PERFORMANCE VIDEO / INSTALLATION - Two performers reproduce the movements of Hassam Abdo, a Palestinian teenager who surrendered at an
Israeli army checkpoint in 2004 with a bomb attached to his body. In a news video he is alone in an open area, surrounded by soldiers who are off-camera, shouting instructions.
A robot is sent to him with tools. He must disarm himself.
In this choreographic echo, a man in a business suit enacts and repeats the gestures of
the boy as he follows orders to disarm himself and remove his clothing, while a second performer, a woman, embodies all
that intervenes from behind the camera; the soldiers, the viewer, the camera itself. This echo begins quietly with subtle
hand and body movements as the performer replays the gestures of trauma internally. Gradually these gestures become full movement with the cycle repeating
at greater and greater intensity. The second performer intervenes, at first to help initiate the cycle and later, as the trauma amplifies, trying to stop it.
[performers: Robert Schweitzer, Monique Romeiko Music: Rainer Weins]
video (30min):