Politics Through the Looking Glass

How political is the first-person narrative? In the Arab world, authors have recently increasingly used their personal experiences as the starting point for their writing and filming. The self merges with the voice of collective consciousness. In view of this new "inwardness," the relationship between the real and the fictional must be rethought: What does the turn to the personal mean against the background of the current changes in the Arab world? Does it stand for distancing oneself from the political? Or, on the contrary, does it show its reconfiguration after deceptions and defeats in the aftermath of the Arab revolutions? In panels, film screenings, project presentations and performances, authors, filmmakers, critics and academics discuss the potential of the self as a renewal of the political.

With the novelists Suhaib Ayoub, Raji Bathish, Mazen Maarouf, Sahar Mandour, the artists Monira Al Qadiri, Zineb Benjelloun, Fayrouz Karawya, Abdo Shanan, the filmmakers Lina Alabed, Abdellah Taïa, Maya Shurbaji and others

Conceived with the Arab Fund for Arts and Culture (AFAC), in association with Europe in the Middle East – the Middle East in Europe (EUME), curated by Rasha Salti and Khaled Saghieh