In their transdisciplinary artistic practice, Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme have for many years been concerned with how inclusion and exclusion manifest themselves in bodily experiences, in the imaginary and symbolic realm. Against this backdrop, the problem of breathing already appears in their series of works And Yet My Mask Is Powerful (2016-2019), opening up interrelated questions about the value and protection of bodies, of life. In the SODA lecture, they discuss the knowledge that is needed to breathe where you are not supposed to do so: “Breathing as a physical and existential condition is also a question of continuing to be, continuing to claim yourself, to claim space and to claim narrative, to claim your story and your testimony.”
Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme work together across a range of sound, image, text, installation and performance practices. Their practice is engaged in the intersections between performativity, political imaginaries, the body and virtuality. Across their works they probe a contemporary landscape marked by seemingly perpetual crisis and an endless ‘present’, one that is shaped by a politics of desire and disaster. They have been developing a body of work that questions this suspension of the present and searches for ways in which an altogether different imaginary and language can emerge that is not bound within colonial/capitalist narrative and discourse. www.baselandruanne.com
In the frame of: Breathe. A SODA Lecture Series, November 2020 – January 2021
Curated by Sandra Noeth (HZT Berlin – MA SODA).
With: Basel Abbas & Ruanne Abou-Rahme; Hope Ginsburg; Miriam Jakob & Jana Unmüßig; Maikon K; Bojana Kunst; Francesca Raimondi; Vanessa Eileen Thompson. Curated by Prof. Dr. Sandra Noeth (HZT Berlin – MA SODA).
The lecture takes place from 6pm – 8pm (CET) in English, via Zoom, and will then be available on www.hzt-berlin.de until end of March 2021.
Zoom-Link
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88266633133?pwd=b2pzLzRqOHpha0V3Wm5yanNwTEY4UT09
Meeting-ID: 882 6663 3133
Kenncode: 771714
Event location:
