Ali El-Darsa

Playground
 Ali El-Darsa

Exhibition
13.08.2024–03.09.2024
Diaphanes Berlin,  Dresdener Str. 118

Performance-Based Research Presentation
Iteriation III 
Tuesday, 13.08.2024 at 6 PM
With Emma Howes and Jao Moon
Playground is an ongoing collaborative performance-based research project that takes form in workshops consisting of individual and group performances, readings, screenings and discussions. Iterations of Playground have been developed and presented in Beirut at Ashkal Alwan (2018) and in Dubai at Alserkal Residency under the title Zwischenspiel (2017), engaging local performers and artists. The project evolves continuously over several years, responding to local settings and experiences while forging spaces for experimentation with local performers and non-performers.

Employing open-ended, collaborative rehearsal strategies, Playground examines movement as written and oral language; as visual and sonic translations. In this iteration of the project, Emma Howes and Jao Moon are asked to examine their bodies as vehicles devoid of affect, capable of performing movement shaped by the conceptual framework and methodology I have set in place—defining form and aesthetics.

Playground opens onto the fields of text, word, sign and languages, both vernacular and through their relationship with the linguistic legacy in Europe. It involves questioning the ways in which language influences thought systems and, by extension, the discourses and interpretations of a work of art, both in its material and metaphorical sense. The research approaches the notion of communication through its means, methods and media, whether oral, written or coded; through the transmission of customary, historical or contemporary stories; and through dialogue, with consideration for the diversity of discursive spaces and how location informs, expands or limits the room for expression.

I am interested in how formal representations manifest and interact with the conceptual framework I have set for the researcher-performers, and how the perception of the audience becomes a crucial agent in this interaction. Playground positions settings and modes of embodied research through rehearsal as a self-contained work of art. For me, these modes, along with the aesthetics they foster, are self-sufficient and independent of conventional modes of exhibition. The methodological process, along with the workshops and presentation space as containers of thought-in-the-making, aims to liberate the research from traditional economies of production.  –Ali El-Darsa

Methodology
Before attending workshops over the course of a week, Howes and Moon are asked to document their immediate realities on video while conceptually reflecting on the following questions and positions:

– We are experiencing a suppression of our voices, fundamentally transforming how we navigate our public and private spheres—how we move, act, belong and care for ourselves as communities.
– Pro-Palestine demonstrations over the last few months in Berlin reveal masses of bodies that are alert, fearful, defiant, angry, cheerful, burnt-out and equally hopeful, all in search of collective strength, agency, transformation and relief. How do our bodies inform our mediated and public spaces, and vice versa? Can we study the transformation of our collective movement over a set period of time as a means to overcome oppression, affect change, and find alternative forms of expression through translation, abstraction and the coded? Where do we start and how do we wrap up, if we can at all?

Howes and Moon reflect on these questions by capturing what is significant and striking to them. Excerpts from their research videos are then indexed to create an archive, from which they collaboratively develop sets of translations using text, image, sound and drawing. They present several iterations from their research, constructing a collective body-based language in real time. Their diverse backgrounds play crucial roles in shaping this research.

Emma Howes oscillates between movement and form to create time-based performance installations that incorporate soft-sculpture, sound, and improvisation with fallible objects. Her transdisciplinary works manifest as multiple reconfigurations of the body and space, informed by a background in dance (ballet, baroque opera, modern, and baguazhang—an internal Chinese martial art), performance theory, and the visual arts within the framework of a conceptual art practice. Her labor is guided by observations of gestures, focusing on speculative scores—compositions that represent a stage in the development from concept and intention to depiction and effect. Buttressed by these graphic systems, Howes creates space for concentrated encounters, or serious play–a process that embraces embodied experience toward the creation of hyper-glitch operas as Cadavre Exquis—chimeras that celebrate comprehensive failure and foster alternative perspectives. Recent solo presentations and upcoming projects include: Critical Shifts, Istanbul, Turkey (2024); Art Museum of Joliette, Quebec, (2024); Kunstverein am Rosa Luxemburg Platz (2023); ImPulsTanz, Vienna (2023) and the 11th Berlin Biennale, Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin (2020). Howes holds a joint MFA from Concordia University, Montreal, and the Bauhaus-Universität, Weimar.

Jao Moon Growing up in the marginalized periphery of Cartagena de Indias, Colombia turned Jao Moon into a political body. His experience in an environment of constant resistance led him to question predominant social orders, a theme that defines his work. Jao Moon’s projects include Memory of Dislocation – Exactly the same in the opposite direction at Ballhaus Naunynstraße, The Lifetime of Fire - Manifestos for a Queer Futures at HAU and as part of the closing event for the exhibition, Ceremony (Burial of a undead world) at Haus der Kulturen der Welt. His work Everybody can be / Everybody can not be My was presented at Ballhaus Naunynstraße in 2019. Jao Moon’s collaborations and works have been presented at Volksbühne, Kampnagel, Sophiensaele, Deutsche Oper Berlin and at the Pompidou Center in Paris. He is currently working at MDT Stockholm on a new production by Ofelia Jarl Ortega.

Team Artistic Director: Ali El-Darsa
Researcher-Performers: Emma Howes and Jao Moon
Producer & Manager: Ali El-Darsa
Gallery Director: Marie Glassl, Diaphanes Berlin
Sound Design: Richy Carey, èist sound
Graphic Design: arc
Sound Technician: Nobutaka Shomura
Videographer: Karam Ghoussein
Photographer: Andreea Dican

Former Researcher-Performers
Beirut, 2018 / Bassam Abou Diab, Ghida Hachicho, Stephanie Kayal, Christel Salem and Corinne Skaff.
Dubai, 2017 / Hened Choueiry, Sandra Egido Ibañez, Vrushali Kulkarni and Isaac Sullivan.

Digital Flyer 


Playground is created with the support of the Canada Council for the Arts.