Taking the form of an exhibition and performance program in the Kravis Studio, Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme’s multipart project May amnesia never kiss us on the mouth (2020–ongoing) examines how communities bear witness to experiences of violence, loss, displacement, and forced migration. Since the early 2010s, Abbas and Abou-Rahme have collected online recordings of everyday people singing and dancing in communal spaces in Iraq, Palestine, and Syria. The work brings digital traces of these performing bodies together with new performances created by the artists with dancer Rima Baransi and electronic musicians Haykal, Julmud, and Makimakkuk, working in Ramallah, Palestine. According to Abbas and Abou-Rahme, through song and dance, “these fractured communities are resisting their own erasure and laying claim to space, self, and collectivity once more.”
Over the course of the exhibition, the Kravis Studio will host a series of ticketed, evening concerts that take the May amnesia… archive as inspiration. Abbas and Abou-Rahme will present a new two-person live sound and video performance titled an echo buried, buried, but calling still (2022). Additionally, Abbas and Abou-Rahme invited electronic musicians Hiro Kone, SCRAAATCH, and Muqata’a to create new work that responds to the exhibition. The full schedule of performances is below.
an echo buried, buried, but calling still will conclude with a post-performance conversation with the artists and MoMA curator Martha Joseph on Saturday, June 25, following the 7:30 p.m. event.
Tickets go on sale one month before the performance date and can be purchased via the event pages below.
Organized at MoMA by Martha Joseph, The Phyllis Ann and Walter Borten Assistant Curator of Media and Performance. Performances produced by Lizzie Gorfaine, Producer, and Ginny Benson, former Assistant Performance Coordinator, with the support of Olivia Rousey, Production Assistant, Performance and Live Programs.
The exhibition is presented as part of The Hyundai Card Performance Series.
Major support is provided by MoMA's Wallis Annenberg Director’s Fund for Innovation in Contemporary Art.
Generous funding is provided by the Lonti Ebers Endowment for Performance and the Sarah Arison Endowment Fund for Performance.
