WORK
Mosaic Rooms: October 2023
In responding to the genocide taking place in Gaza , Bint Mbareh offered a session at Mosaic Rooms exploring some readings into historical Palestinian allyship that could be helpful in thinking of the current moment.
The literature used spanned Shayma al-Bess' "Where the Striped Hyenas Are" published on No-Niin, Akwugo Emjulu's Fugitive Feminism, and Majlis al-Khayaal's fantastical anthropological study of the supernatural in Jerusalem.
The thread that Bint Mbareh followed said that allyship for the current moment needed to look past the ambition of humanising Palestinians. Humanity has always necessitated fugitives and Others. If Israeli settler colonialism aims to dehumanise Palestinians to enable its genocide, then Palestinian responses have to look beyond merely reacting to dehumanisation. This is informed by Fugitive Feminist theory.
Palestinian history is rife with examples of supernatural allies as well as allies in the vegetal and topographic worlds. These are exemplified in Adania Shibli's Nature-first syntactical style, in Shayma al-Bess' storied history of her grandfather's disappearance, and Majles Al-Khayal's collection of stories of Jinn and other invisible beings inhabiting Jerusalem. All these parties, Othered out of their humanity are invited to join forces in the historical moment of dismantling the settler colony.
https://mosaicrooms.org/event/solidarity-reverb/
Call the Waves Exhibition
Sway Collective (based in Barry, Wales), and Qanat collective (based in Marrakech) collaborated on curating an exhibition titled Call the Waves at Chapter Gallery in Cardiff.
The curatorial note invited six artists to exhibit work relating to their historical relationships with land and water, and how their cultures knew the world by knowing their water resources.
Bint Mbareh contributed an object and a sound piece named "Stellar Footprints". The piece was a nod of respect to Palestinian agricultural traditions being led by constellations mentioned in 13th century manuscripts. These constellations often were used as instructions for farmers and landfarers. The artist poses this relationship between constellation and community as an encrypted set of instructions and knowledges that are not accessible to the knowing and understanding of colonisers.
Cafe Oto Performance 24th July 2022
Bint was invited to return to Cafe OTO with a different set from last year. The performance was generously recorded by Oto.
Three works in progress for Radio Fantasia
In 2022 Bint started producing music and she was invited by Radio Fantasia to make a radio programme about her work.
Published in January 2023, this hour-long reflection is her playing a song and saying her opinion on it and what she would change about it. She showcases four of the songs that she made throughout 2022, some of them developed, and some others very early in their conception.
Exist Takeover of Refuge Worldwide @ Oona Bar
Refuge Worldwide is an inspiring Berlin space that opens up conversations about international solidarity movements. Bint Mbareh helped to organise the first iteration of Exist Festival in 2019, and this relationship with the festival was revived in its takeover of the stream at Refuge Worldwide.
This performance was one of Bint Mbareh's longest improvised sets from the Summer of 2022.
Mosaic Rooms Performance
Bint Mbareh gave a performance at the Mosaic Rooms in November of 2022. The performance relied on lyrics that are sung to the prophet Saleh that she learned of during her field research in Palestine. The performance evokes many modes of listening, and it is titled "An Earthworm Narrates Footsteps to Mars". How would a creature with no ears, no eyes, and a barely audible physical form narrate animal footsteps to a planet listening in from millions of distance units away? This performance was in response to Marwa Arsanios' solo exhibition Reverse Shot.
Videos Courtesy of a friend who attended the performance.
WhatsApp Video 2022-09-04 at 21.18.00.mp4In the Eddy of the Stream
Cooking Sections and Sakiya are two collectives that had been working on an exhibition about ecological catastrophe and informed, anticolonial responses to climate cataclysm. Bint Mbareh is a friend of Sakiya's and was invited to send voice files that she had recorded for Sakiya in 2018. Nida Sinokrot translated the voice into exciters, which can be seen as clay pots in the video - they were handmade in Jaffa.
The artist's voice was coming through the makeshift speakers and that prompted several impromptu performances throughout the day the exhibition "In the Eddy of the Stream" opened.
The recording is courtesy of Sahar Qawasmi. It was made in July of 2022 at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh, Inverleith House.
P1144029.MOVHiya Live Sessions
This is an excerpt from a live improvised show commissioned by the Hiya Live sessions at the Jago in London on May 6th in 2022.
Moses in Mardin
The Kurdish Mardin Biennial invited Bint Mbareh to perform and show work informed by her researched on the prophet Moses' shrine. Mardin is a city whose location and political history have made it into an amalgam of regional cultures. Bint took this as an opportunity to impress the impact of the shrine in yet another place while waiting to be able to actually visit and venerate the shrine. The theme of 2022's Biennial was "The Promise of Grass", also pertinent to the festivities of the Prophet Moses, because they demarcated the coming of the Palesitnian Spring, as well as the political potential for liberation that the site constantly carried. Photographs courtesy of Mehmet Cimen.
Bint partook in a panel discussion with Zahra Malkani and Kathyayini Dash, two brilliant artists exploring themes of dissolving linear time. She presented work made with a holographic 3D fan, candles for visitors to also venerate the makeshift shrine, as well as locally sourced building materials organised into a maze, decaying red poppies, and playing marbles. Please follow the link below for more information about this work.
https://mardinbienali.org/haber/from-the-5th-mardin-biennial-artists-bint-mbareh/
This was presented in May of 2022.
The Anti Lullaby
Bint Mbareh was commissioned by Mophradat's Read the Room festival to ruminate on the theme of motherhood. In the songs that belong to mothering archetypes, there was a theme of darkness, death, departure specifically in the Palestinian lullabies she encountered. In this performance she finds a contemporary sonic reflection of this phenomenon, probing the territory of mothering ourselves using these highly adept songs.
Videography Credit is for Nasrine Kheltent.
Dr. Dia Barghouti's role was indispensable in collating thiss research on Palestinian lullaby lyrics
This was performed in March 2022 in Kaaitheatre in Brussels.
Bint Mbaret - The Anti Lullaby.mp4Movement Radio guest mix for Muqata'a
Bint made a mix with some of the music that she was listening to in January of 2023 for Muqata'a's radio residency on Movement Radio Athens. This is the first playlist she ever publicly put together.
Please click episode in the link to the left OR follow link below to listen to it.
https://movement.radio/show/guest-mix-by-bint-mbareh-2023-02-01
Kareem Samara and Bint Mbareh at Brave Poets
Brave Poets organisers Maisa invited Kareem Samara, a long-time collaborator with Bint Mbareh to play at an event held at Cromwell Place in London.
The artists made a fully improvised set on July 14th of 2022. This excerpt is courtesy of @abdulisms.
The Shrine of the Prophet Moses in Kortrijk
In a combination of storytelling, vocal and buzuq performance, Bint Mbareh capitulates a period of research on the parallels between the astrological phenomenon and archetype of the planet Mars and the site of the Prophet Moses in Palestine.
This research was generously supported by Mophradat, BUDA Kortrijk, and Next Festival. It was performed in Kortrijk on the 19th of November 2021.
بعث مرّيخيّ في مقام كليم الله العمرانيّ
The Shrine of the Prophet Moses in Dalston
This is a full audio recording of a performance Bint Mbareh made as part of her residency at Café Oto in London. This is the beginning of the research that she did on the shrine of the prophet Moses.
Cafe Oto is a music venue that was very generous to Bint Mbareh's growth as a musician, and this is one of the first full length performances she ever capitulated on her own.
This was in September 2021, in Hackney.
Jineen
In this performance with Kareem Samara, Bint Mbareh pays homage to her maternal lineage in a song title Jineen, named after a city with supernatural powers, nestled in the middle of Palestine.
This was performed in London in August of 2020.
1.mp4
Ta3al
This song was recorded as part of the Cafe Oto residency in collaboration with Kareem Samara. This was recorded in the wake and with the influence of the Palestinian revolution of May 2021.
Tal3a
This song was dedicated to a Palestinian grassroots campaign that combatted gender based violence and honour killing.
This was composed/improvised and performed alongside Kareem Samara in August of 2020 at Battersea Park in London.
This was part of a Brave Poets event.
2.mp4Time Flows in all Directions/Water Flows Through Me
This was the first performance Bint Mbareh developed on her own, and in this iteration at Darat Al-Funun in Amman, Jordan, was the third time she did it live. She proceeded to perform this in another two cities, totalling five cities in 2019.
She continues to be informed and inspired by the rain summoning traditions of Palestinian agricultural workers. Especially so by how these traditions weave the Palestinian present into a technologically capable, resource abundant world.
To read more:
https://daratalfunun.org/?event=time-flows-directions_-water-flows
And:
https://savvy-contemporary.com/site/assets/files/5309/soilisaninscribedbody_full_concept-2.pdf
Avon Terror Corps contribution
During the uprising in Palestine during May of 2021, Bint contributed the vocals to a track produced by ANTS. This is sung with her sister.
Undocumented Work
There aree more performances that go undocumented than there is space to list here, but a description of some of them helps to shed some light on the kind of work Bint does/makes/plays/performs.
Exist Festival at Panke Culture
Bint Mbareh gave a performance at Exist Festival alongside Kujo, Nar, Phiroza, Insidious Bass Storefront, Razan Hassan, and Dirar Kalash in November 2022. Exist has a special place in her heart.
Codex
Codex was one of Bint's most absorbed and entrancing performances of 2022, done in November. Codex is one of her favourite Berlin bass driven, always leftfield, dance-focussed night.
The Codex set was based on the intention to get on stage with a completely empty Ableton session, and fill it using spoken text (mostly gibberish), and build from there into a dancing set. It is worth noting that none of the approximately 18 performances Bint made in 2022 were rehearsed nor repeated.
Territory Disrupt
This was a 2-day festival in Berlin packed with subversive conversations and challenging music. She played here on the same lineup as Khyam Allami, Kamilya Jubran+Werner Hassler, Poly Chain, and Cluster Lizard, to name a few.
In the first edition, held in November 2022, Bint participated in a panel about mobility, displacement, and subversion in music. She also performed with the aid of material from one of her favourite anthologies: an anthology of the Djinn inhabiting the old city of Jerusalem.
Tehran Contemporary Sounds
Exist Festival curated two artists, Bint, Kujo, and Muqata'a to play at TCS. So in October of 2022, she joined the remarkable lineup which included Sote, Sahar Homami, Nazanin Noori, Cinna Peyghami, and many other minds.
She contributed to a panel on musical expression, rage, and sound as healing for unheard voices. She also played a set relying heavily on music by Issa Al-Laith's Zawamel genre sung mostly to cultivate a fighting spirit amongst Yemenis.
