Masahat, KORO – Public Art Norway and Kunstnernes Hus welcome you to one-day seminar at Kunstnernes Hus on the theme of protest. The program includes lectures, panel discussions, films and performances featuring both Norwegian and international artists, all of whom are concerned in different ways with building a solidarity movement. Many of them have connections to Palestine and Lebanon.

Wednesday, March 19th 2025 – Kunstnernes Hus – Free entrance

Program

10:00 – 10:15 | Registration – coffee and light refreshments

10:15 – 10:25 | Opening by Øystein Strand, KORO Director

10:25 – 10:30 | Welcome remarks by Rana Issa and Truls Ramberg

10:30 – 11:30 | Keynote Lecture by Helga Tawil-Souri

11:30 – 11:45 | Break

11:45 – 13:15 | Artist talk panel on practice, artistic freedom, art, institutions, and critique. Participants: Helle Siljeholm, Mira Adoumier, Mia Habib, Jumana Manna. Moderator: Sarah Lookofsky

13:15 – 14:10 | Light lunch

14:10 – 15:15 | Panel discussion on art and space. Art can change meaning in different spaces, but it can also transform public space. What spaces exist for art to influence public spaces? Participants: Khalid Albaih, Ayman Azrak, Rana Issa. Moderator: Nikhil Vettukattil

15:15 – 15:30 | Break

15:30 – 17:00 | Panel discussion on art and social movements. Art has historically played a significant role in social movements. This discussion will explore these connections through an art historical perspective. Participants: Noor Abed, Dora Garcia, Sami Khatib. Moderator: Bojana Cvejic

18:00 – 19:00 | Short Film Program

19:15 – 20:15 | Listening performance: Nothing Will Remain other than the Thorn Lodged in the Throat of this World by Noor Abed and Haig Aivazian

Panels and performances

Artist talk panel

How is artistic freedom defined in practice concerning art, institutions, and the ability of artists to safely criticize power structures and art institutions? Artists today face increasing censorship. Art is considered dangerous by powerful institutions, leading to artists being canceled and contracts annulled. How do artists perceive their relationship with institutions and the public attacks on artists happening in many places? Should art remain steadfast in its role of social critique, and how can artistic expressions be shaped in response to societal challenges such as democracy and the precarious working conditions typical for artists and cultural workers?

Art and space

How can art challenge our awareness of space? What constitutes public space? Who remains unseen in public space, and how can art help defend an open, equal, and sustainable society? How does art challenge dominance, disrupt perception, and create room for alternative political imagination and possibilities?

Art and social movements

Throughout history, art has played a significant role in social movements. In many liberation struggles and recent decades of global protests, artists have worked closely with activists and militias to communicate political messages. This discussion will specifically explore these connections in relation to contemporary authoritarianism, imperial and colonial wars, and social and political protests.

Film program

This short film program presents protest as an impetus and intention for art. Curating films that combine a strong criticality towards hegemonic violence that threatens both people and earth, the films are selected for the complexities of their oppositional arch of expression that combines the political and the intimate, the collective struggle and collective grief, with strong articulations of the values and the causes artists are fighting for. The program goes as follows:

Two films produced by Masahat in collaboration with KORO in 2024 on the genocide:
1. Angle of Incidence (4 mins) by Mira Adoumier
2. Algorithms of Suffocation (7:31 mins) by Islam Shabana
Short film on the memory of Refaat al-Areer (3 mins) by Jumana Manna.
Two short films by Haig Aivazian (10 mins) You May Own the Lanterns but We Have the Light قد تملكون القناديل، لكن الضوء لنا
1. Episode 1: Home Alone
2. Episode 2: Eyeshadow Dark as Night
A Night We Held Between (30 mins) by Noor Abed

Nothing Will Remain other than the Thorn Lodged in the Throat of this World

“Don’t be sad. No one will manage to get rid of us. Palestine is a fish bone lodged in the world’s throat. No one will manage to swallow it. Don’t worry.”

– From Wadih Sanbar’s last words to his son, Palestinian historian and poet Elias Sanbar.

Haig Aivazian and Noor Abed enact a score composed of sound, text, and movement. Through a series of guttural sounds, gasps, coughs, hums, hisses the pair organise the central themes of the text through various parts of their noses, mouths, larynxes, tracheae and lungs, each organ embodying and introducing a series of affective and textual registers.

In a recent correspondence spanning several months, the pair exchanged reflections, quotidian anecdotes, readings, poems, recordings of songs and recitations. The performance acts as an active labour of selecting, remembering, re-enacting, restructuring, reassessing, and reassembling elements from the correspondence, as a way to grapple with a heightened historical moment characterised by a peak in the constant hum of genocidal violence that has structured the artists’ respective trajectories. Periodically prompting spectators to join in the sonic experience, the pair attempt to create a space of synchrony and action, where the audience becomes a resonance chamber traveled by vibration and transformed into a disparate choir.

Guest artists bios

Noor Abed (b.1988, Jerusalem)

Noor Abed is an interdisciplinary artist and filmmaker. Her practice examines notions of choreography and the imaginary relationship of individuals, creating situations where social possibilities are both rehearsed and performed. In 2020, she co-founded, with Lara Khaldi, the “School of Intrusions,” an educational platform in Ramallah, Palestine.

Mira Adoumier (b.1985, New York)

Mira Adoumier is an Oslo-based Lebanese/French filmmaker. Through her work with fictional short films and film essays, she explores characters living at the margins of in-between worlds, while also experimenting with the formal aspects of the image. Her first feature film, ERRANS, premiered at CPH:DOX 2020 in the next:wave competition. She is part of the Camelia Committee (انا في الكاميليا), a collective exploring hybrid forms of writing for and in cinema.

Ayman al Azraq

Ayman al Azraq is a filmmaker, photographer, and mixed-media artist. His short film The Passport has been screened at venues including the National Museum of Cinema in Turin and the Cologne International VideoArt Festival. His film Oslo Syndrome was shown at the Autumn Exhibition in Oslo, Dubai International Film Festival, and London Palestinian Film Festival. His documentary Into My Lungs examines working conditions in Bangladesh’s textile industry. His installation The Lost Tapes of a People’s Tribunal 1982 was exhibited at Fotogalleriet in Oslo (2023/2024).

Haig Aivazian

Haig Aivazian is an artist living in Beirut. Working across media, he investigates how power moves through people, objects, animals, landscapes, and architecture. From 2020–2022, he was Artistic Director of Beirut Art Center and founding editor of thederivative.org.

Khalid Albaih

Khalid Albaih is a Sudanese award-winning artist, political cartoonist, and cultural producer based between Doha and Oslo. He is the author of KHARTOON! and Sudan Retold and founder of multiple platforms including getfadaa.com, Sudan Artist Fund, and Khartoonmag.com.

Bojana Cvejic

Bojana Cvejic is an Oslo-based dramaturg and researcher whose work interweaves performance and critical theory. She has been active in self-organized platforms such as Performing Arts Forum in France and teaches Dance Theory at KHiO.

Ingri Midgard Fiksdal

Ingri Midgard Fiksdal is a choreographer based in Oslo. She holds a PhD in artistic research from the Oslo National Academy of the Arts. Her work explores affect, perspective, and the entanglement of theory and practice.

Dora García

Dora García is an artist, teacher, and researcher based in Oslo. Her work uses research into literature and the subconscious to create performances, films, and installations that engage audiences in introspective experiences.

Mia Habib

Mia Habib is an Oslo-based dancer, performer, and choreographer working across performance, exhibitions, and publications. Her work critically engages with body, identity, and society.

Rana Issa

Rana Issa is the artistic director of Masahat in Oslo. She is a curator, writer, and translator focusing on Arabic cultural history and contemporary art. She is the author of The Modern Arabic Bible (2023) and Tung tids tale (2025).

Sami Khatib

Sami Khatib works across aesthetic, critical, and media theory with a focus on Walter Benjamin. His research spans continental philosophy, Marxism, and post-structuralism.

Sara Lookofsky

Sara Lookofsky is Director of Kunstnernes Hus in Oslo and a curator and writer. She previously held roles at MoMA and the Whitney Museum and has worked extensively in international contemporary art contexts.

Jumana Manna

Jumana Manna is a visual artist and filmmaker exploring power, land, and materiality in relation to colonial histories. She works across sculpture, film, and writing, and is based in Berlin.

Helle Siljeholm

Helle Siljeholm is a choreographer and visual artist based in Oslo. Her work spans film, installation, sculpture, and performance.

Islam Shabana

Islam Shabana’s work explores intersections between technology, Islamic philosophy, and mythology through speculative and poetic forms.

Helga Tawil-Souri

Helga Tawil-Souri researches technology, media, and politics in the Middle East, focusing on Palestine. She has published widely and works across academic and visual practices.

Nikhil Vettukattil (b.1990, Bengaluru)

Nikhil Vettukattil is an artist and writer based in Oslo. His work spans sound, installation, performance, and text, exploring representation and lived experience.