In an effort to better understand the nature of contemporary collective action, artist Bassem Saad has assembled an audiovisual symposium on the subject, Congress of Idling Persons. To probe the extent to which multiple voices can operate in unison, he has brought together multiple voices into a single conversation: DJ and translator Rayyan Abdel Khalek, musician Sandy Chamoun, Palestinian writer Islam Khatib, labour organiser Mekdes Yilma, and himself. Combining a variety of techniques – from on-stage performance to on-screen text, from presented talking head interview to verité protest footage – Saad playfully aligns and juxtaposes several narratives.
The events that the discourse primarily covers are the Lebanese uprising of 2019, the Black Lives Matter protests in the wake of George Floyd’s murder in 2020, and the relief efforts of ordinary citizens after the Beirut port explosion later in 2020. The various interlocutors give their own personal accounts of these occurrences and more, often drawing attention to the strange contradictions of the apparently homogenous mass. Chamoun recounts being violently attacked by other protestors, Khatib explains the migrant experience of solidarity being contingent on her successful assimilation into the population, Yilma soberingly recalls black women being told by young Lebanese men that they weren’t welcome at ‘their’ uprising.
These inconsistencies are replicated in the shifting form of Saad’s film. Khalek and Chamoun talk directly to one another, situated on the stage of a beloved Beirut cabaret theatre surrounded by the paraphernalia of protests and disaster relief like pop-up tents or medical equipment. Khatib and Yilma both tell their stories in a traditional documentary fashion. For all subjects, audio is intermittently glitched and looped, their messages momentarily lost in the crosscutting between people or the echoing multitude of voices. Saad’s own words cut through this static, presented in bold bilingual text that appears throughout the piece, interspersed with found video footage that includes protests in New York, Beirut, and Syria. As these different situations vie for our attention, Congress of Idling Persons seems to wonder provocatively about the strength of transcultural solidarity without ever feeling as though we shouldn’t continue striving for it.
Director: Bassem Saad
Writers: Bassem Saad, Rayyan Abdel Khalek, Sandy Chamoun, Islam Khatib, Mekdes Yilma
Cast: Rayyan Abdel Khalek, Sandy Chamoun, Islam Khatib, Mekdes Yilma, Tsigereda Brihanu, Medhanit Teshome
Sound: Sancy Chamoun, Anthony Sahyoun
Venue: CPH: DOX (NEW: VISIONS)
In Arabic, English
36 minutes
