Dream City Unfolds in the Interstices of the City, Intra and Extra Muros: Tunis Vibrates with Voices and Silences
A Perpetual Artistic Gesture and a Practice in Motion
For its tenth edition, the Contemporary Art Biennale offers "fragments of an incomplete world facing a slow apocalypse"
The Press — This autumn, Tunis is set to be filled with presences, shadows, voices, and gestures. For its tenth edition, the Contemporary Art Biennale, Dream City, will welcome, starting from October 3, around fifty artists from twenty-two countries. For over two weeks, the streets, squares, and corners of the city center will become a stage, workshop, and terrain for shared reflection. Eight Tunisian artists and forty-eight guests from around the world will come to showcase their works, gazes, and silences.
The Edition Opens Under a Title that Resonates Strangely with the Times
"Fragments of an incomplete world, thinking despite the slow apocalypse" is a thought that is made fragile but persists. Starting from October 2, in a pre-opening event, a tribute will be paid to Palestine through a musical performance titled "Tarab". A way to say the essential without making noise.
A Dense Program
This year again, the programming is dense. Fifty-six proposals, between local and international creations, are designed as spaces for listening and confrontation. Palestine occupies a central place, not as a theme, but as a presence. As a necessity.
A Shared Memory
The previous edition, held in 2023, had gathered sixty-two performances and around fifty artists. In April 2024, Dream City moved to Brussels, investing the Kanal-Centre Pompidou for a first Brussels edition. A shared memory, carried beyond the Mediterranean shores, in a form of discreet continuity. Creating here is not a neutral gesture.
A Way to Remain Standing
It's a way to remain standing, to keep eyes open, to archive the world's tremors differently. Dream City aims to be a space for experimentation, friction, and circulation between disciplines, cultures, and languages. What is presented does not seek to please, but to displace.
Among the Invited Artists
Some have chosen to speak about Gaza, not to add noise, but to make stifled voices visible. The choreographers assassinated in 2024 will be evoked through a song, a silence, a breath. In partnership with the Sharjah Art Foundation, engaged performances will come to deconstruct official geographies, propose counter-maps closer to experience, more porous. Jumana Manna, Sille Storihle, Sharif Waked, Raeda Saadeh, Basma Al-Shaif will be part of this journey.
An Eclectic Program
The city will be invested with an eclectic program: dance, videos, installations, music, projections, conferences. Thirty-one locations will host this living matter. At the heart of the device, the Dream Creations are works conceived for Tunis, in a logic of residence and resonance. The Dream Guests, invited artists, come with their experiences, doubts, and urgencies.
Curatorial Work
Tania El Khoury and Jan Goossens continue their curatorial work, between finesse and audacity. Two projects are noteworthy: "Resilience Overflow" by Lara Tabet and "In Search for Justice Among the Rubble" by the Public Works Studio collective. Two delicate gestures, anchored, traversed by the shocks of reality.
Collective Exhibition
The collective exhibition "Suni'a Bisihrika", designed by Tarak Abu El Foutouh, will bring together several figures from the contemporary scene of the Arab world. It will be visible among twenty-seven installations and exhibitions gathered under the title Dream Exhibitions. An attempt to open dialogues without imposing answers.
A Place for Speech
Dream City remains a place for speech. With Dream Talks & Ideas, artists, researchers, and thinkers will gather to share their questions. Among them: Sonia Kallel, Nanda Mohammad, Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Jeremy Nedd, Bissane Al Charif, Selma and Sofiane Ouissi. Kharba City, a project both poetic and urban, will complement this constellation.
A History of Dream City
Since its creation in 2007 by Selma and Sofiane Ouissi, Dream City has been built against the current. Multidisciplinary, unclassifiable, it remains a crossroads between the Arab, African, and European worlds. A way to dream together, to continue dreaming of the city despite everything.
