This audio work marks the final outcome of the residency project of Bint Mbareh during her Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee residency.

This 43-minute "podcast" stages an unusual interaction: advice given to a photographer in crisis by an unconventional advice column – in the form of quotations from theorists, poets and Walid Daqqa, a Palestinian political prisoner who was killed in Israeli prisons due to intentional medical negligence in May 2024 after over three decades in prison.

Read the credits and Mbareh's notes on the (creation of the) work below.

The audio piece that resulted from my residency with Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee was an opportunity for me to read and listen more deeply to some of the theory I had been meaning to read.

The premise is that there is a listener facing a problem, and the only way to solve this problem (according to the hosts of the Not My Problem podcast) is through a series of cryptic and seemingly impossible tasks. Will the listener attempt these tasks?

While the tasks are both silly and useless, the podcast host at least attempts most of them, instead of simply advising the listener on what to do from a pedestal. Additionally, she gives detailed and often nonsensical explanations, using the resources and music below, as to EXACTLY why each task/solution was recommended.

Song 1:

فرقة الطريق - مقبعة

Muqabba’ - Firqet al-Tareeq

This band was assembled in Iraq to celebrate the communist party’s culture and achievement. Most band members went on to be either disappeared or murdered by the Baathist regime of Iraq. The song’s aesthetic belongs squarely in a fluid rhythmic tradition of Iraqi sway and song. The lyrics, on the other hand, affirm the party’s youth committing to their duties of distributing published material across the country, including messaging published on the walls of towns and cities.

Source 1: Margarida Mendez: https://soundcloud.com/margarida-mendes-482890469/sets/phd-cra

https://www.neroeditions.com/expanded-river-listening/

Source 2: AM Kangieser

Source 3: Zahra Malkani

Song 2:

Abu Baker Salem - I cannot find the version that I used in the audio anymore

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEh5qwS9jvo

Source 4:

Technic and Magic: The Reconstruction of Reality by Federico Campagna

Source 5:

Walid Daqqa - A detailed account of the invasion of Jenin Refugee Camp in 2002

Source 6:

Fred Moten - Al-Khwarriddim

Song 3:

Cheikha Rimitti - Touche Mami Touche

Playlist

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMtaCmHJtVU&ab_channel=BassamAl-Ali
https://logicalda9ud.bandcamp.com/track/--39
https://ikhrasactivity.bandcamp.com/track/al-nahr
https://yhwhnailgun.bandcamp.com/track/marias-wing-needles-rain
https://solimangamil.bandcamp.com/track/sacred-lake
https://soundcloud.com/ameennaji/unvjgqxleoh9
https://hmotclub.bandcamp.com/track/heal-me-o-tenebrae-2
https://al-uzza.bandcamp.com/track/thaer

Bint Mbareh is a sound researcher with a focus on water in Palestine. Her interest in the physical parallel between water waves and sound waves leads her into questions of border dissolutions (between bodies, between states, between tenses), and into the possibility of being enveloped by the voice and by sounding communally – similarly to being enveloped by a water body. She challenges settler colonial epistemology by taking seriously Palestinian ways of knowing, from rain-summoning music to shrine pilgrimage as an instigator to political revolution.