Rabih Mroué. Detail from The fall of a Hair: Blow ups (2012)
Tot Zover
Pixelated Revolution
Lebanese artist Rabih Mroué (Beirut, 1967) reflects on the use of the smartphone as a weapon of publicity in the Middle East. There, citizen journalists film their own deaths while recording violent acts with their mobile phones.
Shooting pictures
In contemporary revolutions, shooting picturescan be as effective as shooting bullets. Mroué uses real life footage of deceased activists to comment on their fatal last images from conflict areas, images that contrast shockingly with the tranquility of the majestic De Nieuwe Ooster cemetery, the location of the museum. The Pixelated Revolution presents confrontational images as poetic reflections on the representation of death in the current media age.
Filming of one's own death
Filming with mobile phones or digital cameras carries the weight of authenticity. The rougher the image the more authentic and credible it is? Amateur shots also influence the visualization of dying and death. In The Pixelated Revolution, Rabih Mroué discovers a new perspective on the realistic representation of death. Videos of Syrian citizen journalists found on YouTube show an unbearable phenomenon: filming one's own death. Mobile phones, as an extension of our sight, reveal the last images: the shooter, the fatal shot, the fall. The films are posted posthumously on the internet.
Mroué deconstructs the videos to different points of view. He places the viewer behind the camera, face to face with death and points to the power of these initially "meaningless" images. His conclusion: death does not take place in front or behind, but within the camera. This visual formula transcends "the old" realism of bloodied victims, the images are death.
Programming
- Performance Rabih Mroué in Frascati on 24th and 25th January 2014
- Debat evening in De Balie on 12th March 2014
- The Last Image film programme in Eye from 22nd May until 4th June 2014
About Rabih Mroué
Rabih Mroué (Beirut, 1967) works at the intersection of visual art, theatre and storytelling. In 2011 he received the Prince Claus Award. His work has been shown at dOCUMENTA 13 (Kassel), at BAK, base for contemporary art (Utrecht) and at the Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam), the Tate Modern (London) and the Museum of Modern Art (New York). Mroué is a research fellow at the International Research Center "The interweaving performance cultures" of the Freie Universität Berlin.