Works
Beast Type Song (2019)
Sophia Al-Maria’s work is based on Etel Adnan's poem The Arab Apocalypse to reflect on how identities are erased and rewritten. Shot in a dilapidated building in London, the work features several performers - including Al-Maria herself - who act out scenes characterised by the tension between word, gesture and sound. When language is not enough, the artist turns to the body, the drawing and the music as forms of expression. In this work, the post-human is also presented as a possibility: bodies not only act as living archives of personal and collective histories, but also as spaces open to other ways of being and telling a story. Through a non-linear structure, the video shows how histories marked by colonial violence are inherited and how these memories are etched on the bodies. The work does not seek to directly represent trauma, but rather to propose new ways of narrating a story that avoid reproducing the same damage. In that sense, Beast Type Song may be seen as a work that eludes prevailing narratives, but also as an exploration of what might come after them: new sensibilities, new languages; perhaps even new forms of humanity.
