Jassem Hindi is a Palestinian/Breton choreographer, sound artist and performer, born in Saudi Arabia and living in Norway. el Hindi has an education in philosophy.
At the center of his work, el Hindi looks at the relation between haunting and hospitality, in an effort to incarnate and apprehend epic scales of violence and slow revolutions, through the use of death poems, dance, and sound.
His last recent performances make use of the relation between ruins of folk dances and poems from Bretagne, West Asia and Scandinavia, in order to create dance performances as immersive environments, in dark, nervous, and overlayered atmospheres.His work is hybrid, and extends to a variety of forms of expression.
He is the co-founder of a research/performance group about migration and minorities called Stranger Within, along with Mia Habib.
His recent collaborators are Lara Kramer, Clara Furey, Elina Mikkelsen Waage, Harald Beharie, Ofelia Jarl Ortega and Sina Seifee. Since two decades, he also designs and creates music for choreographers all over the world.
He also gives lectures and workshops internationally, on utopia and betrayal, on folk dance and politics, and on the concepts of hospitality, body, and hauntology in philosophy.
He is the recipient of the KORO grant for public art 2025 - 2026 - on behalf of The Palestinian Agency, a sculpture and performance project between Palestine and Norway.
He is influenced by folk dances from Bretagne and West Asia, pre-islamic worship movements, Gisele Vienne, Marlene Freitas, Ralph Lemon, Keith Hennessy, doom style, butho.
He has long lasting collaborations with the works of poets Nazik el Malaika, Aase Berg, Etel Adnan, Ida Borjel, Leila Malik, Ingeborg Bachman, Tor Ulven and the writers Pierre Guyotat and Reza Negarestani.
Current performances:
Laundry of Legends, a choreographic adaptation of The Arab Apocalypse by Etel Adnan.
Sun Eaters, a contemporary folk dance about the relation between Oil culture and Petromagic.
His work is shown internationally, and his collaborations have won numerous awards (Bessie Award, the Dublin Fringe Jury prize and the PICA Portland Jury’s choice...).
More info:
My work is cast in nervousness and necessity, using broken texts, broken dances and broken sounds.I am haunted by others' voices: I use, edit, corrupt and celebrate. I am not a musician, nor a dancer, nor a visual artist. There should always be something I'm missing in my practice. I believe that any virtuoso act is an act of foreclosure, and I am much more interested in unstable systems, offering space for other things to happen, and thus always flirting with failure.
I use extended techniques of poetry-telling to revisit what the potential of a poem is, more particularly death poems, and how they can be used as an actual collective political practice. These performances are not speculative lessons, things to do in the future; they are political practices for the here and now - not delaying the moment to be together.
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SHORT VERSION
Jassem Hindi
living in Oslo, Norway
from Palestine Bretagne
born in Saudi Arabia
Sound artist, choreographer
https://jassemhindi.cargo.site/
Jassem Hindi's work concerns the bond between haunting and hospitality. His latest dance pieces Laundry of Legends & Sun Eaters look at how to inhabit and survive very long cycles of violence. How to dance in times of war? He works with ruins of folk dances accompanied by death poems from West Asia and Scandinavia (Etel Adnan, Aase Berg, Tor Ulven, Laila Malik). Jassem’s work is shown internationally, and his collaborations have won numerous awards and nominations. His recent collaborators are Mia Habib, Harald Beharie, Ofelia Ortega, Ligia Lewis, Keith Hennessy, Sina Seifee, Clara Furey, Simon Portigal, Justin de Luna.
He also gives lectures and workshops internationally, on utopia & betrayal, folk dance & politics, and the concepts of hospitality, body, and hauntology in philosophy and performance.
He is the recipient of the KORO grant for public art - on behalf of The Palestinian Agency, a project between Jenine and Norway.
My work is cast in nervousness and necessity, using broken texts, broken dances and broken sounds.I am haunted by others' voices: I use, edit, corrupt and celebrate. I am not a musician, nor a dancer, nor a visual artist. There should always be something I'm missing in my practice. I believe that any virtuoso act is an act of foreclosure, and I am much more interested in unstable systems, offering space for other things to happen, and thus always flirting with failure.
I use extended techniques of poetry-telling to revisit what the potential of a poem is, more particularly death poems, and how they can be used as an actual collective political practice. These performances are not speculative lessons, things to do in the future; they are political practices for the here and now - not delaying the moment to be together.