Call it a cat when it grins

In one of his musings, bedridden French poet Joë Bousquet, shot in a battle during world war I, pronounces himself destined to become the offspring of his wound; that ‘[his] wound existed before [him], [he] was born to embody it’.  Contemplating the ‘wound’ in relation to such a counter-intuitive statement, Rana Hamadeh’s lecture-performance will set off a trail of questions and associations that reflect upon the ethics of masquerade: the role-play between bodies and events, absences and presences, language and the objects of language.

Taking a graphic design magazine penetrated during the Lebanese civil war by a bullet, as its point of departure, Hamadeh’s lecture-performance call it a cat when it grins: graphis nº 127  will question the constructions of history and futurity through the play among several tenses, telling lies, believing them, posing questions, answering some and regretting answering the rest, building, demolishing, hesitating, killing, living and letting live, becoming Alice, becoming a cat, grinning, masquerading, etc.