MoMA Presents Basel Abbas And Ruanne Abou-Rahme's MAY AMNESIA NEVER KISS US ON THE MOUTH

The Museum of Modern Art presents Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme's May amnesia never kiss us on the mouth (2020-ongoing) in the Marie-Josée and Henry Kravis Studio, April 23 through June 26, 2022. Over the past decade, artists Basel Abbas (Palestinian, b. 1983) and Ruanne Abou-Rahme (Palestinian American, b. 1983) have collected, sampled, and created audiovisual materials, recasting them into new multimedia works.

Taking the contemporary moment in Palestine as a point of departure, their research-based practice imagines new artistic and political possibilities through sound, image, and text. This evolving project, co-commissioned by MoMA and Dia Art Foundation, is presented as an online platform for the Artist Web Projects series at Dia and an immersive installation with performances at MoMA. In May amnesia..., the artists bring together found and self-authored footage to examine how individuals bear witness to experiences of violence, loss, displacement, and forced migration through song and dance. The exhibition at MoMA is organized by Martha Joseph, the Phyllis Ann and Walter Borten Assistant Curator of Media and Performance.

Since the early 2010s, Abbas and Abou-Rahme have collected online recordings of everyday people singing and dancing in communal spaces in Iraq, Palestine, Syria and Yemen. This work brings these recordings together with new performances created by the artists with dancer Rima Baransi and electronic musicians Haykal, Julmud, and Makimakkuk, working in Ramallah, Palestine. According to Abbas and Abou-Rahme, through song and dance, "these fractured communities are resisting their own erasure and laying claim to space, self, and collectivity once more." Ultimately, in creating May amnesia..., the artists consider performance-whether in the form of song, spoken word, dance, or gesture-as a political act that responds to myriad forms of violence against entire communities.

For this presentation in the Kravis Studio, Abbas and Abou-Rahme have created an immersive, multichannel sound and moving-image work within a custom installation environment. Drawing on videos from the artists' archive as well as the performances they created, this work addresses communities deemed "illegal"-their land, histories, and built structures. Footage appears and reappears, sampled and remixed, presenting an entanglement of images, sounds, and bodies. A new eight-channel sound composition features processed vocals, electronic beats, and audio samples from the archive and performances. A fragmented text written by the artists, proposing that simply breathing becomes a form of resistance, weaves throughout the video.

Additionally, the Kravis Studio will host a series of ticketed, evening performances that take the May amnesia... archive as inspiration. Abbas and Abou-Rahme will present a new two person performance titled an echo buried, buried, but calling still (2022). For selected performances, electronic musicians Hiro Kone, SCRAAATCH, and Muqata'a will also contribute new work that responds to the exhibition. an echo buried, buried, but calling still will conclude with a post-performance conversation with the artists and MoMA curator Martha Joseph on Saturday, June 25, following the 7:30 p.m. performance. The exhibition will also be accompanied by an evening of video and conversation on June 13 as a Modern Mondays event in Titus Theater 2, with more details to be announced.

Tickets go on sale one month before the performance date and can be purchased on moma.org.