Film works by Noor Abed

18.00–19.00 ｜ A cycle of film works by Noor Abed, 54’ 33”

our songs were ready for all wars to come, 2021 –19' 54'' / Out of Joint, 2018 – 10' 40'' / PENELOPE, 2014, 6' 28' / We Both Know, 2013 – 9' 15'' / I’m So High On You, 2012 – 8' 16''

20.00–22.00｜Screening of A Night We Held Between, 2024 by Noor Abed

Noor Abed will join us at Ar/Ge Kunst to screen a new film work titled, A Night We Held Between, 2024 (30:00 minutes). The screening will be followed by a discussion and readings from her forthcoming book, describing community approaches, her notes from production, and processes of making with friends in Palestine.

Noor Abed (b. 1988, Palestine) works at the intersection of performance and film. Her works create situations where social possibilities are both rehearsed and performed. Abed attended the Whitney Independent Study Program in Νew York in 2015-16, and the Home Workspace Program (HWP) at Ashkal Alwan, Beirut 2016-17. In 2020, she co-founded, with Lara Khaldi, the School of Intrusions, an independent educational collective in Ramallah, Palestine. Abed was an assistant curator in documenta fifteen, kassel 2021-22. She is currently an artist in residence at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam 2022-24 and was recently awarded the Han Nefkens Foundation/Fundació Antoni Tàpies Video Art Production Grant 2022.

Films:

our songs were ready for all wars to come, 2021 - 19' 54''

Choreographed scenes based on historized folktales from Palestine. The project aims to create a new aesthetic form to re-awaken latent stories from the folklore, ones that are mainly based around water wells and their connection to disappearance. How can folktales become an emancipatory tool to reclaim community and land that have been seized by direct colonialism and neoliberal hegemonies?

Out of Joint, 2018 - 10' 40''

Focusing on ‘dance’ as a social construct, in a wider examination of notions of choreography and the imaginary relationship of individuals, the video combines staged (staged dance of two men) and documentary footage (pre-wedding celebration in Palestine); highlighting the affinities and tensions between performativity and performance. One of a staged choreography, the other of one culturally embodied, while the third develops through editing.

PENELOPE, 2014 - 6' 28'

Inspired by the Odyssey, based on Homer's epic poem from Greek Mythology, this work is based on the concept of myth; its position in history and relation to the present and the imaginary. The continuous presence of the female figure, as a representation of Penelope, unfolds the absence of the hero figure. Through the act of sewing, she is returning to a past memory simultaneously. The past is activated in the imagination, reinforcing through movement its dislocation from its original site. The film attempts to reflect a reality other than the one history offers. Here, myth could be seen as a collective dream and public imagination.

We Both Know, 2013 - 9' 15''

The video examines concepts of death and gender in relation to landscape in the frame of time and labor. It also plays out fantasies of endurance as articulated through the space of the body; unpacking ideas of control within the political realm through the personal. The work questions concepts of camouflage and repetition through naturalized body movements, while contemplating the present moment.

I'm So High On You, 2012 - 8' 16''

Artist Noor Abed inserts herself inside a multi-storey skeleton in Ramallah, Palestine. Back then, the construction was paused for a year by Israel, because the building was going “too high”. The skeleton of the architecture is represented on video stripped down, just like the person (the artist) dancing inside it, in an attempt to reappropriate the space and create a new relationship between body, movement and masculine/patriarchal space.