Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme: Collapse (Work-In-Progress)

Collapse is a sound and video installation, which uses as its starting point an assemblage of audio and film archive material. The compiled footage brings together imaginary and actual moments of resistance and loss, and highlights the disruptions that shape shared histories of struggle, in Palestine and elsewhere.

Somewhere between reality and fiction, absence and presence, nostalgia and deja-vu, the installation explores an anxious and obsessive state of being, a fractional condition obscured by repetition, forgetfulness and the subsequent feelings of impotence and frustration. A fragmented, anachronic and a-temporal dialogue ensues, set to a soundscape sourced from news footage, archive material and field recordings.

Collapse questions an incomplete memory ‘made-to-forget’, and eradicated right before its transition from present to past.  The installation embodies the artists’ attempt to trace the a historical momentum, which leads to a general breakdown, and to gather the fragments that were left behind, whilst making visible the disjuncture of the present.

Biographies

Basel Abbas (sound artist and musician) and Ruanne Abou-Rahme (film and video) have collaborated on numerous projects, including Ramallah Syndrome (53rd Venice Biennale, with Alessandro Petti and Sandi Hilal). They were international artists-in-residence at The Delfina Foundation in 2009.