Installation (Installation)

In late 2017, Kiswanson stared working with Vadim, an eleven-year-old Romanian-French boy who he met during castings for a performance. Captivated by what he describes as a “hybrid voice, one that belonged everywhere and nowhere all at once”, he began working with Vadim on a regular basis. Over the course of four months, Kiswanson interviewed Vadim on a multitude of subjects concerning the human condition: from his beliefs on death, his thoughts on growing up and becoming an adult, what it feels like to breathe, talk, move and above all, what it means to be born between several cultures and languages.

Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)

The artist’s Passings series are hand-sewn works composed of radiological scans of items of clothing loaned by the Tiraz Foundation in Jordan. These articles – Palestinian, Jordanian and other Arab costumes from the 19th and 20th centuries from the Widad Kamel Kawar dress collection – are mixed in with contemporary clothing sometimes borrowed from participants in Kiswanson’s performances. In this particular piece, a tracksuit is overlaid with an 18th century Jordanian Robe.

Installation (Installation)

For The Reverse Sessions , the artist reversed the order in which instruments are usually created, taking the sounds of a collection of ethnic musical instruments from The Dahlem Museum as the starting point. The artist used the audio recordings of live performances that he wrote and directed, to collaborate with instrument makers on imagining and building the objects that could have generated these recordings. Without involving any images, Atoui proposed to engage with sound directly — contrary to the path of ethnomusicology that studies the shape and mechanism of an instrument with an emphasis on its cultural and social context.