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Welcome
May 2023
Dear Friends of Peacebuilding and the Arts Now,
Every three years, the Rotterdam (Netherlands)-based International Community Arts Festival offers a showcase for community arts organizations, individual artists, and cultural producers from across the globe. At the Festival, participants share innovative approaches to addressing complex challenges through the arts, and are afforded invaluable time and space for reflection. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020 Festival was canceled at the very last minute. That means that the 2023 edition, held from March 29 – April 2, was the first such gathering in six years!
The three editors of Peacebuilding and the Arts Now were lucky to have participated in this year’s event. We were there to meet practitioners from around the world, and also, in part, to engage in strategic planning regarding the global non-profit organization IMPACT, Inc. (Imagining Together Platform for Arts, Culture, and Conflict Transformation). We’re happy to include in this newsletter brief reflections from IMPACT board members about their experience of the Festival, as well as an interview with a Festival artist from Tanzania, Samwel Japhet Silas.
We are also spotlighting another individual artist: Playwright Catherine Filloux has written about painter Amin Al-Badra, who is originally from Iraq, and now a resident of Jordan. And, we’re thrilled to introduce readers to two new publications. Exhibitions curator Robert L. Reiner spearheaded the adaptation of the graphic novel The Unwanted by Otto Binder, and here writes about how the original story -- and 20th-century comics in general – intersect with racial justice concerns in the United States. Teya Sepinuck’s book, We are the Ripple Effect: Theatre of Witness in Northern Ireland, contains both an overview of what this unique approach to theater entails, and excerpts from plays produced in the aftermath of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. We include special mention of yet another resource: Jane Wilburn Sapp, the noted African American cultural worker, performer, educator, and activist, has produced a book, podcast, and website, Let’s Make a Better World, through which to share her approach to strengthening communities and advancing social transformation through music. Here we begin a series highlighting different episodes of her podcast. In this issue, we focus on her conversation with LGBTQ and anti-racist activist Suzanne Pharr, as part of our response to right-wing assaults on transgender people in the United States.
Just below this letter, you’ll find links to recent articles about the horrific violence in Sudan, and the situation and responses of Sudanese artists, both in and outside of the country. Our hearts are breaking, and we are exploring strategies for support.
Toni Shapiro-Phim
Cindy Cohen
Armine Avetisyan
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'Washday': A painting by Sudanese artist Amna Elhassan.
Photo courtesy of Amna Elhassan. Source: DW
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Updates on Sudan
Sudanese Artists Speak Out: It’s Not Our War
Stefan Dege, DW
“Sudan has become a battleground. But it is not the war of the people who live there, say exiled Sudanese writers Stella Gitano and Abdelaziz Baraka Sakin… [Sakin explains]: ‘This is not the Sudanese people's war. It's a couple of generals fighting for wealth and power!’"
'We refuse to abandon Sudanese artists'
Op-Ed/Group Letter, Le Monde
“A group of prominent French cultural figures is asking French authorities to issue visas to their Sudanese counterparts, who are at the forefront of the country's liberation movement.”
The Art of Conflict Resolution in Sudan
Erick Trickey, NGN Magazine
“Khalid Kodi’s participatory art projects in his native Sudan and South Sudan aim to bring rival groups together, resolve conflicts and look to a better future. The Northeastern University professor is a mentor to many young Sudanese artists and activists.”
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ICAF (International Community Arts Festival):
Mini-reports from participants affiliated with IMPACT, Inc.
From March 29 through April 2, 2023, hundreds of artists, cultural workers, community organizers, and peacebuilding practitioners from around the world met at the International Community Arts Festival (ICAF) in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, for performances, exhibitions, workshops, and conversations. Below are short reflections on selected experiences at ICAF.
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James Thompson presenting Care Aesthetics at ICAF.
Photo courtesy of ICAF.
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Care Aesthetics
by Dijana Milošević, theater director, writer, educator, co-founder of DAH Theatre Research Center, Belgrade, Serbia, IMPACT board member
One of the most exciting moments of ICAF (International Community Arts Festival) for me was James Thompson’s lecture ‘’Care Aesthetics.’’ This year’s edition of the Festival was titled ‘’Sound of Change.’’ I came to the Festival for an IMPACT organizational work meeting, and to follow the Festival’s program along with my colleagues from IMPACT.
James Thompson is a professor of applied theater at University of Manchester and besides many other activities he is a co-founder of an art organization, ‘’In Place of War.’’ His focus has been on art programs in conflict zones all around the world.
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Relations (live), An Instant Relational Choreography performance at ICAF.
Photo courtesy of Armine Avetisyan.
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A Village Dances
By Dessa Quesada-Palm, Artistic Director of the Youth Advocates Through Theater Arts, Dumaguete City in the Philippines, IMPACT board member
We came into the blackbox theater and were immediately welcomed by young smiling ushers who handed us an index card and a marker. On the paper, an instruction to write something that you love had been scribbled. As more people entered, paper and pen were collected, and the sheets found their way to clips attached to twirling wires (lots of them) hanging on the center stage’s ceiling, akin to hanging vines, audiences spread out in a U shape. A live band had already played music.
The invitation to engage is immediately set up. And soon everyone in the mood to move congregated in the middle for an animated warm up accompanied by musicians playing a pulsating 4/4 rhythm. There was a blurring of the lines between audience and the team of performers, because as soon as the warm-up was over, the group’s choreographer-facilitator Jordy Dik went into a well-designed process of simultaneous dramaturgy. One group worked on creating movement duets, another in solos, yet another in ensemble, and there was us, in Augusto Boal’s nomenclature, the “spect-actors” who were co-creating with everyone else, ably threaded by Jordy’s team. Motifs were gathered from people’s responses to the question of what they loved, gestures inspired by people’s ideas, and connected.
Read the full story.
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Emilie Diouf leading the Creative Approaches to Ending Gender-Based Violence Workshop at ICAF. Photo courtesy of Armine Avetisyan.
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A Disorderly Reflection on ICAF 2023 Conference
by Kitche Magak, professor of literature at Maasai Mara University, Kenya, IMPACT board member.
As a scholar of nearly three decades, I have attended a little more than a few conferences and workshops all over the world, not countless, but enough for memory to start playing tricks on the actual numbers. Virtually all these conferences are bespoke events cut from the same cloth, fitted and professionally-tailored to fit the occasions with ruthless efficiency. That, in my considered opinion, makes these conferences hardly memorable. There are rare exceptions to this rule. The International Community Arts Festival (ICAF) 2023 was one of them. But allow me to get back to that in a moment.
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Still images from Zoom interview with Samwel Japhet Silas
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An Artist at ICAF: Interview with Samwel Japhet Silas
By Toni Shapiro-Phim, Co-director of Brandeis University’s Program in Peacebuilding and the Arts
We met at ICAF in Rotterdam. What brought you there this year?
My company was invited to perform our piece ‘Onyesha Thamani,’ which means Showing Value. It was a duet reflecting on gender equality here in Tanzania, and as a global issue. It was created using dance-theatre as a language to reflect on this issue in the city we are living in, Dar es Salaam. At ICAF I did it as a duet with my colleague Irene Themistocles Ruyakingira. We performed twice. My company is called Nantea Dance Company. The company provides multifaceted performances and community-based projects, and hopes to contribute to the promotion and development of the dance scene in Tanzania, inspiring youth to become ambassadors of development and social change. ‘Nantea’ reflects the idea of being pulled towards something or someone, in a positive way. When you’re falling in love with someone, you are drawn into someone or something, just as you might be drawn into dance, into the arts.
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Peace for Ukraine, painting by Amin Al-Badra.
Photo courtesy of the artist.
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Artist spotlight: Amin Al-Badra
The seeds were not going to wait around for anyone
By Catherine Filloux, playwright/librettist and activist
As a playwright and co-founder of Theatre Without Borders, who helped develop the Program in Peacebuilding and the Arts at Brandeis University, I always yearn to learn more about how other artists merge peacebuilding and the arts. In this essay I briefly introduce readers to Amin Al-Badra, a visual artist and writer from Iraq, now a refugee who lives in Amman, Jordan. I came to know Amin on a writing project and am inspired by how Amin seamlessly explores both painting and writing within the framework of peacebuilding. I wondered what led him to incorporate both in his practice. Amin was born in Baghdad, Iraq, and lived in a small city called Adhamiya, surrounded by the waters of the Tigris River. “My father is a professor, and my mother is an agricultural engineer,” says Amin. “The reason I came to Jordan is I lost the hope for a good life in Iraq. There was unjustified violence by government security forces and militias affiliated with the Islamic fascist regime.”
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Robert L. Reiner’s graphic novel adaptation, Otto Binder’s THE UNWANTED, Fantagraphics Underground.
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The Eve of Judgment Day
By Robert L. Reiner, sequential art historian, exhibitions curator and defender of banned books
In the March-April 1953 issue of the comic book Weird Fantasy, an astronaut named Tarlton is sent to evaluate a planet for inclusion in the Great Galactic Republic. He finds a world which is designed based on Earth’s history, values, and legacy, and populated by sentient robots segregated by color. The robots are identical in every other way.
After a thorough review of the education, living conditions and treatment of the “inferior” blue robots, he concludes that this society needs to evolve further to join. The orange robots protest, not understanding where they fell short. But Tarlton assures them that there is reason for hope. Tarlton explains that his world had had a similar history but in time was able to move forward and mend its ways. When the astronaut returns to his spaceship and removes his helmet, we see that he is a Black man. The story, Judgment Day, was a bold and potentially suicidal move for a comic book publisher. In a medium which more often would feature a muscular white super-hero or a funny cartoon animal, Entertaining Comics (EC) placed in one of its science fiction comics a tale in which the only human being is a Black man.
Read the full story.
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| A New Book about Theatre of Witness
Toni Shapiro-Phim in conversation with Teya Sepinuck
During what is known as the Troubles, conflict raged between those who wanted Northern Ireland to remain within the United Kingdom and those who wanted it to break from the UK and become part of a united Ireland. By the time of the Good Friday Agreement, signed in 1998, the violent struggle had lasted about thirty years. By sheer coincidence, a new book about a remarkable theater and peacebuilding initiative in Northern Ireland has been published just as the world is celebrating the 25th anniversary of the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, which brought most of the fighting to an end.
Teya Sepinuck’s We are the Ripple Effect: Theatre of Witness in Northern Ireland, offers a first-hand account of the development of this particular approach to performance in the midst and aftermath of violent conflict, written by the founder of Theatre of Witness herself.
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| Cultural Resources for when Things Become Hard
by Cindy Cohen, Co-director of Brandeis University's Program in Peacebuilding and the Arts
Jane Wilburn Sapp, the noted African American cultural worker, performer, educator and activist has produced a book and website, Let’s Make a Better World to share her approach to strengthening communities and advancing social transformation through music. Her approach, based on African American musical traditions, integrates spiritual, aesthetic, cultural and political dimensions of life. Visitors to Jane’s website are welcome to view a documentary and listen to a podcast. In this issue of Peacebuilding and the Arts Now, we begin a series highlighting different episodes of her podcast.
Partly in response to right-wing assaults on transgender people in the United States, we would like to draw attention to Episode 5, which features songs shared in conversation with veteran LGBTQ, women’s rights and anti-racist activist Suzanne Pharr. Pharr says, “[i]n this political moment, where so much has been challenged and so much danger lies ahead, we are going to have to reach deep for the things of the spirit. The role of cultural workers… will be more important than ever...What does the Tree of Life look like? It’s not a tree of oppression, not a tree of division. It’s not a tree of chastity. It’s a tree of abundance. It’s a tree of equal worth…For me, it has a tremendous power as things become hard. That’s when I think we have to ask that question and sing that song a lot.”
Listen here.
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Tara Homasi. Video Still: a visitor, 2021
Source: wp.nyu.edu
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Upcoming Events
Diasporic Tremors Exhibition
31 May-14 June, The Gallatin Galleries, New York
“An exhibition of video and performance art, curated by Ellada Evangelou and Keith Miller, begins with … the impossibility of being in two places and times at once and with this idea of the origin of trauma as embedded in diasporas. The artists participating in the exhibition are suspended between these two realities, which they have deconstructed through their work.”
Book Launch: Art and Human Rights A Multicultural Approach to Contemporary Issues
9 June, 4-6 pm CET, virtually
Creating Rights
“The Book brings together experts in the fields of art, cultural heritage, social justice, human rights, international law, and transitional justice, and builds bridges between the notions of art and aesthetics, human rights, universality, and dignity. It explores a world in which art and justice enter a discussion to answer questions such as: can art translate the human experience? How does humanity link individuality and community building? How do human beings define and look for their identity?
How do artistic and cultural productions and rights contribute to answering these questions?”
See details | Register.
The Gaaga
2-18 June US Premiere | 8-18 June Live worldwide streaming
“A site specific phantasmagoria from celebrated Ukrainian documentary playwright and director Sasha Denisova. Developed through first-person interviews with refugees and officials, and inspired by world events, The Gaaga is a darkly funny, haunting and fantastical trip through the consequences of war. Set in a bomb shelter, a Ukrainian girl dreams Vladimir Putin and his cronies into a trial for crimes of war.”
Buy tickets for in-person and virtual performances.
Arts and Human Rights Festival
20-24 June, Belgrade, Serbia
DAH Theatre
“This 3rd edition of the festival is inspired by Martin Niemoller’s poem “First they came …” hoping to encourage and empower citizens to react against injustice, to take an active role inciting positive change in their communities, as well as to connect artists and human rights activists with each other, and with the wider community. A subtopic is Standing up for Another, emphasizing empathy and compassion, bringing humanity back to the forefront before personal (selfish) needs, glorified in our times of radical individuality. The program includes theater productions, workshops, installations, concerts, talks, films, as well as the creation of an original mural. Artists and activists are coming from Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Brazil, Denmark, Germany, Holland, Kosovo, Norway, Italy, Serbia, and the USA.”
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Artwork Natalia Peredvigina: microterritory.land
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Opportunities and Resources
28 August - 9 September
Deadline: 2 May
artasfoundation
“In late August 2023, artasfoundation will invite artists, activists and cultural practitioners working within the field of socially engaged arts to explore the chances and limitations of artistic interventions in contexts of deep differences in worldview. Taking diverging views within Eastern European societies and within different social groups in Switzerland as starting points, artasfoundation dives into a week full of inputs, exchange of experience, shared learning, inspiration, and networking. The 7-day summer school brings together artists located in Zurich and artists from Eastern Europe and beyond, who, despite their respective social and cultural contexts, share similar basic concerns. The programme itself will be partly developed jointly with the participants. The summer school will be held in English.”
First Joint Annual Engaged Artivist Award on Atrocity Prevention and Human Rights: Call for Applications
Deadline: 23 May
“The Global Campus of Human Rights and the Auschwitz Institute for the Prevention of Genocide and Mass Atrocities, in collaboration with the Institute for Genocide and Mass Atrocity Prevention at Binghamton University (USA), announce a call for applications for the first edition of their Joint Annual Engaged Artivist Award on Atrocity Prevention and Human Rights. The purpose of the Joint Annual Engaged Artivist Award is to recognize the work of Artivists (artist-activists), highlighting the original ways in which they respond creatively to large-scale identity-based violence and mass atrocity in varying conflict contexts and geographic regions across the globe. The concept of “Art as Atrocity Prevention” is related to the role of the arts in mitigating risk factors associated with genocide, other mass atrocities, and identity-based violence, as well as the use of the arts as a powerful tool to contribute to the transformation of post-atrocity societies.”
Build Peace Conference
1-3 December, Nairobi, Kenya
Deadline: 15 June
“Every year, the Build Peace conference explores emergent challenges to peace in a digital era, and peacebuilding innovations to address these challenges. It holds an interdisciplinary space to address the most pressing topics and transformative practices in peace, conflict, and innovation.
This year, the conference will focus on ‘How technology and the arts influence identities relevant to peace & conflict.’ Whether it is your tenth time attending, or your first, we warmly invite you to bring your questions, ideas, and experiences as we chart the future together.”
More information on applying as a contributor and registration.
Call For Applications
Mentorship Building Beyond
Prince Claus Fund and the Creative Industries Fund NL
“Building Beyond brings together 12 experienced designers, creatives, and artists over the course of a year to foster conversation, collaboration, and exchange within the cohort; to support each participant in their own individual practice; and to facilitate exchanges between the cohort and relevant external practitioners. We support practices that engage with challenges related to your city’s public space and communities to propose alternative ideas and methods that align the physical city with the realities and imaginations of the lived city. We seek to foster locally-rooted, critical design practices, and cultural productions that challenge our ideas of space and citizenship, reaffirm agency, and restate ownership. Building Beyond is an alternative educational structure where you come together with your peers to reflect on your practice, activate your practice within your local context, and gather ideas and universalities from different urban contexts - aimed at reimagining the future of your contexts and continent.”
The Role of Arts in an Interdependent World – a recorded conversation with jazz artist Arturo O’Farill
In honor of International Jazz Day, Jamie Metzl of OneShared.World had a conversation with the jazz artist Arturo O'Farill, which was recorded as part of the OneShared.World Interdependence Summit. Arturo is a ground-breaking pianist, composer, and educator, and director of the Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra. He is also a Global Arts Ambassador for OneShared.World.
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Program in Peacebuilding and the Arts
International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life
Brandeis University
415 South Street | MS 086 | Waltham, MA 02454-9110
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