Regardless of the extremely intimate and autobiographical nature of Marwan Hamdan’s films, they provide a critical commentary on the current socio-political situation. His practice can be summarized as searching for meaning at the intersection of utopia, religion, ideology and identity. At the same time, the author shows how large systems shape the lives of individuals and their memories. Hamdan places personal narratives in universal contexts. He often reaches into the archives in search for images, clichés, fading memories, to finally juxtapose them with raw, digital video. He does not use camera tricks, he does not care about color saturation or frame perfection. The sequence of his films happens in the content, in the subtitles, in the stories told, in the quotes cited. What we actually see in his films is the faded past, the ghosts that we recreate in our heads. We tell stories about them, we shiver in fear of their breath on our necks, but are we sure we will never feel it?
The exhibition at TRAFO sets Marwan Hamdan’s films in their unnatural environment. They used to look at us from arthouse cinemas, film festival screenings, in the darkness and stuffiness of large-capacity movie theatres or lecture halls. In the T2 Gallery, the image disappears and blurs even more than originally intended by the author. Duplicated, it sinks into the whiteness. We disappear into the void of the TV screen and dissolve into the armchair, just like the image in the non-colour. In the seats that we remember from the waiting room, from school, from the post office. Between point a and b, between being and non-being. Supposedly in a place, but a non-place. We are waiting for the promised utopias that will never happen, and their implementation itself has tragic consequences. The dystopian waiting room in which we have been placed, without warning, without consent, in a vacuum, in a neverland, can only give us a sense of discomfort.
Marwan Hamdan – Lebanese filmmaker and artist, born in Beirut in 1980. He graduated with a B.A. from Audio Visula C.L.E.T. (Kafa’at) (Beirut, Lebanon) in 2005. In his practice, he focuses on archival research, including images and recordings of Beirut’s contemporary political and social history, with particular emphasis on religion, mythology, beliefs, and systems of power. In 2012-13, he participated in the annually held interdisciplinary artistic program Ashkal Alwan’s Home Workspace Program. Artist-in-residence at De Ateliers in Amsterdam in 2013-15. In 2023, he took part in the three-year ASK development project held in Västmanland (Sweden). His works were shown at the 66th Berlinale in 2016.