Case Study 1: Farah Saleh
Case Study 1:
Farah Saleh is a Palestinian choreographer who engages with the themes of education, body and cultural resistance. In her work ‘A Fidayee son in Moscow’ she uses found material, testimonies and her imagination in order to expose the body itself both as an archive of historical discourses and as a site of potential resistance against occupation.[1] Her work is deeply embedded into the Palestinian cause and the movement of artists to ‘archive’ what is constantly under threat under the Israeli occupation. This installation seeks to expose gestures of civil disobedience during the first Intifada by imagining a day at the Interdom, the school where children of the Palestinian Freedom Fighters (Fidayeen) were sent to in Moscow. Saleh’s installation is divided into three videos: History, Physics and Creative Writing. In these videos, she is performing gestures that she found in archives, and in didactic tone asks the audience to repeat what she is doing. Moreover, the space includes a desk, recreating the classroom in the gallery space and therefore helping the audience to associate and repeat the movements as if they were in an actual classroom. The deconstructing of certain movements, their isolation and the detail added to them, allow the body-memory association to occur by asking the audience to understand through embodying these movements This becomes a methodology of re-orienting history and highlighting the body as a historical site of resistance.
Thematically, Saleh deals with the vanishing histories and a need to re-write these histories through an alternative method of archiving through movement. Her means of research have been particularly useful to me as she is drawing on various sources for these gestures, from her brother’s experience and archival testimonies. Similarly, I am using personal and found recordings to trace, national identity and the way that it is ascribed to the body. I am interested in the way the Cypriot experience is overlooked through a process of an indoctrination of the Greek archetype through movement. The pedagogical performative mode links directly to my work around nationalist commemoration. As a research method, I have been attempting to ‘teach’ myself these choreographies to understand the specificity of the meanings attached to them. Saleh’s work of isolation and repetition has been essential in aiding me to divide isolate and explore certain movements that I associated with National Commemoration from my memory and archival material. The repetition of specific gestures found in my school performances has been a way for me to devise and expose the gendered nature of national identity through its association with certain movements. Saleh’s work on these gestures is a move away from Dabke (Palestinian Traditional dance) and therefore highlights how contemporary dance techniques of isolation and repetition can be used to re-signify and re-historicise gestures that are otherwise perceived as quotidian. Moreover, the form of the video installation allows for the performance event to be a means of research as the transferability of the installation to gallery spaces around the world allows for different audiences to experience and respond these classes in different ways.
[1] Farah Saleh, 'A Fidayee son in Moscow', video and installation, in 'Suspended Accounts' at The Mosaic Rooms, 2014, London
Farah Saleh is a Palestinian choreographer who engages with the themes of education, body and cultural resistance. In her work ‘A Fidayee son in Moscow’ she uses found material, testimonies and her imagination in order to expose the body itself both as an archive of historical discourses and as a site of potential resistance against occupation.[1] Her work is deeply embedded into the Palestinian cause and the movement of artists to ‘archive’ what is constantly under threat under the Israeli occupation. This installation seeks to expose gestures of civil disobedience during the first Intifada by imagining a day at the Interdom, the school where children of the Palestinian Freedom Fighters (Fidayeen) were sent to in Moscow. Saleh’s installation is divided into three videos: History, Physics and Creative Writing. In these videos, she is performing gestures that she found in archives, and in didactic tone asks the audience to repeat what she is doing. Moreover, the space includes a desk, recreating the classroom in the gallery space and therefore helping the audience to associate and repeat the movements as if they were in an actual classroom. The deconstructing of certain movements, their isolation and the detail added to them, allow the body-memory association to occur by asking the audience to understand through embodying these movements This becomes a methodology of re-orienting history and highlighting the body as a historical site of resistance.
Thematically, Saleh deals with the vanishing histories and a need to re-write these histories through an alternative method of archiving through movement. Her means of research have been particularly useful to me as she is drawing on various sources for these gestures, from her brother’s experience and archival testimonies. Similarly, I am using personal and found recordings to trace, national identity and the way that it is ascribed to the body. I am interested in the way the Cypriot experience is overlooked through a process of an indoctrination of the Greek archetype through movement. The pedagogical performative mode links directly to my work around nationalist commemoration. As a research method, I have been attempting to ‘teach’ myself these choreographies to understand the specificity of the meanings attached to them. Saleh’s work of isolation and repetition has been essential in aiding me to divide isolate and explore certain movements that I associated with National Commemoration from my memory and archival material. The repetition of specific gestures found in my school performances has been a way for me to devise and expose the gendered nature of national identity through its association with certain movements. Saleh’s work on these gestures is a move away from Dabke (Palestinian Traditional dance) and therefore highlights how contemporary dance techniques of isolation and repetition can be used to re-signify and re-historicise gestures that are otherwise perceived as quotidian. Moreover, the form of the video installation allows for the performance event to be a means of research as the transferability of the installation to gallery spaces around the world allows for different audiences to experience and respond these classes in different ways.
[1] Farah Saleh, 'A Fidayee son in Moscow', video and installation, in 'Suspended Accounts' at The Mosaic Rooms, 2014, London