AMP Residency program was launched in the fall of 2020 with lead support from the California Arts Council.  This program is intended to support experimental artists from the SWANA [South West Asia North Africa] diaspora living and working in California; providing workspace at Temescal Art Center, honorarium, and production support for field research in the form of public workshops. This program, as with all of Arab.AMP’s programming, is in dialogue with artistic and social movements internationally, and the work of our allied communities.

The inaugural AMP Resident artist Sholeh Asgary has been offering free monthly workshops this season called “Majles” – sound, silence and movement based sessions, audience participatory scores, and collective reflections that seek to build a new governance through individual creativity, in relationship to each other.

As a final synthesis to her residency research, Asgary offers two video premieres and a “Majles” Panel with previous participants, moderated by Abou Farman, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at The New School for Social Research (NYC).

Through the yearlong AMP Residency, Asgary has been researching, creating and experimenting with sound and movement scores that exist outside of Western notions of linearity. Sholeh will open up the discussion with the panelists in reflection and about the scores she has conducted with Majles participants, and how this research will continue moving forward.  Other topics include living archives, indeterminacy, and community practice.