ALPHABET, (Un)folding the line: Movements, Transmissions, Improvisations

Beginnings are a delicate thing.

For the past 18 months I have been working behind the scenes on a familial history project Unfolding the line(s): Movements, Transmissions, Improvisations that I started in the summer of 2022. The project began as a series of recorded interviews with my mother (Algerian) and my father (Croatian); I interviewed my mother and father separately about their own experiences of Algeria before, during and after the war of Algerian Independence; my parents met in Algeria in 1962. The first written piece (currently in progress) is called Alphabet. It is imagined as a sequence of 28 poems in prose in English, French, and Arabic on the 28 letters of the Arabic alphabet; it will contain text, calligraphy and shaped poems (calligrammes).🪬

Arabic is a heritage language for me, yet it has taken me a very long time to be brave enough to dive into that language and my Algerian past; for that I had to start small - with the letters of the alphabet.  Between April and June 2024, I undertook mentoring sessions with the poet, artist and coach Caroline Bergvall. It is during the session work I undertook with Caroline that she encouraged me to take on the exploration of my heritage through the Arabic writing script and the Arabic alphabet letters. This first exploration work led me to enrolling on an Islamic calligraphy short course  “Introduction to the Methods, Materials & Practice of Islamic Calligraphy”. in Sept 2024 at the King's Foundation School of Traditional Arts. The course introduced me to the traditional method of making and using my own qalam (reed calligraphy pen) and creating my own paper; it covered daily practice of calligraphy writing of the Arabic alphabet in the riq’a script, and the creation of a free-form composition (“mini mashq”) as well as a finished calligraphy piece. The breakthrough effect that my re-encounter with the Arabic language and the Islamic calligraphy had on my current writing practice is explained in a 12-minute video conversation with Caroline as part of her Practice Conversations series. You can listen to the short and long video on this page (see top).🪬

I am at the beginning of the process, but the re-discovery of the Arabic language has been an extraordinary experience for me so far. I am able to fully integrate the Arabic sounds  passed on to me by my Algerian grandmother in my childhood into my new writing practice and connect these sounds to Arabic letters and calligraphic signs. To unfold the line(s), recover the lost thread(s), to release the work. 

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31 December 2024, Zagreb. /  8 May 2025, London.