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With artists Basma AlSharif, Coleman Collins, Sky Hopinka, Emily Jacir, Joe Namy, and Oraib Toukan, ON LANDSCAPES, RUINS AND PATTERNS OF REMEMBERING is a program of video works that unfold a politics of image-making, reviewing and recounting social and cultural histories as they are explored through contemporary frameworks. The program is prompted by a work from the ArteArchive—Toukan’s performance video, Remind me to Remember to Forget (2006), after Mahmoud Darwish’s 1982 prose poem, “Memory for Forgetfulness.” The artist proposes to reverse the act of writing and the will to remember, consequently dispersing the written word and suspending it in memory and reimagination.
Revisiting Toukan’s video eighteen years later, in a global context that remains anxious with war and impending invasions, Remind me to Remember to Forget is revisited in conversation with works by Alsharif, Collins, Hopinka, Jacir, and Namy. Through minimalist experiments and lyrical narratives the works address profound violences of colonial erasure of land and people, the legacies of exile and dispersion, and our relationship to objects and images when only image and replica remain.
In their distinct structural explorations of cycles and repetitions, these works deal with the promises and devastating blunders of modernity. They connect to land, time, and space in a contemporary world charged with a renewed authoritarian tendency that swings from guise and symbolism to blatant and annihilating power. Between lived experiences and replicated environments, these works present a receding natural world, real and imagined sites, and archives that render the architectures of a modern time swept up in a coup of capitalist developments and techno-autocratic fascist regimes.
ON LANDSCAPES, RUINS AND PATTERNS OF REMEMBERING is curated by Fwaz Kabra and is co-presented by ArteEast and e-flux. This program is part of the legacy program Unpacking the ArteArchive, which preserves and presents 20 years of film and video programming by ArteEast. A selection of works from the program will be screened in-person at e-flux on Tuesday, September 24, followed by a Q&A between Emily Jacir, Coleman Collins and Fawz Kabra. For more details about the in-person screening on September 24, visit e-flux.com. The full program will be screened online on artearchive.org from September 19 - 29.
As Egypt sinks further into poverty, new cities are being erected across the country and prisons fill with dissenting opinions. Since it is currently not possible to safely speak about this: a ventriloquist, songs, and advertisements describe a seemingly bygone era of fascism.
About the Filmmaker:
Basma al-Sharif is a Palestinian artist/filmmaker whose work explores cyclical political histories and conflicts. In films and installations that move backward and forward in history, between place and non-place, she confronts the legacy of colonialism through satirical, immersive, and lyrical works. She received an MFA from the University of Illinois in Chicago in 2007, and was a resident of the Fondazione Antonio Ratti in 2009 and of the Pavillon Neuflize OBC at the Palais de Tokyo in 2014-15. She received a Jury prize at the Sharjah Biennial in 2009, was awarded a Visual Arts of the Fundación Botín in 2010, was a recipient of Mophradat’s Consortium Commissions in 2018, a fellow of the Berlin Artistic Research Grant Programme for 2022-2023, and was nominated for the Prix Aware for 2024. Al-Sharif’s major exhibitions include: De Appel, the Ruttenberg Contemporary Photography Series for the Museum of the Art Institute of Chicago, Modern Mondays at MOMA, CCA Glasgow, SALT Galata, the Whitney Biennial, Here and Elsewhere at the New Museum, Berlin Documentary Forum, and Manifesta 8. Her films have screened in the international film festivals of Locarno, Berlin, Mar del Plata, Milan, London, Toronto, New York, Montreal, and Yamagata amongst others. She is based in Berlin.
- Year2022
- Runtime17 minutes
- LanguageArabic, Italian, French
- CountryEgypt, Italy, Germany
- Subtitle LanguageEnglish
- DirectorBasma Alsharif
- FilmmakerBasma Alsharif
With artists Basma AlSharif, Coleman Collins, Sky Hopinka, Emily Jacir, Joe Namy, and Oraib Toukan, ON LANDSCAPES, RUINS AND PATTERNS OF REMEMBERING is a program of video works that unfold a politics of image-making, reviewing and recounting social and cultural histories as they are explored through contemporary frameworks. The program is prompted by a work from the ArteArchive—Toukan’s performance video, Remind me to Remember to Forget (2006), after Mahmoud Darwish’s 1982 prose poem, “Memory for Forgetfulness.” The artist proposes to reverse the act of writing and the will to remember, consequently dispersing the written word and suspending it in memory and reimagination.
Revisiting Toukan’s video eighteen years later, in a global context that remains anxious with war and impending invasions, Remind me to Remember to Forget is revisited in conversation with works by Alsharif, Collins, Hopinka, Jacir, and Namy. Through minimalist experiments and lyrical narratives the works address profound violences of colonial erasure of land and people, the legacies of exile and dispersion, and our relationship to objects and images when only image and replica remain.
In their distinct structural explorations of cycles and repetitions, these works deal with the promises and devastating blunders of modernity. They connect to land, time, and space in a contemporary world charged with a renewed authoritarian tendency that swings from guise and symbolism to blatant and annihilating power. Between lived experiences and replicated environments, these works present a receding natural world, real and imagined sites, and archives that render the architectures of a modern time swept up in a coup of capitalist developments and techno-autocratic fascist regimes.
ON LANDSCAPES, RUINS AND PATTERNS OF REMEMBERING is curated by Fwaz Kabra and is co-presented by ArteEast and e-flux. This program is part of the legacy program Unpacking the ArteArchive, which preserves and presents 20 years of film and video programming by ArteEast. A selection of works from the program will be screened in-person at e-flux on Tuesday, September 24, followed by a Q&A between Emily Jacir, Coleman Collins and Fawz Kabra. For more details about the in-person screening on September 24, visit e-flux.com. The full program will be screened online on artearchive.org from September 19 - 29.
As Egypt sinks further into poverty, new cities are being erected across the country and prisons fill with dissenting opinions. Since it is currently not possible to safely speak about this: a ventriloquist, songs, and advertisements describe a seemingly bygone era of fascism.
About the Filmmaker:
Basma al-Sharif is a Palestinian artist/filmmaker whose work explores cyclical political histories and conflicts. In films and installations that move backward and forward in history, between place and non-place, she confronts the legacy of colonialism through satirical, immersive, and lyrical works. She received an MFA from the University of Illinois in Chicago in 2007, and was a resident of the Fondazione Antonio Ratti in 2009 and of the Pavillon Neuflize OBC at the Palais de Tokyo in 2014-15. She received a Jury prize at the Sharjah Biennial in 2009, was awarded a Visual Arts of the Fundación Botín in 2010, was a recipient of Mophradat’s Consortium Commissions in 2018, a fellow of the Berlin Artistic Research Grant Programme for 2022-2023, and was nominated for the Prix Aware for 2024. Al-Sharif’s major exhibitions include: De Appel, the Ruttenberg Contemporary Photography Series for the Museum of the Art Institute of Chicago, Modern Mondays at MOMA, CCA Glasgow, SALT Galata, the Whitney Biennial, Here and Elsewhere at the New Museum, Berlin Documentary Forum, and Manifesta 8. Her films have screened in the international film festivals of Locarno, Berlin, Mar del Plata, Milan, London, Toronto, New York, Montreal, and Yamagata amongst others. She is based in Berlin.
- Year2022
- Runtime17 minutes
- LanguageArabic, Italian, French
- CountryEgypt, Italy, Germany
- Subtitle LanguageEnglish
- DirectorBasma Alsharif
- FilmmakerBasma Alsharif