Three Rooms at Urbang Festival, Cologne, October 2017
Performance; skype, internet, text, colored gaff tape, computer, webcam, colored pens, paper.
Duration 1hr.
Performed Cologne, Urbang Festival, Orangerie, 2017.
Artists Amal Omran, Onur Karaoglu, Kathryn Hamilton, Hatem Hadawe, Jurjen Alkema
Photos by Ceren Saner
Our performance of Three Rooms at Urbang festival was an adaptation of the original performance in London. When we first created this piece, we were responding to the pressures that Hatem and Amal were facing - visas, restricted mobility, uncertain and uncontrollable futures. We wanted to create a form that could adapt to the realities of the world that we found ourselves in, so we created a piece that is performed predominantly as a live-film on skype. However, for this performance, Hatem was in the hospital, and unable to skype, so we adapted the piece again - not to replace him, but to rearrange our materials so that he his absence can also be a part of the performance.
The performance in Cologne began with an invitation to the audience to join us in an action, one that we hoped would bring together the Three Rooms of our performance. We invited the audience to begin to draw on the paper covered floor - to draw without taking their pens from the paper, and without crossing a line that had already been drawn. The exercise comes to an end as each person finds themselves restricted to a smaller and smaller area, finally trapped in by their own and others lines. At this point the second part of the performance begins, as Suhair calls in from Paris, and Onur, live in the room, tries to represent for us the actions and words of Hatem.
For information on the other versions of this performance:
Shubbak Festival, London, July 2017
Prelude Festival, New York, October 2017
Dancing On The Edge, Amsterdam
Bozar, Brussels and Les Bancs Publics, Marseille
