Artists in residence

Born in 1972, Kamal Aljafari is a Palestinian experimental film director. He studied at the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne and lives in Berlin.

In his work, he uses archive footage, which he reactivates and reinterprets to question history. He is particularly interested in the daily lives of Palestinians and attempts to illustrate human experiences in a context of war, loss and forced displacement. Kamal Aljafari has become a lecturer at the Academy of Film and Television in Berlin. His work has been shown at the Berlinale, Locarno and Rotterdam film festivals, as well as in museums such as MoMA and Tate Modern.

Independent artist Damascus-born, Wael Alkak is an experienced author of unique electronic music that combines genres and cultures.

After graduating from the Damascus Conservatory of Music, he became interested in Syrian popular music at a very young age, practising a multitude of instruments such as bouzouki, percussions, saxophone and keyboards, and digital music.

Driven by democratic values and overwhelmed by the frozen elitism of the art world in his country, Wael Alkak participated in the first pacifist demonstrations in 2011. As a result of these events, he composed his first musical album: Neshama, a contemporary collective project that interprets traditional rhythms in electronic versions, combining folk music with classical Arabic, inspired from revolutionary anthems born from pacifist demonstrations.

Since 2013, Wael Alkak has been performing all over Europe, between Paris, where he now lives, Berlin, London and Copenhagen. He presents during his live set Neshama (2012) and Men Zaman (2017) which he mixes with new electronic musical compositions. Wael Alkak draws his repertoire from the folklore of the Levant (Chaâbi).

His live performances mix tradition and modernity, where synthesizer sounds and bouzouki melodies produce a transcendent style, inviting bodies to let go.

Born in 1998 in Nantes, Pierre Allain lives and works in Lyon. He is co-founder of the artist run space “monopole” based in Lyon. He graduated from the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Lyon in 2021. His work was presented at the Kunstverein of Bielefeld and at the CAP Saint-Fons in 2022.

All of Pierre Allain’s research is related to bodies and the invisible alterations to which they are subject – or rather, of which they are the subjects. Each of his projects is the result of manipulations of multiple sources that intertwine to establish a critical reading of objects and materials in order to question their presupposed neutrality.

The scientific and psychological analysis of materials, the study of syndromes and unexplained pathologies, the testimonies of strangers, the collaboration with companies, the agricultural context, the industrial design or the daily experience of the body in the public space constitute so many materials and sources which allow the artist to question the vulnerability of the bodies (human, non-human, social) and their misuse.

His work is thus played in the interstice of a visible history and a secret history, that of the discrete transformation of the body in subject, of its disincarnation and, by extension, of our effort of compensation.