Dialectics of Erasure

Part performance, part lecture, part social experiment.

You, the audience, become part of the everyday performance of settler colonialism.

The experiment unfolds with a camera operator documenting the process — mirroring how atrocities committed against Palestinians are meticulously recorded yet continue unabated. It interrogates the role that visual broadcasting plays in this violence.

You are split into groups and guided through a series of real-time actions by the artist, culminating in a lecture-performance.

Settler colonialism is not a relic of the past but an ongoing, performative structure in which we are all implicated.

If you have benefited from global politics, you are invited to pay more.

Please note: this is an outdoor, weather-dependent performance.

The route is accessible, though it involves moving through London.

“And when you dare to appear in their spheres
You're not just unwelcome.
You're violating their space.
A pest in the settler's garden.
Proof, they say, that they were right to come.”

Mudar Al Khufash is a Palestinian artist, writer and performer whose practice spans poetry, performance, sound, and the silences between them. Video is an important part of his work, used both as a medium of memory and as a tool for political witnessing. Born in Kuwait and raised between Jordan and Germany, Mudar’s work navigates the intersections of diaspora, memory and resistance, with a particular focus on violence as a mechanism of control and erasure. He is currently pursuing a PhD at the University of Groningen. We first met Mudar while collaborating with Mat on Confluence, where we explored movement-based methods for working with non-actors. That project sparked a conversation between Mudar and BÉZNĂ which led to the creation of Dialectics of Erasure, a new performance exploring settler colonialism, shaped by shared politics, lived experience and an urgency to act.

dialectic
/ˌdʌɪəˈlɛktɪk/

(Philosophy)
noun: usually dialectics
any systematic reasoning, exposition or argument that juxtaposes opposed or contradictory ideas and usually seeks to resolve their conflict: a method of examining and discussing opposing ideas in order to find the truth

erasure
/ɪˈreɪʒə/

noun
an act or instance of removing written or drawn marks