This iteration of aashra examines movement as a staged action, and highlights the daily choreography of bodies in dances or narrations where absurdity is deployed. What does the stage - any stage - withdraw from us, and what does it hold invisible? How can the political unconscious be revealed through practices of movement? The works touch upon fragilities, intervals, and gaps within social constructs, and engage the notion of touch through the lens of ‘social choreography’, and the ideologies that regulate our everyday movement and social bodies. Throughout their duration, these films and videos emphasize and stage situations where new social possibilities can be rehearsed, while sustaining complexity and momentum. They are an invitation to observe, poetically, invisible structures that inform our movements; they touch the monstrous gently, as it unfolds.

Noor Abed (b.1988, Jerusalem) is an interdisciplinary artist and filmmaker. Her practice examines notions of choreography and the imaginary relationship of individuals, creating situations for alternative social and representational models in Palestine. Abed attended the Whitney Independent Study Program in Νew York in 2015-16, and the Home Workspace Program (HWP) at Ashkal Alwan 2016-17. She received her BA from the International Academy of Arts in Palestine and a MFA from the California Institute of the Arts, Los Angeles. Abed was a fellow in documenta (13)’s “Department of Maybe Educatiοn and Public Programs” in Kassel, Germany). She was awarded the March Project residency and commission from Sharjah Art Foundation in 2016, a residency grant at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris in 2018, a fellowship at the Raw Material Company in Dakar (Senegal) in 2019, and a fellowship at Onassis AIR (Athens). In 2020, she co-founded, with Lara Khaldi, the School of Intrusions, an independent educational platform in Ramallah, Palestine.