View from Above

The camera slowly pans the ruins of a war-torn city. The artist’s voice-over tells the story of the deserter M, who fled from a "safe zone". To avoid being deported back, M must convince interrogators of a background in the city of K, where he has never been. A model of the German city Kassel, destroyed in the Second World War, forms the background for a timeless story of rightlessness and identity loss in the wake of conflict. Hiwa K uses performance, film and installation, often in a collective process. The script for this piece is by the artist Lawrence Abu Hamdan, whose practice explores the "politics of listening" – the relevance of the individual’s testimony and the transaction with the listener. The artists share the experience of exile, Abu Hamdan as a Jordanian living in Lebanon, and Hiwa K with a background in Iraqi Kurdistan.