S.W.E.A.T. features conversations about performance and performativity of the sexual/ized body at work—work as labour of survival and labour of a/Art with host Mad Kate. This months episode features Palestinian documentary photographer and visual storyteller Rasha Al Jundi and Palestinian collective experimental designer, artist, architect, and performer Michael Jabareen.

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Rasha Al Jundi

Rasha Al Jundi (1984) is a Palestinian documentary photographer and visual storyteller. She grew up in the UAE, after which she moved to Lebanon to pursue higher education. During her seven year stay in the country, she volunteered with the Lebanese Red Cross and worked with a local NGO coordinating rural development programs. Between 2009 and 2021, she worked with several civil society organisations, in the Near East, and Africa. Her work generally follows a social documentary pathway. Rasha is the 2022 Ian Parry grant recipient and a graduate from the International Center for Photography (ICP), New York.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rashaa_jv Website: https://www.rashajundi.com/

Michael Jabareen

As a Palestinian collective experimental designer, artist, architect, and performer, Michael focuses on the exploration and experimentation in design and artistic expression methodologies and technologies, to effectively connect and communicate with the users/audience and create a positive impact. With a diverse academic background between the creativity and technicalities of architectural engineering to the high level of experimentation in visual and experience design, and a local and international experience in multimedia artistic production since 2016, Michael has been working in the intersections between art, illustration, comics, graphic design, identity design, branding, animation, videography, multimedia production, theater, spatial design, UX/UI, and business entrepreneurship, with a focus on humanitarian and environmental causes.

Michael is an award-winning artist in different competitions, including the 1st place winner of Jerusalem Festival 2022 Poster Design Competition by Yabous Cultural Centre (Jerusalem-Palestine, 2022), the 1st place winner of the Graphic Illustration Category of the 6th Mahmoud Kahil Award (Beirut-Lebanon, 2021), and an honorable mention in the “Son of Favela” 24-hour IF-Ideas Forward comics competition (Portugal, 2018), in addition to others. Michael also participated in multiple collective exhibitions in Palestine and abroad, including his 2023 latest participations in “Tadaffuq/Flow/Fluir” Exhibition at Casa Árabe (Madrid & Córdoba, Spain), “The Gift Exhibition” at Al Ma’mal Foundation (Jerusalem, Palestine), “Liberation Street, Building No.48” comics exhibition (Ramallah, Palestine), as well as his first “solo” exhibition in collaboration with the Palestinian visual storyteller Rasha Al Jundi, titled “Cold Water”, at Yabous Cultural Centre (Jerusalem, Palestine).

https://www.instagram.com/michaelmjabareen/?hl=en

Tracks played in this episode: - Mad Kate - My Fear of Pretending - Tarweedeh Shamali (traditional encrypted song which was used to send messages to Palestinian prisoners in British mandate prisons and then in Israeli occupation prisons)

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We all sweat as we provide care, as we labour, as we perform our work, as we fuck, as we survive and as we sacrifice one choice for the other. How exactly do we define our work and how does that work entangle and circumscribe our sexual identities, our racialized bodies, our creative lives and the ways in which we provide care? How do we perform both tasks and identities within the framework of that which we consider work? These conversations are a means to speak between intersectionalities by anchoring through our (always, already, and ever pervasive) sexualized and racialized bodies, our working bodies, our artistic bodies and our performative bodies. I hope that they contribute to dialogues which normalize sex work as work, and all work as deserving of respect, healthy conditions, and a living wage.

You can find out more about S.W.E.A.T. at https://www.alfabus.us/sweat-podcast/

Mad Kate (they/them) is an electronic producer, sound designer, performance artist and writer who began working the Berlin performance and club scene in 2004, expanding their unique identity-queering, genderfcking and sexpositive performative work throughout music, theatre and film. Their explorations of borders between/within bodies, audibility, consent, proximity, and touch as political practice have brought them to theaters, communes, technomansions, prisons, dungeons, squats and galleries around the world.