Tuesday, 14 April, 2026 - 10:00

All The Rivers Residency II: Bound with the Living

Hana Umeda
Miriam Schickler
Juna Suleiman
Hagar Ophir

please note: a public sharing will follow in October 26!

Bound with the Living: Rehearsals for an Unwritten History is an experimental, collaborative research project developed since 2019. The project is built around objects of historical and personal value as witnesses of the past carrying the histories of their owners and the experiences they have endured. We use the séance as a method for engaging with history in a non-linear way. In séance sessions, participants gather around a table in a dark room to rehearse an unwritten history of a specific past through shared presence, deep listening, and paying attention. The séance is held by a medium, working in dialogue with an absent or deceased subject (entity) that stands at the heart of the research, who is invited into the room through intentional questions and collective focus.
Participants confront ancestors and historical ruptures through objects marked by violence, displacement, and loss. These objects hold traces of un-narrated ways of living under imperial violence, giving voice to potential histories shaped by the possibility of repair. Objects used in previous séance sessions include a wooden box believed to have been looted from a Palestinian family during the Deir Yassin massacre in 1948, a Jewish owned violin looted by a Wehrmacht officer and later found hidden in his closet, as well as textiles, amulets, and books filled with names and spells. The project continues to evolve each time through different objects and materials and new encounters. Rather than reconstructing a fixed past, the project rehearses relationships to histories that remain fragmentary and unresolved, resisting linear narration or authoritative voice. The motivation is to create situations where historical engagement can be a collective practice and an embodied experience . The aim goes beyond seeking answers, but rather seeks to hold space for questions, contradictions, and partial knowledge.