Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme: At Those Terrifying Frontiers Where The Existence And Disappearance Of People Fade Into Each Other

Exhibition by Basel Abbas
and Ruanne Abou-Rahme

Still from ‘At Those Terrifying Frontiers Where The Existence And Disappearance Of People Fade Into Each Other’ (2019). Courtesy of Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme - (IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A digital figure with a shaved head looks upward, centered against a white rectangle over a dark, barren landscape, with the green text “THOSE TERRIFYING FRONTIERS” across the image)

Opening Hours

Opening Night: 6pm to 9pm, Friday the 23rd of January
Exhibition Run: 22nd of January to the 15th of February

Opening days/hours:Friday and Saturday (12-5pm)
Thursday and Sunday by appointment only. (Please email mine@vssl-studio.org)
(Closed Monday to Wednesday)

--> Exhibition Text
--> Audio Recording of the Exhibition Text
--> Visual Story of How to Get to VSSL Studio

--> An interview with Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme
--> Hyperallergic - ‘Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme Create a Poetic, Web-based Space for Mourning’ by Rea McNamara

Still from ‘At Those Terrifying Frontiers Where The Existence And Disappearance Of People Fade Into Each Other’ (2019). Courtesy of Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme - (IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A digital figure with a shaved head looks downward, centered against a white rectangle over a yellow landscape, with the light yellow text “OUR CHARACTERISTIC MODE IS NOT A NARRATIVE IN WHICH SCENES TAKES PLACE SERIATIM,” across the image).

At Those Terrifying Frontiers Where The Existence And Disappearance Of People Fade Into Each Other

“And so our need for a new consciousness at those terrifying frontiers where the existence and disappearance of people fade into each other” - Edward Said After the Last Sky.

Fragments from Edward Said’s most personal and poetic work After the Last Sky are repurposed to create a new script that reflects on what it means now to be constructed as an ‘illegal’ person, body or entity.

The script is turned into a song sung and performed by the artists as multiple avatars. Using a software that generates avatars from a single image the avatars in the video are all drawn from people who participated in the ‘March of Return’, that continue to take place on the seamline in Gaza, an area that has been under physical siege by the Israeli army since 2006.

40,000 people marched weekly to the military fence not only to break the siege but to be able to return to their villages and lands, protesters were killed, maimed and disabled week in and week out.

With the impossibility of the artists, who were also in Palestine, reaching the marchers and the marchers reaching them the avatars that are created create a composite between the original images and the artist as the performers of the avatars only a 100 km away.

The work attempts to rupture this impossible imposed distance in an act of intense proximity and new becoming. The algorithm in the avatar software renders the missing data and information (due to the low resolution of images circulated online) in the original image as scars, glitches and incomplete features on the avatar's faces.

By keeping and not ‘fixing’ these visible scars the work speaks not only to the violence of the material reality but to the often invisible and embedded violence of representation itself in the circulation/consumption of images and ultimately to the violence in the algorithm. At those terrifying frontiers thinks about how to continue, how to mutate, in order not only to survive but to generate resistant possibilities of being and breathing within impossible conditions of violence and erasure.

E-flux Journal #106

Still from ‘At Those Terrifying Frontiers Where The Existence And Disappearance Of People Fade Into Each Other’ (2019). Courtesy of Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme - (IMAGE DESCRIPTION: Three overlapping digital portraits of shaved-head figures shown in profile and three-quarter view, set against a dark landscape background, with interface icons layered over the images).

About Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme

Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme work together across a range of sound, image, text, installation and performance practices. Their practice is engaged in the intersections between performativity, political imaginaries, the body and virtuality. Across their works they probe a contemporary landscape marked by seemingly perpetual crisis and an endless ‘present’, one that is shaped by a politics of desire and disaster.

They have been developing a body of work that questions this suspension of the present and searches for ways in which an altogether different imaginary and language can emerge that is not bound within colonial/capitalist narrative and discourse. In their projects, they find themselves excavating, activating and inventing incidental narratives, figures, gestures and sites as material for re-imagining the possibilities of the present. Often reflecting on ideas of non-linearity in the form of returns, amnesia and deja vu, and in the process unfolding the slippages between actuality and projection (virtuality, myth, wish), what is and what could be.

Largely their approach has been one of sampling materials both existing and self-authored in the form of sound, image, text, objects and recasting them into altogether new ‘scripts’. The result is a practice that investigates the political, visceral, material possibilities of sound, image, text and site, taking on the form of multi-media installations and live sound/image performances.

www.baselandruanne.com

Still from ‘At Those Terrifying Frontiers Where The Existence And Disappearance Of People Fade Into Each - (IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A centered digital portrait of a shaved-head figure against a black background, overlaid with green text reading “WE ARE KNOWN FOR NO ACTUAL ACHIEVEMENT’).

access information

The exhibition is free to attend.

Getting Here

VSSL is on Resolution Way, on the ground floor of an apartment building called Resolution Studios, opposite the commercial arches.
It is part of the creative hub Enclave, which includes other galleries and creative spaces.
ADDRESS: VSSL Studio, Enclave 50, Resolution Way. London SE8 4AL
View on Google Maps
VISUAL STORY: How to Get to VSSL (PDF available)

Step-free access

Step-free access to VSSL is available via Tidemill Way
Please check the Visual Story for Directional photos of the route

Parking and Drop-Off Points

Accessible parking: The nearest accessible parking is on Frankham Street (Pay & Display / Parking Boulevard).
It is a tree-lined road with spaces on both sides.
The walk from Frankham Street to VSSL takes around 4 minutes via Tidemill Way.
Drop-off point: The nearest car drop-off point is on Tidemill Way, behind Deptford Lounge.
From here, there is a short, step-free route through the car park directly to VSSL.

Public Transport

VSSL is well connected by public transport.

Train: The nearest rail station is Deptford Station, about 4 minutes’ walk along a flat route. The station has step-free access.
DLR: Deptford Bridge Station is about 10 minutes’ walk along a flat route. It also has step-free access.
Bus: The closest stop is Wavelengths on Deptford Church Street.
Only bus 47 serves this stop. It runs between Bellingham (Catford Bus Garage) and Shoreditch, passing through Lewisham, Deptford, Canada Water, Bermondsey, London Bridge, and Liverpool Street Station.

(See Visual Story for more detail).

VSSL STUDIO Space Information

The exhibition space measures 3.95 metres wide, 6 metres long, and 4 metres high.
The entrance door is 1.70 metres wide, heavy, and opens manually inward.
Please ask a member of staff for assistance if needed.
Lighting: Dim lights throughout, with video projector and soft yellow lighting.
Noise / Volume: The video will play at mid volume.
Temperature: We have one heater in the space so it’s warmer than outside but still cool.

Seating & Walking Canes

Two types of seating are available:

A single bench
Three different sizes of stools.
Chairs with backs (please ask a member of staff for assistance if needed.

There are 2 walking canes available for visitors who would like extra support.

Support Animals

Support animals are welcome.
Drinking bowls will be provided.

COVID Safety

The exhibition space is medium-sized (3.95m × 6m × 4m), which may limit air circulation when crowded.
We provide N95 masks and hand sanitiser at the entrance.
We encourage visitors to test before attending and to wear a face mask during the exhibition.

Scent-Conscious Space

To help keep VSSL safe for everyone, please avoid wearing perfume or scented products whenever possible.

Toilets

There is one toilet located along the Resolution Way fenced path, two doors down from VSSL.
It is gender-neutral and wheelchair accessible.

The toilet includes:

One hinged rail and one vertical rail beside the toilet
Two vertical rails by the sink
An emergency cord that reaches the floor (on the right side of the toilet)

The toilet door is heavy and opens manually outward. VSSL team are happy to provide assistance.

Emergency Exit
and Assembly Point

Emergency exits are clearly marked throughout the space.
The Designated Assembly Point is in the Tidemill Way car park, near the gates.
In case of emergency, VSSL staff will guide visitors safely to the assembly point.

Credits

BASEL ABBAS AND RUANNE ABOU-RAHME: AT THOSE TERRIFYING FRONTIERS WHERE THE EXISTANCE OF PEOPLE FADE INTO EACH OTHER as part of ENTANGLEMENTS OF THE APOCALYPSE is co-curated by Mine Kaplangı, Benjamin Sebastian, Joseph Morgan Schofield & Ash McNaughton - and has been made possible with public funding from the National Lottery and Arts Council England. With special thanks to not/nowhere, Whitechapel Gallery and Surplus Sounds for technical support.

Exhibition by Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme