Jalal Toufic is a writer, film theorist, and video artist. Recently he published the book 'Two or Three Things I'm Dying to Tell You'. His videos and mixed media works have been presented in North America, Brazil, the Middle East and Europe. Toufic has taught at the University of California at Berkeley, California Institute of the Arts, USC and at DasArts and Rijksakademie – both in Amsterdam.
On invitation by WdKA's Piet Zwart Institute, Jalal Toufic is presenting his lecture 'Two or Three Things I'm Dying to Tell You about The Thousand and One Nights'. The lecture is part of the program of the thematic seminar 'One-Eye, Two-Eyes, and Three-Eyes – On the Notion of Storytelling' held at the PZI by the Uqbar Foundation.

From the press release: “Morning overtook Shahrazad, and she lapsed into silence… The king thought to himself, 'I will spare her until I hear the rest of the story then I will have her put to death the next day.'” Borges errs when he writes: “Why were there first a thousand [the apparently Persian version: Hazar Afsana, the thousand tales] and later a thousand and one?” It is confounding that despite all his flair Borges should miss the displacement from tale in the Persian version to night in the Arabic one: I consider that the first title refers to the stories Shahrazad tells, while the second refers to the nights, the one thousand nights of the one thousand unjustly murdered previous one-night wives of King Shahrayar plus his night with Shahrazad, a night that is itself like a thousand nights.”

Jalal Toufic. 'Two or Three Things I'm Dying to Tell You about The Thousand and One Nights' – public lecture. Monday November 26, 2007. Piet Zwart Institute / Postgraduate Studies and Research / Willem de Kooning Academy Hogeschool Rotterdam, Mauritsstraat 36, 3012 GC Rotterdam/NL. The lecture starts at 7.30 pm. Admission: free. The lecture will be in English.

More information: website Jalal Toufic