What does it mean to exist as an image, as something seen but never comprehended? What happens when a language is visible yet continually misread, or made illegible?
Arabic Letter Seen س, Arabic Letter Wow و is a lecture-performance that investigates the relationships between image, language, and power. Weaving together a collection of found materials with her own writing, Urok Shirhan speculates on a recurrent phenomenon that tends to engage with the Arabic language through forms of ‘Othering’. She explores the extent to which these practices amount to what she calls ‘the slow violence of images’.
A previous iteration of Arabic Letter Seen س Arabic Letter Wow و was presented at the Mosaic Rooms in London in 2021.
photo by Monika Karczmarczyk
Free admission
Language: English
Duration: 45 minutes
Doors open at 7:00 PM. Performance starts at 07:30 PM.
Urok Shirhan (NL/Iraq) is an artist and researcher working at the intersection of performance, visual arts and critical theory. Her practice explores the politics and poetics of sound, image and language in relation to power and affect.
