Scouting for locations
Film title: Traces of a Screem
2013
Photography + Text
51 photos of different sizes

Produced by Sharjah Art Foundation for Sharjah Biennial 11

No one heard us shout in angst for every yard we found a lonely tree standing as we roamed the city for days searching in the sounds where the three men's bodies were thrown under a silent tree no one remembers hearing the anguish that they screamed the day the sun melted their dreams

A film crew disappears while scouting for locations for a film based on an adaptation of Ghassan Kanafani's novel "Men in the Sun" that was planned to be shot in Sharjah. What remains of this crew are photographs taken of possible locations for shooting the film, and a scream that was voiced in an empty dimly lit alley. In an attempt to find them, the project tries to trace those disappeared through re-constructing their journey, their experience and the voice that lingers in that alley. The scream is examined as proof, but no one is certain who's scream it was; the crew's or that of the witness of their disappearance.

These photographs were found in an email sent to their producer without any details. We organise them on a wall in a timeline chronicling their movement in the city, looking for clues we find that many witnessed their disappearance but no one remembers them, everyone remembers the scream that night but no one recollects its author.

The project is scouting for a public space in the public space through the possibility of a scream. Whose voice is heard? who is there to witness? was that scream the result of fear or was it a demand for visibility? can one be invisible in the public space? or is it even a public space if the public is invisible? perhaps that scream is the demand for visibility? but isn't demand for visibility in the public space a demand for political existence!

Someone said that the crew are still roaming in the city, scouting for public spaces, that is why they will not be found, as soon as they enter the public space, they are devoured by invisibility. The inaudible scream that lingers in those photographs perhaps brings into question their political existence.