Play Me Multiple Lives (work in progress)
Najwa Ahmed and Rawan Abbas
2021, Audio and Video, 92 seconds long
This iteration of the work explores the notions of identity, spatial and temporal existence, as well as connection and communication.
Identity, in the age of globalization, commodity and availability, is elusive. The age-old questions of Who Am I, Who Am I Becoming, and similar existential wonderings have no concrete answers to them, and they gain more nuance in direct proportion to the complexity of our contemporary existence. If we’re lucky, we’re able to meet people who look like us, or who are able to see us. The need for that type of recognition, belonging, is what drives us forward.
This project is an examination of that specific happening. Of two people meeting in a virtual space, where they both get to glimpse a point in time that may or may not have happened yet. This is an initial attempt to utilize the concept of Phenomenal Transparency to depict a fluctuation in time and space. Where objects come forward, recede, intersect, overlap, and change over a period of time. The fluctuation in the spoken language has that same function of examining the starting point – Home – using Arabic our native language, and English, a language we learned later on in life that we use to navigate certain new spaces where we may potentially lay down roots.
*This project was created during NaqdCritique’s Volume One of Borrowed Vision program.
Artist | Rawan Abbas 