ألمانيا

Concert Series in the State of Baden Württemberg / Germany Monthly Spiritual Music Series in Stuttgart / Germany New Musical in 2019 in Stuttgart and the US New cultural partnerships with twin cities of Stuttgart with a focus on North Africa ( Cairo and Menzel Bourghuiba )

a) Service in the homes of handicapped people
- afternoons are spend in one of the three assigned homes.
- job is not to support the staff in their daily work activities, but to offer a special service to the handicapped people that is unique to the CARAVAN program (spending quality time together, entertainment, a sense of belonging, and friendship).
b) education 
- one month of arabic intensive course
- attend lectures at the Jesuit University every morning
- several trips taken to cultural or religious places in Lebanon.

EWDP  East-West Divan Project/ Oriental Journey 2013-2019
Théodor Chassériau, “Toilette d’Esther”, 1842 Louvre
Some 200 years ago, during a journey down the Rhine with his muse Marianne von Wellemer in the Spring of 1814, Goethe submerges himself in the lyrics written by the Persian poet under the pen name of Hafez (1326 –1390). Inspired by his work and the lyric form known as the ghasel, the couple begin to write the first of a larger collection of poems published five years later with the title West-Eastern Divan. In the opening Book of Song, Goethe privileges sound over sign, the spoken over the written word that remains a central theme throughout the Divan. His spiritual-lyrical journey to the East is grounded in a philosophy of language that turns away from a static „classicistic“ logocentric conception of language - in the beginning was the word - in favor of a dynamic, Hebraic-Aramaic conception of language - in the beginning was the deed (dabhar), a notion that is more in keeping with the language philosophy of the biblical countries. This lingusitic turn signals a re-orientation that is already suggested by Faust as he grapples with his translation of Genesis.
In celebrating the 200th anniversary of the West-Eastern Divan, this project follows Goethe’s lead by venturing beyond the confines of the written text. In a series of events scheduled to begin in 2014 in Berlin, Istanbul and Paris a core focus of the celebration will be a concert with musicians and artists from the east and the west, accompanied by a performance including a choir, dancing dervishes and a ballet that unites both traditions. The supporting programme for this “oriental journey” includes an exhibition, readings, a lecture and a film series exploring various aspects of orientalism and neo-orientalism from a cross-cultural perspective.
Bridging the Cultures
Collecting was was one of the greatest material and inspirational resources funding all areas of Goethe’s life work. His practice of staging smaller groups of objects with specific visitors in mind enabled and often provoked a dialogue between people that was otherwise not possible. With their creation of the West- Eastern Divan Orchestra, Daniel Barenboim and Edward Said have applied
this same mediative socio-communicative function to music. In their jointly authored book Parallels and Paradoxes and other writings Barenboim and Said explore the connection between music and politics, sound and life, resonance and silence.
Between Occident and Orient
A key source and point of departure for the West-Eastern Divan Project is Edward Said's book on Orientalism. As a visiting scholar at Stanford University he regularly presented selections from the unpublished manuscript to us that was soon to revolutionize the discourse on this topic. While Foucault had promised us a new order of things, Said made this wish a reality by redefining the Orient as a cultural construct around an elusive East that was primarily a product of the Western imagination. For Said, Orient and Occident are not merely cardinal points on a compass such as North and South or East and West. The question of location gives way to one of orientation and perspective. From a historical and political standpoint perceptions of the Orient are determined largely by geographic location. Thus England, France and Germany - and after the Second World War the US as well - have divergent conceptions of the Orient. Every cultural sphere has its own Orient onto which it projects a plethora of ideas and notions, in a never-ending chain of projections that unbridles a phantasy that is not forcibly grounded in reality. Had the Orient intended to represent itself - or in fact been meant to do so - then this would have happened long ago. So Said, who quotes the 18th Brumaire here. Yet what about the Orient itself - we might ask - the question of representation and the objects of its imagination?
The three partner cities Paris-Berlin-Istanbul in which this trinational hommage to Goethe’s West- Eastern Divan and the collaborative work of Barenboim and Said is scheduled to take place, are not merely arbitrary locations for an oriental journey. Each city offers its own set of cultural artefacts and its own perspective on the Orient which is often folded into a population with its own migrational bi-cultural history, providing a wealth of material and inspiration for exhibitions, workshops, film and lecture series on this theme.
 
Supporting and collaborating partners: Ornamento, Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the Federal Republic of Turkey, Goethe Institute, Embassy of the Federal Republic of Turkey (Berlin); Bilgi University- Istanbul, German-French Youth Works DFJW-OFAJ * (Paris/Berlin); lʼAssociation Générale des Conservateurs des Collections Publiques de France (PACA), Musée des Civilisations de lʼ Europe et de la Méditerranée (MuCEM-Marseille), Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (IKSV)
*West-Eastern Divan Project facilitates a cross-cultural dialogue through the arts and across the disciplines, offering opportunities for Youth (18-30) participation on all levels.

OMA projects include: annual intercultural study trips with Klassik Stiftung Weimar and AFS Intercultural Programs, the international festival Yiddish Summer Weimar (www.yiddishsummer.eu), the OMA Improvisation Project, "Can we afford a Vision" (Nouakchott/Weimar), "Cabinet of Local Wonders" (Antalya/Altenburg), "Contes Imbriqués" (Bamako/M'hamid/Aken) or the #openpavillon social construction sites with its cultural boat Mary Jane (www.openpavillon.eu). Our work includes community arts productions as well as laying the foundations to the formation of new intercultural bands and collectives, originating from our 20 years of Yiddish Summer Weimar as an intercultural summer institute with changing annual or bi-annual topics. A selection of our artistic and community productions can be seen here: www.omaworks.eu

Since 2020 Oyoun has had the opportunity to realise various artistic, cultural and sociocultural endeavours, some projects, some starting points for much deeper, slower and longer engagement. Some examples are: Oyoun Curators* Lab: https://oyoun.de/en/unsere-arbeit/curators-lab-2022/ Curators* Lab invites emerging queer BIPOC curators, artists, activists, thinkers, academics, and cultural practitioners to come together to better understand the significant roles of curation as a tool for social movements and knowledge-production outside of the museum and ivory-tower of academia. Through this platform, we are committed to continuing our work with the queer BIPOC community to practice co-creating, co-curating, and distributing knowledge in the community; for example, through sessions on Navigating Queer Curation and Praxis, Comradeship as Praxis workshop, TRANSCENTERED – Leaving No One Behind, and Process as Collective. Here, we invite participants with their existing skill sets to expand their practices into motions beyond the confined traditional curation. Rongin Shagor: https://oyoun.de/en/unsere-arbeit/ronginshagor/ Being a common term in Bengali, “rongin shagor রঙিন সাগর” translates to “colorful ocean” – the ocean as a holder of memories: Our bodies as holders of memories, which puts us in direct relation to bodies of water. “Will you remember to keep us afloat ?” – in turn – proposes a question at the ocean that gives and takes and creates a parallel to how and who shapes memory in our world. Who stays afloat and is remembered to stay afloat? Who will be devoured by tides and forced to be forgotten? Starting with a poem by Afro-German poet May Ayim, Oyouns new artistic intervention rongin shagor reflects on cultures of memory by exploring the reflective and generative threads of cultural formations located in the senses of the oppressed body. Retracing and reweaving these threads are the incessant tasks of cultures that faced colonialism. Collective memory emerges from language and patterns of collective memory influence language as socially and culturally shared narrative genres. The project attempts to form a constellation of remembrance by interweaving cultural responses and transnational dialogue. This multimodal space will create a rupture between voice and silence, the oral and the visual and an attempt towards the survival of the sensory cultures in the world today. UN:IMAGINABLE: https://oyoun.de/en/unsere-arbeit/unimaginable-our-histories-in-conversation/ UN:IMAGINABLE is an extraordinary theater production that emerged from the lived reality of trauma, war, exclusion and exile. The genocides of the 1990s in Rwanda and the Balkans shook the world - and are still among the bloodiest events in modern history. The reports and stories about it have lost nothing of their importance. Many people fled their home country at the time and some of them have been living in Germany ever since, which was given the status of “paradise”. Society is stuck in suppressed fear and hatred leading to further conflicts while in denial of histories untold. UN:IMAGINABLE mirrors the banality of evil and its connection to everyday, mundane life and deals with the hour prior to death in the lives of victims and perpetrators. UN:IMAGINABLE is a transnational documentary musical theater exploring various forms of healing within spheres of repetitive histories, war, genocide and existence in disapora. Following the intense weeks of sharing, exchanging and learning, more than 20 people across 6 countries collectively contribute to a new media and offline experience with narratives told that are essentially human. Mightier than a Trampled Flower: https://oyoun.de/en/unsere-arbeit/mightier-than-a-trampled-flower/ The past centuries have seen numerous wars that glorified killing and dying and justified violence against nature. Nations of material wealth craved mastery and estranged people from one another. The illusion of victory and the will to conquer crumble into debris, where the post-war world can hardly catch its breath. Women* are in the middle of this burning carnage. Women*s bodies become battlefields, where the effects of war are intensified and its structures are internalized. Women* in wars live through intra-community, national and colonial violence. Women*s experience of a war is, however, more than a trauma, much more than a pathological state of mind. Women* in wars are more than victims, rougher and stronger than trampled flowers. In their every gesture towards survival, we see burning tigers fighting for life. Mightier than a Trampled Flower is a witness to women* in wars and against the history-making that is neglectful of experiences of the marginalized. It sheds light on the struggles of women*, whose chronicles are entangled with colonialism and decolonial movements, such as: women* in Brazil facing the threat of pervasive femicide, women* resistance fighters in the Algerian War of Independence, and “comfort women”, the survivors of forced sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army. Imperialist warfares are rooted in the illusion of mastery which attempts to condition the reality of women*. In this reality, women* live through displacement and relocation. Through migration and exile, somatic remobilization and reassignment of social roles, women* continue to diverge and redefine what women*hood can be. Mightier than a Trampled Flower is an ongoing curatorial focus of Oyoun Berlin with artistic projects anchored in different forms of woman*hood in war. ESCAPISM: https://oyoun.de/en/unsere-arbeit/escapism/ With ESCAPISM, a platform was created in Oyoun for an artistic and socially critical experiment that connects virtual and physical spaces. In an interactive exhibition from December 3rd to 24th, visitors to the Oyoun can experience four hybrid game installations created by the ESCAPISM artists: tarare by téa boyarchuk, Thicker Than Blood Digital by Izdihar Afyouni, Guacuco by Sol Martínez-Solé and Embryonic Babies of Hot Winters by Avita Maheen. In a process of collective learning the four artists developed their explorative visions into four hybrid games. They concretized their ideas in digital as well as physical spheres through exchanges, workshops and collaboration with fellow artists, programmers, technicians and mentors. The artists are based in different parts of the online and offline worlds and the largest part of the development and production process has been enabled through a remote, digital communication - which makes ESCAPISM hybrid and experimental in its essence.

anti-aggressive: Faustlos: program for young pupils, regarding coping with anger and irritation, controlling impulses, developing empathy. Mediation:training elder pupils as mediators for their schools. Buddy:trainig teachers to develop stategies on strengthening social competences of pupils Intercultural: Projects on developing countries, as Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Benin, Ghana, Zimbabwe, Noth-Cameroon, India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Afghanistan, Cambodia, Papua New Guinea, with themes such as geography, history, culture, daily life, nature, religion,...for a better understanding. Consultants are either migrants or have worked in these countries as development aid workers. Projects on "One world themes", as Fair Trade taking chocolate as example, "biodiversity and biopiracy", UN-millenniumdevelopmentgoals. These projects can last from 2 hours up to even half a year, with one class or a whole school, depending on how much stress school principal and teachers want to put on.

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Education Culture Humanitarian Environment Sustainable development International exchange programs