As Far As My Fingertips Take Me + Camp Pause
Tania El Khoury, Basel Zaraa & Dictaphone Group
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Treaty Space Gallery, 1887 Granville St
Public Arts Programming
As Far As My Fingertips Take Me is an encounter through a gallery wall between an audience member and a refugee. Their arms touch without seeing each other. The refugee will mark the audience by drawing on their arm. The audience will listen to those who have recently challenged border discrimination. The marking can be kept or washed away.
Tania El Khoury commissioned musician and street artist Basel Zaraa who was born a Palestinian refugee in Syria to record a rap song inspired by the journey his sisters made from Damascus to Sweden. Through touch and sound, this intimate encounter explores empathy and whether we need to literally “feel” a refugee in order to understand the effect of border discrimination on peoples’ lives.
Our fingertips facilitate touch and sensations, but are also used by authorities to track many of us. In today’s Europe, a refugee’s journey can be set as far as their fingertips take them. The Dublin Regulation mandated a fingerprinting database across Europe for all refugees and migrants. The regulation often means that a refugee is sent back to where their fingertips were first recorded, without any regard to their needs, desires, or plans.
Audience participation will be part of this event and for tickets visit PRISMATIC for more details. Dates and time of performances to be announced.
Camp Pause is an immersive video installation about displacement and the journey Palestinian refugees make. We know very little about why Palestinian camps are located where they are. We also know little about the trajectories of their communities. We often assume that, upon their arrival, refugees were directly transported to tents that later became “camps.” Reflecting on ideas of refuge and the sea that connects them to Palestine, we worked with four residents of the Rashidieh Refugee Camp located on the coast of Lebanon, just south of the city of Tyre. We filmed their everyday routes from their homes to the sea, each participant leading us to the final scene in which they choose a spot on the seashore. Along the way, they weave simultaneous narratives about the history of the land, their arrival, the struggle to build, and everyday life in the camp.
Presented in partnership with Prismatic Festival and funded by the Canada Council for the Arts
