Performative Screenings #35
Raed Yassin
Karaoke & Disco Tonight

open also Saturday May 30, 12-3 pm

Where is father? Every night, a family gathers in front of the TV to raise the same question, hoping to catch a glimpse of him hiding in the glamorous world of the Egyptian film industry. They will not find him, but see him in dreams through images of stars. Raed Yassin, a Beirut-born artist and musician, is haunted by Middle Eastern pop culture from the 1960s up to today, with its stand-up comedy, belly dancing, and films. Three video works are going to be screened including his latest: Karaoke (2015), a meditation on the burning shame felt by a child in the face of artistic failure. Yassin?s semi-fictitious, sad/funny stories are always about longing, embarrassment, and false hope, but equally about history?s deep unfairness towards the self-colonized periphery, unjustly represented as backwards and imitative.