Remember Me, Lying on Your Sides

Performance
Filming by Jakub Bobrowski & M Hasnan Habib
4 min and 17 sec
Produced in Espoo, 2016
Presented in SOAK group show & Azad Gallery, Tehran, 2018
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 leechlike mass, then from a leechlike mass into a fetus lump, then from fetus lump into bones, then my bones were clothed with flesh. I have been measured precisely and then have been brought forth as quite a different being. After living for a while I will die and most surely will be raised to life again on the day of resurrection and will be faced with what I have put forward by then.” (Quran (23:12- 23:16))

This piece has been presented in the SOAK group exhibition in April 2016 in Helsinki for the first time. SOAK was the first edition of the project Occupation of De-contextualized Spaces for Contemporary Art and took place on a  boat in Kalasatama harbor. In this piece, I try to roll a hefty and wobbly mass of a big 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) refers to a state of interaction with objects, where the interpretive mind takes a backseat, and the focus lies solely on the objects’ inherent nature, materiality, and functional potentials. The primary goal of thing(-ing) is not necessarily to achieve a predetermined outcome but rather to engage in a genuine and conscious experience of the interplay between the mind/body and the object/matter. This process involves a phenomenological and creative encounter that allows me to be fully present in the moment through physical engagement with the objects.