Mihret Kebede: Archiving Silence

The PhD in Practice welcomes you to one of their Fantastic Wednesday events where one of the candidates presents part of their artistic research to an open audience. Join us for screenings, performances, discussions, and an open bar.

The activists talk
The street vendors talk
The churches talk
The pedestrians talk
The radio talks
The shop keepers talk
The poets talk
The doctors talk
The journalists talk
My friends talk
The mosques talk
The teachers talk
The drivers talk
The streets kids talk
The cars talk
The students talk
The beggars talk
The city talks …

……and I was archiving the silence in between their talks/ thoughts, silently.

I also had to make sure that I at least have recorded my silence in between my listening.

This presentation is a collage/montage of varieties of interactions, conversations, and interventions documented throughout my quest of a book on silence in the city of Addis Ababa; asking street booksellers and book shops after getting disappointed for not getting any in the big libraries.

Mihret Kebede is an artist/poet, who graduated from Addis Ababa University School of Fine Arts and Design in painting with distinction in 2007 and has earned her MA in arts from the same school in 2016. She has received a certificate award of recognition as the best practicing artist in 2013 from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, Ethiopia. Mihret Kebede has participated in several local and international art exhibitions, workshops, poetry performances, art residencies, and collaborative art projects. Beyond her artistic practices, she is also well known for organizing local and international art events and festivals. Among her numerous involvements in organizing artistic events Mihret is a co-organizer and founding member of Addis video art festival together with the initiator of the festival Ezra Wube, and a founding manager of a popular monthly poetry and jazz event at Ras Hotel, a founding director of Netsa Art Village, artists collective which later forcedly closed by the government officials in 2015 after seven years of serving the contemporary art scene in the country. She also organized several collaborative poetry and jazz projects and performances locally and internationally including workshops and seminars with Studio Olafur Eliasson, followed by her solo show in the studio in 2012.

She is currently a Ph.D. in-practice program candidate at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna with a working title conversing with Silence as a continuity of her project silence during her MA study at Alle school of fine arts and Design, Addis Ababa University.