In Between the Verses Winging from Hill to Hill, All Was Utterly Silent is a collective research project by Nour Bishouty and Adrian Schindler that centers on unofficial and peripheral modes of publishing and dissemination as forms of resilience and preservation within cultural narratives overwritten by dispossession and displacement. Focused on the biographical—particularly the lives of Palestinian intellectual Najati Sidqi and Nour’s grandfather, Habib Bishouty—the project explores languages of resistance and forms of collective mourning expressed through texts, songs, and personal letters that exist outside traditional literary frameworks. For the duration of the project, The Lab at Darat al Funun will assume the character of a postal office, inviting participants to engage in acts of writing, reading, announcing, addressing, and publishing.
A reading-writing group will gather over three consecutive days—between the 21st and 23rd of November (4-7 PM) —at Darat al Funun and other historical sites, to discuss selected texts and participate in collaborative writing exercises. The group is open to participants whose current work, practice, or research intersects with the themes of the project and who are interested in reading, writing, and historical research. Professional expertise is not required.
The sessions will be conducted in both Arabic and English.
Nour Bishouty is a Palestinian-Lebanese artist currently based in Toronto. Her practice draws on familial narratives and personal histories as forms of counter-archives, reflecting critically on the standard use of archives in the production of knowledge. Her work looks to other modes of historical narration and maintaining custodianship of the past that go beyond eurocentric notions of preservation. Bishouty’s work has been exhibited internationally including Nuit Blanche (Toronto), Art Jameel (Jeddah), La biennale de Québec (Québec City), GTA21 Triennial, the Museum of Contemporary Art (Toronto), Cooper Cole (Toronto), Darat Al Funun (Amman), Casa Árabe (Madrid), Mosaic Rooms (London), and the Beirut Art Centre. She received her MFA from University of Massachusetts, her BFA from University of Jordan, and was a participant at HomeWorkspace Program, Ashkal Alwan (Beirut). Her artist book “1—130: Selected works Ghassan Bishouty b. 1941 Safad, Palestine — d. 2004 Amman, Jordan,” (2020) was co-published by Art Metropole and Motto Books.
Adrian Schindler is a French-German artist currently based in Tangier. He has been examining European fascist and colonial legacies through biographical prisms for the past ten years, mainly focusing on Third Reich Germany and the Spanish protectorate in Morocco. Drawing upon decolonial theory and critical whiteness, he seeks to develop an ethic of collaborative work methodologies. He approaches historical documents as performative tools to address how the past makes itself present in current power relations. His work has been presented in MACBA (Barcelona), La Casa Encendida (Madrid), Collection Lambert (Avignon), FID (Marseille), Centre d’art Le Lait (Albi), The Green Parrot (Barcelona), Casa Árabe (Madrid), The Institute for Endotic Research (Berlin), and Art Explora Festival (Tangier). He holds a MA from UdK Berlin, a MFA from Beaux-Arts de Paris and studied performance at Columbia College and the School of the Art Institute, Chicago.
Nour Bishouty and Adrian Schindler first presented this collective project in conversation with curator Maite Borjabad during the panel “Reframing Palestine: Archival Disruptions and New Imaginaries” at the Summer Institute 2024, part of the Graduate Program in Cinema & Media Studies/Film at York University, Toronto.