#4 - Tarek Atoui

Welcome to this new episode of Handing Over the Mic, a podcast series where influential voices from the Global South share their perspectives on Europe its past, present and future.

What does Europe look like from the outside? What narratives do people from regions of the Global South attribute to Europe? Through this series, hosts Elisa Díaz Gras, Margaux Cassan and Christine Mhundwa invite writers, diplomats, artists and intellectuals to offer new, often unexpected, perspectives on how Europe is imagined beyond its borders.

In this episode, we hand over the mic to Tarek Atoui, the trail-blazing Lebanese electro-acoustic composer and sound artist born in 1980. From his first impressions of Europe while witnessing France’s switch from the franc to the euro, to his globe-spanning performances that dissolve cultural and physical frontiers, Atoui invites us into a sonic universe where hospitality, experimentation and collective listening take centre stage. He reflects on the power and pitfalls of European cultural funding networks he first encountered in the early 2000s, and explains why he has learnt to resist the lure of artistic “fads” in favour of long-term, community-driven practice.

Drawing on formative projects such as Within, which re-imagines music through the expertise of Deaf and hard-of-hearing performers, and his recent collaborations with choreographer Noé Soulier, Atoui shows how sound can become both a bridge and a form of gentle provocation. He speaks candidly about growing up in war-torn Beirut, questioning Europe’s shifting borders, and exploring the Mediterranean not as a closed basin but as a channel of perpetual exchange. The result is a richly textured meditation on identity, inclusion and the ways subtle vibrations can upend entrenched narratives.

Handing Over the Mic is a podcast by the Brussels Institute for Geopolitics, produced with the support of the European Cultural Foundation.

Production and Distribution

Episodes are available on all major platforms, including Apple Podcasts and Spotify, and are also featured on the homepages of BIG and our partner, the European Cultural Foundation.

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