Join us as we interview writer and performer Andrea Assaf on our afikra Outline series.
Date: Wednesday, September 29
Time: 12PM NYC | 5PM London | 7PM Beirut | 8PM Abu Dhabi
Hosted By: Mikey Muhanna (afikra)
Synopsis: Eleven Reflections on September is a poetry, music, movement and digital media exploration of Arab American experience, Wars on/of Terror, and “the constant, quiet rain of death amidst beauty” that each autumn brings in a post-9/11 world. Based on a series of poems Andrea Assaf has written since 2001, “Eleven Reflections…” spans the fall of the Twin Towers, the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the global rise of anti-Arab racism and Islamophobia, and the revolutions and uprisings that have swept through the Arab world in the last decade. Aesthetically, the poems explore the disintegration of language in the face of violence, prejudice, and unspeakable horror, as they progress from lyrical to abstract and broken. The annual witnessing of autumn leaves becomes a metaphor for the fallen. As we approach the 20th anniversary of 9/11, this ever-evolving tour de force finds new relevance and urgency. As an experimental work that lives at the intersection of live performance and digital media, Eleven Reflections on September is beautiful, haunting, and truly genre-shattering.