Installations

Audio installation
Gunta Stölzl Foyer (Phone Booths)

The audio installation A Chorus of Tongues expands upon Middle Ground: Hargeysa International Book Fair, allowing audiences to immerse themselves in the work of different authors through a dial-in phone that leads to poems in various languages.

With poems by Momtaza Mehri, Ananda Devi, Abdourahman Waberi, Yirgalem Fisseha Mebrahtu, Hadraawi, Galal Alahmadi, L-ness, and Tash Aw

Video installation, Shiraz Bayjoo, 31'
Magnus Hirschfeld Bar

Ile de France (2015) is a film by Shiraz Bayjoo that explores Mauritius’ landscape, architecture, and colonial history through a poetic and cinematic lens. The film encompasses imagery of the island’s coast alongside traces of the various chapters of colonialism it has been subject to as a result of Dutch, French and British incursions. Bayjoo collates shots of disparate subjects—among them French-language graffiti on early colonial settlements, Muslim prayer objects, as well as footage celebrating the island’s independence from Britain in 1968—using soft light and fluid camera movements to create a deliberately dreamlike atmosphere. There is no narrator, nor any human protagonists in the film, with the director instead capturing the island’s complex social history via the documentation of these structures and objects withincontemporary Mauritius. A polyphony of sounds, narratives, languages, and songs serves as a soundtrack, with the roar of the Indian Ocean particularly present, echoing its role in this year’s edition of Middle Ground as a memory space.

Video installation, Somali, English, Arabic, 3' 49"
Magnus Hirschfeld Bar

In this preview of a documentary about the 17th Hargeysa International Book Fair, held between 20–25 July 2024, in Hargeysa, Somaliland, explorations of heterogeneous forms of knowledge production occupy an important position. Produced by the fair’s initiators, the film showcases the key events and activities of the festival, including poetry readings, performances, interviews, and concerts, alongside an examination of its origins and purpose. It further reflects on the fair’s achievements over the past seventeen years, as well as its shortcomings and the ongoing challenges it continues to face.