Alaa Abu Asad is an artist, researcher, and photographer from Palestine. His practice is centered around developing and experiencing alternative trajectories where values of (re) presentation, translation, viewing, reading, and understanding intersect.
Glossolalia / ثَرثَرة - Single-channel video, 14'37"
With Ignace Cami, 2021
This video is produced as part of the exhibition project Under the Tower / Onder de Kerktoren / تحت البرج
Glossolalia reveals poetic diversity and is an ode to the pleasure of looking at images and listening to sounds.In Glossolalia, tonal language or speaking in tongues transforms difficult communication and misunderstandings into playful and refined poetry. References to the online gatherings of Under the Tower / Onder de Kerktoren / تحت البرج exhibition-project are present but never overbearing. Glossolalia is a conversation between the artists, and through audiovisual elements it offers a window on the world, an invite to a contemplative journey.
Stuttering Gestures / إيماءات مُتأتأة - Live audiovisual performance, 35' With Bekriah Mawasi, 2022 "Read the Room" biennial, Mophradat and Kaaitheater, Brussels 2022
‘Stuttering Gestures’ is a proposal for reading and listening concurrently; a live audiovisual performance that contemplates movement, stillness, and silence as a formative succession. An invitation to adapt to phonetic and lexical nuances and the variations in dialects and realities. The work looks into the alphabet as a nascent basket that engenders narratives and disclosures. The artists observe fragmented stories, bodies, sounds, and gestures. The selection of words and images springs from conversations and chats on language, dialects, and speech. The visual sequences echo the rhythmic repetition.
THE DOG CHASED ITS TAIL TO BITE IT OFF - Ongoing research, 2018– In 1823 Philipp Franz von Siebold sailed under the auspices of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) to Japan, where he used his role as resident doctor and scientist at the Dejima trading post to amass a vast botanical collection. Among the species von Siebold introduced to Europe was Japanese knotweed (Fallopia japonica). Today considered a “non native invasive species” in places like the United Kingdom, the plant is now treated as a scourge. Alaa Abu Asad meditatively traces the violent, xenophobic speech used to describe the plant and its parallels in the language used to describe human migrants. On a planet where ultimately very little is truly native, Abu Asad questions which plant species become accepted as the rightful inhabitants of nation states over time and which are forever relegated to the foreign. Tulips, though first imported to Holland from the Ottoman Empire in the sixteenth century, are today proudly claimed a national treasure. No such fate has with the Japanese knotweed. The plant remains pursued across countries and continents as every conceivable attempt is made to eradicate it. Japanese knotweed survives where other species cannot. Its nonhierarchical root system enables it to thrive in industrial wastelands, erupt through concrete, and even disrupt electrical lines. And yet little thought is given to the underlying causes aiding this plant to flourish, from pollution to reduced frost brought on by climate change. The plant is blamed for the wrongdoings of others in the name of expediency and self-preservation. For Abu Asad, these plants reveal to us the human condition. Even as many try to expunge it from the earth, Japanese knotweed's resilience continues to insist on presence. Amanda Sarroff for Van Eyck Academy open studios, 2020
I LOVE IT WHEN TRANSLATION CAN BE FOUND TO AGREE WITH OUR WEIRD DESIRES - With Ulufer Çelik, 2017-2020 / Available at BOOKS @ RET & amp; WALTER books & amp; KIOSK Rotterdam / Do you know what şemsiye means? Do you use the word kırbaç for a whip? For around three years, we have been asking each other about identical words used in both of our languages: Turkish and (vernacular) Palestinian Arabic. It is a process that can last for good - as long as our friendship lives. We spend time together uttering words that are held in common and draw them, discovering whether they carry the same meaning, are slightly different, or are false friends.
