Installations
Obscenitas (2011)
Oona Spengler (France), Khouloud Yassine (Lebanon), Shaymaa Shoukry (Egypt) and Noora Baker (Palestine) ( World Premiere, V ideo Installation)
Using the media of dance and film, three female choreographers reflect on the subject of obscenity. Yassine, Shoukry and Baker all visited the Netherlands where they worked in the studio with the dancers of Dance Works Rotterdam/André Gingras. They had furthermore a free hand in making these short pieces, filmed and edited by the French filmmaker Oona Spengler. The result is an abstract but personal view of how they see the notion of obscenity.
Obscenitas is a concept of Andre Gingras and produced by Dance Works Rotterdam/Andre Gingras and Dancing on the Edge. This project was made possible through the support of Stichting DOEN and the Anna Lindh Foundation.
8, 9 &10 Dec | Amsterdam – Brakke Grond
10 December 18:00-20:00 |Amsterdam: Brakke Grond - Revolutionary Bodies (Presentation & Meeting, see Arts & Minds for more info)
11 Dec | Utrecht- Theater Kikker
9, 10 & 11 Dec | Groningen- Grand Theatre
13, 14 & 15 Dec |The Hague – Korzo
16 & 17 Dec | Rotterdam – Rotterdamse Schouwburg
Noora Baker is one of the leading dancers and teachers of the El Funoun company in Ramallah in the Palestinian territories. Baker has a background in both Arabic traditional dance (Dabke) and Western contemporary dance.
Shaymaa Shoukry is from Cairo, Egypt, and is a promising young choreographer who recently has shown her pieces in the Invernales Festival (Avignon) and 2B Continued Festival (Cairo) and who can be seen in this Dancing on the Edge Festival.
Khouloud Yassine is a founding member of the Dance Theatre Maqamat in Beirut, Lebanon and danced in a number of their productions. Yassine has produced a number of choreographies of her own, in addition to being an actress and dancer.
Oona Spengler is a French video filmmaker. She collaborated with Andre Gingras on the very succesful video Les Commerçants.
Performers Léa Dubois, Sandra Maes, Revé Terborg, Noëmi Wagner, Melanie Wirz, Thami Joe Fischer, BlaŜej Jasinski, Ilija Surla, Jason de Witt, Chérif Zaouali, Marek Zawalski.
Skin & Fabric (2001)
Fassih Keiso (Syria) (video installation, Dutch premiere)
‘The dress you trail behind, oh my oh my Raises stardust in your dainty path, oh my oh my’
(Translated from an Arabic Syrian song featured as part of the installation soundscape)
By using sound and images, the installation Skin & Fabric examines the tensions between current Eastern and Western perceptions of the body and sexuality. By interweaving an Arabic popular song with taboo video images of the fragmented human body, Skin & Fabric enters the cultural politics of sexuality and morality (through the body’s absence -in an Arab representational sense – and through its presence- in a Western sense) with a sense of irony, and where boundaries are blurred.
Fassih Keiso is a visual artist whose work has been shown nationally and internationally. After studying in Australia, the USA, and Lebanon he returned to Syria where he, besides continuing to make his own creations, works as a lecturer at the Faculty of Applied Art at Kalamoon University. Keiso is the founder and director of Centre for New Art in the north-eastern part of the country. He has exhibited at locations including Artspace in Sydney and the Centre for Contemporary Photography in Melbourne, as well as at spaces in Damascus, Beirut and Berlin, and various locations in Asia. In New York he has exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art/ P.S.1, the Pelham Art Center, and at the International Center of Photography.
8, 9 & 10 Dec | Amsterdam – de Brakke Grond
10 December 18:00-20:00 |Amsterdam: Brakke Grond - Revolutionary Bodies (Presentation & Meeting, see Arts & Minds for more info)
14, 15 & 16 Dec |The Hague – Korzo
Merge and Emerge (2011)
Moataz Nasr (Egypt) (Video Installation, Dutch premiere)
In this series of videos, several personalities are filmed. The artist’s camera acts like a scanner which searches beyond appearance, under the skin, beneath the flesh. This ensemble results in a vague unrest, a silent suffering which, once the masks are dropped, reveals the crude reality of true feelings. These videos were produced before Hosni Mubarak resigned. Everyone believed then that the freedom which resulted from his departure was far out of reach.
Moataz Nasr was born in 1961 in Alexandria (Egypt). He lives and works in Cairo. This self-taught artist gained local recognition before breaking into the international art scene in 2001, notably winning the Grand Prix at the 8th International Cairo Biennale. Since then he has participated in large international gatherings such as the Venice, Seoul and Sao Paulo Biennales and has exhibited in prestigious contemporary art venues. Today he is considered one of the greatest representatives of pan-Arab contemporary art. Showing complex cultural processes currently underway in the Islamic world, his work surpasses idiosyncrasies and geographical limits, and voices the worries and torments of the African continent. In 2008, Moatz Nasr founded DARB 1718, an Egyptian contemporary art center in Old Cairo.
8, 9 & 10 Dec | Amsterdam – de Brakke Grond
10 December 18:00-20:00 |Amsterdam: Brakke Grond - Revolutionary Bodies (Presentation & Meeting, see Arts & Minds for more info)