Marouf has been working with fragments from his memory of spaces in Damascus that he has been transforming into installation settings to present his work in. It is a central theme in how he deals with the concrete physical inaccessibility to his home town. The installation carries with it an architectural gesture giving the audience the possibility to inhabit and move through the space during the viewing of the work.
In the video work, the figure of the Angle is introduced as a transformative figure, both disobedient and undomesticated, revolutionary and challenging. The figure in his work is shifting between addressing a person the artist speaks to in his work and the process of thought producing as a companion to humans like an angel or a shadow in unsettling times of uncertainty. Constructed as a scenic performance for the camera, Marouf creates with the performers movement sequences taken from Ballet, intimate everyday life gestures and speech, showing a simultaneous duality of absence and presence, loss and proximity and the emotional work that comes with them.
Credits: Director: Enad Marouf. Performance and dance by: Franziska Aigner, Eren Demirel, Alyha Love, Samuel Pereira and Tiran Wilmsen. Choreography: Enad Marouf. Assistant choreographer: Samuel Pereira. Voice: Majed Shalgheen. Text: Enad Marouf. Director of Photography: Omar Zaki. Assitstant camera: Veronica Storm. Second assitant camera: Mayar Abou El Naga. Gaffer: Alfredo La Corte. Assistant Gaffer: Isabelle Schmitz. Edit: Enad Marouf. Colorgrading: Alaa Abdullatif. Cello Pieces: Franziska Aigner. Sound recording and design: Alexander Iezzi. Set: Filip Berg. Styling consultant: Emman Debattista. Hair and Make up: Guerdy Casimir. Producer: Tatianna Peckham. Production Management: Yara Seifan.
A production by Enad Marouf in co-production with TANZTAGE BERLIN SOPHIENSÆLE. Supported by the NATIONAL PERFORMANCE NETWORK – STEPPING OUT, funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media as part of the NEUSTART KULTUR. Assistance Program for Dance.
Enad Marouf is a Syrian/German performance and video artist based in Berlin. His works deal with memory, loss and intimacy. Through the physical inaccessibility to certain aspects in a life, only memories and the act of remembering grant access to the challenges posed by loss and the inaccessible itself. He received his MA in choreography and performance at the Institute for Theater Studies Gießen/Frankfurt he completed in 2014. His solo works and collaborations have been shown at venues including the Athens Biennale, KunstenfestivaldesArts Brussels, 104 Paris, HAU Berlin, Babel Beirut, Centre Francais de Damas, Art Institute of Chicago, Tate Modern London, Sophiensaele Berlin.
Acknowledgment: Some quotes and anecdotes in the work are taken from: Night by Etel Adnan. Angel of History by Rabih Alameddine. On the concept of History by Walter Benjamin and Prisoner of love by Jean Genet.
