Towards Documentary Choreography by Arkadi Zaides
Arkadi Zaides’ doctoral research project Towards Documentary Choreography – Intermedial Approaches when Working with Extra-Aesthetic Materials explored how choreography might respond to today’s societal urgencies and topical issues. It developed a documentary approach to dance and embodied practices, where, unlike in theatre, film, or the visual arts, the use of historical facts and documentary sources is only now beginning to emerge. More specifically, it examined how, through various formats, documents can be reimagined choreographically to reveal divergent, and at times conflicting, ways of engaging with society and the arts, particularly in times of crisis.
On the occasion of his doctoral defence, Zaides invites external jury members Rabih Mroué and Yumna Masarwa to share with students and a wider audience their respective practices.
Thursday 18 December 2025 | 10.00 - 13.00 | Studio laGeste, Bijlokesite Gent.
“Shot/Counter Shot: Rethinking the Reverse” by Rabih Mroué
This lecture revisits the classical definition of the shot/counter shot technique, with a focus on instances where the reverse is internalized within a single frame. Rather than relying solely on traditional editing patterns, I explore alternative strategies that challenge conventional cinematic grammar. By analyzing these variations, I aim to open up new ways of thinking about point of view, relational space, and narrative construction.
I further reflect on the term shoot, examining the kinds of connections that can be drawn between acts of war-making and image-taking. In this presentation, I share documents and examples from both his own work, as well as from other artists and video-makers, to expand this line of thought and propose alternative ways of thinking about point of view, relational space, and narrative construction.
“Re(Making) Death in Gaza: The Dead Body as a Site of Agency and Sumūd” by Yumna Masarwa
The recent war on Gaza has rendered impossible the enactment of funerary rites and the provision of dignified burial for the deceased, fundamentally disrupting the structure of death itself. This talk examines how Gazans respond to this annihilation of death’s structure, how they make sense of the brutal scenes of death and dismemberment that have become part of daily life, and how they grieve amid mass casualties and the absence of traditional funerary rituals.
Foregrounding Gazan voices and centering the victim as both witness and paradoxical agent—whose dispossession paradoxically generates the power to speak—this study challenges Western theoretical frameworks that position death rituals as essential to social cohesion and predict social collapse in their absence (Hertz, 1960; Huntington & Metcalf, 1991; Turner, 1969; Van Gennep, 1960).
I argue instead that in Gaza, the destruction of the structure of death has generated social cohesion through sumūd (steadfastness). I also propose the concept of martyrdom (shahāda) understood as an idea of agency and collective grief, which serves as a critical lens for interpreting the interrelation between mourning, resistance, and communal identity under conditions of systematic violence.
Taken together, these two concepts found an argument for the necessity of an indigenous theoretical framework in order to understand Gazan experiences of grief.
PRACTICAL
free entrance
where Studio laGeste, Bijlokekaai 1, 9000 Ghent
when 18 December 2025 at10.00 till13.00
language english
accessibility studio laGeste is wheelchair accessible