Emma Haraké’s teaching, research, and creative practice move within a framework of public and critical pedagogy. She is an educator, researcher, and visual artist whose work focuses on oral history, memory work, autobiographical inquiries, and participatory practices. Haraké holds a Master’s in art education from Concordia University, Montreal and a BFA from the Lebanese University. She has years of work experience in various cultural, academic, and community settings and locates her work within collaborative and community-based practices.

As a project, Mumtalakat is anchored in processes of oral history that aim to produce a recording that is as complete as possible. Providing an uninterrupted transmission of memories and experiences, either through monologue or in dialogue with an interviewer, these recordings invite close listening and analysis. The accompanying transcripts are practical yet complicated documents where non-linguistic elements, personal style, and interpersonal dynamics need to conform to the rules of grammar and composition.

Explore:

• How each interviewee narrates their experiences and reflections.
• The role of non-linguistic changes in speech—rhythm, tone, volume—and how you come to understand (or not) their cues as the interviews progress.
• How the interviewer structures and responds to the conversation: When are questions answered directly? When do the answers lead elsewhere? What is left unanswered? When are open-ended questions introduced? When does the interview turn conversational?

Each interview in Mumtalakat focuses on a set of objects as selected by the interviewee. These objects at once carry and provoke memories, serving as a lens through which recollection might refract in different directions. Yet, by only capturing the audio from the interview each object is initially obscured. Instead, the video assembles photographs by the participants of their objects. Just as the interviews invite long periods of listening, each photo offers an extended view particular to the participant.

Explore:

• How an image of each object—its uses, histories and the relationships connected to it—is produced through language.
• How the interviewer looks at the object. What questions are asked about the object? What answers do they provoke?
• The simultaneous forms of analysis you do as a viewer in order to bridge the recordings, the images, and the transcripts.

As framed in the project description, mumtalakat as a concept brings up questions of the distribution and experience of power. Over the course of the interviews power ranges from exterior forces—such as social and political conditions leading to migration processes—to the personal—as a question of identity, self-determination, and inquiry. While ownership implies value where power or stature is measured by possessions, the value explored in Mumtalakat, however, trades in emotion, recollection, and shared and private experiences, while also recording instances where the participants were crossed by or assumed power.

Explore:

• The different processes of valuing that led participants to select the objects to accompany them.
• The ways these values are recognized, maintained, and accessed through the caretaking of and interaction with the objects.
• How value is described? How its layers are revealed as participants return to their objects through the interviews.

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Hryniewicz-Yarbrough, Ewa. “Objects of Affection.” Ploughshares 37, no. 1 (2011): 155-164.

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Maalouf, Amin. In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong. Translated by Barbara Bray. New York: Arcade Publishing, 2001.

Nora, Pierre. “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire.” Representations, no. 26 (1989): 7-24.

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Interview with Malaka Ackaoui

Interviewer: Emma Haraké

Date of Interview: March 21, 2019

Length of Interview: 37 min. 50 sec.

Place of interview: Interviewee’s home

Language of interview: Arabic (Egyptian Dialect)

Objects: Notebooks with sewing patterns, sewing certificates

Malaka Ackaoui was born in 1953 in Alexandria, Egypt. Malaka was seventeen years old when her parents moved to Montreal with her two younger siblings. She has a bachelor’s degree in Landscape Architecture from the Université de Montréal and a master’s degree in Urban Planning from McGill University. She ran her own company in Montreal. She married a Québécois man and has three children and four grandchildren.

Transcription in English

Interview with Maher Kouraytem

Interviewer: Emma Haraké

Date of Interview: August 11, 2017

Length of Interview: 60 min. 30 sec.

Place of interview: Interviewee’s home

Language of interview: Arabic (Lebanese Dialect)

Objects: Framed photographs and house key, school bag, school absence notebook, Billie Holiday by Greta Naufal

Maher Kouraytem was born in 1976 in Lebanon, one year after the start of the Lebanese civil war. He grew up in Ras Beirut with his two older sisters and parents. Kouraytem lost several family members during the civil war. He worked as an accountant in Lebanon and Abidjan. He also has a career as a self-taught artist since 2007. Maher immigrated to Montreal in September 2014.

Transcription in English

Interview with M.B.
Interviewer: Emma Haraké
Date of Interview: March 08, 2019
Length of Interview: 51 min. 55 sec.
Place of interview: Interviewee’s office
Language of interview: Arabic (Syrian Dialect)
Objects: Three diaries, rosary, teddy bear

M.B. is a 24-year-old Syrian/Armenian born in Aleppo, Syria. In 2014, M.B. had to leave Aleppo with her family to Lebanon because of the Syrian war. In December 2015, due to political unrest and treatment of Syrians in Lebanon, the family decided to move to Montreal. M.B. is currently a student at Concordia University and a community organizer.

Transcription in English

Interview with Wissam Assouad
Interviewer: Emma Haraké
Date of Interview: 26 October 2017
Length of Interview: 47 min. 9 sec.
Place of interview: Interviewee’s home
Language of interview: Arabic (Lebanese Dialect)
Objects: Religious icon, Red Cross card, toolkit

Wissam Assouad was born in 1984 in Lebanon and grew up in Ein el Rimaneh with his siblings and parents. In addition to his work in outdoor education, Assouad volunteered for three years with the Lebanese Red Cross. Assouad arrived in Montreal in June 2014. At the time of the interview he was a master’s student at Concordia University.

Transcription in English

Interview with Farah Mustafa
Interviewer: Emma Haraké
Date of Interview: November 11, 2017
Length of Interview: 21 min. 7 sec.
Place of interview: Coffee shop
Language of interview: Arabic (Palestinian Dialect)
Belongings: Keffiyeh, Memory in the Flesh novel by Ahlam Mosteghanemi, travel souvenirs from Dubai, Paris and Pisa

Farah Mustafa is a Palestinian born in Dubai in 1992. She grew up in Tyre, a coastal city southern Lebanon. Her family is originally from Saffuriyeh, a Palestinian village close to the city of Nazareth whose residents were expelled during Al-Nakba. As a Palestinian refugee living in Lebanon, Mustafa cannot visit her family’s homeland. Mustafa worked as a journalist in Lebanon. She immigrated along with her family to Montreal in 2016.

Transcription in English