An anthem murmured

Join us for a performance by Palestinian poet Asmaa Azaizeh and Lebanese musician and producer Radwan Ghazi Moumneh.

We are thrilled to welcome Wonder Cabinet in Bethlehem to Ibraaz, marking our first collaboration together. Founded by Youssef and Elias Anastas, Wonder Cabinet is a vital space for artistic experimentation and critical exchange in Palestine. This feels like a meaningful beginning for us, and we hope it is the first of many collaborations to come.

Shaped by early rehearsals that took place at Ibraaz, Radwan’s music and Asmaa’s poetry emphasise and utilise each other’s more physical, vocal qualities, creating an experience far beyond textual semantics.

At the core of this collaboration, distinct boundaries between words and sounds dissolve, and a shared language emerges. Asmaa explores themes that are rooted in her experience as a 48 Palestinian, who faces a “silent” erasure of space, language, and collective existence. She traces the places of possibilities, which Aurde Lorde describes as “dark because they are ancient and hidden”, or concealed in the Palestinian context. While surviving and growing stronger through that darkness, Asmaa illuminates them by speaking of collective grief, rage, motherhood, and exile, in a present shaped by the genocide in Gaza. 

Her texts are recited, fragmented, and reshaped through vocal manipulation, electronic processing, and immersive soundscapes shaped through the live curation of Radwan. Layered processing transforms the voice into texture- sometimes stretched into long, trembling tones, sometimes fractured into stuttering echoes. These voices inhabit an environment of carefully constructed sonic architecture: deep, resonant drones, shimmering tonal washes, fragmented rhythms, and traces of environmental sound.

Doors open at 4.30pm; event starts at 5pm and finishes at 6pm.