 14 days of the installation, these balloons are slowly getting deflated. As they get lower to the ground and disperse in the space, HOMELAND becomes scattered and the carried eggs are in greater risk of breaking.

Non-verbal Performative Presentation, 2016

This performative presentation discussing the artistic voice and its authorship takes place within an installation comprised of a 5-metre long mirror hanging horizontally and a 5-metre long table standing at a slanted angle. A singular I – sitting behind the mirror – a body juxtaposed to all the plural heads reflected on the mirror.

Interactive Performance, 2016

In the grey area between hunting as a competitive sport and hunting as a killing skill, the consequences fall into a causal loop between the physical and the digital. Reflecting on digital warfare, the performance is an act that reverses the relation where the physical sabotages the virtual.

A video of a performer sitting on a chair is projected on a wall. Above the level of her head is a white balloon filled with water hanging in the physical space. An archer walks in with a bow and arrow. Standing among the audience, he raises his bow, stretches his arrow and points at the hanging balloon. When the archer shoots the balloon the performer in the projected video is drenched with water.

Interactive designer: Pépé Heijenberg

Interactive Performance, 2015

Jeanne d’Arc is reincarnated and now living in Palestine planning a Holy War for the liberation of the Occupied Territories. You are invited to have a Skype conversation with her. What would you talk about and would you support her?

A Skype conversation between a participant and Jeanne d’Arc about the contemporary notions of ideology, heroism and terrorism through historical, fictional and medial distance.