STURM AND SLANG: Hussein Nassereddin, performance, “Laughing on the River, Your Eyes Drown in Tears”, 31 May, 07:30 PM and 08:30 PM.
Hussein Nassereddine’s performance orates stories of bygone poetry, and of poets whose jaws would appear brimming with marble. The reading is set in a metaphorical garden of fountains where Nassereddine narrates improvised fabulations with specific historical references mirroring the existing link between the Arabic language, poetry and water.
During the performance, Nassereddine invite the audience to contemplate wandering during desert nights where sea waves wash over poets’ bodies, and then turn into silver shimmering atop ponds, foreseeing the glimmer on the surface of rivers, alongside which kingdoms and their luscious gardens would come to be built centuries later. Tears turn to ponds, and ponds dissipate over time. Nothing remains but the wet voice of the poet, and librarians’ records held in dry books, and historians’ reports written on papers.
Free admission.
Language: Arabic With English Subtitles
Duration: 35 minutes
Doors open at 7:00 PM. First performance starts at 7:30 PM, second at 8:30 PM
Hussein Nassereddine’s work originates from a practice around language that builds fragile monuments rooted in collective histories and resources of poetry, ruins, construction and image-making.
Laughing on the River, Your Eyes Drown in Tears, at Art Jameel, Dubai, 2023. Courtesy of Hussein Nassereddine.