Troubled Water, 2015
By Amr Abou Chakra, Isan Maher, Al Harris Al Shoufi, Frans Jacobi and Gitte Sætre.
Kunsthall 3.14
In 2015, during the so-called refugee crises, the old teacher college at Landås in bergen, Norway was for 12 months the home for asylum seekers from the Syrian war and neighbor countries. Today we do not have many coming due to EU controversial deal with Turkey. Today the refugees are trapped in fare more inhuman camps. However, that is another story than then I am about to tell now.
Back in 2015 Frans Jacobi and I were lucky to get to know and work with two men from Syria and one man from Egypt. Our friend Mekdes Shebeta was working at the camp, and she had noticed that it was something special with these tree guys. It turned out to be true, they were artist and had the need to process and express their traumatic experience. They wanted to talk about how they meet each other for the first time, in a rubber boat fleeing from Turkey to Greece. And we wanted to learn and to help them mediate some of it to a Norwegian audience.
We meet up at a café at a close by shopping-mal. It was a surreal moment, sitting among the local daytime user of the café and listen to the story of why they left, and how they finally managed to cross the Mediterranean Sea. This was just before easter, and we decided that Amr Abou Chakra would try to write down their story with help from his friends, Isan Maher and Al Hareth.
A few weeks later we meet up again and Frans Jacobi and I was presented a story with a twist. The tabled had turned a bit in order to mediate the story even better for an Norwegian audience. Now the story was that Norwegians had to flee and immigrate through the same route they had come to Scandinavia. A meteor was going to hit Europe, and we needed to save ourselves.
Their experience from entering the boat, the crossing and reaching of shore was the base line of the script for Troubled Water. We had decided to do a performance of their script at Kunsthall 3.14 in central Bergen. The gallery space was turned into an open troubled sea by 3 video-projections, showing a very dramatic, stormy sea. More or less the same amount of people that had been in the boat was now put closely together. Among the people we placed six actors who re-enacted the dialogue that was once spoken during the journey. However, this time we were experiencing it. In the closing part of the performance, the audience arrived at the Syrian coast, where they were registered and greeted by a welcoming speech by the mayor. Isan Maher closed the performance with a gripping melancholic song in arabic.
After the performance the dialogue- based art project Soups&Stories encouraged the audience to further participate through a dialogue on the human urge of insisting to be. This way the performance Trouble Water created the basis of a dialogue where we shared experiences on the will to live. Soups&Stories have experimented over 5 years with various methods of sharing personal stories and experience. This dialogue was the third held at Kunsthall 3.14. Together with an extraordinary engaged audience we have been reflecting upon actions and lack of actions in today’s society.
In 2017 Amr, Isan and Al Harris got permission to stay in Norway and today Amr and Isan Maher are working as assistants at the Institute for Art in Bergen and they are at this moment in time applying to become students within the arts. Al Harris got his wife and two children to Norway and are again living together with his family.
By Amr Abou Chakra, Isan Maher, Al Harris Al Shoufi, Frans Jacobi and Gitte Sætre.
Kunsthall 3.14
In 2015, during the so-called refugee crises, the old teacher college at Landås in bergen, Norway was for 12 months the home for asylum seekers from the Syrian war and neighbor countries. Today we do not have many coming due to EU controversial deal with Turkey. Today the refugees are trapped in fare more inhuman camps. However, that is another story than then I am about to tell now.
Back in 2015 Frans Jacobi and I were lucky to get to know and work with two men from Syria and one man from Egypt. Our friend Mekdes Shebeta was working at the camp, and she had noticed that it was something special with these tree guys. It turned out to be true, they were artist and had the need to process and express their traumatic experience. They wanted to talk about how they meet each other for the first time, in a rubber boat fleeing from Turkey to Greece. And we wanted to learn and to help them mediate some of it to a Norwegian audience.
We meet up at a café at a close by shopping-mal. It was a surreal moment, sitting among the local daytime user of the café and listen to the story of why they left, and how they finally managed to cross the Mediterranean Sea. This was just before easter, and we decided that Amr Abou Chakra would try to write down their story with help from his friends, Isan Maher and Al Hareth.
A few weeks later we meet up again and Frans Jacobi and I was presented a story with a twist. The tabled had turned a bit in order to mediate the story even better for an Norwegian audience. Now the story was that Norwegians had to flee and immigrate through the same route they had come to Scandinavia. A meteor was going to hit Europe, and we needed to save ourselves.
Their experience from entering the boat, the crossing and reaching of shore was the base line of the script for Troubled Water. We had decided to do a performance of their script at Kunsthall 3.14 in central Bergen. The gallery space was turned into an open troubled sea by 3 video-projections, showing a very dramatic, stormy sea. More or less the same amount of people that had been in the boat was now put closely together. Among the people we placed six actors who re-enacted the dialogue that was once spoken during the journey. However, this time we were experiencing it. In the closing part of the performance, the audience arrived at the Syrian coast, where they were registered and greeted by a welcoming speech by the mayor. Isan Maher closed the performance with a gripping melancholic song in arabic.
After the performance the dialogue- based art project Soups&Stories encouraged the audience to further participate through a dialogue on the human urge of insisting to be. This way the performance Trouble Water created the basis of a dialogue where we shared experiences on the will to live. Soups&Stories have experimented over 5 years with various methods of sharing personal stories and experience. This dialogue was the third held at Kunsthall 3.14. Together with an extraordinary engaged audience we have been reflecting upon actions and lack of actions in today’s society.
In 2017 Amr, Isan and Al Harris got permission to stay in Norway and today Amr and Isan Maher are working as assistants at the Institute for Art in Bergen and they are at this moment in time applying to become students within the arts. Al Harris got his wife and two children to Norway and are again living together with his family.