Rana Hamadeh
Standard_Deviation
5. Mai – 18. Juni 2023

The solo exhibition Standard_Deviation by Rana Hamadeh from 05 May - 18 June 2023 is the second chapter within the three-part project The theater in each*one of us (17 Feb – 30 Jun 2023), in which Kunstverein Arnsberg explores and investigates how processes and spaces of theater find a form in visual art and in our everyday life. The exhibition features Hamadeh‘s 3-D animated film installation Standard_Deviation (2021-continuing); a 22-minute looped projection accompanied by an immersive and cacophonous sound and media installation. In the other four rooms of KV Arnsberg, Hamadeh presents new studies for a series of cartographic offshoots of the animated film. These trace the narrative, poetic and scenographic layers of the exhibited film, and not only enable a different way of engaging with its content, but also transform its densely coded images, spaces and motifs into autonomous actors that become independent from the film‘s montage.

Rana Hamadeh‘s practice blurs the boundaries between art, theater, and exhibition making. Her works, often produced over a period of years, develop in successive chapters and manifest as large-scale sound compositions with complex network designs and mechanic interactions, audio-visual installations, cartographic works, texts, and pedagogical setups. Her works generally think through the infrastructures and technologies of justice – linguistic, legal and performative – understanding justice through the modalities of spectacle. For The theater in each one of us, KV Arnsberg was particularly interested in Hamadeh‘s artistic understanding of theater as a form. In her series Standard_Deviation, the artist ventures through Sophocles’ famed tragedy, Oedipus Rex.

In ihrer Serie Standard_Deviation unternimmt Hamadeh einen Exkurs durch Sophokles‘ berühmte Tragödie Ödipus Rex. Die Arbeit bietet keine Nacherzählung des erschütternden Unglücks von Ödipus, dem König von Theben, dessen schwere Reise sich auf dem Höhepunkt
des Schwarzen Todes, – der Pest abspielt. Sie bietet Lesarten von Sophokles‘ Stück selbst an und dessen Darstellung der Tragödie als „Maschine und Technologie des Aushaltens“. Diese Edition des Films im KV Arnsberg wurde in Zusammenarbeit mit Sara Hamadeh realisiert.
Mit seinem unheimlichen visuellen und akustischen Geflecht zeichnet der Film die Leidenswege und die emotionalen Abgründe nach, die sich in der ursprünglichen Tragödie entfalten. Er folgt den Höhen und Tiefen, der Anspannung und Unruhen, seiner Dramatik, der Figurenabfolge und den psychologischen Verstrickungen.
From dreams to trance to horror to phantasmagorical tableaux vivants, the visuals are mainly reminiscent of cut scenes in a computer game. The scenarios are as dreamlike as they are menacing, while the action is driven by gears, prosthetics and viscera.
Constantly mutating figures such as the leg, the shrimp, the log chairs, the paper airplane, and the traffic cone wander through sets inspired by anatomy theaters. Constantly, one theater unfolds from another. The jugglery of fantastic images is accompanied by a cacophonous and disorienting six-channel composition, spatialized for the exhibition. The sound intensifies. Lenticular prints and simple stereoscopic viewing apparatuses showing successive scenes from the video contrast the technical and mediational nature of the audio-visual installation. Similarly, a map of the film’s digital infrastructure allows the viewer to access the film through the backstage of its digital materiality.

From Hamadeh‘s reading of Sophocles‘ tragedy arise topical questions about the entanglements of desire, destiny, technology and the economies of reproduction. In an endeavour to think of what constitutes a contemporary tragedy, Hamadeh asks how – in a hyper-mediated social reality – can we ‘desire differently’? And what technologies can we devise to mediate such a desire to ‘desire differently’?


Rana Hamadeh lebt und arbeitet in Rotterdam. Einige ihrer jüngsten Einzelausstellungen waren 2022 Edith Russ Haus, Oldenburg, 2021 Wiener Secession; 2019 Kunsthalle Winterthur; 2017 Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art (momentan Kunstinstituut Melly), Rotterdam; 2016 The Showroom, London; 2015 Nottingham Contemporary. Im Jahr 2017 wurde sie mit dem niederländischen Prix de Rome ausgezeichnet. 2021 war sie Preisträgerin des Stipendiums der Niedersächsischen Stiftung für Medienkunst am Edith-Russ-Haus.

The theatre in each one of us is supported by Stiftung Kunstfonds as part of the NEUSTART KULTUR program. Kunstverein Arnsberg is supported by the city of Arnsberg, Brauerei C&A Veltins and Sparkasse Arnsberg-Sundern. The exhibition Standard_Deviation by Rana Hamadeh was made possible by the additional support from the Mondriaan Fonds. Works in this exhibition were produced by KV Arnsberg, Edith-Russ-Haus for Media Art, steirischer herbst ‘20, Vienna Secession, SCHUNCK (Gemeente Heerlen) and Jester.

Photo credits: Michel Ptasinski