Streets Urban Festival Kasserine

From: Streets Urban Festival Kasserine

Tuesday’s update from the Streets team:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdmrlweMXqA

The frigid air crystalized the anticipation in the streets of Kasserine this Tuesday morning. As motorbikes coughed by, struggling past horse-drawn carts, most Kasserinis wouldn’t have dreamed that in a few hours the avenues and back alleys of their city would be home to giant graffiti murals; courtesy of world-class artists the likes of Zepha, Shuck 2, Sim, and Tire. Nor would anyone have expected the vibrant workshops in rap, photography, and breakdancing that animated the conference rooms and courtyards of the local youth complex, seated behind a low dusty wall on Kasserine’s outskirts.

But as locals and artists alike finished lunch and walked out of the dining hall at the youth complex, they were greeted by local youth contorting themselves in the middle of a circle

in an old-skool B-boy battle; onlookers cheering loudly at their best moves. Despite the chill, the battle was hot, and dancers pulled off their shirts before plunging back onto the mat while classic breaks played from the DJ booth behind them. The competition was fierce, but the B-boys kept the battle peaceful, throwing fake blows at each other and dodging them with laughs and backflips.

Just steps down the road from the youth center, graffeurs Tire and Shuck 2, both from the cités of Paris were putting their mark on a wall facing a municipal building. Both characters are as colourful as the calligraffiti murals they were creating. Tire, originally from France, has been living in Montréal for the last three years. He’s a former streetball player, and after leaving Tunisia will be moving to Yemen with his wife and children. Shuck 2 began his graffiti career in the late 1980s with his gang in the Parisian suburbs, and was one of the first to practice graffiti using Arabic script.

Even farther down the road, French street artist Zepha balances precariously on a motorized lift, dragging his spray can over the top edges of an apartment building with broad strokes, assembling a twisted formation of Arabic letters with shapes of natural objects. On a crumbing wall below him, Tunisian graffeur Slim fills in the outlines of his work in progress with bright pink paint. Local boys, who were practicing parkour nearby, or Free Running, stand at the street’s edge in rapt attention.

Haron Hesi, 16 years old, said, “The graffiti here encourages us to be creative. If someone has creativity, he can imagine, he can become someone else. Creativity gives us hope.”

Written by Sam Kimball. You can also follow Sam on Twitter @SamOnTheRoad

Wednesday’s update from the Streets team:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzpoQcYH7SI

As the chill of the morning wore off on Wednesday, young men from Kasserine warmed up on yellow and blue mats in the open Air beside the local youth center. The smallest children imitated the bigger kids on another mat just meters away. As time went on, renowned break dancer Selim, the founder of French dance crew Pokémon, began his workshop with the youth. With simple electro beats lording over the crowd, they youth all moved in unison following Selim’s lead. Still later, the rows of dancers turned into a circle with one-on-one battles exploding within, Selim serving as judge.

Walid Kafi, a filmmaker from Montréal, had his lens focused on the dancers before turning it to Seifeddine, a twenty year-old from Kasserine who is the focus of a documentary film about the Streets Festival. Kafi shot a scene with Seifeddine and American journalist Sam Kimball as they walked slowly along a path beside the youth center, as they spoke about Seif’s interest in graffiti and acting as forms of expression, and his hopes for the festival.

Later in the afternoon, up the hill from the municipal youth center at a private arts center called Al Rawabi (The Hills), children sat in rows before a local teacher of the oud, a traditional Arab stringed instrument. Following his notes in unison, their voices climbed climbed through traditional songs. But minutes later, as Canadian-Iraqi rapper The Narcicyst and French rapper Medine entered the courtyard of the center, the children poured from their classrooms and stood quietly before Medine as he spoke to them about the importance of positive creative outlets. Then with beats from producer Sandhill pounding, Narcicyst and Medine took turns freestyle wrapping in Arabic, French and English. In an interview outside the center, Medine said, “Our professors educate us. Our parents educate us too. But I think at this festival, the artists have educated us.”

When night fell and the deep cold returned, the local basketball stadium packed with the bodies of contorting their bodies before a stage where a local DJ spun old breaks. The final B-boy battle had begun. In round after round, dancers went in round after round, first one-on-one, then two-on-two, then crew versus crew. There was even a special round for children, 8 and 9 year-olds. After hours of round after round, Selim made his decision and one of the crews won the battle. The prize for the winners is an international show with Selim’s celebrated Pokémon dance crew.

Written by Sam Kimball. You can also follow Sam on Twitter @SamOnTheRoad

Thursday’s update from the Streets team:

For Kasserinis tuning into the radio this Thursday morning, they heard the program host introducing Montréal-based rapper The Narcicyst, and announcing his upcoming performance scheduled for that night. Next they heard The Narcicyst’s song Batal (Hero) produced by fellow visiting artist Sandhill. Following, festival founder Karim Jabbari jumped on the microphone and updated Kasserine on the festival’s progress.

As the sun began to lift into the midday sky, the day’s activities opened once-again at Dar Esh Shabab (Youth Center) on the edges of Kasserine. Imen, a young woman from Kasserine recently graduated from a fashion and design program at the local university, was demonstrating to children seated around a table how to make simple sculptures from various types of pasta. The children used fingers and rollers to shape dough into faces and stars. Girls, who hitherto hadn’t had a strong presence in many of the workshops, made up nearly half the group. Nadir Soultani, 15, who participated in the workshop, said, “Workshops like this are important because they allow us to be creative, they give knowledge to the local kids, and provide a model for how we can be.”

On the other side of the courtyard, producer and beatmaker Sandhill was assembling drums and guitar samples on a mixing console, while heads of curious local youth nodded with the rhythm. Sandhill encouraged some of the rappers in the crowd to pick up a microphone, and within minutes a crowd had formed, with a freestyle rap battle in full swing. The Narcicyst, who had seen the battle and come running, spit a few bars between some of the local talents.

And just as the sun fell that night, The Narcicyst appeared on stage at Kasserine’s indoor sports complex in a woolen bournous (cloak) and Tunisian skullcap with mic in hand and Sandhill at the sound booth behind him. While videos for Narcy’s various songs flitted across a projector screen beside him, the eager youth piled up in front of the stage rocked their fists in the air to the beat. After Narcy finished his mixed English/Arabic set and the audience settled down, Tunisia’s own MC Killa and the group Debo came to the stage for a freestyle battle, Kasserini youth filling the sports complex further in support of local talent.

Written by Sam Kimball. You can also follow Sam on Twitter @SamOnTheRoad

Friday’s update from the Streets team:

On the final day, the atmosphere was light. With a bright sun shining, the air of Kasserine’s dusty streets was warm. Renowned Chilean graffiti muralist Saile One was raised three stories above Kasserine’s downtown on a hydraulic lift. The mural, a collection of different collaged faces, began on Tuesday and is still in progress. Saile says he’ll stay in Kasserine as long as it takes to finish.

Filmmaker Walid Kafi continued filming his documentary on the festival, taking up-close footage of artists Tire and Shuck 2. Both had completed their expansive graffiti pieces on the wall facing a mosque and a municipal building, Tire’s composed of elaborate but bare Arabic letters, Shuck 2’s old-skool latin script with Kasserine written in neon green Arabic splashed in the middle. By today they had moved on to another wall closer to the center of town, Shuck 2’s rapidly assembled and simple Arabic mural covering a huge swath of the wall, while Tire’s giant tag was made up of a few latin letters adorned with crowns and paint drips. Kafi’s camera hovered below spray cans and behind ladders, capturing every movement.

Later on, Kafi, along with The Narcycist, Tamara Abdul Hadi, Sandhill, graffers Vajo and Kim, and Seifeddine, around whom Kafi’s documentary is oriented, all went to a Roman amphitheater just outside Kasserine. The Narcicyst gave an interview on his experience at Thursday evening’s concert and spoke about his hopes for the festival, but also about his understanding that it will not immediately change the economic and social situation most Kasserinis live in. Photographer Tamara Abdulhadi explained the techniques she used in her photography workshop, particularly allowing students to take their own photographs as a means of allowing them to choose how they are represented.

Kafi then turned his lens back on Seifeddine. In front of one if his Graffiti murals, Seif explained to journalist Sam Kimball the meaning behind his writing “My Country is My Responsibility.’” He painted this during a graffiti competition shortly after military operations against extremists, which left many locals angry and fearful. The piece was Seif’s attempt to give Kasserinis hope and strength in a period of uncertainty.

Streets Festival wrapped up with a three-on-three freestyle basketball competition, with local youth up against a French freestyle basketball team, along with Tire.

The local youth tried as best they could to catch up with the French team’s Harlem Globe Trotters-like moves. The Kasserini youth didn’t come out on top for this one, but the game ended with high-fives and pats on the back; a warm end to the festival as cold night fell once again.

Written by Sam Kimball. You can also follow Sam on Twitter @SamOnTheRoad

Tuunis #2: RCD, DÉGAGE!

RCD, DÉGAGE!

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(“3” as I use it in transcriptions, represents the
tightening of the throat one hears when Kermit
The Frog speaks.)

May 4, 2011

The coming and going of guys in the room woke me. Course and quick shuffling on the dead linoleum, turning on and off the lights as they got their clothes on at 6:30a.m. and faces washed for work, off to the mdīna (“old city”) to suffer their dignity and sell cheap plastic jewelry or cigarettes all day. Brāhim with his cardboard box of trinkets, Şāliħ off to teach home design classes, I believe, and Bilēl, unemployed, still frozen on his pad on the floor. I rose at 7a.m. from the floor of the dingy apartment I shared—deciding to let my body adjust to the new schedule of this new country with a slightly later start—and am all the better for it.
I got a late start too to the interview with the semi-spokesman of the unemployed union. Sat waiting on the steps of the theatre for a half hour, dotted with red revolutionary graffiti in French and Arabic, the temporary wall around the construction project across from me splashed with the familiar slogan RCD, dégage! (“RCD, Get Out!” – RCD is the Rassemblement Constitutionnel Democratique, or Democratic Constitutional Rally, the party of Ben Ali and his cronies, said to still haunt Tunisia under different party names). Called my contact, reset our meeting, and grabbed a seat at the fancy café of Hôtel International. Belkacem was his name, came running up to my bourgeois perch under the umbrella, sweating in the 11a.m. breeze and never taking off his sunglasses. We talked about some important stuff regarding the Leftists in Tunisia, the spread of committees for the diplômés chômeurs—those with college degrees and no suitable work to speak of—since the December/January uprising, and the protests in which the unemployed have been vital in organizing. Yet, we never finished the interview, as he scurried off heavily while spitting thick Tunisian dialect into his phone, telling me we’d finish tomorrow, and I didn’t get all of what he said, because of his Arabic accent in French, and my distraction at his sunglasses and badly rotted teeth.
After that, I met my thin, humble roommate Bilēl over at Bēb Bħar, the imposing gate to the mdīna standing alone in a square filled with cafés and a dribble of tourists in awful shorts and tank-tops. We meandered over to the sūq (“market”) and bargained down a pair of fake Adidas for me to about twenty Dinar. Walked a ways, and so far no sores on the bottom of my toes. A good start for these sneakers. Then onwards through the alleys of polished stone, and hanging bras, towels, and rolls of cloth, out past an old mesjid (“mosque”), and on to the Université Neuf Avril. There, I called Nasrin, the beauty I’d met a few days before, several times in the windy courtyard of the austere college and got only the boîte vocale, to my dismay. Met a couple leaders of student groups and other activists, told ‘em my mission in French, and we met again inside the office of the recently deposed school secret police, just inside the main door to the campus.
These kids were smart, and had a lot of analysis to give—albeit full of uncertainty—in response to my questions. They interrupted each other here and there, and all pulled out cigarettes and smoked in unison like young communists in Paris. Yet, none of them could offer too many confident statements about the future when I asked, which I guess few Tunisians really can at this point. Pretty militant and full of life they were, though, which was a breath of fresh air, after so much of the political staleness in people’s minds that I encountered while living in Syria.
One of the guys in the interview could understand my questions in French, but stumbled some when speaking French (no worse than me, certainly), and so responded in Standard Arabic, most of the words of which I was understanding, but I wasn’t able to put it all together into a meaningful statement. I guess I’m still at that level in Arabic. Shucks.
At one point, the girl to my left started to speak to me about student organizing in English with a British accent, and then POOF! They were all speaking advanced-level English. But then I would say something in Standard Arabic to the guy having a little linguistic trouble, and they would all start speaking and arguing in Standard Arabic. Same for French. Incredible.
Afterwards, I watched some videos of the revolution here in the capital that they had put together, and they all jumped at the chance to give me their contact info. One brown-skinned woman (3azza was her name, I think?) said she’d accompany me to Sidi Bou Zid when I go, the place from which the Tunisian revolution spread. That’s where she’s from, she said. Nice.
Then me and Bilēl wandered out of the spot, and I felt a huge lump in my throat and chest as if I was going to cry, and I felt tired, homesick, and pessimistic about this whole journalism thing, despite the great meeting. Back through the mdīna, and me and Bilēl grabbed some sandwiches in a hole-in-the-wall near Enīs’ internet shop, and I felt just fine again after eating. But, as I sat at Enīs’ cyber café making calls to City College to check for job options (not looking so great there), calling Dick Hull about NYU financing, and writing a letter in French pleading the Université Libre de Bruxelles to still let me apply despite my missing the deadline, the enormous weight I felt before returned, and I felt like crying.
The sky became grey and flat, and I went across the street, home to the fellas’ apartment, and called Mom for a little wisdom and relief. I did get some, but couldn’t bring myself to cook any shūrbit l 3adis (“lentil soup”) for the boys, as I’d planned. They cooked instead, and we sat around watching TV and talking simple Arabic, chowing down on macaroni. The weight left me, and I slept.


May 8^th, 2011

Woke at 7am, eyes embarrassingly heavy at this hour, which is a slovenly one for my new up-and-at-‘em-at-daybreak schedule. Because of the heavy dinner last night prepared by Kefi’s wife Ħannān, had trouble getting out of bed. But, I got my shower on (I thank the universe), got my kriya on, then wolfed down a breakfast of baguettes and jam and café au lait from the low table in Kefi’s arab-style living room with cushions on the floor. It’s pretty high living in the care of this man who I only met yesterday. I’m amazed how far some money one saves while an immigrant, working as a cab driver in Philadelphia, will get one in this destitute little town of Menzil Bou Zian.
We sauntered in the sun, out through the decrepit concrete portal around Kefi’s property, and hopped in the car with smiling Fādil, Kefi’s brother—or cousin?—who really knows great sayings and expressions in English, and we sped out of Menzil Bou Zian alongside the old French train tracks. As we cruised along, Kefi, his eyes peeking out slightly from under the brim of his eternal baseball cap, told me in his high, joyful-sounding voice, about his illiterate father, who started fighting the French occupation in 1946 as a young man. He told me how many great rebels against French colonization came from this town, this area, this little peach pit at the middle of this country ripe with radicalism—yes, radicalism. It’s that popular liberating impulse that can force off the hand that squeezes the throat of a society. But, be very careful about equating “radicalism” as I use it with the blind, angry, Islamophobic word which much of the mainstream American media uses to frighten us about the world beyond our borders.
The land spreading out around our car was semi-arid, and flat, but for tiny bare mountains of brown and grey off in the distance. The sky was frighteningly clear.
We drove a long way, picking up a motley crew of simple Tunisian hitchhikers, and dropping them off along the way, and after a long stretch of kilometers along the highway, now surrounded by feeble agriculture, Fādil dropped us in the middle of Sidi Bou Zid. It’s interesting how I had a preconceived notion of Sidi Bou Zid, this small town where Muhammed Bou Azizi burned himself alive in protest, sparking a revolution, as being a place physically mangled by poverty. Yet, it looked like simply another dull town of the interior, save for the revolutionary spray paint graffiti in Arabic, French, and English on the white walls of the town.
I talked to Kefi at a café about general problems of corruption, regional favoritism of the past regimes, and the absolute lack of any industry or commerce development in the area, while I composed interview questions in French. I thought I would be pushing for interviews with local bureaucrats, but Kefi unceremoniously grabbed three young guys from the café, and we embarked upon a great trilingual discussion. In hindsight, of course I wanted to talk to the regular unemployed people of this town, not some fat administrator behind a desk.
The young men, two of them former students of tourism who commanded the basics in English, seemed on the edge of tears from frustration at the state of things, one of them looking the whole time as if he’d just been beat in a fight. They talked about the corruption that remains, the etbē3 (cronies) of the old regime who hang on in the provincial administration, the lack of any job prospects. “Anyone who can help, come! We need help… from America, OK? From anybody. I have dreams. I have no hope,” said the beaten young guy with thick beard scruff. When asked if they thought the revolution would bring something better, something that lasts, to Sidi Bou Zid, they winced like I’d just put a finger in their would. “No,” was the answer in short. “Moi, j’irai en France” (“Me, I’m going to France”) said the only one of them who had some means to escape.
Afterwards, Kefi and I checked out a local minister’s office, burned from the inside out yesterday by unknown assailants. Black wings of soot on the walls spread out from the windows. Beside us, an aging taxi driver, seemingly out of nowhere, recounted to me from his car window his days with the Tunisian secret police in the 1980’s. He had been trained by—guess who—the CIA. He showed me the lapel pin that signified his unit, given to him by America’s bravest torture trainers. He seemed to have little fear of reprisal as he spoke. Either he had resigned to the inevitability of future punishment, or his acts had already been recognized by past victims.
We took a bit of rest and fruit juice in Fādil’s tidy, gardened home just down the street. Then, headed out, we toddled down the main avenue, approaching some old cats standing out front of a dry cleaners. After intense conversation that I understood little of, they pointed us to a local police office smashed and disheveled and burned by marauding shebēb (young men). Within, the bookcases were overturned and sat in piles of ash and black water. The entrance door was dark with soot. The quietly outraged family living above the station came down and told us how they had averted an attack on their home upstairs only by firing a gun when the vandals approached. Several acts of arson and vandalism in one small town in one day. Who did this? Do they work for somebody? The beginning of a counter-revolution terrorist movement?
Then the long, hot drive along the cracked road back to Menzil Bou Zian.
After a nap and a meditation, I headed over to a sha3bi (popular/working-class) coffee shop, men and only men shriveled like prunes laid out to dry on its terrace. I drank tea and smoked a disgusting hookah that burned my throat with Kefi, Fādil, and other local fellas who sat around smiling at this foreigner who struggled like a baby with their dialect. I learned some great expressions in the Tunisian idiom, though, like “Just when 3idi is getting married, the grain goes bad,” meaning that sometimes the rarest of misfortunes will happen at the worst moments, and be ready for it. Then, I did the briefest, most concise interview hitherto with Fādil, in English. He gave me a lot more specific information about the people in the area, but in the end, he said he too was almost hopeless for real change post-revolution. “Maybe, maybe, after the elections [in July] we’ll see change,” he closed, wincing.
The sun taking its last purple-orange breathes over the dry and deserted avenue at the center of town, I walked over the barren railroad tracks behind the café, talking in French with a café waiter about racism in the U.S., the gravel crunching under our feet, and I went to the half-built house of Kefi’s brother to use internet. I spoke with Kefi’s brother—pious, curious, a bit hard-headed—and a few hijab-sporting women with light skin and piercing faces about religion, in my uncomfortable, tedious Arabic. We argued about the assassination of Bin Laden, they said he was a great leader, and I spoke to my mother about this place on the phone.