Olivia Furber & Ramzi Maqdisi
The Land’s Heart is Greater than its Map
Presentation
An alternative guided tour of the only city that exists twice, once on earth and once in heaven. Over there, daily life is stranger than fiction: you can see the sea but are forbidden to touch it, being honest is illegal and those with ancestors from the city are forbidden to enter it. The tour questions who has the authority to give a coherent narrative of a city and how we are able to come into contact with the ‘real’ essence of a place.
This is a faraway city which cannot be named. Its people are silenced and its landscape is disappearing. Propelled by a need to show you the sides of his city which will soon be forgotten forever, a resident records the stories behind his favourite places and creates an experience which will allow you to walk through the streets of his home town without having to travel beyond the streets that you stand in.
Your journey to this distant city will take place within your own locality and requires only walking shoes and an open imagination. An emotional, cartographic resistance piece which actively questions who has the right to claim the history of places and objects and how we can imaginatively salvage shrinking landscapes.
Ramzi Maqdisi is a Palestinian filmmaker and actor. Using subversive and visual storytelling, his work seeks to convey an experience of the overwhelming nature of occupation through zooming in on the tiny details that we all, as humans, share. Ramzi began his professional career as an actor in the Palestinian National Theatre and is co-artistic director of Quds Art Films; a collective of artists from Europe and the Middle East covering multiple disciplines including film, theatre and installation.
Olivia Furber is a theatre director and writer working across theatre, film and installation. She trained in movement direction at Opera North and has gone on to direct, assistant direct and dramaturge work for the Barbican, York Theatre Royal, London International Festival of Theatre, Ensemble52 and Theatre Hullabaloo. Her work focuses on borders (those written into the mind and drawn into the ground) and how humans find ever-ingenious ways to cross them.
Artist website: oliviafurber.com
Dispatches: Ramzi Maqdisi – Contemporary Theatre Review
If you would like get in touch about this work, please contact Hannah Slimmon, International Development Manager.
Email: hannah@horizonshowcase.uk
