Basel Abbas, Ruanne Abou-Rahme

Drawing upon recordings, interviews and texts, Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme interweave visual, sound and textual-based forms in order to evoke the experience of these small prisons present within a much larger prison, that of the Occupation. For this duo, with its origins in the Palestinian musical and video scene, sound is a crucial medium capable of transcending closed spaces. Here, the power of the poems and songs filters into the frontiers of the structures of repression, meanwhile image resists against the confines of the screen in order to bring about total immersion. In the course of a performative installation devised with the Palestinien musician Julmud and in reference to the novel Un captif amoureux (Prisoner of Love) by Jean Genet, centred on Palestine, this new work highlights the way in which poetry mobilises hope, enabling us to collectively imagine alternative futures, to the extent that prison walls fall to the ground.