THE NEGOTIATION
1/3 channel video, 38 min., English, HD video, 2010.
Produced by Haus der Kulturen der Welt Berlin, on the occasion of the exhibition „On Rage“, curated by Valerie Smith.
Cast: Jeff Burell, Laila Gray, Stephen Patrick Hannah, Hening Kober, Julia Kratz, Erol Shaker
Narrator: Nil Wach
Writers, Directors, Editors: Azin Feizabadi & Kaya Behkalam
Director of Photography: Osama Rashid
Screenings (selection):
House of World Cultures Berlin, Sheila C. Johnson Design Center NYC, Queens Museum NYC, Thomas Erben Gallery NYC, Heidelberger Kunstverein, Kunstraum Bethanien Berlin, Optica centre d’art contemporain Montreal, Framer Framed Amsterdam.
A group of international actors comes together in the set of a conference room, to read and rehearse an unnamed three act drama on an undefined revolutionary situation. In the process of the rehearsel in which the actors imagine and interpretate their characters and their context, the borders be- tween fiction, projections and biographical backgrounds become more and more blurry.
Only commented from afar by a mysterious narrator, the actors discuss, improvise and negotiate between language and the necessity for action. But to what extent can action be thought and performed beyond the inherited dramaturgical patterns that come to play on stage?