Water, war, drought- North and East Syria action session – ONLINE
Within the framework of Performance Studies international’s Annual Conference on Hunger, academicians and community workers from North and East Syria, France and Germany come together to give visibility to difficulties that people in the North and East Syria region face due to drought caused by military and political interventions as well as the ecological crisis.
July 8, 2022 10:00 – 11:30 AM Paris (GMT +2) / 11:00 – 12:30 AM Rojava (GMT +3) / 4:00 – 5:30 PM Asia/Manila (GMT +8)
Livestream on the facebook page of Performance Studies international:
https://www.facebook.com/PerformanceStudiesinternational
The frontier between Turkey and Syria witnessed dramatic political changes and incessant war in the last decade, from the Syrian civil war to the expansion of Isil to their defeat mostly by Kurdish forces. Established in 2016, the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, also called Rojava attracts attentions worldwide with its decentralized direct democracy based on gender equality, environmental sustainability and pluralistic tolerance. Today, the Turkish military uses water as a war weapon by blocking the water of the two major rivers that aliment the region, depriving inhabitants of Rojava of water. While ecological crisis is among the triggers of regional chaos, the regional multicultural performances (for instance lamentations) carry the memory of deprivation due to ethnic and religious conflicts in the past and present. This session opens space to expressions that shed light on the situation and its memory in collaboration with artists, activists, community workers, academicians from Rojava and around the world, as well as its inhabitants.
The session will be chaired by Nilüfer Gros, doctoral researcher at Conservatoire National Supérieur d’Art Dramatique in Paris and Engin Sustam from Université Paris 8, Center for Solidarity with Universities of NE Syria (CSUNES).
The speakers are: Xezne Îbrahîm from Kobane University who is also the co-chair of the University’s Institute of Educational Sciences. She will focus on « Water and Nature Policy and its Consequences ». Hêvî Musa from Jinwar Women’s Village works in the field of natural medicine and health. She also takes care of the education of children and mothers in Jinwar. She will give a presentation entitled « Against war, poverty, drought and patriarchal attacks, build a living space: Jinwar ». Şermin Güven (M.A.) is an environmental and political anthropologist and a PhD Student at Freie Universität Berlin (FU), Department of Political and Social Sciences – Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology. She recently curated « Constructed Utopias + JINWAR », an Exhibition about women’s resilience against climate change and war. She will close up the hydro-hegemoniac behavior of Turkey toward North East Syria and what the impacts are.
The session will be in English and Kurdish
It will be streamed live on the facebook page of Performance Studies International: https://www.facebook.com/PerformanceStudiesinternational
The session will also be live on the platform of the PSi Conference. If you wish to register and contribute to other Hunger action sessions in the PSi Hunger Conference click here
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