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The last residency of the Common Places A.i.R. cycle. saw the artists of Collectif Kahraba as guests.

Founded in 2007, Collectif Kahraba is a performing arts company comprising artists and technicians from different walks of life who firmly believe that art is a pathway for dialogue and openness. Thanks to a growing network of actors, writers, stage directors, photographers, puppeteers and dancers, brought together by the will to exchange tools and knowledge and to meet the audience, Collectif Kahraba poetically questions the world in which we evolve. With over 18 productions that tour regularly across Lebanon and internationally, Collectif Kahraba initiated “Us, the Moon & The Neighbours” in 2011; a free, multi-disciplinary festival. With 6 editions, the festival managed to position itself as a real platform for collaboration, exchange and encounters amongst audiences and local and international artists. In 2017 Collectif Kahrba takes the artistic direction of Hammana Artist House, a residency space for artists that it co-founded with Robert Eid. With Hammana Artist House, it’s the art of encounter that Collectif Kahraba chooses to put forth as a vehicle to develop the imaginary, curiosity, critical sense, and to contribute, in a shared responsibility, to building a culture of peace.

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Totus in pari cun Collectif Kahraba!

In the month preceding the arrival of the Collectif Kahraba artists, a close-knit group of boys and girls from Perdaxius and the surrounding area led by the artists Carlo Spiga and Matteo Rubbi conceived and created a new puppet show from scratch. The protagonists of an incredible story between science fiction and fantasy were born from clay: The fantastic story of Robit12.

During the workshops the screenplay, scenography and soundtrack were born. The premiere of the show took place on September 26, 2022 at the Perdaxius Social Center.

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Geologia di una fiaba



“Geologia di una fiaba” is a creative project for young audiences conceived of and interpreted by Aurelien Zouki and Éric Deniaud. The piece combines storytelling, dance, and object and sound manipulation. The central element is clay in layered sheets, in piles, in blocks, in bas-relief, modeled live, etc., giving life to figures and spaces. It is from and through this raw material that the two interpreters build the genealogy of fables and their origins. In order to write their own fables, we know that La Fontaine and Marie de France were inspired by Aesop, who was himself inspired by Persian tales, which most certainly came from India, and so on… probably since the continental drift, perhaps before language became so elaborate. The first fable may have even been modeled from clay. Through oral transmission, these simple wisdoms have been entrusted to us from age to age, territory to territory. The ascension of time and crossing of space reminds us that not so long ago, borders were not defined as they are today. The only things, perhaps, still able to easily cross, are our thoughts and our stories.

Amy Sow, artista e attivista (Nouakchott 1977) è la terza artista invitata per Common Places A.i.R.
Primo Vicepresidente del Collectif di giovani artisti visivi mauritani, M-ART, fondatrice di ArtGallé, un centro d’arte situato a Nouakchott che ha come scopo divulgare e promuovere l’arte e l’educazione artistica soprattutto alle fasce che ne sono escluse, bambini e bambine soprattutto.
La passione di Amy Sow risale alla sua infanzia. Da allora si è formata e perfezionata in calligrafia, pittura e fotografia.
Il lavoro di Amy Sow è stato esposto alla biennale di Dakar, al palazzo Chaillot e all’Institut du Monde Arabe di Parigi, al museo di arti contemporanee di Cartagine a Tunisi. Nel 2019 ha partecipato al progetto I giardini possibili, con Cherimus e Casa Emmaus in Sardegna.

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Prima tappa della residenza è stato Monte Sirai un antico sito fenicio-cartaginese. Nelle foto vediamo il tempio di Astarte e Baal con all’orizzonte lo Stabilimento Metallurgico di Portovesme, un ritratto di Amy nel sito con la città di Carbonia sullo sfondo; un porcospino che vive in una delle antiche tombe cartaginesi, Amy sotto un vecchio ulivo piegato dal maestrale, il tramonto sulla spiaggia di Punt’e s’Arena.

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Amy incontra “Is Meurreddas”, un gruppo di autoriflessione nato a Perdaxius e incentrato sulla discriminazione e la violenza di genere.

Nell’ottica di immaginare e costruire nuovi progetti insieme Amy Sow incontra a Iglesias il sindaco di Iglesias Marco Usai e gli assessori Angela Scarpa e Monica Marongiu. Successivamente è la volta di Perdaxius con gli assessori Sebastian Fadda e Alfonso Sanna.

Visita alla galleria di Herny, un tunnel nelle rocce del Sulcis-iglesiente dove abbiamo scoperto il patrimonio minerario della zona.
In questi giorni ci hanno visitato anche i partner del progetto Common Places per un a serie di incontri di scambio metodologico e per condividere i risultati perseguiti dal progetto fino a questo punto.

Negli stessi giorni ci hanno visitato anche i partner del progetto Common Places La Fundició e Prostorož per un a serie di incontri di scambio metodologico e per condividere i risultati perseguiti dal progetto fino a questo punto.

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Performance di Amy Sow al parco pubblico di San Leonardo.
“Deboo” è una parola Pulaar che significa donna. Lo spettacolo parla della lotta delle donne per liberarsi da tutti i fardelli e le costrizioni con cui sono costrette a vivere.
Musiche di: Carlo Spiga @makika2
Foto di: @riccardolocci

Pesaus a contus / كلنا حكايات is part of “On the move! Un teatro in viaggio per il Libano” cooperation project between Cherimus (Sardinia) and Hammana Artist House (Lebanon) financed by the Regione Autonoma della Sardegna.

The project involved eight performing artists based in Lebanon:

Maya Aghniadis, composer e arranger
Sarah Almoneem, performance artist
Patricia Habchy, director
Monà Hallab, soprano
Nivine Kallas, performance artist and director
Tracy Khoueiry, performance artist
Chantal Mailhac, storyteller and musician
Sarah Mashmoushy, performance artist

and two artists based in Sardinia:

Carlo Spiga, visual artist e musician
Sara Deidda, photographer and filmmaker

During an artistic residency at the Hammana Artist House, the artists developed and staged two new performances: “Tarantism”, created and directed by Nivine Kallas and “The longest night of my life”, created and directed by Chantal Mailhac..
Over two intense weeks, artists shared the same spaces, lived in the cozy and welcoming environment of Hammana and activated moments of artistic discussion with the artists of Hammana Artist House, which helped the artists in residence to stage two new performances for the first time.

At the end of the two weeks, the performances had their debut in Hammana with an audience of youg students from the town’s schools. Subsequently the theatre tour continued in Rmeileh, at the “Centre socio éducatif Fratelli” and in Beirut at the Islamic orphanage.

Carlo Spiga collaborated with Nivine Kallas, Sarah Mashmoushy, Sarah Almoneem, and Tracy Khoueiry to create an original score for the performance “Tarantism” using Sardinian traditional and experimental instruments.
Sara Deidda has created a documentary to narrate the project by working closely with the artists, exchanging ideas and engaging with the participants as well as the Hammana staff.

Il documentario “Pesaus a contus / كلنا حكايات was presented for the first time in the Spazio Antas of San Sperate on 27 September 2022.

All the images used on the website are made by Sara Deidda.

“On the move! Un teatro in viaggio per il Libano” also supported the sustainability of the social and artistic initiatives of Hammana Artist House for marginalized communities within Lebanon, in the form of a donation of a powerful rechargeable battery system that will help to run some of the activities that are at ‘present severely hampered by the serious economic and energetic crisis that the country is going through.

Chantal Mailhac and Mona Hallab tell and sing on stage the story of Ba’al, the Phoenician’s “God of the rain, that climbs the clouds and come back with fertility; he lives above the clouds. During his time nature is green, colorful, full of fruits, flowers […]”

The night of the title refers to the winter solstice night, the longest of the year, before days start to be longer again. The tradition contains many points later taken up by Christianity (Jesus’ birth on the solstice and the death/resurrection process). Ba’al later became, as many gods with horns -he is associated with the constellation of Taurus-, one of the enemies of God, one of the ways to represent satan.

This performance wants to revive a story that has deep roots in Lebanese and Levantine history as well as in many places of the Mediterranean Sea, including Sardinia.
In Sardinia the figure of the bull was one of the most widespread in antiquity, and it is the base today for some of the famous masks used for carnival rituals.

Thanks to the histrionic and playful storytelling of Chantal, the voice of Mona, the support of Patricia Habchy for the mise-en-scène and of Maya Aghniadis for the music composition, the legend of Ba’al came back to life and was told and sung in front of the audience of students, children and young adults.

Tarantism is the name of a traditional “magical-religious” music therapy practice once very common in Puglia and in the regions of southern Italy.
The performance by Nivine Kallas, unfolds through a series of scenes narratively centering the human body and its struggle to face present time challenges
As physical narrator and director Nivine Kallas says: “Tarantism is a performance that tackles
an irresistible invitation to move, as a form of expression that can be violent yet therapeutic, now the pain is triggered pushing the body to face it is shadows.”
A complex exchange of glances, a fight, a constant attempt to reconnect, to heal, all through a multifaceted dance, that combine different methods and techniques.
Visual artist and musician Carlo Spiga has developed an unprecedented collaboration with the performers Nivine Kallas, Tracy Khoueiry, Sarah Almoneem, Sarah Mashmoushy and experimented with new ways of using launeddas, trunfa, and throat singing. These three elements are traditional instruments of Sardinian dances. During this residency Carlo Spiga had the chance to build a bridge between “Tarantism” and the Sardinian ritual named “Argia”, connected as well with the bite of a spider (the black widow) and with dance as a therapy practice.
Photographer Sara Deidda is collaborating with the 8 artists in residence as well, thanks to a collaboration with Eja Tv, exploring day by day ways to film the performances and find a way to tell a story through images, rather than merely documenting it.

Sarah Mashmoushy

Sarah Almoneem

Tracy Khoueiry

Nivine Kallas

Okada Buluma (Nairobi, 1982) is a Social Practice Artist.
He is known in Kenya and internationally for the quality of his work on behalf of children and disadvantaged youth. Over the years, Okada has experimented with creative educational methods centred on the needs of children, through the use of games and of playful learning practices.
Cherimus has been collaborating with Okada Buluma since 2014 and together they have realized two major projects funded by the Sardinian Region (in application of the Regional Law of 11 April 1996, n. 19), ‘Ciak! Kibera’ and ‘Carnival! Nairobi.’ The collaboration also led to the creation, in Nairobi, together with Charles Nshimmy, of a wooden statue of Santu Jacu (St James), which was later offered to the community of Perdaxius.

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The residency starts with a visit at Museo archeologico nazionale, Cagliari, through centuries of history and intertwining Mediterranean cultures. Sphinxes and other artifacts found in Sardinia testify to the presence of the cults of Isis and Osiris on the island, while other funerary and quotidian artifacts are very similar to those on display in the museum. The visit continued with the Giants of Mont’e Prama, the sacred models of the nuraghi (ancient Sardinian stone structures), and the beautiful Nuragic bronzes statues.

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Workshop by Okada Buluma and Cherimus with a group of people living in the Casa Emmaus’ facility (Iglesias) from Egypt, Tunisia, Albania and Afghanistan.
Okada invited everyone to write or draw something important to them, a memory, a dream. Stories emerged, sometimes linked to moments of the long journey that brought them to Sardinia, the nostalgia and longing for home. They then transformed these reflections into color and painting, and then a map of all their stories.

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Conference “Orizzonti di cooperazione”, Town Hall, Perdaxius
Okada Buluma talked about his professional experience working with and educating kids who live in the streets of Nairobi: the building of a sense of trust through play, the uplifting of each person’s uniqueness and self expression, perseverance, and patience are the ingredients of a process that brought many children off the streets. After Okada spoke, Emiliana Sabiu & Matteo Rubbi, cofounders of Cherimus, talked about the projects Cherimus has developed with Koinonia Community in Nairobi, in which artists, musicians, and educators worked together in the communities of the children who live in the street to represent and give form to their dreams and their futures. Also present at the meeting were various institutional actors and representatives of local area associations who are interested in activating dialogue on the theme of educational poverty, centering the education and growth of all the components of community education: families, teachers, and educators.

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Workshop in collaboration with Elda Mazzocchi Scarzella association, Domusnovas.
Okada, alongside Cherimus, held a workshop for a group of children, exploring the theme of tales and stories as the roots of one’s identity both as individuals and as a community.
Some of the stories centered on the territory of Domusnovas, its caves, its mines, and its mountains. Others were classic fairy tales, and still others tales invented for the workshop. At the end of their time together, these stories, translated into a storyboard of drawings, were lined up and recombined by the children, giving life to a new story. Stories are a living language: they are games; they are the transmission and questioning of knowledge. Our stories grow with us.

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Visiting Barrancu Mannu, one of the most beautiful and magical archaeological and natural sites in Sulcis. Located near Santadi, the site houses a Tomba dei giganti and other remains from ancient times.

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For Easter Saturday, Okada Buluma, Emilia Brunoro and Fiammetta Caime worked together to prepare Chapati, a fried unleavened bread very popular in Kenya. As an accompaniment to this bread, ricotta was prepared with excellent thistle honey produced in Perdaxius, Sulcis cheeses and legumes.

Some images of the playful workshop that closed the week of Okada Buluma’s residency. The kids of Perdaxius gifted us with this explosion of colors, creating the shell of an alien dinosaur egg made of their drawings, which was shown to the community at the Park of San Leonardo.
Thank you Comune di Perdaxius for making this possible!

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So Close is a project by Cherimus and Espace Mass’art (Tunis), as part of the Tandem / Shaml – Cultural Managers Exchange program, an initiative of the European Cultural Foundation (Amsterdam), MitOst (Berlin), Al Mawred Al Thaqafy (Cairo) and Anadolu Kültür (Istanbul), with the support of Robert Bosch Stiftung (Germany), DOEN Foundation (Netherlands) and Mimeta (Norway).

The name of the project recalls the geographical proximity of the two associations as well as the need to imagine projects together despite the difficulties of exchange between cultural initiatives between the two countries, so close and so far at the same time, separated by a sea that wants to be a limit. impassable rather than a place for discussion and encounter.

The project freely uses artistic and theatrical workshops, music and improvisation to tell new stories that focus on the children of the neighborhood of El Omrane (Tunis) and the children of Perdaxius (Sardinia).
Salah Hammouda, Hatem Boukesra and Sawsan Louati of Mass’Art, together with Matteo Rubbi, Andrea Rossi, Emiliana Sabiu and Carlo Spiga of Cherimus, carried out two weeks of workshops in Tunis (December 2014) and Perdaxius (March 2015). From the Tunis workshops was born an original song created by children and from the collaboration between the musicians Maurizio Marzo and Francesco Medda (Cagliari) and Amin and Aymen Makni (Tunis) entitled Aslema / Beslema. On the other hand, in Sardinia, the Teatro Forum show in Perdaxius was born based on the stories of the young people who participated in the workshops that debuted on March 18, 2015 in the town’s oratory.
The musicians Maurizio Marzo, Francesco Medda, Amin Makni and Aymen Makni created the soundtrack of the show.

«And So We’ll End Up Singing» (“E così finiremo a cantare”) è il terzo ciclo del progetto Communities Between Islands, residenza artistica itinerante dedicata alla ricerca e allo scambio con la comunità locale, organizzata da tre associazioni culturali in tre isole del Mediterraneo: in Sardegna (Italia), in Corsica (Francia), e a Syros (Grecia).

L’ultimo capitolo di Communities Between Islands riunirà gli artisti e musicisti Lukas de Clerk, Maya Aghniadis (Flugen) e Roberto Casti in un viaggio che li porterà da Syros alla Corsica e alla Sardegna. I nostri artisti saranno a Perdaxius dal 9 al 24 Ottobre, portando avanti un lavoro che si concentrerà sulle narrazioni musicali attraverso le tre isole, reinterpretando la loro storia e cultura attraverso le lenti dei paesaggi sonori contemporanei, in un’anticipazione di possibili connessioni – passate e ancora future – tra di esse.

Durante la residenza gli artisti terranno dei laboratori aperti alle comunità locali e a chiunque abbia il piacere di partecipare, avvicinando il pubblico alla propria ricerca e pratica artistica.

Lukas de Clerk

The main topic of the project is the harvest of reed (Phragmites Australis) for fabricating Aulos reeds.
The timing of the Syros-part falls right in the sweet spot of a late harvest for Aulos reeds. Also october would be acceptable time to harvest reed, so already harvesting reed in all 3 islands would be pretty magical.
The part in Sardegna might be off course heavily inspired by the Launeddas. when we were with Luciano Montisci together, we brielfy talked about an Aulos-Launeddas fusion instrument… The ‘ghost’ of the Aulos, transforming the Launeddas could be a beautiful act of connection the islands.
We could connect the 3 islands by way of a plant typical of the Mediterranean, reed, and a desire to make an Aulos with elements of all 3 islands.
The caramusa in Corsica feels very related to the launeddas, but in the shape of the bagpipe. Lot’s of things to bring together hehe.
Very quick and associative thinking right now, but it could help us to already think together towards some direction!

Maya Aghniadis (Flugen)

We are always ahead of time while planning life, we lose the precious moment of the present and we are rebellious with our past, constantly making amends. 
My idea for the creation of this sonic narrative revolves around elements of the past , present and future. A rhythmic play that challenges the feeling of time and soundscapes that send us to an ancient yet familiar place. 
The storyline will link the three islands and will also include elements from the workshops ; A superposition that combines three different groups of people, all performing on the same note and rhythm without meeting each other.