Videos from Dream City
Presentation of video installations of artists Heba Y. Amin, Ismaïl Bahri and Youssef Chebbi, Fakhri El Ghezal, Malek Gnaoui, Bouchra Khalili, Rabih Mroué and Mouna Karray. On view after each performance.
Heba Y. Amin
As Birds Flying
2016
Video, 16/9 monitor, color, sound
7 min 11 sec
In a world of political unrest and total surveillance, suspicion and paranoia can become normalized. In 2013, news stories told of a fisherman in Egypt who spotted a migratory stork fitted with an electronic device on its right leg. Fearing foreign tampering, the fisherman reported the bird. The animal was apprehended by the Egyptian authorities on suspicion of espionage. The would-be “spying device” on the stork was later shown to be a scientific tracking device used by Hungarian scientists to follow the stork’s migratory patterns.
Heba Y. Amin’s film As Birds Flying (2016) responds to the absurdity of such accusations, which occur in moments of political strain. The short, allegorical film is constructed out of found drone footage of aerial views of savannas and wetlands, including Israeli settlements in Galilea—sweeping views that seem to be taken by the “spy” stork in the above story. Funny, absurd and disconcerting, the video’s suspenseful cinematic soundtrack contains the reconstructed audio sequences of dialogue from Birds of Darkness. This 1995 film by Adel Imams looks at government corruption and religious radicalism in Egypt. In the reconstructed dialogue, the characters discuss political sectarianism, censorship, democracy and surveillance.
About the artist
Visual artist Heba Y. Amin is based in Berlin. Her work deals with politics, technology, and architecture. Technological utopian ideas and how they affect the landscape and the balance of power are at the core of her work.
The Tempest Society
Bouchra Khalili
2017
Digital video, projection, 4/3, color, sound
60 min
K1
The Tempest Society is neither documentary nor fiction, but rather a hypothesis. Three Athenians from different backgrounds form a group to examine the current state of Greece, Europe, and the Mediterranean. They get together on a theatre stage that is being used as a public space. They call themselves The Tempest Society in tribute to Al Assifa ('the tempest' in Arabic), a theatrical troupe consisting mainly of North African immigrant workers and French students with North African heritage that was active in 1970s Paris. Al Assifa used the format of a ‘theatrical newspaper’ to communicate the everyday struggles of immigrants against inequality and racism in France.
Forty years later, Al Assifa’s legacy is being revived. On a theatre stage, the Tempest Society and their guests call for equality, a sense of citizenship, and solidarity.
The film is followed by a conversation with Bouchra Khalili and Joachim Ben Yakoub.
About the artist
Bouchra Khalili graduated in Film and Media and Audiovisual Arts in Paris. She has won various prizes and her work has been shown at numerous international exhibitions and artistic events, from Jeu de Paume (Paris) and MoMa (New York) to documenta 14 (Kassel) and Sharjah Biennial (Sharjah).
Joachim Ben Yakoub is a writer, researcher and lecturer operating on the border of different art schools and institutions. He is affiliated to the MENARG and S:PAM research group of Ghent University, where he is conducting research on the aesthetics of revolt somewhere in between Tunisia and Belgium. He is guest professor at LUCA school of Arts Brussels and lecturer at Sint-Lucas School of Arts Antwerp, where he is also promotor of the collective action research The Archives of the Tout-Monde.
Rabih Mroué
As if Seen by a Bird Standing on Top of a Cow
2018
Video, 4x3 monitor, black and white, no sound
21 min
In As if Seen by a Bird Standing on Top of a Cow, Rabih Mroué invites you to look up into a shaft where you are confronted with a drone’s-eye view of the Battle of Homs. Homs, the third largest city in Syria, suffered heavy fighting and bombardments between 2011 and 2014. This battle marked a turning point in the revolution and turned the country into an international battleground involving, besides Syrian troops, Hezbollah, Russia, Turkey, and the United States. In this installation, Mroué turns around the classic bird-eye’s view of the drone operator.
About the artist
Rabih Mroué is an actor, director, playwright, and visual artist. He is also editor of The Drama Review and co-founder and board member of the Beirut Art Center. In his work he explores various disciplines and formats. Using fiction and in-depth research he makes connections with his environment and the associated political and cultural context.
Ismaïl Bahri and Youssef Chebbi
Esquisse, pour Edith Dekyndt
2017
Video HD 16/9, projection, color, no sound
5 min 17 sec
Esquisse, pour Edith Dekyndt refers to One Second of Silence (2008-2009), a film by artist Edith Dekyndt in which she captures the movements of a waving flag against a cloudy sky. In Esquisse a waving flag becomes a window onto the landscape and a projection canvas. The image is overexposed and ‘scorches’ the surrounding landscape.
About the artist
The artist Ismaïl Bahri lives and works in Paris and Tunis. He mainly creates video art but also drawings, photographs, and installations. Bahri’s work has been shown in diverse venues, including Jeu de Paume (Paris), Centre Pompidou (Paris), La Verrière (Brussels), the Staatliche Kunsthalle (Karlsruh), and others. His films have been selected for festivals such as TIFF (Toronto), NYFF, (New York), IFFR (Rotterdam), FID (Marseille), and the Kunstenfestivaldesarts (Brussels).
The musician and filmmaker Youssef Chebbi lives and works in Paris and Tunis. In 2010, he directed his first film, the short Vers le nord. Together with Mohamed Ismail Louati and Ala Eddinne Slim, he made the documentary Babylon (2012), about Libyan refugees at the border of Tunisia. The film won the Grand Prix of the International Competition at FIDMarseille. That same year, he released the short film Les profondeurs. Black Medusa (2021) is his feature film debut, with its world premiere at IFFR 2021. Besides his work in film, Chebbi is the founder and director of Bookmaker Records.
Fakhri El Ghezal
Companions of The Cave (Ahlou Al Kahef)
2019
8mm transferred to digital 4/3, projection, black and white, sound
18 min 17 sec
Companions of The Cave is a poetic report from the long road travelled by Fakhri El Ghezal and two rappers, Jojo M and Galaa, from Redeyef in Tunisia to Nantes in France. In super 8 images, they remember the many steps taken during and after their migration, and their expectations at the time.
The film is a tribute to all young Tunisian men who travelled to Europe together and the feelings associated with their journeys, both loneliness to friendship.
About the artist
Photographer, videographer, and visual artist Fakhri El Ghezal is based in Tunisia. He studied visual arts at the Institut Supérieur des Beaux Arts in Tunis and art and communication at the Institut Supérieur des Beaux Arts in Nabeul.
Malek Gnaoui
Blanc Habiba
2024
Video, projection, 4/3, color, sound
12 to 19 min tbc
Blanc Habiba takes place during the Second World War when the Tunisian city of Gabès became the stage of a silent battle against the German occupation.
Through the stories of the old, wise Habiba, the film reveals a little-known part of the history of this occupied city. It tells the story of the solidarity between Habiba and her Jewish Tunisian neighbours, of people with different religious and cultural backgrounds who build bridges over the abyss of war. The film is a tribute to resilience, friendship, and love in challenging times, with Malek Gnaoui’s 90-year-old grandmother in the main role.
About the artist
Malek Gnaoui lives and works in Tunis. His work looks at issues around social conditions and the notion of human sacrifice.
Nobody Will Talk About Us
Mouna Karray
2012–15
Slideshow of 23 photographs, monitor 16/9, color, no sound
7 min 21 sec
The road crosses dusty lands, an area that is both lifeless and inhabited, where the captive figure moves. This body is moving within this universe as its matrix; it extracts itself with gesture that breaks its confinement. In its struggle, in its encounters, in its wanderings, is a figure of resistance, a figure pushing for freedom and the renaissance of an abandoned land.
Nobody Will Talk About Us is a road photography in the Tunisian southwest, its minerals loneliness, its arid soils whose foundations were rich with minerals, which have been confiscated and stripped from these oppressed-but not submissive- souls.
The photographic series was created during an artist residency at Dream City in 2012.
About the artist
Mouna Karray creates her photography and video projects in the space between the intimate and public spheres. Her interests revolve questions around identity, borders, confinement, margins and forgotten lands. Her works have been shown at museums such as Zeitz Mocaa (Cape Town), the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art (Washington), the MMK (Frankfurt), the MAXXI (Rome) and the Quai Branly Museum (Paris).
Without registration.
Co-curated by Selma Ouissi, Sofiane Ouissi, Jan Goossens, Guy Gypens.
As part of Dream City.