NO SUMMARY: Comedy as a Form of Solidarity and Resistance

Golden Thread presented the conversation NO SUMMARY: Comedy as a Form of Solidarity and Resistance livestreaming on the global, commons-based, peer-produced HowlRound TV network on Friday 14 April 2023 at 11 a.m. PDT (San Francisco, UTC -7) / 1 p.m. CDT (Chicago, UTC -5) / 2 p.m. EDT (New York, UTC -4).

In the first episode of our 2023 season, Golden Thread’s Sahar Assaf, executive artistic director, and Wafaa Bilal, artist-in-residence, will be joined by the classes of associate professor Simon Anderson, a British-born-and-educated cultural historian, and interdisciplinary Syrian artist Sami Hussain Ismat, at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Columbia College Chicago.

Wafaa, an Iraqi-born artist and currently an arts professor at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, will discuss comedy as a coping mechanism and a form of solidarity and resistance. Join us to learn about what compelled Wafaa to curate Amreeka: The Comedy Show. Students and general audiences will get the chance to ask their questions directly to the artist.

Bios

Wafaa Bilal (guest speaker): Iraqi-born artist Wafaa Bilal is known internationally for his online performative and interactive works provoking dialogue about international and interpersonal politics. Wafaa’s work explores tensions between the cultural spaces he occupies—his home in the comfort zone of the United States and his consciousness in the conflict zone in Iraq. For his 2007 installation Domestic Tension, Wafaa spent a month in FlatFile Galleries where people could shoot him via a remote-access paintball gun. The Chicago Tribune called it “one of the sharpest works of political art to be seen in a long time”—naming him 2008 Artist of the Year. That year, City Lights published Shoot an Iraqi: Art, Life and Resistance Under the Gun about Wafaa’s life and Domestic Tension. Using his own body as a medium, Wafaa continued to challenge the public’s comfort zone with projects like 3rdiand and Counting…. Wafaa’s work Canto III was included as part of the Iranian pavilion at the 2015 Venice Biennale. Wafaa’s current work 168:01 brings awareness to cultural destruction and promotes the collective healing process through education and audience participation. His work can be found in the permanent collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California; Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, Illinois; and MATHAF: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha, Qatar amongst others. He holds a BFA from the University of New Mexico, an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and was conferred an honorary PhD from DePauw University. Wafaa is currently an arts professor at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts.

Sahar Assaf (moderator): Sahar Assaf is a Lebanese theatremaker and the executive artistic director of Golden Thread Productions. Before joining Golden Thread in May 2021, Sahar was an assistant professor of theatre and headed the minor program in theatre arts at the American University of Beirut, where she also co-founded the Theater Initiative, an interdisciplinary group of faculty and artists working to facilitate theatre creation and research locally, regionally, and internationally. Her directing credits for the Theater Initiative include Garcia Lorca’s Blood Wedding as a site-specific promenade performance in the village of Hammana in Mount Lebanon, Shakespeare’s King Lear, Ritual of Signs and Transformations by Sa'dallah Wannous, and Watch Your Step, a site-specific devised work on the Lebanese civil war. Sahar is an advocate of documentary theatre and her documentary theatre work includes Meen El Felten, an immersive documentary play about sexual assault in Lebanon as part of the Abaad MENA campaign of 2018, and No Demand No Supply, a documentary play about sex trafficking and prostitution in collaboration with the KAFA organization. Sahar is a recipient of a Fulbright scholarship (2009) and holds an MA in theatre studies from Central Washington University (2011) and an MA in sociology from the American University of Beirut (2005). She is an alumna of the Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab in NYC (2014) and is the co-founder and artistic director of Directors Lab Mediterranean.

About HowlRound TV

HowlRound TV is a global, commons-based, peer-produced, open-access livestreaming and video archive project stewarded by the nonprofit HowlRound. HowlRound TV is a free and shared resource for live conversations and performances relevant to the world’s performing-arts and cultural fields. Its mission is to break geographic isolation, promote resource sharing, and develop our knowledge commons collectively. Anyone can participate in a community of peer organizations revolutionizing the flow of information, knowledge, and access in our field by becoming a producer and co-producing with us. Learn more by going to our participate page. For any other queries, email [email protected] or call Vijay Mathew at +1 917.686.3185 Signal. View the video archive of past events.