The Jewelers of the Ummah, Ariella Aïsha Azoulay (2024, 2026) (EMPIRE LINES x Shed Publishing, House of European History)

In this special episode, author, filmmaker, and jewellery-maker Ariella Aïsha Azoulay details shared, intertwined histories of Jewish and Muslim life in Algeria and North Africa, and how they have been fractured through French colonialism and Zionism, in their book, The Jewelers of the Ummah: A Potential History of the Jewish Muslim World (2024, 2026).

This episode was recorded at Shed Publishing in Marseille as part of Peripheries and Horizons, a public programme curated by Jelena Sofronijevic with Pierre-Antoine Vettorello in response to Postcolonial?, a free exhibition at the House of European History in Brussels. The series of conversations and film screenings brings together artists and filmmakers, scholars, and activists, to explore how decolonial approaches travel, what they illuminate, and where they encounter friction when applied within Europe itself—particularly in regions often positioned at its margins. The exhibition continues until 14 March 2027. Find all the information online: historia.europa.eu/en/our-work/news/peripheries-and-horizons-empire-lines-podcast

For more about Gillo Pontecorvo’s film, The Battle of Algiers (1966), and the Algerian Revolution (1954-1962), listen to contemporary artist ⁠⁠Zineb Sedira⁠⁠ on Dreams Have No Titles (2022-Now), recorded with Whitechapel Gallery and Goodman Gallery in London, as part of EMPIRE LINES at Venice 2024: ⁠⁠pod.link/1533637675/episode/N2NjZjUzYTctY2JlMS00N2JhLThjNTAtNGE3YWUwMjEwYzNl.

Dreams Have No Titles (Les rêves n'ont pas de titre) is at La Friche la Belle de Mai in Marseille until 27 September 2026.

Listen to author and contemporary art historian Clare Carolin with EMPIRE LINES live, on the British government’s use of art as an instrument of war in the North of Ireland and the Falklands (Malvinas) in the 20th century, and their research in the archives and collections of the Imperial War Museum (IWM) in London, through The Deployment of Art: The Imperial War Museum’s Artistic Records Committee, 1968–1982 (2025): pod.link/1533637675/episode/M2M3MDc1N2EtYWNmYi00Y2FhLTk0Y2EtZDBkZTY3NmY4ODgz

Listen to journalist, photographer, and filmmaker Ahmad Al-Bazz, capturing the depopulation and destruction of Palestinian villages and towns, and the continuation of colonial histories into the present, through their photography book, The Erasure of Palestine (2026): pod.link/1533637675/episode/NDlkZjI5MDctNmYyYi00NTgyLWIwY2EtYjU4YTkwNGQ2YWIy

Read Object Collections: Contemporary Encounters with Ethnographic Photography in Britain and the Balkans, an essay commissioned by the School of Visual Arts (SVA) in New York, in the Brooklyn Rail: brooklynrail.org/2026/07/special-report/object-collections-contemporary-encounters-with-ethnographic-photography-in-britain-and-the-balkans/

For more about jewellery-making and material culture in contemporary art, listen to Pio Abad on Giolo’s Lament (2023) at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford: pod.link/1533637675/episode/1e7df6b20f9c99aae3e4df96f50913cf

And for more from Marseille, listen to curator and translator Line Ajan on time, language, and humour as an aesthetic, political, and coping strategy in Palestinian collective experiences, and the traumas of the Nakba and Israeli settler colonialism, throughout Mona Benyamin’s artistic practice, and video, Tomorrow, again (2023) at Triangle-Astérides at La Friche la Belle de Mai in 2026: pod.link/1533637675/episode/OTNjYTYxOWUtMDI4My00M2I1LTkyMWMtNDNiNGVjN2QzMTdm

PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic.

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EMPIRE LINES is a project within the ecosystem of Radical Ecology (2026-2027).