Trigger 6: Assemblies
Trigger 6: Assemblies is a publication that examines gatherings as a radical form of agency, focusing on how collective spaces are formed and sustained under conditions of exile, erasure, and precarity. The book traces assemblies that emerge in fragmented contexts—reading circles, cafés, tents, living rooms, bookshops—and highlights the often-invisible affective and emotional labor required to maintain collective practices.
Trigger 6: Assemblies brings together contributions from artists, writers, and researchers including Rabih Mroué, Ala Younis, Hoda Afshar, Myriam Boulos, Céline Semaan, Farah Abdessamad, Didem Pekün, Larissa Sansour, Jumana Manna, Khaled Barakeh, and others, alongside an extensive archival section.
I contributed an article titled “Unscripted Movement”, developed through my ongoing research on embodied knowledge, collectivity, and movement as a social and political practice. The text reflects on movement as something that emerges outside of formal choreography—shaped by urgency, proximity, memory, and shared presence. It explores how bodies gather, respond, and organize themselves when structure is absent or deliberately refused.
The article was created in close collaboration with Shad Alsabagh, who developed the visual material accompanying the text. Together, we approached movement as both an archive and a living process, using images to extend the written reflection into the visual and spatial realm.
My contribution sits within the book’s broader investigation of assemblies as sites of resistance, care, and shared survival, where gathering itself becomes an act of agency.
Trigger 6: Assemblies — Guest Editor: Taous Dahmani | Coordinating Editor (FOMU): Tom Viaene | Publisher: Fw:Books | Design: Hans Gremmen | Partners: FOMU – Fotomuseum Antwerpen; Kamel Lazaar Foundation / Ibraaz | ISBN: 978-90-835197-8-4 | Language: English & Arabic.
Publication Date: November 2025 | Launch Events: 8 Nov 2025 – Ibraaz (London); 14 Nov 2025 – Le Bal (Paris).