MagiC Carpets
Beyond What Drifts Us Apart
Mahalla Festival 2023
An interdisciplinary, site-specific project developed and curated by Elyse Tonna. The multi-year research-based project attempts to uncover the less dominant narratives associated with the environments surrounding historic coastal towers and the consequent relationships between the impacted landscapes and non-human communities. In 2023, the project centres within and around the Qalet Marku Tower and peninsula in Baħar ic-Cagħaq (Naxxar) in Malta. Artists have been invited to develop reactionary works in response to the site and a curatorial framework which overlaps aspects related to ecological thinking, frontiers and post-fossil fuel narratives.
The research questions used as departure points for this project are:
What marginalised ecological narratives are embedded within these structures? How have they inflicted upon natural landscapes and beyond-human communities?
Approached from decolonial and post-anthropocentric perspectives, the project aims to investigate the intersections among climate justice, territorial defence and bio-cultural diversity preservation. It reconsiders the contrasts between the more visible and the invisible, raising aspects related to identity, extractive capitalism and contestation of landscapes.
Contextually, the focus of the project moves away from typical locations for artistic interventions, and shifts attention towards the peripheries, seeing opportunities in making use of sites of historic and ecological importance, with the aim of transmitting non-linear narratives. By embracing the ecotone of these in-between zones through an understanding of the implications on natural landscapes and non-human communities, the artists facilitate development of new relationships between geographical, geological and ecological factors.
Beyond What Drifts Us Apart | opening weekend
Saturday 25 November
11:00 | Threading an (Un)safe Plot - Fernando P Ferreira
12:00 | toe ear - Marija Rasa Kudabaite
13:00 | Sedimentcorpi Qalet Marku- Alfred Graf
14:00 | Be Careful(l) - Charlene Galea
16:30 | Factuals for Future (FaFu) [at Baħar iċ-Ċagħaq Church, Santa Marija tal-Anġli]
Sunday 26 November
11:00 | Beyond What Drifts Us Apart (Site) Tour
12:00 | toe ear- Marija Rasa Kudabaite
14:00 | Be Careful(l) - Charlene Galea
Beyond What Drifts Us Apart | second weekend
Saturday 2 December
12:00 | Beyond What Drifts Us Apart (Site) Tour
14:00 | tune in; solarpunk manifesto - Samuel Ciantar & Noah Fabri
Sunday 3 December
13:00 | Be Careful(l) - Charlene Galea
14:00 | Te fit-Tazza u Kelmtejn - Geġwiġija
Beyond What Drifts Us Apart | final weekend
Saturday 9 December
11:00 - 16:00
More info coming soon
Sunday 10 December
11:00 - 16:00
More info coming soon
*** Have a look at the site map here ***
Geġwiġija (MT)
Geġwiġija is a pop-up library collectively exploring ecology, queerness & decolonisation. As a DIY space for stumbling upon ideas, we collaborate with different groups to share our selection of books at events every two months. Alongside the books, artists and creatives are invited to share their work, connecting the ideas between the pages to local lives and debates. In the spirit of linking theory to practice, we also co-host workshops to encourage the sharing of skills and ideas.
Be Careful(l) | Charlene Galea
Charlene Galea has been carrying out micro-interventions within the space around the Qalet Marku Tower, bringing together her instinctive movement and poetry, with ever-growing issues around environmental contamination, climate-anxiety, and a hypocritical stasis which sees pollution and contamination increase constantly. Her body-as-tower immersion in the site will guide visitors along her reflective journey and asks; “In the future, what is the colour of nature?”
Threading an (un)Safe Plot | Fernando P Ferreira
Fernando P Ferreira weaves an '(un)safe plot' from the Qalet Marku’s peninsula non-linear narratives. With a dialogic backstrap loom (a mobile loom worn by two people), Fernando has woven with the local community a collaborative and multi-authored textile piece made both of local fibres, and found and imagined stories. He will perform one fictional story he has written, inviting the audience to re-evaluate critically what is at stake when re-imaging the future of the Qalet Marku Tower’s plot.
eyestone | Rakel Vella
Rakel Vella explores the duality of protection and surveillance that the Qalet Marku Tower has provided over centuries. The ‘watchfulness’ potentially also relates to the vigilance required for the preservation of historical landmarks and vulnerable natural ecosystems. Blind spots are
also exposed; while certain areas are under strict watch, those that do not merit such attention, suffer neglect. Here, the watched / unwatched (Tower) becomes the watcher; are visitors to the site being observed?
toe ear | Marija Rasa Kudabaite
Marija Rasa Kudabaite employs a deep reverence for the natural world in her work, a recognition of its intrinsic value beyond human utility, and the non-human communities around the Qalet Marku Tower. She has sought to amplify the voices of the wind-whispered trees, the murmurs of the ancient stones, the lives of waves crashing upon the shore, and the intricate conversations of wildlife hidden in the landscape.
FaFu
FaFu (Factuals for Future) is a film-making working group around biodiversity under threat and Initiatives for its protection in Malta. A group of Malta-based filmmakers work around the central importance of biodiversity and community-related projects to protect the environment.
With Leanne and Lorraine Lewis, Sandra Mifsud and Douglas Comley, Laura Piredda and Martina Vasallo . Developed by Sabine and Thomas Büsch.
Tuning into a short-range FM transmission broadcast on the peninsula of Qalet Marku; a a solarpunk manifesto read in Maltese by Noah Fabri conceived as a form of soft-propaganda for an alternative way of living, and a connection to nature.
Antennae for a new frontier | Samuel Ciantar
Samuel Ciantar explores the possibilities of intangible networks and their inherent characteristics, aiming to understand how they coexist and interact within the specific context of the Qalet Marku Tower. He investigates the intricate dynamics between the physical landscape, humans and more unseen relationships. The sculptures introduce other ways of how we might come to understand and interact with the Tower and its landscape, suggesting new frontiers for reconnection.
Sedimentcorpi Qalet Marku | Alfred Graf
Alfred Graf explores the superimposition of body and landscape through skin contact and touch. This allows for the senses to perceive the numerous nuances of colour in sand, earth and eroding rock. The acts of thinking and wanting guide the creation process, in which a series of sculptures emerge that capture these processes. He produced five sediment corpses as a personal fusion of his body with the landscape.
Beyond What Drifts Us Apart is a collaboration with the Istanbul-based Mahalla Festival organised by the cultural organisation Diyalog, including site-specific artistic interventions, artists residencies and community-oriented activities.
Beyond What Drifts Us Apart is part of the MagiC Carpets Platform, co-funded by the European Union’s Creative Europe program. The MagiC Carpets Platform brings together 21 European cultural organisations, coordinated by Kaunas Biennial in Lithuania, offering opportunities for emerging artists to explore little-known areas and to create - together with local communities - new works that bring to light regional particularities and traditions.
Credits
Emerging Curator: Elyse Tonna
Artistic Director & Advisor: Sabine Küper-Büsch
Participating Artists, Malta 2023: Samuel Ciantar (MT), Fernando P Ferreira (PT), Charlene Galea (MT), Alfred Graf (AT), Marija Rasa Kudabaite (LT), Rakel Vella (MT)
Guests: Geġwiġija
Lead Partner: Kaunas Biennale
Key Collaborator: Diyalog Istanbul
Co-funded by: European Union’s Creative Europe programme, Arts Council Malta, and the Federal Ministry for Arts, Culture, the Civil Service and Sport of the Republic of Austria.
Collaborator in Malta: Din l-Art Ħelwa
Health & Safety: JP Health and Safety Consultants
Thanks: to Baħar iċ-Ċagħaq Church, Santa Marija tal-Anġli, Malta Rangers Unit, and Naxxar Local Council for their support.
The Artists
Samuel Ciantar (MT)
Samuel Ciantar is an emerging artist with an academic background in architecture. His artistic practice is concerned with alternative ways of being and interacting with our environment, drawing insight from the relationship between humans, objects and spaces.
Alfred Graf (AT)
Alfred Graf is a graduate of the Art Academy in Vienna. Special sediments or colored stones, unusual river courses or the like mix with strands of memory and phases of interpretation in Alfred Graf's works. Beginning with research and long walks, and later extracting elements from the landscape in the form of rocks and sand, his work sees him create in the studio (sediment paintings) as much as in the landscape as sculpture (sediment corps).
Rakel Vella (MT)
Rakel Vella’s main interest lies in merging the physical and virtual spaces in her work. Her research focused on modern surveillance in contemporary society followed by an interactive sculpture at the intersection of physical and virtual realms.
Influenced by physical and natural surroundings, Rakel combines fundamental design elements with technological media, such as video, 3D sculpture and computer-generated art.
Geġwiġija (MT)
Geġwiġija is a pop-up library collectively exploring ecology, queerness & decolonisation. As a DIY space for stumbling upon ideas, we collaborate with different groups to share our selection of books at events every two months. Alongside the books, artists and creatives are invited to share their work, connecting the ideas between the pages to local lives and debates. In the spirit of linking theory to practice, we also co-host workshops to encourage the sharing of skills and ideas.
Fernando P Ferreira (PT)
Fernando P. Ferreira is an architect, artist and creative researcher based between Porto (Portugal) and London (UK). His practice interacts with activism, art and urban research, textile making, storytelling, and experimental practices.
Marija Rasa Kudabaite (LT)
Marija Rasa Kudabaite explores in her practice sonic spatialization, texture, and fragility. she has been working on a series of acousmatic pieces for multichannel speaker setups. She carefully sculpts fictional soundscapes out of delicate noise, electronic sounds, and field recordings of quiet places, attentively put together by using a micro montage approach.
Charlene Galea (MT)
Charlene Galea is a conceptual artist whose body often navigates between online identity and physical experiences. Concepts are mostly presented through performance and text-based artworks, in which clothes and movement act as a metaphor to narrate how the body is experienced within contemporary times - focusing on the female identity, the effect of the media and its communication, issues or harmony of space as well as those of human relations.
FaFu
FaFu (Factuals for Future) is a film-making working group around biodiversity under threat and Initiatives for its protection in Malta. A group of Malta-based filmmakers work around the central importance of biodiversity and community-related projects to protect the environment.
With Leanne and Lorraine Lewis, Sandra Mifsud and Douglas Comley, Laura Piredda and Martina Vasallo . Developed by Sabine and Thomas Büsch.
The Curator
Elyse Tonna (MT)
Elyse Tonna is a curator, creative director, architect and researcher. Her practice spans various disciplines including visual arts, architecture, design, cultural policy, placemaking and cultural heritage. Currently, her curatorial research interests relate to ecological thinking, the post-/Anthropocene, speculative futures, living heritage and threatened landscapes. She overlaps these with spatial awareness and sensibility to create site/context-specific, immersive and sensorial experiences.
Our Collaborators
Diyalog
The Istanbul-based culture initiative Diyalog deals with bilateral and multilateral art and culture projects that revolve around current cultural-political issues and serve to promote international understanding. Since 2014, Diyalog, in cooperation with various partners, has been designing educational programs and events that deal with international migration movements, their causes and consequences, democratization processes and sustainability, and the development of innovative digital formats of cultural mediation, but also take environmental issues such as biodiversity into account.
Din l-Art Ħelwa
Din l-Art Ħelwa was set up in 1965 to safeguard Malta’s cultural heritage and the natural environment for future generations, which includes the hands-on conservation and restoration of our built and natural heritage.
It currently has guardianship of some 20 properties, half of which are open on a regular basis, and also has a very active sub-committee which checks on all planning applications and objects formally when these go against planning policies.
