project description

“Peace. I don’t want it. Justice? Why? Victory? Makes me sick! Love? What a pity. Freedom? Ugly! Friendship? My ass!”

not a matter of it but when was developed in 2005–06 in Damascus, Syria. This period of time was marked by momentous events: Rafiq Harriri, the former Prime Minister of Lebanon, was assassinated, the Syrians were pressured to withdraw from Lebanon after a 30-year occupation, the “Cedar Revolution” came and went, elections were held in Iraq and were followed by a descent into civil war, and Hezbollah strengthened its position in Southern Lebanon. These events reverberated in Syria and gave rise to widespread anxiety and anticipation around the potential for imminent change, regime change, internal reform, internal collapse, civil war and the increased power of conservative Islam.

Over a period of several months, we worked with Rami Farah to record short sequences in which he responded to a prompt or a written text. Through a combination of direct address and fantastical narrative, Rami’s improvisations speak to living in a condition of uncertainty, chaos and stasis.

archive.transmediale.de/site/index.php?id=156 (transmediale website archive)

related text

Developed in 2005–2006 in Damascus, together with Syrian dancer, performer and filmmaker Rami Farah, ‘Not a Matter of If but When’ is an attempt to find meaning in a time where vocabulary has become depleted: for what sense can we make nowadays of convoluted notions such as war, peace, religion, justice, struggle and freedom? Though firmly grounded within the Syrian political condition, which after a few very turbulent years is steeped in anxiety and uncertainty, Farah’s improvisations reach well beyond his own national and local context. Farah manages to articulate a rhetoric of fear and pending doom, while simultaneously expressing cautious hope. His usage of irony as comic relief functions as a strategy of survival and self-relativation. Though the close-up and portrait framing seems deceivingly simple, it emphasises how the actor’s body flips roles from body politic to citizen body, and eventually shows that boundaries are blurry, unfixed and capricious. ‘Not a Matter of If but When’ is a timely portrait, which marks a growing sensibility of unease with a ‘runaway’ world. (transmediale.08 jury statement, excerpt)

archive.transmediale.de/site/index.php?id=291

related links

project site: www.meltzerthorne.com/nota

image credits

[01] - [03] Julia Meltzer & David Thorne: Not a matter of if but when, Rami Farah