Join Haverford College’s Hurford Center for the Arts and Humanities, Twelve Gates Arts, and the Philadelphia chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-Philadelphia) for an evening of conversation and movement featuring dancers and choreographers Mukaddas Mijit and Hussein Smko.
At the height of a global pandemic when the virtual displaces the corporeal, how do we discover emotional or physical embrace? When words choke, the body orates; when the verbal falls silent, how can facial gesture or the embodied smile compensate?
Artists Mukaddas Mijit and Hussein Smko collaborate to experiment with geographical distance in a disconnected digital world to create intimacy. Utilizing the exemplary tool of pandemic conversation, the Zoom link, these two performing artists challenge themselves to depict the beauty and failure of long-distance communication. Wordless with stolen sounds, EYE TO TIP is an interconnected live performance grappling with the displacement of emotional, physical, and intellectual intimacy in our current society.
Featuring:
Mukaddas Mijit is an ethnomusicologist, filmmaker and performer born and raised in the Uyghur homeland, and moved to Paris in 2003. She taught Visual Anthropology at the University of Toulouse Jean Jaurès while working on film projects about Uyghur culture and arts. Since 2019, Mukaddas has been involved in a research program entitled "Towards an alternative model of heritage as sustainable development: Meshrep in Kazakhstan (SOAS)" and several creative projects in Paris and in New York. She has also made four substantial documentaries and a series of short films on Uyghur culture and is currently working on her first fiction short film.
Hussein Smko is a dancer, choreographer and filmmaker currently based in NYC and born in Kurdistan, Iraq. Having lived through four wars, Hussein learned his first hip hop move from an American soldier in 2003. In 2006, at age thirteen, he formed the first hip hop dance group called STREET WOLVES which revolutionised the dance culture in Kurdistan. He founded his Dance Theater Company, Project TAG, in 2019. Hussein is currently finishing his new work “A Call for Prayer” that is set to take place this year with a documentary film and dance theater piece. He is also currently choreographing a dance piece for a concept album made by Raelle Myrick-Hodges and is choreographing two solos for ALVIN ALLEY II Student Evita Re.
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The Contest of the Fruits consists of an array of activities with Slavs and Tatars through fall 2021 that will bend borders, tickle tongues, and fracture fixed identities. It is an extended project including an artist residency, film premiere, exhibition at Haverford’s Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery, and a publication which will be released by MIT Press.
This event is part of the The Contest in Context event series. All events are free to attend and require advanced registration. Full event schedule and details can be found at: exhibits.haverford.edu/slavsandtatars/.
This event will take place virtually via Zoom. A login link will be emailed to you prior to event.
The Contest of the Fruits is supported by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage.
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If you have any questions or need help accessing the Zoom link to attend the event, please email: [email protected].