Technical Specifications:
Two-channel video performance installation with one film and one live-feed performance from a separate room. A domestic scene of folding laundry is performed and projected on one screen, while a filmed performance is playing on another.
A meditation on an Ideology of Pain, 2019, 11:02 min, two-channel installation, two-channel sound
Synopsis:
When I put my hand on my heart something did not feel right. It was not my heart. It was my mind. I was taken back in time. I remembered witnessing the procession yearly. 10 days of mourning, forced to wear black, my Shiite family taught me how to never forget the war of Karbala. My atheism did not mean that my body forgot seeing those men beating their bloodied heads with their hands till their white towels turned red. Hundreds of people marching the streets every year beating their hearts to a single sound, the streets shaking. Commemoration and ritual. The gesture lives within me. Even when I am not aware of it. Does my child see it when I can’t? If the Shiites stop mourning their beloved Hussein their whole ideology will seize to exist. Is it different to witness or to hear a story? If I don’t tell her their story, would I be part of the injustice that they were subjected to?
In the current context of advocating empathy, and the war on silencing, this work asks the question, is there such thing as dangerous empathy or harmful remembering? Coming from an ideology of pain, I question whether commemoration and mourning in such ideologies perpetuate or alleviate inter-generational trauma. And finally, the question of embodied memory, could someone remember a war that they did not live?
Role:
Camera, Lighting, Editing, Performance, Sound Design
