Catalogue > Un extrait vidéo au hasard

The theme of music is represented by work of Kurdish-Iraqi filmmaker Sherko Abbas: The music of the Bush era. in a split-screen video, using footage shot by his sister, a cellist in the Iraqi National Symphony Orchestra, he demonstrates how in 2003 the US administration, instead of helping the orchestra to properly re-establish itself in Iraq, militarily airlifted the entire orchestra to Washington to perform once at the Kennedy Centre before President Bush. his film is critical of this futile propagandistic gesture, enacted in the shadow of the invasion in March of the year to promote neo-liberal values, and escape censure. The work was partially inspired by Slavoj Zizek's analysis in his Pervert's Guide to Ideology of the widespread ideological use of Beethoven's Ode to Joy from his Ninth Symphony.

Sherko Abbas Born in 1978, in Sulaymaniyah, Kurdish Autonomous Region, Iraq. Lives and works in United Kingdom. He studied Fine Art in Sulaymaniyah and graduated with Master of Fine arts at the Goldsmiths University of London in 2015. He employs the media of video, performance, text and sound in his practice dedicated to the sonic and visual memory and geopolitical situation of contemporary Iraq and Kurdistan in Particular. He has participated in many exhibitions including his work THE MUSIC OF BUSH ERA was Shown in last Iraqi pavilion (Archaic) in Venice Biennale 57th, the Bagdad mon amour in ICI Paris, Vernacularity, Alternativa International Visual Arts Festival in Gdansk, Poland and the Estrangement in showroom London, Freedom at the barricades? Vaxjo Art Hall, Vaxjo, Sweden.