Noor Abed, our songs were ready for all wars to come 2021 (film stills), photo credit: Noor Abed, Courtesy of the artist
Born Jerusalem, Palestine (1988), lives and works in Amsterdam, Netherlands and Ramallah, Palestine
our songs were ready for all wars to come 2021
super 8mm film transferred to digital video, 19.52 mins
Courtesy of the artist
The production of this work was supported by U–jazdowski Center for Contemporary Art, Warsaw & Qanat Collective.
Artist’s statement
Choreographed scenes based on documented folktales from Palestine, the film aims to create a new aesthetic form to re-awaken latent stories based around water wells and their connection to communal rituals around notions of disappearance, mourning, and death. our songs were ready for all the wars to come explores the critical stance of ‘folklore’ as a source of knowledge, and its possible connection to alternative social and representational models in Palestine. How can ‘folklore’ become a common emancipatory tool for people to overturn dominant discourses, reclaim their history and land, and rewrite reality as they know it? The only narration in the film is a song, which is sung by Palestinian singer Maya Khaldi. Its lyrics are a collage of different folk tales. Captured through mediums of film and sound, situated stories are archived and represented, creating a context that explores the capacity of social formation, and the possibility of recalling a memory that is capable of decentralizing images of fixity; a memory that is liberated from monuments.
Noor Abed’s work is included in Gregarious architectures.
