From The Rivers To The Seas: Mazen Kerbaj, Kamilya Jubran and Ejrad (Masa Nazzal and Hajar Ibrahim).
We’re delighted to be teaming up with our friends at Arika to present an event as part of their new Episode, From the Rivers to the Seas, taking place at Tramway (Glasgow) on Wed 11 – Sun 15 November 2026.
Our collaborative event with them takes place on the 15th of November. Full details can be found on the Arika website. Tickets are on sale now.
The event will open with a set by someone who is no stranger to Counterflows – Lebanese artist Mazen Kerbaj. Mazen will present an electro-acoustic performance composition for trumpet and field recordings of bombardment, sirens, TV clips, phone calls and the social geography of Beirut during the 2006 war, re-membered amidst the unchanging same of settler colonial violence 20 years later.
Exploring collective listening as a political action, Ejrad (Masa Nazzal and Hajar Ibrahim) will present sonic counter-narratives from the Edinburgh student encampment which mobilise the transformative power of listening as a bridge towards solidarity, action, and change.
We also welcome a rare performance from Palestinian artist Kamilya Jubran. Kamilya is a musician committed to daring music expression. Since 2000 she has focused her music work and research on finding new spaces for her voice and oud. She has done this through developing her compositions and interpretations, musically and textually, solo or collectively to try and find logic, or sense to how her music resonates in our contemporary context.
The event and festival comes to a close with Mazen Kerbaj’s presentation of Lungless. Where eliminatory violence denies the basic necessity of breathing, Lungless is a spatialised performance for the specially built “Putin’s Organ”—7 trumpets powered by an air compressor—giving voice to a trumpet without breath.
—
Arika, Episode 12, is a 5-day gathering that brings together art, critical thought and grass roots organising. Pluralising Palestine to unsettle colonialism everywhere. For liberation, justice and revolution to be successful they must be planetary. Between every river and every sea, and beyond every border and state.
