Congress of Idling Persons features five interlocutors who play themselves and greater fictions amid broader transhistorical narratives. In the shadows of recent world-historical events, artist and writer Bassem Saad, DJ and translator Rayyan Abdel Khalek, musical artist Sandy Chamoun, writer Islam Khatib, and organiser Mekdes Yilma examine a cartography of protest, crisis, humanitarian and mutual aid, migrant labour, and Palestinian outsider status. Punctuated by the late Arab Spring and the Black Lives Matter revolts of 2020, as well as by the Beirut port explosion, the film weaves through transhistorical constants, from collective rage to mutualism, propelled by the speech and acts of its performers. With this work, Saad asks: If a group action is a riot and not a revolution, then who films it? If four is a riot, is it also a congress?
The work was commissioned by transmediale with the support of the Martin Roth-Initiative.
Bassem Saad is an artist and writer born on 11 September and trained in architecture. His work explores objects and operations that distribute violence, pleasure, welfare, and waste. Through video, sculpture, and writing, he investigates and records strategies for manoeuvring within and beyond present systems of governance.
