Prisoners of Love: Wednesday Read-ins (Special Session + Keynote)

Wednesday 23 September 2026
5–6 pm

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To close the run of the exhibition Prisoners of Love: Until the Sun of Freedom, we are hosting three collective reading sessions every Wednesday to learn together from the resources assembled by Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme during the making of their newest work, on view at Kunstinstituut Melly until 27 September 2026.

Working together since 2007, Basel and Ruanne create multimedia installations that engage the politics and poetics of anti-colonial resistance while tracing struggles against dispossession and oppression in Palestine. They approach their work as a practice of study, which is visible in Prisoners of Love: Until the Sun of Freedom. As part of their research for this project and their ongoing commitment to study processes, Basel and Ruanne taught a graduate and undergraduate research-based course at Brown University in 2025. For this course, they gathered a syllabus which they share with the institutions showing Prisoners of Love, as a way to open up the research behind their practice, but also share who their practice is indebted to.

Join us the next three Wednesdays of September, from 17:30 to 19:00 to collectively read texts by Walid Daqqa, June Jordan, Nasser Abourahme, Hiba Abu Nada and more… You may drop in and out during that time, and attending all sessions is not mandatory, though it is encouraged. Texts do not have to be read in advance.

The read-in series will conclude with a special session on Wednesday 23 September, as it will be followed by a keynote presentation by the writer, translator, and publisher Hazem Jamjoum.

Sessions

Wednesday 9 September | 17:30–19:00

Learning from the poetry of prisoners and poetry as testimony

With proposed texts from Walid Daqqa, Kaleem Hawa, Christopher Soto, Esmat Elhalaby, Mahmoud Darwish and Muin Bseiso, Ojore Lutalo, Nasser Abourahme and Iyko Day, Refaat Alareer, Hiba Abu Nada, Fargo Tbakhi.

Wednesday 16 September | 17:30–19:00

Poetics of resistance and parallel struggles

With proposed texts from Andrew Brooks, Panashe Chigumadzi, Layli Long Soldier (Oglala Lakota Nation), George Jackson and Samih al Qasim, Orisanmi Burton, Sophia Azeb, Doreen St. Felix, June Jordan

Wednesday 23 September | Special Session

17:00–18:00 · Open session

Open session for texts we may not have read or that might have emerged during the previous sessions.

18:00 · Keynote

The read-in series will conclude with a special session on Wednesday 23 September, as it will be followed by a keynote presentation by the writer, translator, and publisher Hazem Jamjoum. More information and a link to reserve tickets will be shared soon!