(06)

Untitled (Beyrouth)

Video, color, silent
4:55 min.


Video, 2014



Transcript






[We open to streaky, VHS footage of a living room with a group of people sitting around and smoking. A woman wearing a pink satin dress enters from the right of the screen and begins dancing and shaking her hips back and forth, prompting the rest of the group to join her. The screen goes black at moments, punctuating yellow captions burned along the bottom, and then returns. Other scenes show large groups of people walking in a line, waving their bodies in anguish as they push and pull against one another, a young child lying on a hospital gurney, two men having a conversation through their car windows as they drive side by side at night, people gathered in a room, perhaps at a trial, as speakers come up to a microphone and offer testimony. The footage degrades as streaks on the screen show a rainbow of glitches and TV static. The work ends with a group in an elevator. One man gets close to a woman and speaks, looking at her suggestively. She doesn't look amused. He touches her shoulder and she throws him an intense glare as he cowers his hand as if touching a fire. The woman puts on sunglasses.]