LIVE ARTS BARD 2019 BIENNIAL Where No Wall Remains حيث ﻻ جدار يبقى Donde No Queda Ningún Muro an international festival about borders NOVEMBER 21–24, 2019 About the Fisher Center at Bard Fisher Center at Bard The Fisher Center develops, produces, and presents performing arts across disciplines Chair Jeanne Donovan through new productions and context-rich programs that challenge and inspire. As President Leon Botstein a premier professional performing arts center and a hub for research and education, Executive Director Bob Bursey the Fisher Center supports artists, students, and audiences in the development and Artistic Director Gideon Lester examination of artistic ideas, offering perspectives from the past and present, as well present as visions of the future. The Fisher Center demonstrates Bard’s commitment to the performing arts as a cultural and educational necessity. Home is the Fisher Center LIVE ARTS BARD 2019 BIENNIAL for the Performing Arts, designed by Frank Gehry and located on the campus of Bard College in New York’s Hudson Valley. The Fisher Center offers outstanding programs Where No Wall to many communities, including the students and faculty of Bard College, and audi- Remains لحيث ﻻ جدار يبقى .ences in the Hudson Valley, New York City, across the country, and around the world Building on a 159-year history as a competitive and innovative undergraduate institu- Donde No tion, Bard is committed to enriching culture, public life, and democratic discourse by training tomorrow’s thought leaders. Queda Ningún Muro an international festival about borders Land Acknowledgment Statement Cocurated by Tania El Khoury and Gideon Lester In the spirit of truth and equity, it is with gratitude and humility that we acknowl- edge that we are gathered on the sacred homelands of the Muheaconneok or Thursday, November 21, through Sunday, November 24, 2019 Mohican people, who are the stewards of this land. Today, the community resides Fisher Center for the Performing Arts in Wisconsin, and is known as the Stockbridge-Munsee Mohican Nation. We honor Bard College Farm and pay our respects to their ancestors past, present, and future, and recognize Murray’s Tivoli their continuing presence in their homelands as well as in Mohican communities worldwide. We understand that our acknowledgment requires those of us who are Exhibition Hours settlers to accept our own responsibilities toward addressing inequity, and that this November 21 from 6–9 pm ongoing and challenging work requires our meaningful and continuous engagement November 22 from 6–9:30 pm with the Mohican community. November 23 from 1–9:30 pm November 24 from 1–8 pm Works by Where No Wall Remains is supported by grants from the Ford Foundation; Open Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme with Tashweesh Society Foundations; Arab Fund for Arts and Culture; Thendara Foundation; John D. and Mirna Bamieh/Palestine Hosting Society Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation; Consortium on Forced Migration, Displacement, Ali Chahrour and Education; The Vilcek Foundation; and the Institute of International Education. Rudi Goblen Live Arts Bard is made possible by generous support from members of the Live Arts Emily Jacir Bard Creative Council and Advisory Board of the Fisher Center at Bard Tania El Khoury Jason De León Emilio Rojas Curatorial Fellows Sukanya Baskar CCS ’20, Thea Spittle CCS ’19, and Triston Tolentino ’18 Festival Producers Caleb Hammons and Cathy Teixeira CURATORS’ NOTE systems of oppression; Night brings the audience to the most intimate site of alien- ation, the human body, reminding us that love stories are also about borders and how we transcend them. The entire program reflects the urgency of our political climate, not by merely advancing critique but by also producing knowledge. Works They say there is a window from one heart to another. such as Hostile Terrain 94 (HT94); Menu of Dis/appearance; m(Other)s: Hudson How can there be a window where no wall remains? Valley; and At those terrifying frontiers where the existence and disappearance of —Rumi, from Thief of Sleep people fade into each other (part 2) engage dispossessed bodies, erased cultures, and forgotten artifacts. Naturalized Borders (to Gloria) redraws the U.S.-Mexico border as an imagined line by communities who have historically asserted the inter- Where No Wall Remains is the third edition of the Live Arts Bard (LAB) Biennial, a section between labor rights, land sovereignty, and migration. We are reminded of festival of commissioned works that temporarily reconfigures the Fisher Center as a the everyday price many people pay for borders: the marginalization of indigenous site for innovative and interactive performances and installations. The first edition, communities, the uncounted and unrecorded deaths at border zones, and the era- The House Is Open (2014), explored the relationship between visual and performing sure of entire lifeworlds. The festival’s cover image, Samar Hazboun’s photograph arts; the second, We’re Watching (2017), examined contemporary states of surveil- of the wall in her town of Bethlehem, represents a global community of artists who lance. We started planning the third edition in January 2017, in the week that the refuse to be imprisoned by racism or cement. Trump administration’s “Muslim ban” came into effect, accompanied by increasingly xenophobic rhetoric and the specter of a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. It was The festival is the culmination of a two-year partnership with many Bard pro- inevitable that the current edition would focus on the subject of borders. grams (including Middle Eastern Studies, Latin American and Iberian Studies, Experimental Humanities, and the Human Rights Project), and has included under- November 2019, the month of the festival, marks the 30th anniversary of the fall graduate courses, public events, and artist residencies. We are talking with col- of the Berlin Wall. One of the most significant and celebrated events of the 20th leagues across the Bard network about future iterations of Where No Wall Remains century, at the time it seemed to promise a future of open borders and unifica- at Bard College Berlin, Al-Quds Bard, and in other cities dominated by the past, tion. Three decades later, the heady dreams of 1989 are very far from us; walls are present, or future political reality of border walls. being built, not torn down. The recent near-elimination of America’s immigration program, together with an increase of human rights violations on the Mexican bor- We acknowledge the vast body of work that came before this festival by artists and der, have made the festival’s subject even more grimly present than we could have activists who are most affected by discriminatory border politics. We pay homage imagined in 2017. Current U.S. immigration policy has particularly affected people to them and hope to build on the ongoing discussion and mobilization on borders from the Middle East and Central America, and we therefore invited artists from with this timely and inspiring body of work. those regions to join us in creating the festival. —Tania El Khoury and Gideon Lester The title Where No Wall Remains, taken from a love poem by Rumi, invites us to imagine a utopian state of being—a fully unbordered world. The festival comprises nine new artistic works that engage with the notion of borders: political, physical, historical, and contemporary; borders seen and unseen; the borders of the body; bor- ders between art forms, performers, and spectators; borders that divide or define us; borders to be crossed, tested, resisted, destroyed, rebuilt, or transcended. Festival venues include the Fisher Center, Bard College Farm, and the nearby vil- lage of Tivoli, New York. The political potential of each work evokes many ideas and BIENNIAL BLOG representations of borders: letter to a friend, FITO, and Cultural Exchange Rate recenter the political debate around the personal, presenting autobiographical, Explore the themes and artists of Where No Wall Remains, including a festival syllabus, familial, and neighborhood accounts of border crossing and navigating broader interviews with the artists, digital resources, and more, by visiting nowall.bard.edu. 4 Where No Wall Remains fishercenter.bard.edu 5 Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday SCHEDULE AT A GLANCE November 21 November 22 November 23 November 24 Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme with Tashweesh 6–9 pm 6:30 pm 4:30 pm 2, 6:30 pm At those terrifying frontiers where the existence and exhibition hours performance performance performances disappearance of people fade into each other (part 2) Resnick Studio 6–9:30 pm 1–9:30 pm 1–8 pm Installation open during exhibition hours exhibition hours exhibition hours exhibition hours Mirna Bamieh / Palestine Hosting Society 7:30 pm 7:30 pm 7:30 pm Menu of Dis/appearance performance performance performance Murray’s Tivoli Ali Chahrour 7:30 pm 3 pm 4 pm Night performance performance performance LUMA Theater Rudi Goblen 9 pm 7:30 pm FITO performance performance Sosnoff Stage Right Emily Jacir 6–9 pm 6–9:30 pm 1–9:30 pm 1–8 pm Letter to a Friend exhibition hours exhibition hours exhibition hours exhibition hours Sosnoff Stage Left Installation open during exhibition hours Tania El Khoury 6, 7, 8 pm 6, 7, 8 pm 1:30, 2:30, 3:30, 4:30, 1, 2, 3, 5:30, 6:30 pm Cultural Exchange Rate performances performances 7, 8 pm performances Sosnoff Backstage performances Jason De León 6–9 pm 6–9:30 pm 1–9:30 pm 1–8 pm Hostile Terrain 94 (HT94) exhibition hours exhibition hours exhibition hours