The writer Haytham El-Wardany engages with traditions of storytelling that lend agency to seemingly lifeless objects. In his writings, they become subjects. In his reading of the short story In the Wrong Place, El-Wardany creates a verbal space that encourages us to rethink the concept of a “source of inspiration”. Like many other modern artists, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff called the art of the regions of Asia, Africa, Oceania and South America “sources of inspiration” for his own works. El-Wardany’s reading and discussion intend to render the voids of labor in the socalled “sources of inspiration” visible. In his performance, El-Wardany works with the book Kalīla wa Dimna [Kalila and Dimna], a collection of fables recorded in Arabic by the Basra, Iraqborn writer and scholar Abdullah Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ
in the 8th century. more