Beyond What Drifts Us Apart (BWDUA) was again the title of an art event curated by Elyse Tonna in the frame of the Mahalla Festival taking place at the Dwejra Tower in Gozo this year.

It was the second interdisciplinary site-specific project under this title which attempts to uncover the less dominant narratives associated with the environments surrounding the historic coastal towers and the consequent relationships between the impacted landscapes and non-human communities in Malta.

Also, this year BWDUA was 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.

BWDUA is part of the MagiC Carpets platform, co-funded by the European Union’s Creative Europe program. The MagiC Carpets platform brings together 21 European cultural organizations, coordinated by Kaunas Biennial in Lithuania, offering opportunities for emerging artists to explore little-known areas and to create, together with local communities, new works that bring to light regional particularities and traditions.

The Mahalla Festival (Association Diyalog) and Unfinished Art Space are two of the 21 members from twenty-one countries in Europe. Sabine Küper-Büsch, Artistic Director of the Mahalla Festival and Deputy General Secretary of the Association Diyalog is the advisor to Curator Elyse Tonna in the framework of the MagiC Carpets Network.

Thematically, BWDUA seeks to uncover the less visible narratives associated with the environments surrounding historic (300+ year old) coastal towers and other coastal structures, and the consequent relationships that have developed and continue to develop between the impacted landscapes and non-human communities. It seeks to reconsider the dichotomies between the visible and the invisible, raising issues related to identity, extractive capitalism, and contestation of landscapes. It is approached from decolonize and post- anthropocentric perspectives and aims to investigate the intersections between climate justice, territorial defence and biocultural diversity preservation.

Participating Artists: Keit Bonnici (MT), Martinha Maia (PT), Jamie Barbara (MT), Justyna Olszewska (PL), Florinda Camilleri (MT), Isaac Warrington (MT)