The Beyond 1932 Artist-in-Residence Programme is run by postdoctoral fellow and freelance curator Dr Rim Irscheid and invites practitioners across the fields of sound art, experimental and electro-acoustic music to reflect on the sonic and colonial legacy of the 1932 Cairo Congress. The performances take place across London and aim to connect diaspora musicians working across sound art, experimental music and contemporary Arabic music. Venues for 2025 are the British Library, Café OTO, and the Greenwood Theatre.
For the duration of the Beyond 1932 ERC/UKRI project, these six residencies reflect on issues around music pedagogy, counter-archival practices, notation and tuning, and multidisciplinary performance practices. The residency series is providing a platform for artist-led approaches to archiving and sonic interventions that address the issues around control and power of institutional archives and politics of cultural representation and intersectional counter-archives in the region. In collaboration with the British Library, the project is depositing a collection of the residency recordings in close collaboration with the artists who co-lead on the curating and archiving their own practice.
Rust
(Czech Republic)
Rust is a Prague-based duo whose music blends the Arabic heritage of melody and poetry with a modern electronic sound. Combining elements of Arabic music with contemporary production and powerful vocals, Rust draws influence from the older generation of musical rebels, aiming to bridge the gap between legacy and modernity. The project was cofounded in Beirut in 2020 by Petra El Hawi, a Lebanese musician and vocalist Hany Manja, a Syrian musician, Oud player and electronic music producer.
Friday 7 March 2025, 7 pm
The Greenwood Theatre, London
Sara Hamdy
(Egypt)
Sara Hamdy is an Egyptian multidisciplinary artist and sound researcher. Her artistic practice includes visuals and sound as well as text and performance. She is the founder and curator of the Sonic Spaces project, a participatory archival space that engages with sound-related artistic and research projects across Egypt and the Arab world. Hamdy graduated in fine arts at the Helwan University in Cairo (2009), and participated in exhibitions and residency programs in Egypt, the Arab region and Europe.
Monday 31 March 2025, 7 pm
The British Library (Pigott Theatre)
Kareem Samara
(United Kingdom)
Kareem Samara is an improviser and composer from London. He has worked extensively in theatre as a composer and has toured worldwide with different iterations of solo and collaborative musical projects. He combines the Oud and Arabic percussion, with loopers and samplers to create a new dialogue between himself and technology. This combined with experimental amplification techniques and use of guitar pedals offers a unique sonic assault from Samara on recordings and live that allow a listener to bathe in his reflections of the current moment, and connect with him and themselves.
Sunday 12 October 2025, 7 pm
Café OTO, London
Booking soon
Hardi Kurda
(Iraq)
Hardi Kurda is a sound artist and improviser. He founded SPACE21, a sound art and experimental music platform in Slemani, and the Archive Khanah, an interactive sound archive project using the philosophy of computer gaming technology. The evening will introduce the sound archive’s interactive and community-based approach to recording and archiving forgotten and excluded voices from the 1920s – 1970s in Kurdistan and Iraq by using computer game technology to capture and perform the sounds of the region.
Sunday 11 May 2024, 7 pm
Café OTO, London
Past event
Dr Rim Irscheid: rim-irscheid.com