AFROVIBES FRIDAY / XL

2024 marks the fourth edition of the Moving Beyond project, in which Utrecht-based composer and musician Mohamed Allati will create the performance Moving Beyond: Mimount 'N Serwan as artist-in-residence together with Dutch spoken word artist Nicole Kaandorp, Dutch philosopher and writer Khadija Al Mourabit and Moroccan singer-songwriter Lina Charif. 

The Riffi singer Mimount 'N Serwan is one of the few Moroccan performing artists who managed to win over large audiences in the 60s, 70s and 80s within a society with an ambivalent attitude towards performing arts. Based on her song lyrics and life story, Al Mourabit and Kaandorp create the poetry and story that take the audience back to the Rif through the eyes of Mimount 'N Serwan. In the musical performance, in which Dutch and Tamazight alternate, Allati and Charif combine poetry with music and acting, exploring what emerges when creators work together from their different perspectives and cultural contexts.

In Fake N.E.W.S, South African choreographer Nelisiwe Xaba combines performance and digital art. She explores the concepts of disinformation, conspiracy theories and science denial whose influence on social media and traditional media has become inescapable.

Fake N.E.W.S shows how the media creates a seductive world of meaning and wraps it in fake news. Xaba deconstructs this world in a dance performance where live performance turns into animation, blurring boundaries between body and screen, reality and appearance. The performance critiques contemporary socio-political and cultural society in which the emerging dominance of virtual presence and encounters, and which increases alienation and the risk of disinformation, is the new normal.