Tonight’s Programme
Fiction | Iraq | Liban | Length: 14:03
(2017)
Tonight’s Programme toys with history to construct a new realm in between, merging Duke Ellington’s 1963 performance at Khuld Hall in Baghdad with Saddam’s bloody coup in the same theater 16 years later. The video collage creates a fictional space to provide a different history and a different world for those victims in the hall, a gate of Annunaki through which the dead and lost can reclaim their place. “Don’t let anyone kill your daughter in the underworld. Don’t let your precious metal be alloyed with the dirt of the underworld. Don’t let your precious lapis lazuli be split there with the mason’s stone. Don’t let your boxwood be chopped up there with the carpenter’s wood.” – From Tonight’s Programme, words by Inana of the underworld, the land of no return.
Open Studios HWP 2016-17 | 12-15 July, 2017 Special Thanks to Ashkal Alwan team, Christine Tohme, Joe Namy (Resident Advisor) Mohammed Abdullah, Parine Jaddo and Nancy Naser Al Deen.