the morning after attending a public forum entitled: ‘opening our theatres to ethnic stories and players’ ***###%%%@@@@???!!!???!!!shou??!!who is asking the question?who is considering doing the opening? on whose terms?whose theatres are ‘our’ theatres?who are ‘ethnics’? and what does that word mean again?!?etc etc etc although these days i am not actively / consistently engaged in […]
Some of my internal dialogues during and after the presentation and discussion @ A tale of two cities: from Paris to ParramattaMulticulturalism, community and cultural development: a transnational perspective.Paula Abood @ Parramatta Artists Studios on 16 June 2008 • In a process of interviews and action research, ‘who’ is asking / posing the questions (regardless […]
essentially what i want to do through 3arabi-mapping: ~ record conversations with 3arab artists, where they are reflecting on their own critical questions about their own work processes, within their own terms… ~ map out for ourselves, how 3arab arts networks have grown and diversified since 1991 ~ collect some images and sounds of cultural […]
Alissar Chidiac has been engaged in community and cultural development work for almost 30 years. She has had a specific focus on contemporary Arab cultural and heritage work since 1991. She worked at the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, 1998 to 2004, where she initiated a diversity of programmes, community partnerships and exhibitions through the wattan […]
qalbee wat’r saoutee…my heart, the cords of my voice listening with my eyesandspeaking with my heart
khay!quietness and silence… can quietness and silence and withdrawal be forms of resistance or social change?is it possible that community cultural development work, as life work, can have slower approaches – so slow that there are long periods of quiet? maybe i am emerging from four months of relative quietness.but i have grown to love […]
kan ya makan… once upon a time… i remember long ago as a child, working out for myself that ‘time’ (as we knew it) was something ‘made up’ by humans, to divide and to count… ‘kan ya makan…’ is actually not part of my own childhood. although my father did tell me ongoing stories about […]
3arabi Mapping 
A.I. on ‘ghost flights’…
… my first thought on reading about the helicopter ride that Alissar took – and which she has no memory of, no evidence for – reminded me of the other ‘ghost flights’ that i’ve been thinking about lately. Those ghost flights are the more sinister kind – those that ‘render’ people to institutions of pain […]