Introduction to the day’s program with Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Ali Kaviani, Niall Moore, Haytham El-Wardany & Maha Maamoun
Haytham El-Wardany, Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Ali Kaviani, Maha Maamoun, Niall Moore

The Right To Silence will kick off with a lecture performance by choreographer Ali Kaviani, who as one of consultants for The Silent University project will present an alternative way of amplifying the loss of skills and knowledge experienced in the process of seeking asylum.

Artist and writer Niall Moore will return to a little known story of censorship in Northern Ireland. His presentation explores the relationship between issues of silence and the role of the voice in the context of media censorship in the country during the
late 1980s.

Haytham El-Wardany & Maha Maamoun will create interwoven connections through their respective works on the act of eavesdropping and the status of the listener.

ALI KAVIANI
Ali Kaviani is a choreographer. He studied Natural Sciences at Cambridge University and obtained a PhD in Astrophysics from Imperial College London before training professionally in contemporary dance. He is an academic consultant to the Silent University, a project initiated by the artist Ahmet Ögüt. His experiential lecture performance describes an analogy between movement in the body and concepts in cosmology, with the aim of developing an embodied understanding of those concepts.

NIALL MOORE
Niall Moore is an artist and writer based in London. He contributed to the establishment of the non-profit artist-run gallery 126 in Galway, Ireland and is a graduate of the MA in Aural & Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths University.His current work attempts to uncover and outline pre-emptive modes of production, with a particular emphasis on the blurred intersection between art and politics.

HAYTHAM EL-WARDANY
Haytham El-Wardany is a writer, born in Cairo, who lives in Cairo and Berlin. He recently published Daydream, a collection of short stories (Merit Publishing House, Cairo, 2011), and How to Disappear, a series of texts (Kayfa Ta Editions, Cairo, 2013).

MAHA MAAMOUN
Maha Maamoun is a Cairo-based artist whose work moves between still and moving image and text. Since 2009 she has developed a succession of projects that take listening and listeners as their point of departure. Her work has been shown in exhibitions and biennials worldwide. She has also co-curated several exhibitions and art projects. Maamoun is a founding board member of the Contemporary Image Collective (CIC) in Cairo.