Workshop: Latent Gestures

This interactive physical workshop, led by Farah Saleh, investigates how artists can contribute to social and political change by exploring and problematising memories, using the body as an archive.

Artist, dancer and choreographer, Saleh, focuses on developing interactive performances, using video and other visual means, together with movement. At this three-hour event she will work with participants to archive an array of gestures and movements present in our personal and collective stories, but left out of dominant social and historical narratives. This will be achieved through re-enacting, analysing and commenting on these gestures in different creative ways.

The workshop compliments themes explored in A Fidayee Son in Moscow (2014), Saleh’s interactive video/dance installation, currently on show at The Mosaic Rooms Suspended Accounts exhibition. The piece examines the significance of gesture through the history of a certain socio-political group. It invites viewers to experience the Interdom, a Moscow school built to host children of international revolutionary parents – including those of the Palestinian leftist leadership.

Farah Saleh works in Palestine and Europe. She has been dancing with Sareyyet Ramallah Dance Company since 2010 and has co-choreographed Sandwishet Labaneh (2011), choreographed Parole, parole, parole (2012), Ordinary Madness (2013) and Hana and I (2014). She also took part in and toured with the theatre performance Keffiyeh/made in China (2012), and the dance performance Badke (2013), co-productions of The Royal Flemish Theatre (KVS) and the A.M. Qattan Foundation. Badke was also a collaboration with Les Ballets C de la B from Ghent, Belgium.