This performance, developed under the umbrella of the Alien Encounters Project that Rana Hamadeh initiated in 2011, is an exhaustive deliberation on the notion and gesture of ‘falling’: falling as a form of legal apathy; falling as a choreographic gesture; and falling as a dynamic of virulence. In this performance, the artist leads a journey amidst the legal coding of the terms ‘falling ill’, ’immunity’ and ‘quarantine’, to outer-space and land-sea relations plotted through science fiction projections, geo-political territory formation and cross-border travel. Thinking through the conjunction of the legal and the spatial, Hamadeh plays out an intensive scrutiny of the shared lexicons of criminology, epidemiology and theater.
Rana Hamadeh is a performance and visual artist from Lebanon based in the Netherlands. Interested in a curatorial approach within her artistic practice, she works on long term discursive research projects that operate as umbrellas to growing series of performances, choreographic/cartographic works, installations as stage sets, and writing projects. Her work stems from an extended investigation into specific concepts and terms, treating the field of theory as fiction. Selected exhibitions include a.o. CCA Wattis Institute, EVA International, KIOSK (solo), 2014; Lyon Biennale, The Lisson Gallery, Beirut (Cairo), Witte de With, 2013; Townhouse Gallery, 2012; Van Abbemuseum, 2011; Beirut Art Center, 2010; The New Museum, 2009.
