Love Letters to a Union Lecture-Performance at Ashkal Alwan

As part of the Home Works 6 Platform, Ashkal Alwan is hosting a lecture-performance by Lara Khaldi and Yazan Khalili called “Love Letters to a Union”.

Two friends distanced by their constant travel exchange emails about their love lives, the weather, and often-banal daily events.

They use the letter/ email format by tricking it; they use it and what it elastically permits for weaving different contemporary events with long-forgotten ones. In the performance, Khaldi and Khalili weave together the events that lead to the formulation of the United Arab Republic (1958-1961) between Syria and Egypt and its failure, while also speaking about the contract of marriage, love and pan-Arabism.

They question their friendship, their love lives; they wonder, what is a union? But they are afraid to answer, so they write to each other about a failed love story.