A Sudanese Village Arts Festival Looks Back to the Future · Global Voices
The village of Karmakol, site of the Karmakol Festival. Photo by <PERSON>. Used with permission.
About half a year ago I came across a video that was making the rounds on Sudanese Facebook, about an arts festival scheduled to take place in December 2017 in a northern Sudanese village with a funny name I never heard of before. The village, whose name is Karmakol, turns out to be the birthplace of <PERSON>, one of Sudan’s most celebrated writers.
The arts festival sounded incredible and I immediately applied to participate. The organizers told me I was the first to apply, and invited me to join the team coordinating the Art House as well as to conduct workshops.
­They also told me the story of how this unusual arts festival in such an out of the way location was first dreamed up.
It all started when a team of filmmakers decided to make a short film inspired by <PERSON> novel Season of Migration to the North. So they packed up their equipment and traveled to Karmakol, 330 kilometers north of Khartoum on the western bank of the River Nile.
In the course of trying to make their film, the team had countless meetings with the mayor, the village elders and the family of the author, in an effort to negotiate village politics and tribal differences and bring everyone together. After several months, all parties came to an agreement to establish the Karmakol Cultural Center, with a plan to renovate the part of the village where all the family homes had been abandoned in the 1980’s due to the Nile’s continuous flooding of its banks. They also agreed to launch an annual international Arts festival which would take place in these renovated Nubian style houses, or hush, as they are called in Arabic.
A traditional dwelling in Karmakol. Photo by <PERSON>. Used with permission.
As a political cartoonist who uses art and culture as a tool of resistance, I get invited to a lot of “artivism” events. But because of the risk of being targeted by the Sudanese government, this was the first time I had participated in a public event in my homeland.
Even before I arrived in the village, I knew that this Karmakol Arts Festival was going to be a deeply personal experience for me. 926
I had no idea what to expect, so I decided to remain open to whatever it would end up being.
I arrived in Khartoum in December 2017, and after a few days of weddings and visiting family and friends, headed to Sudan Film Factory, from where buses were transporting organizers, volunteers and attendees on the six-hour journey to the festival. As we left the city the random urbanism of the capital gradually disappeared, to be replaced by desert and those villages that make you wonder if the few people that live there know or care what year it is. It felt like we were driving back in time.
The festival was incredible and drew people from surrounding villages, as well as many from Khartoum. In the few days I stayed in the village I saw urban intellectuals, artists, engineers, urban designers, tourists, volunteers, members of civil society organizations working with the local community, farmers, teachers, government representatives in tribal clothing. I saw a marketplace coming together organically not only with the people of Karmakol, but from the surrounding villages too. Young art school graduates from Khartoum worked alongside local artists and builders to restore these beautiful traditional houses. As the scene unfolded, you could almost imagine characters from <PERSON> books walking through it.
Sudan doesn’t have a film industry like our northern neighbor Egypt, but we were treated to two great Sudanese feature films in the Festival’s open-air cinema. The first, from 1984, was called “Tajooj”, starring the actor <PERSON>. The second film, “Iman”, made last year, starred <PERSON> grandson <PERSON>, in a gesture that embodies the Festival’s spirit of cultural continuity.
In the Music House, anyone who wanted was invited to jam with some of Sudan’s coolest bands. Sufi chants and traditional music mingled with the mixed English-Arabic songs of stylish city musicians.
“Some wondered: “Why is this art if I can draw the same khrabish (gibberish)?” The <PERSON> (Mayor) always answered, “<PERSON>—these are the crazy artists.” Photo by <PERSON>. Used with permission.
In the Art House, artists used a variety of media to transform, recycle, interact, discuss and collaborate with the public in open spaces free of any censorship except their own. 146