Rana Hamadeh
Standard_Deviation
05 May - 18 Jun 2023
Rana Hamadeh, Standard_Deviation, Kunstverein Arnsberg, photocredit: Michel Ptasinski
Rana Hamadeh, Standard_Deviation, Kunstverein Arnsberg, photocredit: Michel Ptasinski
Rana Hamadeh, Standard_Deviation, Kunstverein Arnsberg, photocredit: Michel Ptasinski
Rana Hamadeh, Standard_Deviation, Kunstverein Arnsberg, photocredit: Michel Ptasinski
Rana Hamadeh, Standard_Deviation, Kunstverein Arnsberg, photocredit: Michel Ptasinski
Rana Hamadeh, Standard_Deviation, Kunstverein Arnsberg, photocredit: Michel Ptasinski
Rana Hamadeh, Standard_Deviation, Kunstverein Arnsberg, photocredit: Michel Ptasinski
Rana Hamadeh, Standard_Deviation, Kunstverein Arnsberg, photocredit: Michel Ptasinski
Rana Hamadeh, Standard_Deviation, Kunstverein Arnsberg, photocredit: Michel Ptasinski
Rana Hamadeh, Standard_Deviation, Kunstverein Arnsberg, photocredit: Michel Ptasinski
The solo exhibition Standard_Deviation by Rana Hamadeh is the second chapter within the three-part project The theater in each*one of us (17 Feb – 30 Jun 2023), in which Kunstverein Arnsberg explores and investigates how processes and
spaces of theater find a form in visual art and in our everyday life.
The exhibition features Hamadeh‘s 3-D animated film installation Standard_Deviation (2021-continuing); a 22-minute looped projection accompanied by an immersive and cacophonous sound and media installation. In the other four rooms of KV Arnsberg, Hamadeh presents new studies for a series of cartographic offshoots of the animated film. These trace the narrative, poetic and scenographiclayers of the exhibited film, and not only enable a different way of engaging with its content, but also transform its densely coded images, spaces and motifs into autonomous actors that become independent from the film‘s montage.
Rana Hamadeh‘s practice blurs the boundaries between art, theater, and exhibition making.
Her works, often produced over a period of years, develop in successive chapters and manifest as large-scale sound compositions with complex network designs and mechanic interactions, audio-visual installations, cartographic works, texts, and pedagogical setups.
Her works generally think through the infrastructures and technologies of justice – linguistic, legal and performative – understanding justice through the modalities of spectacle. For The theater in each one of us, KV Arnsberg was particularly interested in Hamadeh‘s artistic understanding of theater as a form.
In her series Standard_Deviation, the artist ventures through Sophocles’ famed tragedy, Oedipus Rex. Rather than offering a re-narration of the harrowing misfortunes of Oedipus, king of Thebes, whose grievous journey unfolds at the height of the Theban plague, the work conducts a reading of Sophocles’ play itself – that is, a reading of Sophocles’ figuration of tragedy as a ‘machine and technology of endurance’. This edition of the film was made in collaboration with Sara Hamadeh. With its
eerie visual and sonic weave, the film plots the journeys of grief and emotional intensities that unfold throughout the original tragedy. It follows the crescendos and decrescendos of the play’s strains and anxieties, its dramatic tension, its sequence of characterisation and psychological entanglements. From dreams to trance to horror to phantasmagorical tableaux vivants, the visuals are mainly reminiscent of cut scenes in a computer game. The scenarios are as dreamlike as they are menacing, while
the action is driven by gears, prosthetics and viscera.
Constantly mutating figures such as the leg, the shrimp, the log chairs, the paper airplane, and the traffic cone wander through sets inspired by anatomy theaters. Constantly, one theater unfolds from another. The jugglery of fantastic images is accompanied by a cacophonous and disorienting six-channel composition, spatialized for the exhibition. The sound intensifies.
Lenticular prints and simple stereoscopic viewing apparatuses showing successive scenes from the video contrast the technical
and mediational nature of the audio-visual installation. Similarly, a map of the film’s digital infrastructure allows the viewer to access the film through the backstage of its digital materiality.
From Hamadeh‘s reading of Sophocles‘ tragedy arise topical questions about the entanglements of desire, destiny, technology and the economies of reproduction. In an endeavour to think of what constitutes a contemporary tragedy, Hamadeh asks how – in a hyper-mediated social reality – can we ‘desire differently’?
And what technologies can we devise to mediate such a desire to ‘desire differently’?
Rana Hamadeh lives and works in Rotterdam. Some of her recent solo exhibitions were at 2022 Edith Russ Haus, Oldenburg, 2021 Secession 21, Vienna; 2019 Kunsthalle Winterthur; 2017 Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art (currently Kunstinstituut Melly), Rotterdam; 2016 The Showroom, London; 2015 Nottingham Contemporary. In 2017 she was
awarded the Dutch Prix de Rome. In 2021 she was a laureate of the Lower Saxony Foundation Grant for Media Art at the Edith-Russ-Haus.
The theatre in each one of us is supported by Stiftung Kunstfonds as part of the NEUSTART KULTUR program.
Kunstverein Arnsberg is supported by the city of Arnsberg, Brauerei C&A Veltins and Sparkasse Arnsberg-Sundern.
The exhibition Standard_Deviation by Rana Hamadeh was made possible by the additional support from the Mondriaan Fonds.
Works in this exhibition were produced by KV Arnsberg, Edith-Russ-Haus for Media Art, steirischer herbst ‘20, Vienna Secession, SCHUNCK (Gemeente Heerlen) and Jester.
spaces of theater find a form in visual art and in our everyday life.
The exhibition features Hamadeh‘s 3-D animated film installation Standard_Deviation (2021-continuing); a 22-minute looped projection accompanied by an immersive and cacophonous sound and media installation. In the other four rooms of KV Arnsberg, Hamadeh presents new studies for a series of cartographic offshoots of the animated film. These trace the narrative, poetic and scenographiclayers of the exhibited film, and not only enable a different way of engaging with its content, but also transform its densely coded images, spaces and motifs into autonomous actors that become independent from the film‘s montage.
Rana Hamadeh‘s practice blurs the boundaries between art, theater, and exhibition making.
Her works, often produced over a period of years, develop in successive chapters and manifest as large-scale sound compositions with complex network designs and mechanic interactions, audio-visual installations, cartographic works, texts, and pedagogical setups.
Her works generally think through the infrastructures and technologies of justice – linguistic, legal and performative – understanding justice through the modalities of spectacle. For The theater in each one of us, KV Arnsberg was particularly interested in Hamadeh‘s artistic understanding of theater as a form.
In her series Standard_Deviation, the artist ventures through Sophocles’ famed tragedy, Oedipus Rex. Rather than offering a re-narration of the harrowing misfortunes of Oedipus, king of Thebes, whose grievous journey unfolds at the height of the Theban plague, the work conducts a reading of Sophocles’ play itself – that is, a reading of Sophocles’ figuration of tragedy as a ‘machine and technology of endurance’. This edition of the film was made in collaboration with Sara Hamadeh. With its
eerie visual and sonic weave, the film plots the journeys of grief and emotional intensities that unfold throughout the original tragedy. It follows the crescendos and decrescendos of the play’s strains and anxieties, its dramatic tension, its sequence of characterisation and psychological entanglements. From dreams to trance to horror to phantasmagorical tableaux vivants, the visuals are mainly reminiscent of cut scenes in a computer game. The scenarios are as dreamlike as they are menacing, while
the action is driven by gears, prosthetics and viscera.
Constantly mutating figures such as the leg, the shrimp, the log chairs, the paper airplane, and the traffic cone wander through sets inspired by anatomy theaters. Constantly, one theater unfolds from another. The jugglery of fantastic images is accompanied by a cacophonous and disorienting six-channel composition, spatialized for the exhibition. The sound intensifies.
Lenticular prints and simple stereoscopic viewing apparatuses showing successive scenes from the video contrast the technical
and mediational nature of the audio-visual installation. Similarly, a map of the film’s digital infrastructure allows the viewer to access the film through the backstage of its digital materiality.
From Hamadeh‘s reading of Sophocles‘ tragedy arise topical questions about the entanglements of desire, destiny, technology and the economies of reproduction. In an endeavour to think of what constitutes a contemporary tragedy, Hamadeh asks how – in a hyper-mediated social reality – can we ‘desire differently’?
And what technologies can we devise to mediate such a desire to ‘desire differently’?
Rana Hamadeh lives and works in Rotterdam. Some of her recent solo exhibitions were at 2022 Edith Russ Haus, Oldenburg, 2021 Secession 21, Vienna; 2019 Kunsthalle Winterthur; 2017 Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art (currently Kunstinstituut Melly), Rotterdam; 2016 The Showroom, London; 2015 Nottingham Contemporary. In 2017 she was
awarded the Dutch Prix de Rome. In 2021 she was a laureate of the Lower Saxony Foundation Grant for Media Art at the Edith-Russ-Haus.
The theatre in each one of us is supported by Stiftung Kunstfonds as part of the NEUSTART KULTUR program.
Kunstverein Arnsberg is supported by the city of Arnsberg, Brauerei C&A Veltins and Sparkasse Arnsberg-Sundern.
The exhibition Standard_Deviation by Rana Hamadeh was made possible by the additional support from the Mondriaan Fonds.
Works in this exhibition were produced by KV Arnsberg, Edith-Russ-Haus for Media Art, steirischer herbst ‘20, Vienna Secession, SCHUNCK (Gemeente Heerlen) and Jester.