CURATING & REPAIR, PUBLISHED BY 1000 WORDS, IN PARTNERSHIP WITH NŌUA, DOUBLE DUMMY AND FINNISH MUSEUM OF PHOTOGRAPHY
OUT OF THE METROPOLIS - ART EXCHANGE ACROSS BORDERS (2022–20
OTM
Out of the Metropolis - Art exchange across borders’ is a collaborative project between three European contemporary photography institutions, working together between 2023-2025 to explore the challenges and possibilities for the exchange and presentation of art in smaller institutions located in the peripheries of Europe. With many artists and curators leaving the art metropolis to establish themselves in the peripheries, new methods for production and presentation of art are needed.
The project responds to Creative Europe’s Objective on Transnational creation and circulation and aim’s to build capacity between European art networks and micro-institutions in the peripheries. We will investigate new curatorial phenomena by challenging the roles, models and functions between exhibition spaces, curators, artists, and audiences in a micro-institution context. The project’s objective is to strengthen micro institutions and unconventional arenas for art in the peripheries by developing innovative strategies and methods for cross-border collaborative teams, co-production, and exchange of art, with particular focus on economic and ecological sustainability. The project seeks to address Creative Europe’s priority on International dimension by running a series of activities supporting knowledge sharing, recourses and infrastructure. Including research and dialogues on art in the periphery through three seminars in Norway, France and Finland, explore new exhibition formats in three exhibitions in Norway, disseminate experiments in a web platform and present essays in a printed publication. Exhibitions at NOUA, Norway will be in connection to Bodø Capital Culture 2024.
The project benefited a large number of micro art institutions in Europe, as well as artists and curators who develop productions for alternative art arenas. The project will have longevity through cementing criticallity including new models for international cooperation.
Link to the EU : Creative Europe Programme (CREA)
Link to the transnational exhibitions:
OCTAHYDRA by Batia Suter was part of the Rencontres d'Arles 2025
DAMI (IMAGO) by Smith was part of Biennial 25 Fotografia do Porto
WE ARE PROUD TO PRESENT OUR FIRST EU PROJECT: OUT OF THE METROPOLIS – ART EXCHANGE ACROSS BORDERS (2022–2025)
ACTIVATION : NO-PHOTO AT ARLES IN 2025
Activation Against Complicity and Silence
This year, NO-PHOTO presented a site-specific activation during the opening week of the 2025 edition of the Rencontres d’Arles, which ran from July 7 to October 5, 2025.
NO-PHOTO began as a counter-festival in 2024, in response to one of Australia’s photography festivals which, like many other cultural institutions, refused to acknowledge the unfolding atrocity in Gaza, instead claiming an apolitical stance when faced with criticism. This was an ironic disavowal, given the overtly political imagery featured throughout their program. At that point, over 124 Palestinian photographers and journalists had been killed. NO-PHOTO emerged from this dissonance: a refusal to accept political aesthetics without political accountability, and a call for cultural institutions to align their visual language with ethical clarity and action.
THE ACTIVATION
At Arles 2025, NO-PHOTO installed a series of dual posters across selected locations. The first poster featured a black rectangle matching the ratio of a specific image captured in Gaza by a local photographer—many of whom had since been killed (176 photographers and journalists as of 12 June 2025). The second poster featured a poetic text, written in collaboration with poets and writers, describing the image in evocative, metaphorical language, in the format of an alt text. These writings invited reflection, not spectacle. Each poster was captioned with the photographer’s name, the date, and the location of the photograph. The black shape served as a space of absence and mourning, refusing to reduce these images, and their subjects, to the violence the world had subjected them to. They stood as acknowledgements of inaction, of the disturbing passivity that continued to surround this atrocity.
The members of NO-PHOTO and the collaborators remained anonymous; only the photographers’ names were acknowledged.
A new edition of Doubledummy’s free newspaper, featuring “SEEING GENOCIDE: WEAPONIZATION OF IMAGES” by Ariella Aïsha Azoulay, was released to mark the occasion. Free physical copies still available or download it here.
For ongoing documentation and updates, follow @no_photo2025 on Instagram.
NO-PHOTO25
NO- PHOTO began as a counter-festival in response to the Melbourne–Naarm’s, a major event showcasing the work of both established and contemporary photographers from diverse backgrounds. While the festival prominently featured images of black, brown, queer, and politically situated bodies and landscapes, its institutional silence on the war in Gaza, at the height of its violence during the festival’s opening, revealed a clear contradiction. At that point, over 124 Palestinian photographers and journalists had been killed. Despite presenting itself as globally engaged and politically aware, the festival, which receives funding from Zionist-aligned sources, refused to acknowledge the unfolding atrocity. When questioned by artists and notable members of the community about the absence of any reference to Palestine or the war, the organisers claimed an apolitical position—an ironic disavowal, given the political imagery and black and brown faces that dominated their posters and promotional materials. NO- PHOTO emerged in response to this dissonance: a refusal to accept political branding without political accountability, and a demand for cultural institutions to match their visual language with ethical clarity and action.
ARLES 2023 : MOMENTS WITH FRIENDS AT THE OPENING
2024 - Against Abstraction, Arles 2024. July 1st-July 7th.
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
A satellite view capturing the destruction of Rafah in the Gaza Strip, via a Telegram group.
ONCE UPON A TIME: AN EDUCATIONAL PROGRAM 2020
An online program on protest and engagement in research based photography.
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.
Day 2
Wednesday June 3rd 2020
Stanley Wolukau-Wanambwa
Who represents who ?
collaborators
