Souk Erbaa

UNIVERSE CONTAINERS
Videoessay
5:45 min
2025

The new video essay „Universe Containers” offers a poetic exploration of mixed realities rooted in the observation of natural water flows. The footage follows pouring water and sediments in natural beds, revealing the dynamic interplay of currents, wind, and light that shape colors, textures, and forms.

The flow interacts intimately with its habitat — topography, soils, vegetation, and animals — generating movement patterns such as streams, spirals, and meanders that influence water velocity and texture. It embodies the meeting point of sky and earth, where natural forces create interferences and momentum among light, climate, and matter, resulting in constantly shifting colors, patterns, and textures.

“Universe Containers” transforms sediments — viewed as archives of nature — into digital textures that balance between representational imagery and generative abstraction, blending organic processes with digitally shaped aesthetics. Sound elements by Roisner trace the process of perception, from recordings of dripping, washing, flowing, and running water to evolving electronic textures. Embedded text sections further personalize the contemplation of nature’s complex ecosystems.

“Universe Containers” unfolds as a sensory immersion, inviting viewers to perceive the fluid boundaries between natural phenomena and digital spin-offs.
Sound: Roisner

MUSEUM GUELLALA

BACKGROUND

Nicolás Dardano is a media artist whose artistic research and practice centers on the dynamic interplay of darkness and light, time and space, material and virtual realities. Grounded in an intuitive and empathic approach to nature, Dardano’s work is inspired by landscapes and the poetic contemplation of natural phenomena. His artistic output encompasses installations, live sets, digital scenography, experimental animation, and immersive audiovisual experiences.

At the core of Dardano’s practice lies a transdisciplinary and collaborative spirit. He works closely with artists from diverse fields including dance, performance, sound, poetry, music, choreography, and architecture. Through a poetic visual language, Dardano opens timeframes in which experimental perception invites deeper reflection and inquiry. Nicolás Dardano’s work encourage understanding of reality through a poetic lens. His intuitive practice follows the flow of energies, aiming to new aesthetic viewpoints.

EXHIBITIONS / PROJECTS

2024 Murcia (es), CENTRO PARRAGA with Abraham Hurtado
2024 Wolfsburg (de), KUNSTMUSEUM with Leandro Erlich Studio
2024 Leeuwarden (nl), LUNA Festival with Guliana Grippo
2023 Berlin (de), HAU
2023 Murcia (es), ROTA Music Festival
2021 Ingolstadt (de), LICHTSTROM International Light Art Project
2021 Leeuwarden (nl), LUNA Festival
2021 Murcia (es), ROTA International Sound Art Festival
2021 Nancy (fr), VOLTE FACE Performance
2020 Murcia (es), RAIZ AL NOISE International Sound Art Festival
2019 Blanca (es), AADK Wild Times
Since 2015, he shifted from applied design practices to new audiovisual media, space design, and live performance, continue …

TEACHING

2018 — 2022 Buenos Aires (ar), TORCUATO DI TELLA UNIVERSITY: Professor
2002 — 2018 Buenos Aires (ar), UNIVERSITY OF ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN: Professor

STUDIES

2003 Buenos Aires (ar), SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE, DESIGN, AND URBAN PLANNING: Diploma Graphic Design

BIO

Lives in Buenos Aires (ar) and Blanca (es).

LINKS

nicolasdardano.com
@nicolas.dardano

FEATURED IMAGE

Nicolás Dardano. SEE DJERBA Hozmt Soul 2025. Photo: Wassim Ben Aissa.

El Ghorfa (Fondouk Bouchaddakh)

THE STORY BEHIND THE JUMP
Dancer: Hoàng Minh Võ
video essay
2 min
2025

Merve Can’s video essay can be seen in Fondouk Bouchaddakah, in the outdoor area of Café El Ghorfa. A place in the middle of busy streets, voices and movements. It is part of all this and yet it seems miles away because of the silence in the Fondouk.

THE STORY BEHIND THE JUMP shows a dancer breakdancing in urban space. He is accompanied by the camera through various urban environments. The movements of the body are in focus, but without losing sight of the surroundings. Details of architecture and ground conditions are emphasised, as is the physical expressiveness of the dance. It is not only shown how the dancer moves in the space but also how he interacts with it.
A calm voiceover draws attention to the unspoken stories behind the movements: hours of work, discipline and passion to make each movement look so seemingly effortless. A light hip-hop jazz soundtrack creates an atmospheric soundscape in the background. The camera constantly follows the movements of the body and almost seems to interact with them. This constant movement of the camera intensifies the dynamics and allows the viewer to physically feel the movements. Therefore this makes the few quiet sequences all the more effective as moments to take a deep breath and pause.

In the video essay, breakdance is shown not just as a performance but as a process of exploring the body, space and identity. Movements develop into a form of dialogue: between dancer and environment, between inner history and external form of expression. As an artistic response to social inequality, marginalisation and violence, breakdance has its roots in the African-American and Puerto Rican communities in New York in the 1970s. It was political from the beginning and a medium of resistance and collective belonging. Therefore breakdance is also an expression of personal identity, a process of self-assertion and self-discovery.

THE STORY BEHIND THE JUMP reveals the hidden individual experiences behind the seemingly effortless movements. It also shows breakdancing as a coded practice whose dimensions can only be read through experience. A practice in which identity is not only projected but also embodied and sought in movement. In Fondouk Bouchadakka, this urban movement culture is combined with local spaces, opening up new forms of artistic exploration of identity, visibility and social change.

ABOUT

In her artistic research she combines photography and video to focus on the relationship between body, space and movement. With a background as a professional dancer, she explores how physicality, rhythm and choreography settle in the bodies memories and how they shape visual narratives. Her projects engage with urban performences refreeting to gestues and movements, spaces and architecture, and overlaping media.

EXHIBITIONS

2025 Bremen (de), MEDIA ART LAB c/o OPEN SPACE DOMSHOF

CHOREOGRAPHY & DANCE PROJECTS

2024 Saigon / Nha Trang (vn), Goethe Institut
2022 Seoul (kr), Goethe Institut, Cultural Exchange Program

STUDIES

Bremen (de), Hochschule für Künste Bremen

BIO

Lives in Hamburg and Bremen

LINKS

@mer.c_raskill
@artistry__c

FEATURED IMAGE

Merve Can. SEE DJERBA Houmt Souk 2025. Photo: Wassim Ben Issa.

El Jarda Café

AI-based Animations

I use artificial intelligence as a tool to bring old photos to life by animating them, giving them a new and vibrant dimension. My approach focuses on blending motion with visual effects inspired by a vintage style, adding an artistic and poetic touch to the images. Through this technique, I don’t merely retell the past. I reinterpret it visually, creating an artistic experience where memory is intertwined with modern technology.

BACKGROUND

Yassine Ben Cheikh is a creative professional from Djerba, Tunisia, with experience in communication, graphic design, and digital marketing. He has worked on various projects across branding, social media content creation, and visual identity development, helping businesses build strong and engaging online presences. Known for his eye for detail and his ability to translate ideas into impactful visuals, Yassine has collaborated with local brands and cultural events, contributing to both commercial and community-focused initiatives. His work reflects a blend of creativity, strategy, and a strong connection to his local culture.

WORK / PROJECTS

2021, Djerba (tn), Printing Agency Printway, Printer / Graphic Designer
2023, Djerba/Marsa (tn), Cultural Space Lagora, Community Manager
2024, Djerba (tn), Marketing Agency MKG Concept, Account Manager
2025, Tunis (tn), CinemaTdour, Projectionist/Manager/Community Manager

STUDIES

2020, Djerba (tn), El May Highschool, Computer Science Baccalaureate
2021, Tunis (tn), Tunisian Training Consulting, Graphic Design & Multimedia
2021, Online training, Udemy, Professional training Photoshop 2021

LINKS

yassyynn/

Square Sidi Abdelkader

WHERE THE TIDE REMEMBERS
Animation
2 x 1-Channel Projections
2025 (Premiere)

For “Where the Tide Remembers”, Liudmila Siewerski turned to the ASSIDJE archive, a vast collection of more than five hundred historic drawings, prints, and photographs of Djerba. She selected images of coastal landscape and boats on the water, a mosque functioning also as a lighthouse, iconic buildings, and characteristic landscapes, inland passages, and panoramas as raw material for her animations.

Rather than presenting these images in their original form, the artist broke them down to their smallest elements: the pixel, each no more than a fleeting point of light on a screen. Amplifying this microstructure of digital vision, Liudmila reanimated a selection of images as pixel clouds of white dots.

The pixels drifted and pulsed in sequences of flowing movement, evoking the rhythms of water edging onto sand, sand shifting back toward the sea, salt forming shapes when drying in the sun. In this choreography of particles, figural outlines appeared only to dissolve again, as if the images oscillated between recognition and abstraction, presence and erosion. The visuals were supported by abstract soundscapes of water, salt, and sand in motion.

The projections shifted in restless contours. Its outlines stretched and contracted, frames seemed to wander, and edges refused closure. This instability gave the images a quality of constant becoming, forms that suggested architectural memories or natural landscapes, only to unravel into openness. Viewers encountered a visual vocabulary without fixed borders, where every frame was provisional and every edge remained porous, recalling the way memory itself drifts, reshapes, and cannot be fully contained.

The two projections unfolded in layers of black and white punctuated by subtle hues echoing the architectural colors weathered over decades, tones that shimmered faintly through the projections like memories surfacing. Moments of coherence gave way to dispersal, creating a constant tension between forming and un-forming, between an archive preserved and an archive in perpetual motion.

Siewerski’s playful and poetic work was a meditation on memory’s unstable ground. Just as the tide erased and redrew the shoreline, so too cultural memory continually reconstructed itself from scattered fragments. “Where the Tide Remembers” staged this fragile, luminous process: the passage from personal recollection to collective history, carried by particles that never fully settled, constantly shifting like the sea.

BACKGROUND

Liudmila Siewerski is a media artist working with video and new media technologies across theatre, contemporary art, and music. Her work synthesizes digital and generative graphics, video art, architecture, and urbanism to create expansive installations and site-specific projections.

Liudmila engages critically with cultural memory and reconfigures urban environments into reflective spaces. Her focus is rooted in a interdisciplinary approach, emphasizing both conceptual and sensory engagements through light, projection, and generative graphics.

EXHIBITIONS

2025 Bern (ch), JAZZWERKFESTIVAL
2025 Berlin (de), SOMA ART GALLERY
2024 Wroclaw (pl), WRONG Biennial
2024 Berlin (de), TRANSMEDIALE Festival
2024 Lille (fr), RENCONTRES AUDIOVISUELLES Video Mapping Contest
2024 Chemnitz (de), LIGHT OUR VISION Festival
2024 Leipzig (de), LEIPZIG LICHTFEST
2022 Paris (fr), CENTRE POMPIDOU
2022 Valletta (mt), SPAZJU KREATTIV
2022 Hong Kong (hk), HONG KONG ARTS FESTIVAL
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STUDIES

2018 Berlin (de), UNIVERSITY OF THE ARTS: MA, Meisterschülerin
2014 Helsinki (fi), UNIVERSITY OF THE ARTS: MA Time and Space Studies
2005 St. Petersburg (ru), UNIVERSITY OF THE ARTS: Diploma Directing Festival and Theater Performances

LINKS

siewerski.com
@iudmila_siewerski

FEATURED IMAGE

SEE DJERBA Test: Videostill.

Fondouk Ben Ghorbel
ROOTS — IT BEGINS WITH WATER
Video Essay, 5’38 min
2025 (site-specific adaptation)

In the video essay ROOTS — IT BEGINS WITH WATER, Amira Chihaoui explored the fluid continuum between organic life and digital materiality. The work traces the flow of water through rivers, seas, and plant systems as a metaphor for livelyness, connectivity, and transformation.

Drawing on the textures and rhythms inherent to the element in motion, Amira developed a visual current that drifted between natural patterns and digital distortion. Imagery of gently moving water, spreading mycelium, and growing roots gradually dissolved.

Through the technique of stretch, glitch, and data moshing, her visuals bend and dissolve into color, texture, and frequencies. The artist explored the aesthetics of digital manipulation, software failure, and technological error, converging nature’s flow and digital disruption into visual poetry.

BACKGROUND

Amira is a visual artist based in Tunisia, her practice explores contemporary themes through painting, installation, and participatory art. She’s interested in how art intersects with public space, social engagement, and community storytelling.Her work often draws on environmental, feminist, and cultural narratives, with a focus on the experiential and collaborative.

EXHIBITIONS

2025 London (uk), SHUBBAK Festival
2025 Tunis (tn), MEDINA DE LUMIERES
2024 Tunis (tn), INTERFERENCE International Light Art Project
2023 Gabes (tn), NO NAME STUDIO – Danseurs Citoyens Sud

BIO

Lives in Tunis

LINK

@chihaoui_amira

SUPPORT

SHUBBAK London c/o British Council

FEATURED IMAGE

Amira Chihaoui. SEE DJERBA Houmt Souk 2025. Photo: Wassim Ben Aissa.

Village Artisanal

ET DANS LA TERRE, JE ME SOUVIENS
Videoessay
1-channel projection
2021

GESTES QUOTIDIENS
Videoessay
1-channel projection
2’31 min
2021

The upper galleries in the central building of the “Village Artisanal” were dedicated to two video essays by Maya Louhichi. The atmosphere was quiescent, and light was emitted only from the projections installed in parallel across the courtyard.

Both artworks were dedicated to the artist’s father, one of them thematized the father’s loss of motor skills after an accident in 2006, and the other is based on an archive of photographs that Maya inherited after his death. Loss and grief are portrayed as shifting terrains, and photography emerges as a tool of holding and releasing, of reflecting and tracing, of a continued negotiation between the past and the present.

“Et dans la terre, je me souviens” is a visual dialogue of images tracing the themes, the way of gaze, and the impact of the camera in the father’s archive, juxtaposed with visuals authored by Maya.

For “Gestes Quotidiens”, the artist asked her mother to perform all the daily gestures of her father that she remembers years after he was paralyzed in an accident in 2006.

The two artworks are a testament to familial ties, belonging, and identity, as well as the transmission of what endures across generations. They offer a microscopic view into transience, mourning, and loss, unfolding with sensitivity to the fragile and impermanent, and expanding into an artistic language.

BACKGROUND

Maya Louhichi’s artistic practice is rooted in a research-based approach that explores themes of memory, heritage, traces, and transmission. Louhichi’s methodology combines investigation, inquiry, and a sensitive perspective, often weaving together intimate and political narratives. She was trained outside formal academic institutions and since 2018, her work has drawn deeply from the cinematic legacy of her father, Tunisian director Taïeb Louhichi.

EXHIBITIONS

2025 London (uk), SHUBBAK Festival
2025 Torino (it), Museo Egizio
2025 Lisbon (pt), National Museum of Natural History and Science
2022 Bamako (ml), BAMAKO ENCOUNTERS
2022 Tunis (tn), JAOU
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LINKS

mayalouhichi.com
@maya.louhichi

SUPPORT

SHUBBAK London c/o British Council

OLD CINEMA

DEAD SERIOUS
Stop Motion Animation
3 min

BACKGROUND

The artist channels a lifelong sense of unease into a search for identity, using art to connect his inner and outer worlds. Through a blend of abstract and figurative work, he explores societal fears and human complexity. Influenced by raw emotion and artists like Basquiat, he finds freedom in creating from struggle — dancing, as Nietzsche said, even in chains.

EXHIBITIONS

2025, London (uk), Shubbak Festival

STUDIES

2022 Tunis (tn), ESSTED, MA Design for Sustainable Development
2019 Tunis (tn), ESSTED: BA Design in Product Creation and Industrial Design

LINK

@matousssi

SUPPORT

SHUBBAK London c/o British Council