za 16 mei t/m ma 18 mei
Performance, Language no problem
SPRING: What Will We Do Without Exile?
Basel Zaraa
Installatie, Language no problem
SPRING: What Will We Do Without Exile?
Basel Zaraa
Installatie, Language no problem
What Will We Do Without Exile? is an immersive, multi-sensory installation that creates a lush world within a refugee tent, inviting audiences to imagine life beyond occupation.
Inspired by the refusal of its people to stop imagining tomorrow, even in the face of genocide, the installation celebrates the natural and cultural richness of Palestine, past, present, and future. As audience members sit among orange and olive trees, listen to a soundscape, and read a newspaper from the future, they are transported to harvest season in a liberated land, where the seeds of freedom sown during long decades of struggle have borne fruit at last.
What Will We Do Without Exile? honours the strength and sacrifice of colonised people and imagines a world where they have not only won their liberation, but where their resilience, ingenuity, and relationship with the land are recognised as examples for humanity in crisis.
Credits
What Will We Do Without Exile? is commissioned by Moomin 80 and co-produced with Counterpoints Arts and Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture
By Basel Zaraa | In collaboration with Emily Churchill Zaraa | Sound artist Pete Churchill | Future Newspaper illustrator and designer Charlotte Bailey | Featuring the voice of Sahar Qawasmi | Tour Assistant Ward Zaraa | With thanks to all the interview participants
Basel Zaraa is a UK-based Palestinian artist whose work uses the senses to bring audiences closer to experiences of exile and war, and who creates art in order to face, express, and understand the trauma that his community lives with. His current installation, What Will We Do Without Exile?, is an immersive, multi-sensory installation that creates a lush world within a refugee tent, inviting audiences to imagine life beyond occupation and war. Since 2022, he has also been touring Dear Laila, an intimate, one-person-at-a-time installation centred around the recreation of a destroyed family home, which received the ZKB Audience Award 2023. His previous work includes As Far As My Fingertips Take Me, a collaboration with Tania El Khoury, which was awarded Outstanding Production at the Bessie Awards in 2019. His work has been shown at over 50 venues and festivals across five continents.
Over SPRING
Over SPRING
SPRING Performing Arts Festival is een tiendaags internationaal festival met vernieuwende dans, theater, performances en meer in de stad Utrecht. Je vindt SPRING in het theater, op bijzondere locaties en in de openbare ruimte. Op het festival zie je ruim 25 avontuurlijke en urgente voorstellingen van zowel dichtbij als ver, die vragen durven te stellen over de staat van de wereld. Je kunt je laten verrassen door nieuwe artistieke vormen en je laten inspireren door andere manieren van kijken naar de wereld om je heen. Tijdens SPRING ontmoeten makers en een nieuwsgierig publiek elkaar voor uitwisseling, discussie, inspiratie en plezier.
About SPRING
SPRING Performing Arts Festival is a ten-day international festival with innovative dance, theatre, performance and more in the city of Utrecht. You will find SPRING in the theatres, at special locations and in public spaces. At the festival you will see over 25 adventurous and urgent performances from both near and far that dare to ask questions about the state of the world. You can be surprised by new artistic forms and inspired by other ways of looking at the world around you. During SPRING, makers and a curious audience meet for exchange, discussion, inspiration and fun.
