9:30 - Welcome

10:00 > 11:00 - One Piece, resistance and creative disobedience

Introduction by Marine Thévenet (Cifas), Anna Czapski (FR/BE) and bruna bonanno (IT)

Our public spaces are increasingly less places where freedom of expression can flourish. Surveillance and control are intensifying, whilst solidarity is being criminalised. In this context, what actions and visions offer hope and inspiration?

With a straw hat and in pursuit of a collective utopia, the tales of pirates past and present are a treasure trove of inspiration for resistance and creative energy for the common good.

11:00 > 13:00 - Navigating the gaps of the “Empire” - discussions

Facilitated by Emmanuelle Nizou (BE)

Emmanuelle Nizou has a background in curation and artistic coordination in the performing arts. She collaborates with collectives that, at the intersection of art and activism, devise strategies for intervention in the public sphere to explore the role of the commons. She is a member of Unbewitch Finance Lab (BE).

The Undocumented Candidate is presenting on all the electoral lists - La Candidate Sans-Papiers d’Europe (BE) embodied by Henriette Essami-Khaullot, Antonia Nina Ferrante, Rosy Maffo, Odette Mvuama Mvumbi, Diasoname Nazare Da Silva Yala, Anna Rispoli, Grâce Wata Mengi, Regine Wingi Agadola

Representative institutions are, par excellence, the place where undocumented migrants disappear from public debate, reduced to nothing more than a scarecrow.

A collective of undocumented women, drawing on an experience that places care at the heart of politics, takes the public sphere by storm to become the protagonists of a fictional election campaign.

Following on from Figures of Fascism and Antifascist Solidarity, La Candidate Sans-Papiers d’Europe goes against the tide of racist hate politics and the migration pact, forging local and transnational alliances, with care and joy at the heart of the struggle.

La Candidate Sans-Papiers d’Europe (BE)

Europe’s first undocumented candidate stood in the 2024 Brussels municipal elections as a fictional political figure, thereby giving a voice to the campaign for the regularisation of thousands of migrant citizens. By employing an artistic strategy based on the practice of envisioning desirable futures, the candidate was able to launch a poster campaign, organise a flamboyant fashion show and secure the support of Kaaitheater, Kanal Pompidou and the House of European History. The Undocumented Candidate of Europe launched the International Alliance of the F.O.R.T.E.S. (Féministes Organisées Résistantes Transnationales Exilées en Sororité) against the criminalisation of migrant subjectivities and is part of the Public Programme Circle set up around the Postcolonial? exhibition, which is taking place at the Maison de la Culture Européenne. 

The Curator as Pirate: Navigating Censorship in Alexandria - Adel Abdelwahab (BE)

Drawing from his work in the independent performing arts in Alexandria, Adel explores festival curation as a “pirate”. This talk reveals tactics used to sustain contemporary theater spaces against oppressive structures.

By sharing strategies for making collective and documentary works, we will discuss how building artistic platforms acts as resistance—smuggling imagination and international solidarity into challenging political landscapes.

Adel Abdelwahab (BE)

Adel Abdelwahab is a theater director, curator, and cultural manager. He is the founder and artistic director of Hewar for Independent Theatre and Performing Arts Company. In March 2012, Abdelwahab initiated and curated Theatre is a Must, an international festival and forum for contemporary political theater in Alexandria (Egypt) aiming to showcase experimental, politically engaged performances from the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region and Europe.

The countries I live in are scattered like archipelagos - Yasmina Reggad (BE)

Yasmina Reggad will present a collaborative project, developed on the island of La Gomera with two groups of students practising Silbo Gomero, a living yet endangered whistled language. It takes the form of an experimental decolonial school, where oral transmission, embodied knowledge and acoustic ecologies engage in dialogue with sound art, choreography and vocal experimentation.

From this process emerges a speculative and context-specific chronicle of an island, conveyed through the encounter between Silbo Gomero, Amazigh and Zagharit storytelling.

Yasmina Reggad (BE)

Yasmina Reggad is a performance artist, director, author, researcher and playwright. She was curator of the French Pavilion at the 59th Venice Biennale and artistic director of the first edition of the Bienal das Amazônias (BR). Yasmina Reggad conducts research and develops projects that examine alternative systems of knowledge production and modes of artistic production. Her work explores performative methodologies informed by activist practices and actions, both past and present. Drawing on unconventional audiovisual and documentary archives, she creates works that take the form of performances, choreographed pieces, sound interventions and pirate radio broadcasts.

Il faut tirer l’existence par les cheveux ! - Dénètem Touam Bona

Dénètem Touam Bona seeks to rethink the concept of refuge in the light of the historical experience of marooning, the art of escaping practised by enslaved people.

In the face of the ongoing abolition of the right to asylum, the extinction of living species, and the growing dominance of algorithms over our lives, he calls for the revival of the maroon arts of camouflage. 

Dénètem Touam Bona

Dénètem Touam Bona is a philosopher and dramaturg. His works include Cosmopoéticas do réfugio (Cultura e barbarie, 2020), Sagesse des lianes (Post Éditions, 2021) and Fugitive, Where Are You Running? (Polity Press, 2023). 

13:00 > 14:00 - Lunch