Trigger

𝙎𝙤𝙣𝙞𝙘 𝙏𝙧𝙖𝙘𝙚𝙨: 𝘽𝙚𝙙𝙤𝙪𝙞𝙣 𝘼𝙨𝙨𝙚𝙢𝙗𝙡𝙮 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙎𝙤𝙪𝙣𝙙 𝘼𝙧𝙘𝙝𝙞𝙫𝙚𝙨 by Mo’min Swaitat is an ode to the author’s Palestinian Bedouin background, a people who preserve their identity through sound, and not material archives. Fond memories of the yarghul and a rediscovery of Tariq cassettes, where decades of Arab music have been collected, led to the birth of the Palestinian Sound Archive, a decolonial project focused on celebrating Palestinian music and their links to the country’s history. Despite the hostility facing their heritage, the people assemble. 𝗠𝗼’𝗺𝗶𝗻 𝗦𝘄𝗮𝗶𝘁𝗮𝘁 is a London-based Palestinian Bedouin actor, filmmaker, artist, and label owner. He trained at the Freedom Theatre in Jenin and the London Inter national School of Performing Arts (LISPA) in London and Berlin. In 2020, he founded the Majazz Project and the Palestinian Sound Archive after uncovering thousands of vintage tapes and records in Jenin. His work re issues and reanimates forgotten sounds— from Bedouin weddings to revolutionary music—combining storytelling, performance, and archival practice to preserve and celebrate Palestinian cultural heritage in contemporary art and sound. @majazzproject This essay is part of the archival section of Trigger #6: Assemblies, highlighting the diverse practices and contributions that shape the project’s evolving archive. This section turns to the archive and engages with the material traces of radical assemblies that reveal resistance as a continuum, persisting whether anyone is watching or not. Image: Artwork used for the latest Palestinian Sound Archive release (August 2025), a 1970s Bedouin field recording of my uncle Atef Swaitat and vocalist Abu Ali featuring original cas- sette artwork. Design by Hilal. Guest editor @taous_r_dahmani @fomuantwerp Revisited by editors @eline.adriaensen @heyitsabel

In a media landscape shaped by deepfakes, algorithmic image production, and growing distrust in representation, ideas of clarity and objectivity have taken on renewed cultural value. In her latest article for TRIGGER, writer, editor and curator Ilaria Sponda reflects on how the aesthetics of objectivity continues to shape the way images are read, trusted, and legitimised today. Through the notion of “symbolic capital,” the essay considers how visual clarity operates not only as a style, but also as a mechanism of authority within contemporary image culture and the post-truth condition. Image: Exhibition view of 'Typologien: Photography in 20th-century Germany' Curated by Susanne Pfeffer Photo: Roberto Marossi Courtesy Fondazione Prada Article online design by @anastasiamiseyko Read the full article via the link in bio. @ilariasponda @fomuantwerp @fondazioneprada @rem_mannheim @staatsgalerie.stuttgart @photobasel @photoespana_ @pinakothekdermoderne

𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝙎𝙥𝙚𝙘𝙩𝙖𝙘𝙡𝙚 𝙤𝙛 𝙋𝙤𝙬𝙚𝙧 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙂𝙝𝙤𝙨𝙩𝙨 𝙄𝙩 𝙇𝙚𝙖𝙫𝙚𝙨 𝘽𝙚𝙝𝙞𝙣𝙙 explores what is left behind from political violence through an examination of archival images of gatherings. A 1926 photo of an execution in Marjeh Square, Damascus is in the focus; the hanged man’s thoughts as the public witnesses. The square is not merely a place for gatherings, but becomes a site for (post)colonial power and discipline, where fear lives and breathes. Death is not where violence ends. Violence lives on in the memory of the people and haunts empty spaces. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗔𝗿𝗮𝗯 𝗜𝗺𝗮𝗴𝗲 𝗙𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 (𝗔𝗜𝗙) is a Beirut-based independent association dedicated to exploring photography and image practices across the Middle East, North Africa, and the Arab diaspora. With a collection of over 500,000 photographic objects built over two decades, the AIF fosters artistic creation, research, and archiving. Through critical and innovative approaches, it rethinks and activates images to reflect on complex social and political realities. The AIF welcomes artists, researchers, students, and the public to engage with its digital platform, physical space, and collaborative projects worldwide. @arabimagefoundation This essay is part of the archival section of Trigger #6: Assemblies, highlighting the diverse practices and contributions that shape the project’s evolving archive. This section turns to the archive and engages with the material traces of radical assemblies that reveal resistance as a continuum, persisting whether anyone is watching or not. Image: From the series Execution Squares. © Hrair Sarkissian Guest editor @taous_r_dahmani @fomuantwerp Revisited by editors @eline.adriaensen @heyitsabel

𝙏𝙧𝙖𝙘𝙚𝙨 𝙤𝙛 𝙏𝙤𝙜𝙚𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙧𝙣𝙚𝙨𝙨: 𝙊𝙣 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝘼𝙡𝙚𝙭𝙖𝙣𝙙𝙧𝙞𝙖 𝙎𝙘𝙝𝙤𝙤𝙡 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝘼𝙧𝙩 𝙤𝙛 𝙂𝙖𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙧𝙞𝙣𝙜 chronicles the complexity of research into Arab art history through fragmented archives, and recenters artists’ agency and lived realities, which have so often been neglected. Within Alexandria’s art scene as a hub of artistic collaboration, Seif Wanly’s painting The Wedding Announcement Dinner is highlighted. It depicts a celebration of the marriage between the painter and the artist Ehsan Mokhtar, whose contributions to the field have been severely underappreciated. Through artistic figures such as these, among many others, a picture emerges of a community that flourished on the act of sharing and close-knit connections; a testament to the radicality inherent to working together. 𝗡𝗮𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗲 𝗡𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗲𝗹 𝗗𝗶𝗻 is a writer, art historian, and curator whose work focuses on the arts and cultural production of the Arab world and wider region. Born in Cairo, Egypt, she currently lives in London. She holds master’s degrees in the history of art from The Courtauld and in arts management and cultural policy from Goldsmiths, University of London, and a bachelor’s in visual arts from the American University in Cairo. @nadinenour This essay is part of the archival section of Trigger #6: Assemblies, highlighting the diverse practices and contributions that shape the project’s evolving archive. This section turns to the archive and engages with the material traces of radical assemblies that reveal resistance as a continuum, persisting whether anyone is watching or not. Guest editor @taous_r_dahmani @fomuantwerp Revisited by editors @eline.adriaensen @heyitsabel

In 𝙋𝙞𝙚𝙧𝙘𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝘼𝙧𝙘𝙝𝙞𝙩𝙚𝙘𝙩𝙪𝙧𝙖𝙡 𝙁𝙧𝙖𝙢𝙚, Sara Sallam engages with colonial archival photography in Egypt, examining how images produced under British rule shaped what was seen, and what was erased. Through the archive of K. A. C. Creswell, Sara Sallam interrogates how architectural documentation often obscures the presence of Egyptians and the violence of the empire behind a focus on monuments and built form. By reworking and collaging archival fragments, the project recentres the bodies, voices, and lived realities that existed outside the frame, disrupting the colonial logic of visibility and preservation. 𝗦𝗮𝗿𝗮 𝗦𝗮𝗹𝗹𝗮𝗺 is a multidisciplinary artist who grew up in Egypt and now lives in the Netherlands. Her research-based practice includes photography, moving images, writing, voice narration, archival interventions, and book-making. She focuses on retelling contested histories through counter-narratives centred around empathy to decolonise her Egyptian heritage. @sarasallam This essay is part of the archival section of Trigger #6: Assemblies, highlighting the diverse practices and contributions that shape the project’s evolving archive. This section turns to the archive and engages with the material traces of radical assemblies that reveal resistance as a continuum, persisting whether anyone is watching or not. Image: Revolution, Not an Aqueduct, from the series Piercing the Architectural Frame, Sara Sallam, 2024. Courtesy of the artist. Developed during a Jameel Fellowship at the Victoria & Albert Museum. Guest editor @taous_r_dahmani @fomuantwerp Revisited by editors @eline.adriaensen @heyitsabel

𝘼𝙨𝙨𝙚𝙢𝙗𝙡𝙞𝙚𝙨 𝙤𝙛 𝙍𝙚𝙨𝙞𝙨𝙩𝙖𝙣𝙘𝙚, 𝙒𝙝𝙚𝙧𝙚 𝙈𝙚𝙢𝙤𝙧𝙮 𝙍𝙚𝙛𝙪𝙨𝙚𝙨 𝙩𝙤 𝘿𝙞𝙚 explores Kurdish archival memory as an evolving field shaped by struggle, collective identity, and political becoming. Drawing on personal family archives and the Kurdish liberation movement Êvar Huseynî reflects on how images of everyday life and anticipated martyrdom coexist. Framed through process philosophy and assemblies of self-determination, the essay positions remembrance as a form of political continuity where the past is continually reassembled in the present. Êvar Huseynî is a Kurdish artist and archivist based in London. Her multidisciplinary practice explores Kurdish genealogies, colonial violence in archives, and their impact on Kurdish feminism and identity. She investigates how archives shape collective memory, perpetuate bias, and affect the freedom of occupied peoples. Her work spans handmade books (Cries of Soil, K-land), films (Fruit of the Dead, my Mum, my Aunt), large-scale installations, and experimental archiving rooted in personal and communal histories of Kurdistan. @evarhuseyni This essay is part of the archival section of Trigger #6: Assemblies, highlighting the diverse practices and contributions that shape the project’s evolving archive. This section turns to the archive and engages with the material traces of radical assemblies that reveal resistance as a continuum, persisting whether anyone is watching or not. Guest editor @taous_r_dahmani @fomuantwerp Revisited by editors @eline.adriaensen @heyitsabel

𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝙎𝙚𝙚𝙙𝙨 𝙤𝙛 𝙊𝙪𝙧 𝘾𝙤𝙡𝙡𝙚𝙘𝙩𝙞𝙫𝙚 𝙃𝙤𝙥𝙚 engages with publishing, archiving, and circulation as practices of resistance across Southwest Asia and North Africa. Through encounters with dispersed archives, bookshops, and publications such as Lotus, Fehras Publishing Practices reflect on how printed matter becomes a living site of memory, shaped by movement, displacement, and collective care. 𝗙𝗲𝗵𝗿𝗮𝘀 𝗣𝘂𝗯𝗹𝗶𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗣𝗿𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗲𝘀 is a cultural workers’ collective spanning Lebanon, Syria, and Iran. Their work interrogates questions of memory, political infrastructure of cultural spaces, and history-making. In 2024, Fehras collective members were mentors-in-residence in Neither on Land nor at Sea, a research project initiated and curated by UNIDEE visiting curator 2022–2024 Chiara Cartuccia. They currently work and live in Berlin. @fehras_publishing_practices This essay is part of the archival section of Trigger #6: Assemblies, highlighting the diverse practices and contributions that shape the project’s evolving archive. This section turns to the archive and engages with the material traces of radical assemblies that reveal resistance as a continuum, persisting whether anyone is watching or not. Image: ‘Hader Halal Sessions’, D’EST cycle #2: Postsocialism as Method. Anti-Geographies of Collective Desires, district*school without center c/o Flutgraben e.V., Berlin. Guest editor @taous_r_dahmani @fomuantwerp Revisited by editors @eline.adriaensen @heyitsabel

𝙔𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙚𝙧𝙙𝙖𝙮, 𝘾𝙤𝙢𝙚 𝘾𝙡𝙤𝙨𝙚𝙧 engages with Palestinian memory through an expansive counter-archival practice that resists fixation, linearity, and closure. Bringing together photographs, texts, posters, drawings, sound, and digital platforms, Ibrahem Hasan constructs a dispersed field of images and voices where memory is experienced as something relational, broken into fragments, resonating across time, but remaining alive. Assembly becomes a method of resistance: a way of holding multiplicity without reducing it, and of insisting on presence against the archival impulse to contain or define. 𝗜𝗯𝗿𝗮𝗵𝗲𝗺 𝗛𝗮𝘀𝗮𝗻 is a Palestinian American artist and visual storyteller born and raised on Chicago’s South Side and now based in Brooklyn. Formerly a senior creative director at Nike, he uses photography, film, text, and installation to explore authenticity, memory, and belonging. His recent book Yesterday, Come Closer (2024), a 728‐page non‐linear exploration of Palestinian collective memory, received widespread acclaim. Hasan’s work emphasises elevating marginalised voices and forging emotional connections through nuanced visual narratives. @ib.hasa.n This essay is part of the archival section of Trigger #6: Assemblies, highlighting the diverse practices and contributions that shape the project’s evolving archive. This section turns to the archive and engages with the material traces of radical assemblies that reveal resistance as a continuum, persisting whether anyone is watching or not. Guest editor @taous_r_dahmani @fomuantwerp Revisited by editors @eline.adriaensen @heyitsabel

The essay 𝙁𝙞𝙡𝙢𝙞𝙘 𝙁𝙖𝙗𝙪𝙡𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣 engages with archival film as a decolonial practice of reworking history through image, sound, and narrative. Drawing on Saidiya Hartman’s notion of ‘critical fabulation,’ Mahasen Nasser-Eldin explores how filmmaking can return to fragmented and colonial archives to recover displaced Palestinian women’s histories and challenge the violence embedded in archival structures. 𝗠𝗮𝗵𝗮𝘀𝗲𝗻 𝗡𝗮𝘀𝘀𝗲𝗿-𝗘𝗹𝗱𝗶𝗻 is an award-winning filmmaker and researcher from Al-Quds (Jerusalem) who tells stories of resistance and resilience, breathing new life into forgotten figures. Her work focuses on decolonial archival practices and displaced women’s histories, drawing from archive studies, subaltern histories, transnational feminism, and subjectivity. @mahasen_nassereldin This essay is part of the archival section of Trigger #6: Assemblies, highlighting the diverse practices and contributions that shape the project’s evolving archive. This section turns to the archive and engages with the material traces of radical assemblies that reveal resistance as a continuum, persisting whether anyone is watching or not. Image: The Matson Photograph Collection, Library of Congress. Image used in The Silent Protest: 1929 Jerusalem directed by Mahasen Nasser-Eldin. Guest editor @taous_r_dahmani @fomuantwerp Revisited by editors @eline.adriaensen @heyitsabel

𝙒𝙝𝙚𝙣 𝙋𝙖𝙧𝙖𝙡𝙡𝙚𝙡 𝙇𝙞𝙣𝙚𝙨 𝙄𝙣𝙩𝙚𝙧𝙨𝙚𝙘𝙩 reflects on displacement, belonging, and the fragile infrastructures of community that emerge in diaspora. Moving between Beirut, Brussels, and Ghent, this essay maps how cultural dispersion reshapes daily life, where memory, friendship, and shared practice become forms of survival and care. Through Tashattot Collective, assembly becomes both response and necessity: a space to remain connected, to hold distance together, and to build a sense of home in motion.
 Tashattot is also currently part of Tenderly There at FOMU, a group exhibition where artists from the SWANA region explore, commemorate, and affirm experiences of queer intimacy. 𝗧𝗮𝘀𝗵𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗼𝘁 (Arabic for dispersion) is a socio-cultural collective based in Brussels that aims to connect artists and cultural practitioners from the SWANA region living in or passing through Europe. Tashattot offers a platform for these artists to showcase their works, share their narratives, and engage with diverse audiences, through the curation of an array of artistic initiatives – including exhibitions, events, workshops, residencies, performances and more. @tashattot.collective This essay is part of the archival section of Trigger #6: Assemblies, highlighting the diverse practices and contributions that shape the project’s evolving archive. This section turns to the archive and engages with the material traces of radical assemblies that reveal resistance as a continuum, persisting whether anyone is watching or not. Guest editor @taous_r_dahmani @fomuantwerp Revisited by editors @eline.adriaensen @heyitsabel

Nadia Yahlom reflects on the Archives des luttes des femmes en Algérie as an act of collective resistance and remembrance, foregrounding women’s central role in shaping histories of struggle. Navigating between personal memory and political history, this essay explores how women’s stories are often excluded from dominant archives, and how they are instead painstakingly assembled through fragments, testimony, and lived experience. In doing so, it positions archiving itself as a political practice that resists erasure and insists on visibility, agency, and collective memory. 𝗡𝗮𝗱𝗶𝗮 𝗗𝗶𝗻𝗮 𝗬𝗮𝗵𝗹𝗼𝗺 is a London-based artist, anthropologist, and curator of British and Palestinian Jewish background. Her interdisciplinary work explores the supernatural and colonial aftermaths between Palestine and the UK. As co-founder of the Sarha Collective, she creates participatory works combining film, sound, photography, and installation to engage with memory, resistance, and invisible worlds. @archivesfemmesdz This essay is part of the archival section of Trigger #6: Assemblies, highlighting the diverse practices and contributions that shape the project’s evolving archive. This section turns to the archive and engages with the material traces of radical assemblies that reveal resistance as a continuum, persisting whether anyone is watching or not. Image: Protest against the Gulf War and in support of Palestine, Algiers, January 24, 1991. Photograph by Rafik Zaidi. Photographer’s archive. Guest editor @taous_r_dahmani @fomuantwerp Revisited by editors @eline.adriaensen @heyitsabel

Introducing the idea of the ‘aestheticisation of political failure,’ Joumaa explores in her essay 𝘾𝙤𝙪𝙣𝙩𝙚𝙧-𝘼𝙧𝙘𝙝𝙞𝙫𝙖𝙡 𝙋𝙧𝙖𝙘𝙩𝙞𝙘𝙚𝙨: 𝘽𝙚𝙩𝙬𝙚𝙚𝙣 𝙋𝙚𝙧𝙛𝙤𝙧𝙢𝙖𝙣𝙘𝙚 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝘿𝙤𝙘𝙪𝙢𝙚𝙣𝙩𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣 how politics today operate through images that promise change while remaining structurally unable to deliver it. In this way, the image of change becomes more powerful than the change itself. Rather than recovering a fixed truth, the counter-archive opens a space for friction, where ‘official’ narratives are unsettled and the gap between representation and reality becomes visible. 𝗝𝗼𝘆𝗰𝗲 𝗝𝗼𝘂𝗺𝗮𝗮 is a Lebanese Canadian visual artist and writer based between Beirut, Montreal, and Amsterdam. Her work focuses on microhistories within Lebanon, as a way to understand how past structures inform the present moment. Central to her practice is an interest in the political charge inscribed in space and the social psychology that unfolds out of this tension. @joycejoumaa This essay is part of the archival section of Trigger #6: Assemblies, highlighting the diverse practices and contributions that shape the project’s evolving archive. This section turns to the archive and engages with the material traces of radical assemblies that reveal resistance as a continuum, persisting whether anyone is watching or not. Guest editor @taous_r_dahmani @fomuantwerp Revisited by editors @eline.adriaensen @heyitsabel