THE ECHO OF THE FEAST THAT CALLS ME

Athens Design Forum and Isabella Barkett present ‘THE ECHO OF THE FEAST THAT CALLS ME’, a double-screening of Izza Genini’s Aïta (1988, 26’) and Hicham Gardaf’s In Praise of Slowness (2023, 17’).

Athens Design Forum’s 2023-24 season, ‘ANTHROPOS-TOPOS’, is guided by deciphering how humans coexist with places at the proxy of design, informed by the laboring body. The medium of film acts as a space for re-inscription – design principles are reunited with the sphere of personhood, identity, and collectivity. The film program’s theme for Milan Design Week 2024 bears its name from a line of Aïta (The echo of the feast that calls me), encapsulating the soundscapes of the Moussem of Moulay Abdallah and the peripheral sites of action that deeply inform and penetrate the ritual of gathering.

In the private realm, cheikhates (female traveling musicians) transform elements such as plastic water bottles into informal drums. They transgress and embody the symbolic significance of temporary tent architecture – built emblems that accompany their shared movement around the country. Genini ushers in the role of performance as a conduit to expand onto the public realm, a social role reserved solely in times of the cheikhate’s animation.

Gardaf’s In Praise of Slowness identifies the thresholds of design implications, expounded upon the body. The culture of the bleach sellers in Tangier, Morocco, is shared through a meditation on the morphology of the urban landscape. Space unfolds to witness time at the lapse of tradition. Through the peripheral coexistence of forms – sonic, bodily, and artifact – Gardaf explores the lasting demise of a capricious market.

Sonic landscapes form a central inquiry towards identifying social hierarchies of power — from the bleach seller’s occupation of public space through his laments, and Genini’s ritualistic approach to cheikhate’s collective call.