To  cope with the COVID-19 pandemic the Mahalla Festival 2020 took place as a remote festival to overcome self-isolation, demobilization and paralysis.

The Mahalla Festival 2020 was implementing remote tools to keep intercultural communication and creative expression alive even in times of physical distance and to help to cope not only with the pandemic but also to create new forms of interactive communication and understanding between different communities in the world.

The Wandering Tower is the title of a surrealist short story by Sergej Prokofiev from the times of vivid migration movements on the edge of the world wars.

The Festival was quoting the title as a metaphorical frame for Mahalla 2020/2021. The tower of Babel is connected as a motive to the search for the origin of language and the access to the divine.

Check out all events

Murmuration refers to the phenomenon that results when hundreds, sometimes thousands, of birds fly in swooping, intricately coordinated patterns through the sky.

Murmuration looks also back on the migration movements of the 20^th century in the interplay of international relations.

Check out all events

The title, Palimpsest, originally denotes a piece of writing material on which the original writing has been erased to make room for later writing.
However, traces of the overwritten texts remain.

This paleographic phenomenon will inspire the artists of the Mahalla Festival 2022. They will be concerned with the use of resources in a
comprehensive way: in terms of ecological, economic, political, social and communal memory culture.

Check out the venue

Memento as a term for artistic discourse shall serve to perceive absences and offer ways to inhale and exhale memory to avoid the acceptance of neglect. Mahalla Memento aims to create a new vision of tomorrow by asking artists to work on the everyday life of the overlooked.

The artists are free to use any artistic form or style. Innovative interpretations of the leitmotif are appreciated.

Beyond What Drifts Us Apart is the title of an art event curated by Elyse Tonna in the frame of the Mahalla Festival 2023 taking place in November 2023 in Malta.

It is a collaborative event of the Istanbul-based Mahalla Festival organized by the cultural organization Diyalog and Malta-based Unfinished Art Space, including site-specific artistic interventions, artists residencies and community-oriented activities.

Beyond What Drifts Us Apart (BWDUA) is the title of an art event curated by Elyse Tonna in the frame of the Mahalla Festival 2023 taking place in November 2023 in Malta.

A MagiC Carpets Project

Supported by

Under the title Midas Touch this year’s Mahalla Festival is calling for a confrontation with the dystopian reality of a growth-based global economy
that ignores the threats of climate change, increasing international armed conflicts and forced migration.

Mahalla Midas Touch is dedicated to give a voice to the vulnerable, excluded, unseen and to revert vulnerability into strength. Questioning narratives appears through individual, collaborative and corresponding artistic works in a historical Set-up in Istanbul inviting for site-specific interventions.

Supported by

In cooperation with:

The MagiC Carpets platform, a Creative Europe program supported by the European Union.

Pilot Galeri

The Memento Festival is supported by

The Festival 2023 is supported by

Cooperation Partner

The Palimpsest Festival is supported by

The Murmuration Festival is supported by

The Wandering Tower Festival was supported by