shut up and listen! 2011
Interdisciplinary Festival for Music and Sound Art
December 10th, 2011, 17.00
Samuli Schielke & Daniela Swarowsky (NL/FI/AT)
Messages from Paradise #1, Egypt:Vienna - Documentary Film
Messages from Paradise #1, Egypt:Vienna - About the Permanent Longing from Elsewhere
Austria/Finland/Netherlands, 44 min., Arabic/German with English subtitles, 2009
The grass is always greener on the other side, or so the well-known saying claims. In Messages from Paradise
#1, the first part of a trilogy, this maxim is articulated by a young Egyptian on a rural rooftop, his horizon
defined by raw brick houses, piles of hay, and satellite dishes. He seeks advice from migrants abroad, and is
offered a response from the lush gardens of Vienna's Schönbrunn Palace, the former summer residence of the
Habsburg's imperial family. There, speaking beside the meticulous flower beds, an older Egyptian migrant
identifies with this youth's longing to travel but also cautions that Europe is not really the place that people
imagine it to be. In Messages from Paradise, four young Egyptian men, all of them born and raised in the
same small village in the Nile Delta, speak of their dreams of migrating to Europe, where one is assumed to
obtain freedom, financial gain, and self-realization. Some of them pragmatic planners and others
philosophical dreamers, they all aspire to escape the suffocating frustrations they deem intrinsic to life in
Egypt. Each believes that traveling to Europe would help them to a better life. The camera then takes us to
the other side of the fence, where we meet nine Egyptians living in Austria who share their personal
experiences with migration. Some settled in Vienna for good and others eager to meet their goals and move
on; they include a student, a taxi driver, a former boxer, a dancer and cook, a rose peddler, a tile artist, and
an intellectual who insists on speaking in German. These migrants tell of their impetus to travel abroad,
describe what they see as the advantages and disadvantages of life in Europe, and share their nostalgia for
their homeland. In telling their tales of migration, they reveal that the realities of living in Europe are more
complex and nuanced than they themselves might have dreamt of before they originally left home. Few have
found the trick of how to settle without being split: Leaving the old dreams aside and finding new and
unexpected ones.
http://www.messagesfromparadise.nl/
Daniela Swarowsky
Daniela Swarowsky is an Austrian artist and cultural producer living and working in Rotterdam and Berlin.
Over the past eight years she has developed a series of art-projects related to questions of migration and
identity. Her "Messages from Paradise" trilogy is a series of fictive dialogues around imaginaries of a better
life and myths associated with migration. Since 1995 Daniela is working as a curator in the experimental
music field, running numerous festivals and music series in the US, Holland, France, Austria and Germany. In
2010 she started a research fellowship at ZMO (Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin) curating an exhibition along
a research project called 'In Search of Europe? Considering the Possible in Africa and the Middle East".
Samuli Schielke
Born in Helsinki, Finland, lives in Berlin / M.A. in Islamic studies, philosophy and political science/ PhD in
social sciences, University of Amsterdam, 2006. / Currently project leader of research project "In Search of
Europe: Considering the POssible in Africa and the Middle East" at Zentrum Moderner Orient in Berlin.
ABOUT PROGRAMME SUAL AWARD PRESS IMPRESSUM SUAL HOME
The grass is always greener on the other side, or so the well-known saying claims. In Messages from Paradise
#1, the first part of a trilogy, this maxim is articulated by a young Egyptian on a rural rooftop, his horizon
defined by raw brick houses, piles of hay, and satellite dishes. He seeks advice from migrants abroad, and is
offered a response from the lush gardens of Vienna's Schönbrunn Palace, the former summer residence of the
Habsburg's imperial family. There, speaking beside the meticulous flower beds, an older Egyptian migrant
identifies with this youth's longing to travel but also cautions that Europe is not really the place that people
imagine it to be. In Messages from Paradise, four young Egyptian men, all of them born and raised in the
same small village in the Nile Delta, speak of their dreams of migrating to Europe, where one is assumed to
obtain freedom, financial gain, and self-realization. Some of them pragmatic planners and others
philosophical dreamers, they all aspire to escape the suffocating frustrations they deem intrinsic to life in
Egypt. Each believes that traveling to Europe would help them to a better life. The camera then takes us to
the other side of the fence, where we meet nine Egyptians living in Austria who share their personal
experiences with migration. Some settled in Vienna for good and others eager to meet their goals and move
on; they include a student, a taxi driver, a former boxer, a dancer and cook, a rose peddler, a tile artist, and
an intellectual who insists on speaking in German. These migrants tell of their impetus to travel abroad,
describe what they see as the advantages and disadvantages of life in Europe, and share their nostalgia for
their homeland. In telling their tales of migration, they reveal that the realities of living in Europe are more
complex and nuanced than they themselves might have dreamt of before they originally left home. Few have
found the trick of how to settle without being split: Leaving the old dreams aside and finding new and
unexpected ones.
http://www.messagesfromparadise.nl/
Daniela Swarowsky
Daniela Swarowsky is an Austrian artist and cultural producer living and working in Rotterdam and Berlin.
Over the past eight years she has developed a series of art-projects related to questions of migration and
identity. Her "Messages from Paradise" trilogy is a series of fictive dialogues around imaginaries of a better
life and myths associated with migration. Since 1995 Daniela is working as a curator in the experimental
music field, running numerous festivals and music series in the US, Holland, France, Austria and Germany. In
2010 she started a research fellowship at ZMO (Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin) curating an exhibition along
a research project called 'In Search of Europe? Considering the Possible in Africa and the Middle East".
Samuli Schielke
Born in Helsinki, Finland, lives in Berlin / M.A. in Islamic studies, philosophy and political science/ PhD in
social sciences, University of Amsterdam, 2006. / Currently project leader of research project "In Search of
Europe: Considering the POssible in Africa and the Middle East" at Zentrum Moderner Orient in Berlin.
ABOUT PROGRAMME SUAL AWARD PRESS IMPRESSUM SUAL HOME