Performance
Duration: 4 min 17 sec
Produced in Espoo, Finland, 2016
Presented in the SOAK group show, Helsinki, 2016, and at Azad Gallery, Tehran, Iran, 2018
Filming: Jakub Bobrowski & M. Hasnan Habib
Thing(-ing) series*

“Indeed, I am the one who is created out of the essence of clay, then placed as a drop of semen in a firm resting place, then changed from semen into a leech-like mass, then from a leech-like mass into a lump of flesh, then from a lump of flesh into bones, and then my bones were clothed with flesh. I have been measured precisely and brought forth as quite a different being. After living for a while I will die, and I will surely be raised to life again on the day of resurrection, and be faced with what I have sent ahead of me.”

Qur’an 23:12–16

The piece was first shown in the SOAK group exhibition in Helsinki in April 2016. SOAK was the first edition of the project Occupation of De-contextualized Spaces for Contemporary Art, and it took place on a boat in Kalasatama harbour. In the piece I try to roll a heavy, unwieldy mass — a large black plastic bag filled with cold water — to the end of a corridor. When I get there, I stab the bag with a knife and try to empty it using the weight of my body.

*Thing(-ing) describes a state of interaction with objects in which the interpreting mind steps back and the attention rests on the objects themselves — their nature, their materiality, what they are capable of. The aim is not a predetermined outcome but a genuine, conscious experience of the interplay between mind and body on one side and object and matter on the other: a phenomenological and creative encounter that lets me be fully present through physical engagement with the things at hand.