Disrupting The Somatic Norm: The Body As An Archive

If the Archive can be considered a locus of power/knowledge in which whiteness has been historically institutionalised and maintained, what does it mean to create a counter-archive? And how can the body become a living counter-archive of resistance? This talk, curated by Angelica Pesarini, will explore ways of decentering whiteness and disrupting the somatic norm through words, images, and movement.

* In Italian, without translation *

Angelica Pesarini is Assistant Professor in Race and Cultural Studies/Race and Diaspora and Italian Studies at the University of Toronto. Her work seeks to expand the field of Black Italia focusing on dynamics of race, gender, identity, and citizenship. She is among the co-founders of The Black Mediterranean Collective, which published The Black Mediterranean: Bodies, Borders, and Citizenship (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021). She contributed a short story to Future. Il domani narrato dalle voci di oggi (Future. Tomorrow Narrated by Today’s Voices, 2019), an anthology by 11 Italian women of African descent, and she co-translated by Fred Moten and Stefano Harney’s Undercommons. Fugitive Planning and Black Study and Blues, Legacies and Black Feminism by Angela Y. Davis into Italian. Angelica is currently writing a book on the lived experience of Black “mixed race” Italian women during the (post)colonial fascist period in East Africa.

Leila Belhadj Mohamed is a freelance journalist specializing in migration, human rights, and geopolitics of Africa and Southwest Asia. Key topics of her work include the role of natural resources in conflicts, Western and Arab foreign policy doctrines, and international terrorism.She appeared as a guest on various Italian podcasts and radio programs, including Effetto Notte on Radio24 and as an Africa expert on RaiNews24. Internationally, she has appeared on Morning on BB4 and Focus on Africa on BBC News. She currently collaborates with LifeGate.

Rahma Nur, born in Somalia and raised in Rome, is a primary school teacher and a trainer on issues related to racism and ableism. As a writer, she has published poems, stories, and articles, including the poetry collection Il Grido e il Sussuro (The Cry and the Whisper) with Capovolte Publishing (2022) and Il figlio del sole e della tempesta (The Son of the Sun and the Storm) with Oso Melero Publishing (2023), both recipents of the “Paese delle Donne” award.

Amir Ra is an Italian director and cinematographer of Egyptian origin. He began his studies in Milan, and attended the International Academy of Communication Sciences in Cairo, specializing in Cinematography, and working for directors in Egypt, the Middle East and Europe, such as Marco Onorato, winner of a David di Donatello and a European Oscar for the photography of Matteo Garrone's 'Gomorra'.  He is currently collaborating on TV programmes for RAI, commercials and music videos. His short film Io sono Fatou (I am Fatou) won many awards at international and local festivals in Italy. In 2020, he created the collective Origines, which highlights the artistic talent of a group of second-generation Italian teenagers. In 2021, the project became an exhibition realized for UNICEF on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the United Nations Children's Fund. Since 2021, he has also been the artistic director of IFF - Integrazione Film Festival. He is currently working on his new feature-length film.