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Captions are available for this session. 

The arts have the special power to engage with complex issues through all our senses - creating experiential knowledge and fostering connection between people. This session features two artists whose practices actively challenge populism, polarisation and patriarchy. 

In answer to political reprisals and other methods of restricting freedom of expression, both Sivan Ben Yishai and Sebastián Squella have developed artistic responses that offer empowering words to counter collective speechlessness and utilise the political dimensions of theatre to invite people to act. 

In his work Squella is ‘demystifying the idea of democracy, imagining its end, and envisioning a better system because we can only create what we have imagined’. As a playwright Sivan Ben Yishai’s work actively embraces the discomfort of exposing hypocrisies within society, through the search for a language that is both precise and unsettling, and capable of mirroring society in all its contradictions.  

Both artists strive for principles that allow, sustain and strengthen many voices. Drawing on excerpts of their work, a dialogue between the artists, and on the discussions participants have experienced throughout the Plenary, this session asks participants: what forms of experiential knowledge can we co-create to foster creative resistance?

Speakers: 

Sivan Ben Yishai, playwright, Israel/Palestine/Germany
Sebastián Squella, theatre director, Chile