Basma al-Sharif
Basma al-Sharif (b. 1983) is a Palestinian artist working in cinema and installation. She developed her practice nomadically between the Middle East, Europe, and North America and is currently based in Berlin. Her practice looks at cyclical political conflicts and confronts the legacy of colonialism through satirical, immersive, and lyrical works. In 2024 al-Sharif was nominated for the AWARE Nouveau Regard Prize. Al-Sharif’s major exhibitions include: the 5th edition of Kochi-Muziris Biennale, the Ruttenberg Contemporary Photography Series for the Museum of the Art Institute of Chicago, Modern Mondays at MOMA, CCA Glasgow, the Whitney Biennial, Here and Elsewhere at the New Museum, Berlin Documentary Forum, and Manifesta 8. (Statement from Imane Farès)
Basma suggested we meet at Hansaviertel, an urban planning project executed in the late 1950s called Interbau that rebuilt the West Berlin neighborhood which had been destroyed after the Second World War. An epitome of post-war modernist architecture, one of the buildings was Basma’s first home in Berlin. We walked around these buildings and into Tiergarten, shooting double exposures on a film camera.
Artist’s Website
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Basma suggested we meet at Hansaviertel, an urban planning project executed in the late 1950s called Interbau that rebuilt the West Berlin neighborhood which had been destroyed after the Second World War. An epitome of post-war modernist architecture, one of the buildings was Basma’s first home in Berlin. We walked around these buildings and into Tiergarten, shooting double exposures on a film camera.
Artist’s Website
Basma: I went to study art in September 2001, which says a little something. I started university in Chicago at UIC and three weeks in, September 11th happens. So that's a big thing that helped shape what I was doing. I did an undergrad and a grad degree at UIC and I kind of knew that I was going to go into art because as a Palestinian, I wanted to try not on the ground activism, but to do something from the cultural sector. So I went into photography, but it's an interdisciplinary program. And so we sort of did everything and, actually, relevantly, the program is modeled after the Bauhaus because a lot of the people who fled Germany during World War II came to Chicago and this program is modeled after that. So very interdisciplinary. And so I kind of did everything and got into film and video in that way. And so by 2007 when I graduated, I realized I didn't want to stay in the States, because basically my whole university period was September 11th, the Iraq war was really destabilizing for me to be in the states, witnessing this false narrative get propagated and watching people being indiscriminately bombed as a result. And so I thought, “Okay, I'm going to leave” and then for the next 15 years, I was basically moving every two, three years between the US, Europe and the Middle East. And developing my practice nomadically and sort of understanding more and more the politics of what I was doing.
Maitreya: We wanted to at this point, kind of open it up to you because the whole point of our project is that we want to give our interview subjects authority and choice over what they talk about. If there's anything that's been on your mind that you immediately want to start talking about or questions you don't typically get asked in an interview context that you wish you were, we want to give you that space right off the bat.
BA: Well, it's funny because as I was coming over here, I was thinking, “Why did I pick this zone?” Because when you asked me to pick a place in Berlin–I still don't feel connected to Berlin at all. And I don't actually feel connected to any city. I feel connected as a Palestinian to our struggle and to Gaza. I grew up going there well into adulthood. So what's happening now is really tragic for me and very personal. And at the same time, being in Germany is really a mess. Because we're really facing a hostile country right now. And I was thinking about when you asked where to go, I thought, well, let's go here because the architecture is really present. It's a modernist project that came after World War II to reconstruct Berlin. And a lot of those projects were about idealized residents and the future and modernity and sort of erasing the past. When I first came to Berlin from Cairo, I had a kid. He was a year. I came here with my partner because he's half German and our kid's German. It was kind of the only place we could come. So I didn't really pick Germany, none of us picked being in Germany. My partner didn't live here ever. We never thought about living here, but in COVID it was like the only place we could go. We will eventually walk back over to the building where we stayed. But it was super strange staying in one of these buildings and also feeling very foreign. I felt like people always looked at us strange, or there was this one time that a friend of ours came to visit who’s much more Arab looking, let's say, than me or my partner. And we sat on the lawn and were immediately told to leave even though we were renting the building. And so I was thinking about how it's so relevant now because this feeling of not belonging or being wanted has chased me my whole life. And as a Palestinian, that's our whole struggle. And so it's funny to have landed in this place that had this utopic vision for the future and for the idealized resident. And it just struck me on the way over here that it's like, who is the idealized resident in these people's minds? It's definitely not the immigrants. It's definitely not the foreigners or as they say here, the “Auslanders.” And I was thinking like, actually, that's the struggle I'm facing now is having to reassert myself in a place, a country I don't really like that's being very hostile, super racist. And that the story sort of began here where that was really apparent, almost like a foreshadow. Do you know what I mean? And it's something that's in a lot of my work. I focus a lot on architecture and domestic spaces and what do those things mean? How are they designed and what history or violence do they carry in them? And so I was thinking, wow, subconsciously, I think I picked this place because we had a very nice time staying here. It's beautiful. It's peaceful. We were here for just like four months in the summer. So it was the ideal landing place, especially from Cairo, which is very dusty, very noisy, super chaotic. But when I pass through here now, I just think about like, it's so strange that that was the place we landed, you know?
MR: Yeah, so being back here, is it triggering any kind of creative thoughts about what you want to make in this session?
BA: I was thinking we should shoot the architecture. I'm not sure how, I haven't thought about it much, but find a way to shoot the architecture where it's maybe bringing some of those ideas forward. I'm not sure how that would happen.
MR: We watched your film “Ouroboros” and noticed you do a lot of double exposure. And one thing that I noticed in particular was the clip with the two people playing ping pong. When they overlaid over each other, they became clearer individually. And so I thought I'd bring that up as maybe something that we could work with.
BA: I think I use a lot of those tricks over and over in my work, like the superimposition or fading it and slowly fading in and out from different images. I love the way it creates a new image. It's neither of the singular images. It's the thing together, which I think really references what we can do with image making or with making art; you're creating a new code. You're creating a new language every time you make something and it's really in how you bring things together. So it's one of the tropes I use repeatedly.
MR: I want to talk about how a lot of your work addresses themes of displacement, like you were just talking about, and not having one singular sense of home. You’ve lived in so many different places across multiple continents. How do you feel that these places have individually and collectively shaped your identity, both artistic and personal?
BA: To be honest, I think being Palestinian is the thing that shaped my identity most. I have very militant parents, let's say. I mean, they grew up in Palestine entirely and had me outside, but I went back a lot and I think it came naturally to them. My mother comes from a politicized family and my father is definitely engaged, so they passed that on. It's a kind of indoctrination that I think is important in our struggle because we're so fractured all over the globe and they were raising a child outside. So for them, it was also a bit like, yeah, they had to shape my identity. And I think the other places I've lived or all the places I've lived have only solidified my being Palestinian more because it's always been a volatile issue. You don't have an out from being Palestinian, you're always reminded that you're different or you're reminded that you're unwelcome or that people have an opinion on the conflict. It's a thing you can't escape. I think in each place, people have very different reactions. In terms of my art practice, it was a very strong thing that I didn't want to move to Palestine and base myself there as a Palestinian. Since graduating, it’s been more difficult since the siege on Gaza started and that's the only area I can go to. So I started making work from other cities and it was how I thought about the context of those cities informing the ideas that I had in the works when they were dealing with Palestine that shaped those projects. It's reinforcing the identity through the experience of other places. But I would say the thing that feels most solid is being Palestinian.
RF: We read your interview with “Berlin Art Link” and it talked about how collaboration is described as the lifeline of your work. So could you talk a little bit about your relationship with collaboration and what that's taught you within your practice?
BA: Yeah, it's not traditional collaboration where I'm working with another artist to make a project together, they're fully my projects and I sort of control them or manage them from the conception to the finish. But I would say they're really process based, meaning that the idea develops through the process of writing and casting and the involvement of different people in that process. And I really open myself up to that and tend to work, even with the technical positions, with other artists. So as performers, but also sometimes as director of photography (DOPs) or sound people, I feel way more at ease with a maker on the crew or as part of the process. I'm open to how they read the scene or an idea and the conversations that we have and how they respond and what they see in it that I don't. And really allowing that to change what we're making, what I'm making. It's ultimately my project, and I'm deciding from what they suggest or how they respond. But I feel like the projects wouldn't be what they are without those people and their influence. This is the building that we moved into our sublet for four months. So maybe we can start and shoot there. MR: You texted that you're hoping for the Berlin golden hour and the moment that we get here, the sun comes out.
BA: Can you do double exposure on this camera?
RF: Yeah.
BA: What if we did like I shoot an image we wind and then you shoot.
MR: Did you live on this side of the building?
BA: Yeah, on the fourth or fifth floor. It's been so long since I've shot on film. It's really funny.
MR: What inspired you to want to do that today?
BA: Well, I really like shooting on film. I've never shot digital still images, and I use photography in a lot of my work. And with film, like with the moving image, I do both. But I really like film photography a lot. I don't know, I don't have a great answer for it. It's very beautiful, there's something about how much time it takes, that you don't see the image immediately, and because you're capturing something still. It has a different weight and a different solidity. Like with the images I have on my phone, I'm always like, they count for nothing. I think people feel that. I don't know how old you are, but even if you don't remember the era of having a film camera and going and getting it developed, it's impossible to think of the digital image as material, and it's really terrifying. If you move around a lot, you lose stuff, you don't have archives, you don't store things in the same way, I don't have things from my childhood. I'm not sad about it, it's the way I exist, but I realize that in relation to imagery, it's so strange not having the physicality of these things anymore, that they don't exist in our culture anymore. I feel like it's a psychosis I have that I keep losing even my digital archives, or even my physical ones, like the negatives that I have from Palestine are missing. It's just like a psychosis, or I'm reproducing my own trauma. It makes me like shooting on film a lot more, and it's just more beautiful. I think no matter how good a digital camera you have, it just doesn't have the same quality, it's a whole different quality.
MR: Yeah, there's such a softness.
BA: And depth, and it feels material. And it's capturing light, I still really romanticize the idea that you're capturing light onto physical material.
MR: Do you feel like with your process, you typically go in knowing exactly what your intention is, or do you feel like it's more like this, where you have one idea and as you're going through, you're figuring it out?
BA: Yeah, definitely the second. I have a general set of ideas I'm exploring, but I can't imagine them visually yet, and I think the process of like, okay why do I want to work with these topics. Through writing it I'll be like, oh obviously I need to. I sometimes don't also know what form it's taking, whether it's a photography project, a writing project, a film. I work more in film than anything else, but also like is it installation or is it a single channel? I sort of let the ideas develop and then figure out what it is.
MR: The shadows are beautiful.
BA: These buildings are super beautiful. They're super drawn to modernist architecture, but actually they feel really inhuman. Not that they're harsh, they're beautiful, but there's something about them that's super oppressive. When we moved from here we moved into an old construction building, and it was like you can breathe again. Wood floors, cracks, things that are asymmetrical, like here it's so much about form, precision, and of course it's very beautiful, but does it make sense? The ceilings are low, the rooms are contained, you have this sense that you have this massive building and everyone has the same flat, it all feels really strange.
RF: You said when you first got here you didn't feel connected to the city, has that changed at all, or do you still…
BA: Connected to the city? No, I mean the politics is making it evident that we're not welcome and that we're not supposed to be here. What's happening is so violent and big and drawing a lot of awareness internationally, I think it's making me feel like, actually I do have a right everywhere, we all have a right everywhere. It’s important to assert that and make it clear that foreigners are welcome here, migrants make the city, and we have every right to have the same rights and not face violence. So it's actually giving me more purpose, and I don't feel like I'm never going to belong here, I think I belong in my communities. I know that we're building things here that are somehow integral, and so it's more than belonging to German culture, I don't think anyone really wants to belong to that. Oh, it looks like a snail without a home! Let’s take a picture of that.
RF: You talked about how, even though you're working with people, you feel mostly in charge of your projects, and so I guess it is collaboration in a way, but you have more authority than the other people working with you, so do you feel like collaboration empowers you, or do you have to quiet parts of yourself or change?
BA: Yeah, it's definitely a struggle when someone sort of doesn't get a scene or doesn't get an idea in the film, or in the project, and is asserting some other idea, and I'm not totally comfortable with it. My knee-jerk reaction is like, "They're wrong." And I have to try and convince them why they're wrong, and I do try, in a way, to stick to what it is that I imagine, but then I think ultimately I end up with something in between what was my idea and what's theirs, or how something should be performed, versus how they do it. It's an internal struggle, but I'm always grateful for the change. We should take this, actually, I think this is the Oscar Niemeyer [building].
MR: That's good. It's good to have that honesty with yourself, to know what isn't working, and to be able to know your boundaries as well within collaboration.
BA: Yeah, definitely. I think in production I won't really reveal what I'm trying to do, because that makes me very vulnerable. Like, if we're reading from this text, and it's a metaphor for this, and they'll just be like, I don't get it, it makes me lose confidence, but the reality is, like, no, I know what I'm doing. I know I'm bringing these things together, and I have to just find a way to get you to do it in a way that will work. Shall I take a photo of the corner?
MR: What did you say was the significance of it?
BA: Do you know Oscar Niemeyer, the Brazilian architect? He did a lot of art modernist architecture. I'm pretty sure this is his. Oh. I mean, I should know. We lived right next to him, I can't remember.
RF: Are people respectful of you shooting down their ideas?
BA: Yeah. I mean, I don't shoot them down. I think people doing more technical things will be less receptive, like sound or DOP, will be less receptive and more insistent that they know the better way and that's more difficult. But DOPs have suggested things that I'm so grateful they changed, because it would have been terrible otherwise. So I think it's ultimately finding people you're really comfortable working with. I've realized that there are people who have strong opinions, have strong visions for things, but don't know how to communicate that well. Technicians, I have to say, men often are, I don't want to generalize, but it's hard working with men in those [roles]. And that's been overwhelmingly my experience, but then when you find someone male or otherwise, who has a strong vision, but is really receptive to a back and forth, that's gold for me. And it's usually people who really like what they do, and they're happy to be part of a dialogue. Rather than just flexing their skill sets and asserting their opinions. That is special to me.
MR: In the making of your film “Ouroboros,” you remotely worked with a production team that was based in Gaza as you were not able to enter the territory at the time. This reminded us of the Tibetan American artist, Tenzin Phuntsog, who came to our school for a talk and screening of his films. For his film “Four Rivers,” he attempted to enter Tibet with his crew to film, but was refused entry. And similarly to you, had to remotely direct a crew to film his ancestral land. He described that experience to be emotionally frustrating. And we were curious, what was it like for you? What was it like to collaborate with others across a distance? And what was your emotional experience of that unchosen separation?
BA: It's so confusing, because I can go to Gaza. I've always been able to go. I have a Gaza ID. There were times when I couldn't go, just because the borders are more restrictive or there's violence in the Sinai or something, which is what kept me away for a long period. I actually could have gone to Gaza during the shooting of “Ouroboros,” but decided not to, because I was shooting a family home and I wanted this really topographical, very cold, distant, perspective to sort of mimic the military perspective on Gaza, but also to reference media images and how it's really dehumanizing and to try and subvert that with what I was doing. So I worked with a Palestinian production company who organized all those shoots and we did a shot list and communicated back and forth. It was interesting for me actually to be operating from afar on this place that means so much and is so intimate and inside the family home and this kind of thing. I actually enjoyed it, but I think it's maybe a different relationship than Tenzin had or has where I'm allowed and I can go and it's very familiar. And for me, it was almost having like a souped up version of Google Maps that I was playing around with and it was a very organic and beautiful process and it was fun to just think of streets to tell them to film and it was like I got to go without going because it's such a complicated process. And it was nice to have these conversations back and forth and have them, who are really living there and on the ground, shoot this meant a lot more to me than to be there and directing people and also just dipping in to grab my footage and leave wouldn't have felt good. I know it sounds worse, almost, to be far away and sort of dictate to the crew what to get but I think it was nice for them, like the director's not there. That was another thing, that is the weirdest collaboration in a way, because they would do things completely differently than I had asked. I'd be like, “Don't have the person speaking while walking through the house,” and she would be speaking the whole time. But then it worked in my favor for the film because there was something eerie about her doing this in reverse and gave her a more uncanny feeling and made her feel kind of like a ghost in that house. So for me it was a positive experience.
MR: Have you had moments where you wanted to enter to create something and you weren't able to?
BA: Yeah, I mean more to visit honestly. I never had a project that I wanted to make and then didn't go in, but I don't think I also would want to go just to make a project. Like for me that feels bad. A lot of my work is not about representing Palestine but trying to sort of represent the violence without showing violent imagery, or the history of violence, or the violent history of that place, and to have it be connected not only to the landscape but connected to the world and how it's not this isolated conflict. It's so intertwined with other sites and histories and peoples. I've never had a project planned and couldn't go in.
MR: As we're talking and collaborating and it's becoming more and more conversational, is there anything else that is on your mind or that you're thinking of that you want to talk about specifically?
BA: I'm trying to think of things related to this site actually more. This place is like a weird vacuum. The idea of having an idea for what a city should be or a neighborhood or reconstructing things after they've been destroyed, like what they did here post-war and how absurd that is. The planning of cities and imagining a population in a certain way, there’s something illogical about it. That even I avoid this square, not for emotional reasons whatsoever, but there’s just nothing here.
RF: You talked a lot about architecture and you shoot a lot of architecture. Is there a place, a city or specific neighborhood where you feel comforted by the architecture and connected to that architecture?
BA: I think Paris, that sounds very pretentious. I really dislike France. But I grew up in Brittany for the first eight years of my life and then I lived in Paris for two or three years as an adult and have this weird familiarity. We were deported from France. We weren't given visas to stay after my parents had started raising me here. I have this weird relationship where it feels nostalgic almost like I am French or I have a relationship to this place. Even though I've lost a lot of my French, I can get by pretty well. My parents aren't French, but I have this feeling whenever I go back, like no matter how many years I've been gone, if you just drop me in that city, I know it. I have a terrible sense of direction, but I feel like Paris is one of these cities where it doesn't matter and it's very small, it's very walkable, it's very human scale. Like in Berlin sometimes you walk one block and you're just like, "When will this end? Take me out of my misery." Paris has a sense like it was built for the human scale. It's very human somehow. Even the way that people sit really close to each other in cafes or restaurants. They really look at each other a lot more and I feel that has to do with the architecture. Someone was saying people live in such small apartments in Paris that they're often just out in the streets so that they can have a bit more breathing room, but they're very intense people also culturally, they're engaged with each other. I really am not romanticizing France at all and I hope that does not come across in the interview. It feels more organic and feels more natural walking in those streets or living in those apartments. They're small but they sort of make use of all the space but not in this modernist way, like everything has a place and an order it's more organic.
MR: You said that you focus on architecture a lot. So after hearing that, I'm curious, do you feel like you use architecture as a way to represent people? Do you have a metaphorical connection to architecture, or is it connected to emotion and association?
BA: I think different things in different projects. “Capital” has everything to do with architecture as development, like urban development and gentrification and dictatorship and rise in fascism, growing poverty. It’s very much about the idealized resident and what sort of morals those people are supposed to uphold, whether it's in Fascist Italy or today in Egypt or how we think about that, like developing new cities and what that means. In “Ouroboros,” it's way more the domestic space and the landscape and how you have people without homes. It mixes very different cultures, we have Native Americans, we're looking at Gaza where homes are being destroyed and then we're in a 13th century castle in Brittany and then a very traditional kind of hut in Italy. So it's looking at how they are a mirror of their cultures and histories and conflicts and characters and of themselves and referencing history a lot. So it takes on different things in different works I would say. I try to always look at it as this foreign thing, the concept of building and architecture, it's what houses us and it's one of the biggest conflicts. It's the thing that's ravaging cities and the world. Maybe a meme is not a great thing to reference in a conversation, but [there’s one that] said like, “I was asking my landlord why he raises the rent every year and he says because of the rise of cost of living” and the response is, “My brother in Christ, you are the cost of living.” It just feels absurd, that you're paying to live, to shelter, it's insane how expensive it is and how it's priced and the injustice of it. Look at what's happening here. It's like tripled rent in the last
MR: It's a crisis everywhere right now. I'm from New York and...
BA: Oh my God, that’s the worst. You must think this is crazy cheap here.
MR: Yeah, no we really do.
BA: Yeah, it's not that it's more expensive here, it's more that the jump is the biggest thing. It reveals a kind of greed that's so awful actually. There's the greed that people have in subletting their places and it's probably also very German, people subletting places and being like, “You can't smoke, you can't have a cat, you can't have house parties, you can't have guests, you shouldn't make noise,” and then you're charging a thousand for a room. What are you talking about? You can't live, you can't breathe basically. I don't know, it makes people weird.
MR: And the irony of as people, we have this epitome of a home and a home symbolizing family and love. And then that symbol is tied to this very physical structure that is also tied to greed.
BA: I think because it’s becoming so expensive, it brings out the worst in people. If it was cheaper, I think people would be more generous.
RF: We were learning about how in January the Berlin City Council passed a clause that basically silenced any artists who received government funding from engaging with any criticism of Israel and supported Palestine. How did that affect the creative community here? And if there's anything more personal you want to share about that…
BA: You know that this was already happening actually in Berlin in 2019, they passed a clause that said anyone who supported BDS, you know what that is? “Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions.” It's just a movement, it's not a political party, there's nothing violent about it, but it's a call to boycott Israeli products and collaboration with artists or academics or anyone in the cultural sector. Or businesses that take money from Israel, but it's just basically calling to boycott, divest and sanction it so that they feel pressure. In 2019 they put this resolution, it's a recommendation, but as Germans will do, they took it very seriously and so it really started this snowball effect of people being a bit wary of working with Palestinians or anyone who supports BDS. So it's not just people who support BDS because they have a letter you can sign to commit to BDS, to their actions, and it had this effect of cancelling Palestinians or people who are pro-Palestinian. I had no idea about this stuff before I came. I'd shown my work here a lot in big institutions like Berlinale, HKW and various things small and big here. So I was really shocked to realize Palestinians weren't welcome. It also has been escalating in the last 10 years, especially since 2019. When HKW reopened, Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung is the new director, Claudia Roth, the cultural minister, came to do a speech at the opening ceremony and basically reiterated that everyone is welcome. “This is a place for decolonial narrative and post-colonial artists and people challenging–” whatever, all the key words. Bonaventure is the first African curator or director of HKW. So it was a big thing. But she said, basically, “We draw the line at anyone who supports BDS,” and so that was big. A lot of controversy happened at Documenta, [in 2022] which shouldn't have played out that way, of accusations of anti-Semitism and people facing harassment and death threats and all this. So it really escalated before October and before the January [clause]. And I think for my community, which is not just Arabs, it's really diverse, it was a big smack in the face. Careers are really fragile now, my own as well. There's no way I can get funding, there's no way I'm going to have exhibitions here unless they're in alternative spaces. As an artist, you don't need to only survive on the place where you live. But a lot of the reason that people move to Berlin is for art funding and for support. And so it's been a big betrayal. I think it's been very evident that people are feeling threatened on the street or it's just become much more hostile. And visa statuses are also in question. And so it's a big thing here that we're talking about constantly, or that's very present, that a lot of artists are resisting, but it's also very frustrating that it's the most precarious artists and it's usually people of color or BIPOC that are risking everything. And the people in power with European passports are staying silent. That feels like a huge betrayal. A lot of these curators or programmers or people in the art world who were supportive before have disappeared or gone silent. It's a big upheaval. Even though I knew this was the terrain and everyone knew this was the terrain that was aware, I think we didn't realize just how aggressive it was going to be and how stupid they were going to be about it, because you can actually just let artists do what they want to do and keep having your foreign policy as you wish. So it's actually not very smart on their part because it's really creating a big backlash. The art world is not clean money and it's not clean politics at all. But now it's become much clearer, just how bad it is, just how complicit it is, which also means that it's created a community of people who are really supporting each other and really working together and have similar politics, and are really bonded because of this experience. It's one of the reasons I'm going to hang on and try to stay here because it feels important and it would actually make it very easy on them if we just left. That's what they would like. So resistance is key, just by staying here and saying, “Okay, we're not going to survive as artists, but we can still survive and we have every right to be here.” Have you been hearing a lot of things about this coming up or is it more like you're digging for…
MR: I found out about it because I was a studio assistant to an artist here last summer and I was having dinner with his family and they told me about it. But if I didn't talk to them… I haven't seen anything else about it.
BA: Yeah, it's really eerie actually. Every time I travel, people are like, “Oh my God, you're in Germany, I'm so sorry.” And they're informed, they kind of know what the terrain is, but then when we start talking and I start giving examples of things going on, they're like,” Oh my God, it's insane.” It's insane here, it's ridiculous. I don't know if you heard about the “Clappartheid” that happened at the Berlinale. There's a film made by an Israeli and Palestinian collective, [“No Other Land” by Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham, and Rachel Szor], they collaborated together, it's a very anti-Zionist film that's talking about the occupation. I haven't seen it but I've heard it's good. And they won an award. There was a lot of controversy at Berlinale where they were trying to silence pro-Palestinian activists and Palestinians and people saying ceasefire. When these guys won, they came up and gave a speech and Claudia Roth, the cultural minister, who was in the audience, clapped and then all these news outlets in Germany were criticizing her for clapping, saying, “Why are you supporting anti-Semitic filmmakers?” Which is ridiculous. And she said, “No, no, I only clapped for the Israeli filmmaker.” And so there was a slew of memes immediately, like come on, do we even have to make memes? It's a special case, Germany. When I've been in other cities in Europe specifically where people have a bit more freedom of speech, but their governments are complicit, selling arms, or having a little bit of censorship here and there, I think it feels harder because it feels less charged. Here, it feels like the frontline of the battle in Europe, like it's definitely the worst country and I think for me that makes it more worthwhile to stay and fight and resist and be an artist and keep producing even when they're making it so hard. And in another place where I might be more comfortable or something, I think it would be way more jarring actually, just to feel like I can keep surviving and living when my people are being slaughtered in front of me and this government is complicit. It wouldn't feel good. Here somehow I'm like, okay, we're in this battle and we're gonna fight it.
RF: You can make more of a difference and have a stronger voice.
MR: I don't know if this is a personal question, you don't have to answer, but you mentioned that you have a child and so I'm curious, what is your experience of raising a kid in this environment?
BA: If I'm really honest, terrifying. Terrifying. I had him in Cairo and my partner's half Egyptian, half German, but he lived his whole life in Egypt. So there was no plan to move to Germany. We were kind of aware that by the time he would have had to enter school that we would want to move, but we were like, we'll figure it out when the time comes where we'll go. And then COVID happened and we ended up here by mistake. And I was really, for the first year, waking up in a cold sweat, having ended up here because even as a lot of friends moved to Berlin after we graduated school or I know a lot of people who have moved here in the last 10 years, I never wanted to live here. I was happy to show, I was happy to come party when I was younger, but I never desired coming to live here. Also language, I never wanted to be in a place where I don't speak the language. And I speak three, so I felt like that gives me access. But I don't speak German and I'm not good at languages. So I didn't want to have to learn. And also politically, I was aware like, okay, this is not great. My son was a year old when we moved here and now he's five. Now he speaks fluent German. I don't speak a word of German. I've started to feel like, yeah, it's very violent. It's really heartbreaking actually being here. I'm terrified of him starting school. I'm really afraid of the indoctrination and the racism he could face that I faced as a kid and it's more like political racism, I would say. I'm reproducing my childhood, which is really sad. And if we move, I'm still reproducing my childhood, upheaving a kid and having to learn a new language. It wasn't easy. It was really difficult for me. It's something that I'm constantly questioning even when I have waves of feeling more empowered and better about it. I have a lot of really good friends, a lot of Arabic speaking friends like Lebanese, Egyptian, and Syrian. And there are also people from Yemen here, Arabic is a very widely spoken language and there are a lot of Arabs here. And so actually I don't feel alone and I know that other friends who have kids are terrified by how punitive–and it's not even just politically, it's culturally, it's such a punitive, rule driven culture. Like have you noticed how people cross the street here? It's psycho. And I find it hard to find redeeming things here. There are definitely redeeming things, but I think because it's such a harsh culture and it's such a harsh environment, I'm like, what are we doing here? Why would we stay? This is ridiculous and it's heartbreaking because my kid, all kids, they're so sensitive and their hearts are so open and they're so curious and adaptable and beautiful. And then you see them in this culture. My friend's kid was called a terrorist the other day because he biked out into the sidewalk and she was walking. He didn't hit her. He's a six year old kid and she said, “He's not a child. He's a terrorist.” So that's how people choose to behave. So yeah, I'm terrified. I'm terrified, but I'm going to see, we'll stick at least another three years if it doesn't get more violent. And I think one of the big things to do, this has been in the back of my mind as something to start working on next year, is to open a space because I think we need a space that brings us together. And not just Arabs, but all the people who I think feel marginalized now in this city, which is a lot of people, where we can meet or we can show work, especially because there's a lot of places we can't show in anymore. Maybe it's a business also, maybe it's a restaurant, maybe it offers classes like workshops. We were saying that there's a thing, like how to deal with aggressivity in Germany and how to respond when people are not just racist. Like when you get yelled at and there's absolutely no reason for you to be yelled at. And when you get yelled at, it's also a common experience in Germany or in Berlin, like what to do. It's really beautiful actually to hear how people deal with these situations. I was like, there should be a German self-defense class for adults and beginners, how to respond, what to say. Or when people ask you why you don't speak German, what you can say, because it's amazing. We've all developed these ways to deal with those situations that don't ruin our day. They're so different and they're so useful and we pick up from each other. Maybe it should be a thing that we teach and maybe it can be also genuinely fun, like dance classes or whatever. It just needs to be a center for people who feel excluded and don't want to integrate into this culture.
MR: Amazing. I hope you're able to do that.
BA: Yeah, now I wake up in a cold sweat being like, are you stupid? This will never work. They'll break the windows on this place and forbid you. They’ll kick you out as soon as they know that you're doing this. But it's worth a try because there's a need.
MR: Do you have examples of moments recently, like of what you were talking about, of feeling like your community has gotten closer and stronger, sweet anecdotes that have been fulfilling?
BA: Actually, just yesterday a friend was saying that there's this thing in Black culture where, I think it's related to America, that Black people outside of America will sort of quietly acknowledge each other. Or if they're in a space that's more predominantly white, will sort of like say hi to each other. I think that's starting to happen here, where once you recognize that it's not actually about skin color now, it's also about political affiliation. It's like if people recognize that you’re Arab they will sort of nod or smile or reach out. This has been happening to me a lot with my kid because we speak in Arabic to each other. And so if someone hears us speaking, they'll interact with us and it feels very comforting, protective. Older Arab men really like kids. I think people don't realize that about our culture, but they're really crazy about children. And so they really interact with them and will give them candy or be more, I don't know, sweet. In the art world, it's been on the one hand devastating, but there was a Brazilian artist that was in a fellowship that I was in who, once all this stuff started happening, she was saying, “I'm finally for the first time in my life really surviving from my practice and my work and really feel more comfortable.” But when this happened, I think it was after HKW, after October. She was like, “Well, I guess it's back to day jobs now because obviously we can't engage with them anymore.” And she has nothing to do with Palestine. If she wanted to, she could keep continuing her work and she's finally getting success. And she was really precarious. It was really beautiful to hear that because I thought, you shouldn't destroy your career. And she was like, “What are you talking about? People are dying.” Telling me that was really heartening. I wasn't very close to her and I felt way closer to her because of that. It's little acknowledgments of solidarity that are really empowering and heartwarming. I hate that word, but I don't know what else to say. I think also in the beginning amongst Palestinians, maybe first and foremost, but maybe other Arabs or people in solidarity, the city just became hard to access. The first places were cultural spaces and then even nightclubs. On a very human basis, you can't go to an opening when people are dying or you shouldn't go to a club if people are dying. But then also because they betrayed us or started canceling people, then everything started to feel like, wait, we're just living in a city in our homes and the lack of social interactions is really hard. And so there was this immediate [shift to] just doing things in each other's homes, gathering and having food and hanging out, essentially, and just being around each other felt really incredible, [making] new friends, and that's incredible. An Irish artist who's also very politically active, not just in Palestine, but said, “For every friend we've lost we've made new ones,” and I think that's absolutely true… Why Berlin?
MR: We wanted to base this theme around identity and knowing that Berlin has this reputation of being a progressive queer-space, art capital. But then also knowing that politically and historically there is so much lack of freedom here too. It felt like a good tension to address within conversation.
BA: Makes sense.
RF: Have you noticed that tension or what's your perspective on that? Berlin having that reputation of being open minded, but there's so much current tension and controversy.
BA: Having come here before a lot on visits, especially when I lived in Paris, I would want to come to Berlin. It felt really big and open and people were really serious in their engagement. It felt way more progressive than France actually. And way more alive and exciting and rough. One of the things I do really like about this city is that class isn't such a huge thing. It almost feels not present or something you want to avoid like in France, it's just dripping with wealth and [one] always feels poor and I hated that and I really liked that about here. I like the political engagement even as a Palestinian. That was one and it's still one of the great things of having a kid here is that class is not present in the way that it is in a lot of Arab countries and other European countries. That always seemed really welcoming and the alliances between different activist groups seemed really present. The weird thing for me is when I moved here I had a one year old, which is a very demanding age. It was COVID so COVID was really the first couple of years here and then coming out of that things were really busy work wise, I feel like everyone kind of got manic, getting back to work and things opened up. It took me a lot longer to understand and I still don't get the art scene. I don't really feel like a part of it. This is all just to say I don't really feel like I'm an expert or like I'm really entrenched in it here, but I definitely felt like people were so willing to help and so accommodating. I had to change production on “Capital,” the film I was making. It was gonna be in Egypt and then suddenly when we moved here mid-development of that project, I realized I had to shoot it in Europe. I couldn’t go back to Cairo to shoot and everyone was like, “Okay I can recommend you a DOP, I can help you with location.” I hadn't experienced that in a city before, not LA, not Paris. The Middle East is generally also quite hard for resources, people are more helpful, but it's just a harder place to work, so I was really like “Oh, this is a great place to work and to be really functional and people are super collaborative and make you feel like things are possible.” I've noticed how fractured that has become and how sad that even different minority communities are at odds with each other because of Palestine, which is really devastating because it should seem really obvious that the intention is to separate us and make us weaker. Do you know that there's two Pride Fests? There's one that refuses to support Palestine and then there's the alternative pride that includes Palestine in it, which is really disappointing that that has to happen, especially in a city like Berlin, and especially with so many different foreigners, like why not just work together? Be stronger. But there's a lot of divisions. The “Anti-Deutsch” is a huge bummer. They're a liberal movement in Germany that is trying to learn from the Holocaust by being anti-German, but they're staunchly pro-Israel as a result. They're on the left and they're supposedly radical, but they're very Zionist and not Jewish most of them. And they're really terrible. I didn't know them before I moved here, even though I'd visited a lot. They create a lot of divisions within the cultural sector.
RF: Do you think Germany kind of silences their political views from external sources to uphold that image of a welcoming, accepting place? You were talking about how you didn't know about so many things before you came here and same with us. We didn't know about all of these political stances before we came here and had this image of Berlin and Germany as that accepting place.
BA: I don't know if they're doing it intentionally. My sense is they really think they're the center of the universe and everyone cares what's happening in Germany and I feel like that's not the case. It's an egocentric, ethnocentric perspective. I imagine people in power think that they are really operating from a moral position. I think even if it's supremacist and racist and all of that I think they don't see it. Certainly some people see it. There's a lot of Nazis everywhere, but I think because it's very contradictory, like there have been a lot of migrants in Germany, but they've been suppressed and treated badly, like the Turkish population and the Persian population, who were really integral to building the city. They really need foreign workers and have this whole cultural program of inviting foreign artists. I think they wanted to open their borders. Not just to migrants, but in the cultural sector, in order to create this Metropolitan cosmopolitan city in their mind, but they were really naive about what that would mean. You invite foreigners, foreigners will change your city and because of how they've always behaved, which is racist, they think that if you come here, then you become German, even though you'll never become German. You have to really speak the language and behave in a certain way and have the same traditions and you'll still be looked at as a foreigner. It's the typical colonial mindset and so it's almost like they didn't know what they were doing and they were operating from a very supremacist position and now the backlash is happening and they're a bit confused. They're doubling down harder, thinking that that's gonna work, and I think they're in for a big surprise. I did psychoanalysis here for like three years and I had a white German therapist who was incredible, really great, very aware. She kind of helped me understand all of that stuff because I would be like, “Why do they behave this way” or “Why do Germans say these things?” “Oh because we're racist.” She even said that when Germany opened its borders in 2015 for this big wave of Syrian immigrants, there were like a million Syrians who came here, she could basically for lack of a better word, see the shit hit the fan. She was like, “Germany does not know how to deal with foreign populations. This is a huge problem in the culture. It's an inflexible culture. It's very rigid, it's very xenophobic.” So it's even from her that I started to get validation for these things that I felt like I was being paranoid about, but actually were very true. In the first year that I was here, I was constantly being asked “Do you speak German?” or “Why don't you speak German?” You're just like, what are you talking about? You don't even know that I could be a tourist. Why are you asking me that? That this is the expectation, it feels very tinged with racism or superiority. I mean much more sinister things happen here. But even that this seemingly banal question is so violent actually, or is coming from a very violent place… That's one of my very positive experiences in Berlin, having this analyst help me decode and understand what was happening, or what I'm up against, and validating this sense of the xenophobia here above all. I'm so lucky I had her.
MR: As we're kind of approaching the end of our time, is there anything else that you want to bring up or talk about? Or anything that these conversations have made you reflect on?
BA: I've said a lot. A funny note to end on, but a friend of mine the other day was saying, sort of ironically, “If it keeps going like this in Germany it's gonna have a severe brain drain.” And I was like, “I don't think that Germans are gonna really leave here.” And she was actually like, “No, no, no, no the brain drain is gonna come from the foreigners.” I was thinking that’s such a beautiful analogy, that we're the ones who came here to try and make it better and to help this city sort of deal with its past, and not reconcile with it, because it's irreconcilable, but we were the fresh blood that did bring and are bringing and have been bringing good energy to this place. Not just Arabs, everyone who comes here. I had another friend who said, “They really want to get rid of bubble tea and pho?” That's basically what they're saying, like who doesn't want bubble tea? What is there if there's no bubble tea? All these anecdotes. People keep saying we make the city better. And we can help with this horrible trauma that happened here, and you're insisting that we don't. And so if you do, the brain drain will come from us. I agree. I think it's actually a very empowering way to look at it, like, you better make us feel welcome, because we can help you. I'm not sure that's gonna happen, but it's a good delusion to live under.
MR: We're so grateful, really, you're so eloquently spoken about such powerful, meaningful things, and really grateful that you were able to talk to us.
BA: Yeah, it's a really nice format I have to say. I was telling my friend yesterday that I was doing this and she was commenting on how great of a format it is because it's really an unnatural format sometimes to just speak like a talking head. It's nice to have it broken up by something else and more of an exchange.
- Ouroboros, film still, 2017 (photo courtesy
of the Artist and Imane Farès Galerie Paris) - Ouroboros, film still, 2017 (photo courtesy
of the Artist and Imane Farès Galerie Paris) - The story of milk and honey, 2011, exhibition view,
Nottingham Contemporary, 2017 (photo courtesy of Stuart Whipps) - The story of milk and honey, 2011, film still (photo courtesy of Imane Farès Galerie Paris)
- Capital, 2022, installation view (photo courtesy
of The Art Institute of Chicago) - Capital, 2022, films still (photo courtesy
of the Artist and Imane Farès Galerie Paris) - Border artwork our collaboration
- Four Rivers by Tenzin Phuntsog [film]
- No Other Land” by Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham, and Rachel Szor [documentary film]
- Oscar Niemeyer [architect]