Sharjah Art Foundation’s biannual event Re|sound returns for its fifth edition on Friday, 18 December 2020, in the contemporary open-air Mirage City Cinema. Re|sound invites locally and regionally based musicians to prepare and perform original live sets in conversation with a projected film. The fifth edition of Re|sound features Rouzbeh Rashidi's film Homo Sapiens Project: There Is No Escape from the Terrors of the Mind (2013), which will be screened in tandem with live music from sound artist Safeya Alblooshi, experimental musician Mckie Alvarez and percussionist Colin James Gordon.
There Is No Escape from the Terrors of the Mind is one episode of a larger film by Rashidi titled Homo Sapiens Project. The experimental film follows a man on a three-part adventure through a series of uncanny surrealistic landscapes.
The film compares the strange qualities of different landscapes and interposes characters within them, thus elaborating on the Homo Sapiens Project’s ongoing preoccupation with extracting sinister moods from ordinary settings.
In a way, the films in the project can be seen as experimental horror films, in which an atmosphere of dread is evoked and sustained without the expected narrative trappings.
Re|sound V also features original live sets by UAE-based musicians. Currently completing her fourth year at New York University Abu Dhabi, where she is studying for a Bachelor of Art in Music (expected 2021), Safeya Alblooshi experiments with sound in the realms of manipulated field recordings, experimental composition and participatory performance. Musician, songwriter, dub-reggae producer, sound designer and DJ Mckie Alvarez is the other half of the dream pop/ethereal wave duo WYWY and front man of the post-punk band LORD FUZZ GZAZ.
Percussionist and producer Colin James Gordon, who has shared the stage with Kendrick Lamar, Bastille, Liam Payne, Sean Kuti, The Supremes and many others, is trained as a drummer and studied ethnomusicology at UCLA under such jazz luminaries as Kenny Burrell, James Newton and Delbert Bump.
Also taking place this weekend is the third edition of FOCAL POINT, the Foundation’s annual art book fair, which runs from 16 to 19 December 2020 in the heritage house Bait Obaid Al Shamsi, Arts Square. The four-day fair presents a wide selection of artist books, zines, journals, prints, posters and other printed matter by artists, writers and publishers from around the world. A number of creative workshops, suitable for children and families, as well as live music performances by local bands will also take place.
Re|sound is free and open to all. Audiences are encouraged to book their attendance online in advance to ensure the comfort and safety of the community.
