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That\u2019s exactly what award-winning creator, Tania El Khoury has achieved with \u2018Gardens Speak\u2019 which premiers in Ireland as part of Belfast International Arts Festival.<\/p>\nThat\u2019s exactly what award-winning creator, Tania El Khoury has achieved with \u2018Gardens Speak\u2019 which premiers in Ireland as part of Belfast International Arts Festival.<\/p>\n
The interactive sound installation portrays the oral histories of the people buried in Syrian gardens.\u00a0 Gardens have been the resting place of many who adorned the streets during the Syrian uprising. Narrated by the friends and family of the deceased, the participating audience, glimpse into ten stories which can no longer be told by those who lived them.<\/p>\n
Ten participants are literally immersed physically and emotionally in the life and death of 10 ordinary people.\u00a0 The experience begins in a dark antechamber. Participants remove socks and shoes and enter the cemetery. They then lie down and listen to the voices from beyond the grave.<\/p>\n
It may sound bizarre, but the The New York Times\u2019 Charles Isherwoods<\/em> described it as \u2018A stark, moving theatre piece by Tania El Khoury, brings us into painful intimacy with the human cost of the war.\u2019 \u201cThe experience was extraordinary, and emotionally wrenching.\u201d\u00a0 The Guardian<\/em> review agreed, \u201cGardens Speak gives the silenced back their voices and provides a gravestone for those whose burial place often has to remain unmarked\u201d-.<\/p>\n World-wide acclaim has continued this week as \u2018Garden\u2019s Speak\u2019 has been announced as winner of the 2017 ANTI Festival International Prize for Live Art, in Kuopio, Finland.<\/p>\n El Khoury is an arab-performance maker. Her work consistently confronts western perceptions and narratives of the Arab world, particularly in relation to women.\u00a0\u00a0 Khoury has a fascination with oral history and storytelling.\u00a0 Explaining \u2018Garden\u2019s Speak\u2019 she says,<\/p>\n \u201cAudiences quite literally have to dirty their hands to uncover the story and to make an effort to uncover the truth. I like the idea of putting your ear to the ground and hearing the stories that normally go unrecorded and unheard.\u00a0 These burials are often an act of resistance. Funerals in Syria often lead to more deaths: there have been incidents of the shelling of cemeteries while funerals are taking place, and in some instances before the burial can take place the families are asked to sign documents exonerating the Assad regime of their loved one\u2019s death.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI hope that by telling these stories it will remind us that it is human beings involved. During big historic events, it\u2019s the small voices, the individual human voices that get lost. They are the history below, the histories that seldom get told.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2018Gardens Speak\u2019 runs from the 11th<\/sup> to the 22nd<\/sup> October in 12-13 Shaftesbury Square.<\/p>\n Booking tickets for this performance is essential. Bookings can be made online at belfastinternationalartsfestival.com, by calling 028 90892707 or in person at the box office in The MAC .\u00a0 Follow Belfast International Arts Festival on Facebook and twitter @BelfastFestival for all the latest news.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" How do you truly immerse the audience in a story? How do you tell the horrifying story of people buried in Syrian gardens? That\u2019s exactly what award-winning creator, Tania El Khoury has achieved with \u2018Gardens Speak\u2019 which premiers in Ireland as part of Belfast International Arts Festival. The interactive sound installation portrays the oral histories … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/whatsonni.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15152"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/whatsonni.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/whatsonni.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whatsonni.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whatsonni.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15152"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/whatsonni.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15152\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15155,"href":"https:\/\/whatsonni.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15152\/revisions\/15155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/whatsonni.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whatsonni.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whatsonni.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}