6 June 2026, 2pm
Mosaic Rooms
226 Cromwell Road
London, SW5 0SW

Join us at Mosaic Rooms for a collective reading session and launch of Bouchra Khalili’s newly published book, The Circle: Timeline for a Constellation.

The publication explores the enduring legacy of the Arab Workers Movement (MTA) and its theatre troupes Al Assifa and Al Halaka. The MTA theatre troupes’ pioneering provocations to imagine how performance and storytelling can become forces for civic transformation culminated in the 1974 presidential candidacy of Djellali Kamal. At a time when migrant communities in France were silenced under threat of expulsion, Kamal’s candidacy became a public performance, and a declaration against the denial of migrant rights, imagining a vision of transnational citizenship.

This gathering invites participants to read aloud selections from interviews, testimonies and conversations featured in the publication, including voices of surviving members who organised with the MTA.

In reading these words aloud together, we honour and celebrate the stories that began with undocumented workers who dared to imagine belonging in their own terms – stories that continue to resonate today.

Texts by: Bouchra Khalili, Mohamed Amer Meziane, Abdellali Hajjat. Interviews: KJ Abudu, Saïd Bouziri, Hedi Akkari, Smaïne Idri, Mustapha Mohammadi, Philippe Tancelin, Mia Radford, Lucas Yahiaoui.

Hosted and run in collaboration with Mosaic Rooms, as part of the annual Small Press Fest (6-7 June).

All welcome. No prior reading is required.

RSVP