Marwan Hemma
CHOKING I

2024 | HKB | ACT Basel

en:

This performance was presented at the ACT Festival in Basel and at the Prozess Kultur Bar for the Performing for Palestine’s evening in Bern. Conceptualized and in collaboration with Mathilde Court (composer/ guitarist).

The black sheet utilized is satin intended for luxury bedding. This performance strips away its connotations, instead addressing the oppression and suffocation experienced by the body’s constraint. It also serves as a way of shaping forms without directly revealing the body. Indeed, by repeating the Zikr, I will fall into hyperventilation and my body will have to release itself from it.

This is emblematic of Swiss neoliberal policy, which often seeks to choke its inherent racist and Islamophobic tendencies. For example, the law of November 29, 2009 « against the construction of minarets », or the law 6 of March 7, 2021, « ban on face covering », which obviously targets the wearing of the burqa.

During the performance, my voice chants the call to prayer, before I engage in the breath practice of the Zikr, drawing from Sufi tradition. Through the repetitive motion, shaping the black sheet, and the electric guitar’s clusters, there’s a tangible suffocative effect. The rearrangement of John Dowland’s Renaissance composition for electric guitar introduces a profound pathos, reigniting a sens of poetic-revolutionary fervor. In confronting the oppressive realities, the plea « Let me mourn » seeks acknowledgment, urging to grasp the material reality of these struggles.