Rana Hamadeh
The Performative Minute

Within the series The Performative Minute, KW Institute for Contemporary Art presents the first sketch for a live version of Can You Pull in an Actor With a Fishhook or Tie Down His Tongue With a Rope?, the recent work by Lebanese artist Rana Hamadeh.

The performance will consist of a sound script, a new episode within Hamadeh's ongoing project Alien Encounters. It is an attempt to decode, re-order and re-choreograph the components and affects that constitute the phenomenon of the Shiitic Ashura ritual, taking the political, military and legal actualization of this theatrical phenomenon within the Lebanese and Syrian contexts as a field for commentary and research.

Aschura is a particularly Shiite phenomenon during which tens of thousands of men, women and children take to the streets to re-enact or 're-witness' the historical battle of Karbala in commemoration of the slaying of Imam Al Hussein, a highly regarded political and religious figure for Shiite Muslims and an allegorical reference to the figure of the oppressed. However, Hamadeh proposes this phenomenon as a structural dramaturgical framework that underlies the entire politics of the region.

The script departs from a claim that regards justice as the extent to which one can access the dramatic means of representation - the measure to which one can access theatre. Working with different codes and references, the work asks whether it is possible to script Justice; to rehearse, orate, narrate, prop, weep, chant, choreograph, scenograph or even spectate justice.
The piece will mark the beginning of an extended theatrical research, aimed at outlining new relations between the notions of justice and theatre.

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 and cartographic works, installations as stage sets, and writing projects.

**Warning: **The performance will include loud elements, the environment is unsuitable for children.

The Performative Minute takes place every first Thursday of the month and records a current development in the performance art scene. The format is flexible, and invites an artist to devise a site-and time-specific evening for KW and to explore the boundaries of performance today.

Can You Pull in an Actor With a Fishhook or Tie Down His Tongue With a Rope? von Rana Hamadeh is kindly supported by the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.