Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme

Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme (b.1983) work together across a range of sound, image, text, installation and performance practices. Their practice, largely research based, 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. In their projects, they find themselves excavating, activating and inventing incidental narratives, figures, gestures and sites as material for re-imagining the possibilities of the present. Largely their approach has been one of sampling materials both existing and self-authored in the form of sound, image, text, objects and recasting them into altogether new ‘scripts’. The result is a practice that investigates the political, visceral, material possibilities of sound, image, text and site, taking on the form of multi-media installations and live sound/image performances. Solo presentations include Kunstverein Hamburg (Hamburg), Krannert Art Museum (Illinois), Alt Bomonti (Istanbul), ICA (Philadelphia), Office for Contemporary Art (Oslo), Carroll/Fletcher (London), Akademie Der Kuenste Der Welt (Cologne), New Art Exchange (Nottingham) and Delfina Foundation (London). Selected group exhibitions include Kunstgebaude Stuttgart (Stuttgart), Portikus (Frankfurt), The Mistake Room (Los Angeles), SeMa Biennale (Seoul), Kunsthalle Wien (Vienna), Museum Of Modern Art (Warsaw), ICA (London), the 12th Sharjah Biennale, the 31st São Paulo Biennial; the 10th Gwangju Biennale; the 13th Istanbul Biennial; the 6th Jerusalem Show; HomeWorks 5 (Beirut); and Palestine c/o Venice at the 53rd Venice Biennale. They were fellows at Akademie der Kunste der Welt in Cologne in 2013 and artists in residence at the Delfina Foundation, London in 2009. They are recipients of the Sharjah Biennale Prize in 2015 and The Abraaj Prize in 2016. Their most recent publication ‘And Yet Amy Mask Is Powerful’ is published by Printed Matter in New York. Oh shining star testify invites us to consider the forms of entanglement between the destruction of bodies and the erasure of images, and the conditions under which these sames bodies and images might once again reappear. The piece is structured around CCTV footage taken from an Israeli military surveillance camera. On March 19, 2014, 14 year-old Yusuf ­Shawamreh crossed the ‘separation fence’ erected by the Israeli military near Hebron. He was going to pick Akub an edible plant that is a delicacy in Palestinian cuisine, blooming only for only a short period of time and growing at high altitudes. After crossing the fence Israeli forces ambushed and shot him dead. A court injunction forced the military surveillance footage to be released and consequently circulated online only to be removed later. Oh shining star testify weaves together a fragmented script sampled from online recordings of everyday erasures of bodies, land and built structures but also their reappearance through ritual and performance. Moments from this material appear as moving layers with images building in density on top of each other, obscuring what came before in an accumulation of constant testament and constant erasure. Retrieving, in this unfolding accumulation and dissipation of testament, certain moments that have passed us by as noise, what we can not turn to see and what we can not turn away from. Uncounted bodies counter their own erasures, appearing on a street, on a link, on a feed. Only the beloved keeps our secrets. Eyes wide shut she treats him with a kiss and he revives. And if death arrives we wish her to be like you red cheeks, like the waves of the sea. She treats him with a kiss and he revives Only the beloved keeps our secrets Eyes wide shut Give me your scarf, to wrap my wound, give me your scarf Send my love to the land that raised me Oh shining star, testify If only the mountain between us could be ground to dust Give me your scarf, to wrap my wound, give me your scarf Land of the sweet soil even your fires are paradise