event

Film screening + talk with Ariella Azoulay the  world like a jewel in the hand

On 18 January, Foam is hosting a special evening with Ariella Aïsha Azoulay, in collaboration with the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA) - a research community of the University of Amsterdam.

The focus of the evening is the independent curator, writer and filmmaker’s newest film  the world like a jewel in the hand – unlearning imperial plunder II. The film focuses on the destruction of the Jewish Muslim world that existed in North Africa and insists on making it imaginable and inhabitable again. It argues that objects held captive in museums and archives outside of the places from where they were looted are only the tip of the iceberg of the mass colonial plunder of Africa.

After the film screening, Azoulay will go into conversation with Marie Aude Baronian (Associate Professor in Film and Visual Culture at the Media Studies department, UvA) and Ermelinda Xheza (Lecturer in Visual Culture, Amsterdam University College and Ph.D. Candidate at ASCA) to give further insight into her research on history, archives and imperialism.

About the film

Substantial wealth in the Western world was accumulated through the extraction of raw materials, labour, knowledge and skills, including the ‘visual wealth’ attained by putting people in front of the colonisers’ cameras. This long and enduring ransack, cannot be addressed through the discourse of restitution, especially when arguments are made in support of the restitution of individual objects; rather, it requires a questioning of the imperial foundations of the world in which we live.

the world like a jewel in the hand – unlearning imperial plunder II is a sequel to Azoulay’s film un-documented – unlearning imperial plunder, 2019. It was shot in the space of her exhibition Errata (Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona, co-curated with Carles Guerra) in which books were approached not as sealed and unalterable visual and textual accounts of the ‘past’, but rather as elements that can still be rejected, re-composed, amended, reversed, erased and reclaimed.

Film still from the world like a jewel in the hand, 2022 © Ariella Aïsha Azoulay.
Ariella Aïsha Azoulay

This event is made possible with the support of ASCA (Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis) and NICA (Netherlands Institute for Cultural Analysis).

Foam is supported by de VriendenLoterij, Foam Members, De Brauw Blackstone Westbroek, the VandenEnde Foundation and the City of Amsterdam.

In 2022 Foam receives additional support from the Mondriaan Fund and receives a contribution through the Mondriaan Fund from the Ministerie van OCW.


Read more about Azoulay's work in Foam Magazine #59: Histories

Image from the series Audacity As We Were and Mirages of Dreams Past © Alanna Fields courtesy of the artist and Assembly
articles

Foam Magazine #59 Histories – The Archival Issue

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Film screening + talk with Ariella Azoulay the  world like a jewel in the hand