Maqam.tv’s research cycles are programs sketching out lines of enquiry to be freely answered through different expression, story-telling and transmission practices. They function a little like stages —for mainly video screenings, but also sonic, visual and text-based exercises, live acts and conversations. And their aim is to unpack the stakes of one central theme in the most unimpeded ways.

The cycles are spaces in which stable and incarcerated research frameworks can be disavowed by way of commoning; co-creating, co-teaching and co-organizing, all through ever-changing bodies and formulas. They are unanchored, transmigratory even: they pass from a state to another, from a body to another, from a place to another; and they’re certainly not on a rush. They take their time, stretch over months, sometimes do not have a determined ending, and sometimes again overlap. A cycle develops a little like a jazz chorus actually, with preliminaries, or series of improvised, free, segments after each melodic part that elevate the register little by little, until reaching its climax.