manifiesto

We are very pleased to announce the upcoming DoubleDummy activation entitled Against Abstraction by Palestinian artists Maen Hammad, Dina Salem, Sari Tarazi, and Ahmad Alaqra. “Against Abstraction” will be showcased in the framework of the opening week of the Rencontres d’Arles. Opening its doors on July 1st, 2024, and running until July 7th, 2024, it conveys a timeline of the ongoing genocide in Gaza using information shared via alternative messaging platforms like Telegram. The vernissage and the launch of the newsprint is scheduled for July 4, 2024 at 19:00. 

Against Abstraction ventures into themes of commodification and erasure of Palestinian suffering, and resistance. Interrogating how images emerging from Palestine are framed, interpreted, and more importantly, consumed, this year’s activation pivots around audiovisual material collected from popular Telegram channels. Known for their secure message encryption and relatively lenient content moderation policies, it relies on the alternative methods of news-sharing and the unfettered circulation of information stemming from these channels, which have been crucial in disseminating the reality from within Palestine. Using coding and AI tools, the artists analyzed large swathes of digital data to identify the most frequented words used on popular Telegram channels active in Gaza, every day since October 7, 2023. Corresponding to each of these words, they selected an image, a video or an audio note from each day of the genocide. The resulting timeline, collated from select excerpts from these channels, presents an insight into the last eight months in Gaza, distinct from mainstream social and corporate media discourse. It simultaneously gestures towards the different modes of erasure and sharp contradictions that have become more pronounced since October 7. The activation opens a portal into Palestine, raising questions about the institutional response to imperialist violence within the Western culture industry and the resulting patterns of consumption around the suffering of the oppressed. Eventually, it aims to confront Western liberal ideals, in their ultimate unmasking, as revealed through their lack of political engagement and solidarity with colonized subjects.

Monday to Friday, 12h : Guided tours at at DD studio.

The vernissage and the launch of the newsprint is scheduled for July 4th, 2024 at 19:00 at DD studio.

TALKS PROGRAM 2024 ; WE ARE STILL ALIVE 

Tuesday to Saturday, 11h at Mirage, 12, rue Vernon; Arles.  

“We are still alive” is a direct response to the current media landscape altered by the wars in Gaza and Ukraine, which are among the deadliest and most destructive conflicts of our century. It also continues DD’s longstanding commitment to foregrounding art and documentary photography as potential sites of activism. The political urgency and conviction with which DD has organized this year’s activation is invigorating — an antidote to the wave of layoffs, resignations and boycotts that have swept the art world both locally and globally, and an act of refusal in itself. Guest speakers: Abdo Shanan, Mohamed Mahdy, Maen Hammad, Adam Broomberg, Rafael Gonzalez, Barbara, Debeuckelaere, Adam Rouhana, Max Pinckers and Kateryna Radchenko. The lecture program is organized together with the Librairie du Palais. 

Monday 1st July, 19h

Special Event : Screening “Slingshot Hip Hop” by Jackie Reem Salloum

A documentary film directed that traces the history and development of hip hop in the Palestinian

Tuesday 2th July, 11h :   

Tarweedeh Zine with Abdo Shanan and Mohamed Mahdy

A presentation about aka TAWLA, a collective of creators of photo books in Southwest Asia and North Africa.

Wednesday 3th July, 11h :  

Against Abstraction with Maen Hammad

About an activation at Double Dummy Studio.

Thursday 4th July, 11h : 

On Palestine with Adam Broomberg, Rafael Gonzalez, Barbara Debeuckelaere , Adam Rouhana, Issa Amro.

 Around Anchor in the Landscape (MACK books) and Om/Mother (Eriskay Connection).

Friday 5th July, 11h:  

State of Emergency with Max Pinckers

A conversation about a project with Mau Mau freedom fighters and survivors of Britishcolonial atrocities.

Saturday 6th July, 11h :  

Odessa Photo Days with Kateryna Radchenko

A conversation about the urgency, action, cooperation in Ukraine.

Saturday 6th July, 17h :

Resist/Refuse: In conversation with Palestinian photographers with Rehaf Batniji, Maen Hammad, Sakir Khader moderated by Tanvi Mishra. 

Over the course of the last nine months, Palestinians have demonstrated the robust power—both in production and dissemination—of the auto narrative. Not solely by choice, scores of Palestinian journalists have been compelled to document the genocide of their own people. In the face of attempts at erasure, of both their narrative and their existence, the visual archive emerging from Palestine has become a vital record of this moment that no one but those in Gaza can lay authorial claim towards. 

At VII Foundation, 49 Quai de la Roquette, Arles. 

DOWNLOAD THE LAST EDITION OF OUR NEWSPRINT here

DOWNLOAD THE PRESS RELEASE here

CALAMITA/À joins Double Dummy on the 7th and 8th July 2021 to present the current stage of artists projects. 

Artists presented are: Gianpaolo Arena, Marina Caneve, Céline Clanet, François Deladerriere, Petra Stavast, Jan Stradmann. 

Don Delillo tells us "Only a catastrophe gets our attention. We want them we depend on them. As long as they happen somewhere else." In Italian CALAMITA means magnet, CALAMITÀ catastrophe. CALAMITA/À with its double identity was started in 2013 as a reflection on disasters and the attraction our society feels for them. The project is interdisciplinary and our major site of investigation so far has been the Vajont area. Vajont it sadly famous because of a catastrophe happened in 1963 in which almost 2.000 people died due to a dam flooding.

The board is composed by Gianpaolo Arena and Marina Caneve. Sara Bassi recently joined the project as collaborator. 

MORE INFO AT: https://calamitaproject.com/

In 2020 we founded Zur, a new platform dedicated to research, creation and exchange that aims to interrogate the photographic practices that are currently taking place in Latin America, focusing in particular on the links that these establish (or not) with the ways of making and thinking about photography that are developing in other regions of the planet. In this sense, Zur seeks to problematize the territory of "Latin American photography" by discussing its displacements, borders, hybridizations, cross breedings, decentralizations, delusions, contradictions, utopias, and dystopias. The interest of Zur is thus to put in tension the Latin American photographic practice with all its otherness, but not only with those who inhabit the "outside" but also in its own "inside".

ZUR is composed of a team of two artist-teachers-researchers : Alejandro Leon Cannock & Sergio Valenzuela Escobedo.

-June 2023. ZUR presents " Global South solidarity day " at the Dd Studio a reading room on actual protest book from Latin America.

-May 2021. ZUR presents " DE AQUI PA ALLA " at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure de la Photographie (Arles- ENSP). a reading group project with the students from the school. 

Atelier NŌUA and doubledummy is delighted to present their first online educational program Once upon a time ... by Mathieu Asselin and Sergio Valenzuela Escobedo. Throughout the activities of this educational program, there will be a series of events held online for artists, photographers, students, curators, designers, curious minds, and other interested parties discussing the issues within documentary photography today. The lectures, seminars, courses, and talks are compiled by Asselin and Valenzuela Escobedo in collaboration with Marianne Bjørnmyr and Dan Mariner will be shared from May 25th to August 14th in NŌUA online platform. The educational program consists of a two-month workshop and a public program. 

The public program consists of six artist talks, seven photobook designer's presentations, and two lectures. The guest speakers for this first online program on protest and engagement are photographers, designers, and curators that somehow are developing works related to long-term projects that propose to rethink the nature and objectives of documentary photography to make it more responsive to the challenges of today’s society. Stanley Wolukau-Wanambwa, Laia Abril, Anthony Luvera, Max Pinckers, and Newsha Tavakolian will be sharing their work, their process, and their vision with Sunil Shah in real-time ‘live’ discussion. Adam Bromberg and Ana Kaisa Rastemberg will be giving an oral presentation intended to present information about a particular subject. Roger Williams, Ramon Peza, Eleana Schlenker, Ricardo Báez, Nina Bačun & Roberta Bratović, Hans Gremmen, and Lewis Bush meet online to open their InDesign files and discuss their choices, inspirations via video conference. The main idea is to bring together a community of photographers, critics, intellectuals, etc. to discuss and exchange information, ideas, and experiences that highlight the current challenges, prospects, and frontiers in contemporary documentary photography. The online public program is supported by the Arts Council Norway. 

Guest: Mathieu Asselin & Sergio Valenzuela Escobedo, Roger Willems, Adam Broomberg, Stanley Wolukau-Wanambwa, Ramon Pez, Anna Kaisa Rastenberger, Laia Abril, Elana Schlenker, Anthony Luvera, Ricardo Báez, Max Pinckers, Nina Bačun & Roberta Bratović, Newsha Tavakolian, Hans Gremmen, Lewis Bush.