Alia Hamdan
The body is here, off screen
- 19.11 — 20.11 2024
- world premiere
- Espaço Alkantara
- €3
- ages 16+
- 45 min
- English with portuguese and english surtitles
A woman is in a coma since the Beirut Port explosion. What happens when time freezes?
In contrast to previous episodes of violence in Beirut, the explosion of 4 August 2020 affected the city as a whole, in one single instant. Even though the event was immense, it did not cut time in half – there were no political changes, no resignations, no justice. The shift in Lebanese politics towards a state of corrupted peace, towards collapse and entropic degradation, became explicit.
This performance is an attempt to depict the frozen temporality generated by this event. On stage, a live performer stands motionless next to her subtle double, while a voice narrates the uncanny experience of time in coma.
Post-show talk with Alia Hamdan and Sarah Lewis-Cappellari (in English) on 20 Nov.
Credits
Written and directed by Alia Hamdan Performer Silvija Dogan Conceptual research advisor/Script and Scenography concepts Fares Chalabi Production assistant Maissa Maatouk Filming, editing and sound/ Theatre assistant Veno Musinovic Commissioned by The Consortium Commissions — an initiative of Mophradat, in partnership with Alkantara and Kaaitheater
This performance is copresented with Teatro Nacional D. Maria II.
Born in Beirut, Alia Hamdan is a researcher in esthetic politics and a performance practitioner. Her research and artistic interests gravitate around the fields of dance and performance, the Deleuzian theory of the image, and Lebanese and Palestinian esthetic politics. Since 2013, she teaches courses in performance and cinema theory in various universities. In 2022, she was in a residency at the Camargo foundation (Cassis, France) 3, and more recently at the Akademie Schloss Solitude in (2023, Stuttgart, Germany).