Prisoners of Love: Wednesday Read-ins (Final session)

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 have been 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.

Two Wednesday Read-ins have already taken place. Join us this Wednesday, 23 September, for the final Read-in from 17:00 to 18:00, followed by a Keynote Lecture by historian and educator Hazem Jamjoum from 18:00 to 19:30.

Final Wednesday Read-in | 17:00 - 18:00

For the final session, we will collectively read texts by Walid Daqqa, June Jordan, Nasser Abourahme, Hiba Abu Nada and more, using texts recommended by Basel and Ruanne as a way of warming up to Hazem Jamjoum’s presentation.

You may drop in and out during the session, and attending the previous sessions is not required. Texts do not have to be read in advance.

Keynote Lecture with Hazem Jamjoum | 18:00 - 19:30

Join us at 18:00, following the final Wednesday Read-in, for a keynote lecture by historian and educator Hazem Jamjoum on Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme’s exhibition Prisoners of Love: Until the Sun of Freedom. When Palestinian prisoners are discussed in solidarity spaces, they are often discussed as victims and statistics. In this keynote presentation, historian and educator Hazem Jamjoum focuses on a key element of how Palestinian prisoners talk about themselves: the Palestinian Prisoners Movement.