You Take Me Across The Distance تأخذني عبر المدى

In the new installation You Take Me Across The Distance, Marouf is presenting two video works: Thikra (memory) and Wa’d (promise).

The installation reinvokes a dwelling of some kind. The videos are conversations between a ‘me’ and a ‘you’ that is multiple. The ‘you’ lived in the middle east over the last 70 years and has lived through the outbreak of the AIDS epidemic, which forms a central theme of the video essay. In an uncanny manner, the AIDS epidemic of the 1980ies which we still find ourselves in, appears to anticipate today’s challenging times in more than one respect. In both moments, ‘the world’ as we know it, seems to come to an end. What emerges, thus, is a parallel moment in which the notion of futurity is radically put into question. Our sense of the present, past and future appears to clash, as these temporalities begin to oscillate and interfere with one another.

Marouf’s work occupies itself with memory, loss and intimacy. Asserting the physical inaccessibility of certain aspects of one’s life, memory and the act of remembrance are the only granted access to this challenge of loss and the inaccessible. By looking into queer narratives and histories, he aims to shift questions of straightforward identity politics towards processes of embodiment. Rethinking queer gestures and speech are understood not only as behavior but as action.

Enad Marouf is a Syrian/German performance artist based in Berlin. After graduating from the Syrian National Ballet School and studying international law at the Faculty of Law at the University of Damascus, Marouf continued his studies of choreography Ernst-Busch-Hochschule in Berlin. He received his MA in choreography and performance at the Institute for Theater Studies Gießen/Frankfurt he completed in 2014. In 2010 he founded with Franziska Aigner, Billy Bultheel, Samuel Forsythe and Daniel Jenatsch the collective New Forms of Life. His solo works and collaborations have been shown at venues including the Athens Biennale, KunstenfestivaldesArts Brussels, 104 Paris, HAU Berlin, Babel Beirut, Centre culturel Francais de Damas, Venice Biennale presented. Since 2016 he is part of Anne Imhof’s studio, where he works as a dramaturg, choreographer and performer. He was part of ANGST I&II at Kunsthalle Basel and Hamburger Bahnhof, of Faust (winner of the Golden Lion, Venice Biennial 2017), and of SEX I&II at the Tate Modern and at the Art Institute of Chicago.

You take me across the Distance (2021) is a co-production of Shedhalle Zurich with the generous support of NATIONAL PERFORMANCE NETWORK – STEPPING OUT, funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media within the framework of the initiative NEUSTART KULTUR. Assistance Program for Dance.