TWENTY YEARS AFTER THE INVASION OF IRAQ: SADA IN CONTEXT
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Join us at e-flux Screening Room on Thursday, March 16 at 7pm for “Twenty Years After the Invasion of Iraq: Sada in Context,” an evening with Rijin Sahakian. Curated and introduced by Ali Hussein Al-Adawy, the evening will feature a screening of Sada [regroup] (2022), and a discussion with Sahakian and Dina Ramadan.
The program is co-presented with ArteEast and the e-flux Screening Room, and co-sponsored by the Center for Human Rights and the Arts at Bard College – CHRA.
Image Credit: Sajjad Abbas, Ali Eyal, Sarah Munaf, Rijin Sahakian, Bassim Al Shaker, Sada [regroup] (still), 2022.
Sada [regroup], 2022, 54 minutes
In Arabic with English subtitles, and English with Arabic subtitles.
From 2011-2015, Sada, an online and in person ad hoc art school, was set up in Baghdad to support artists working through the aftermath of US-led invasion and occupation. Nearly a decade later, former artists of Sada came together again, reflecting on their creative and disparate lives since that time. Artists Sajjad Abbas, Bassim Al Shaker, Ali Eyal, Sarah Munaf, and Sada’s founder Rijin Sahakian each created video works, comprising one experimental, interconnected anthology film on individual and collective art practice in a protracted era of international warfare.
Commissioned by documenta fifteen.
For more information, contact program@e-flux.com.
Biographies
Rijin Sahakian has used writing, teaching, and art-making to examine critically the relationship of contemporary art and culture to the coalition wars in Iraq. She founded Sada, a virtual and physically convened arts education initiative in Baghdad, running from 2010-15. Sahakian curated Iraq: Reframe at the Montalvo Arts Center, Sajjad Abbas and Laith K. Daer: City Limits at VCU Qatar, and Shangri La: Imagined Cities at the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs. She has taught at the California Institute of the Arts, and published in Warscapes, e-flux journal, n+1, Hyperallergic, Camera Austria, The Derivative (Beirut Art Center), and Artforum. Most recently, Sahakian created an anthology film with former members of Sada for documenta fifteen.
Dina Ramadan is Continuing Associate Professor of Human Rights and Middle Eastern Studies at Bard College and Faculty at the Center for Curatorial Studies.
Ali Hussein Al-Adawy is a curator, researcher, editor, writer, and critic of moving images, urban artistic practices, and cultural history. He curated a number of film programs and seminars such as Labor Images (ongoing since 2019), Serge Daney: A Homage and Retrospective (2017) and Harun Farocki: Dialectics of Images…Images That Cover/Uncover Other Images(2018); and exhibitions and public programs such as, together with Paul Cata, the exhibition The Art of Getting Lost in Cities: Barcelona and Alexandria (2017) and the seminar “Benjamin and the City” (2015). He was one of the founders of Tripod, an online magazine for film and moving-image critique (2015-2017) and was part of the editorial team of TarAlbahr, an online platform and a publication for urban and art practices in Alexandria (2015-2018).
Accessibility
–Two flights of stairs lead up to the building’s front entrance at 172 Classon Avenue.
–For elevator access, please RSVP to program@e-flux.com. The building has a freight elevator which leads into the e-flux office space. Entrance to the elevator is nearest to 180 Classon Ave (a garage door). We have a ramp for the steps within the space.
–e-flux has an ADA-compliant bathroom. There are no steps between the Screening Room and this bathroom.
