Adham Faramawy
February 2021
Bassem Saad, Kink Retrograde, 2019
Video, sound. 18 min 55 sec
Courtesy the artist
Music: Zeynab Ghandour aka Thoom available to listen at https://soundcloud.com/thoo-m and Pad Fut available to listen at http://soundcloud.com/pad-fut
Performer: Rayyan Abdelkhalek, with appearances by Jessika Khazrik, Veda Thozhur Kolleri, Nada Zanhour
Equipment provided by Panos Aprahamian and Ashkal Alwan Interior shots at Mkalles Warehouse, courtesy of Renata Sabella
I feel like I’ve been stalking Bassem Saad online for a couple of years now, from articles and interviews, to music, video trailers and exhibition documentation.1 We’ve never met and sadly I’ve never physically seen his sculptural works installed but I really can’t get enough of Bassem’s research or the ways he thinks through and articulates the entanglements of social, cultural and biological toxicity — interests we have in common.
1 Articles: Bassam Saad, 'No Entry Cassandra', Unbag, Fall 2019, available at www.unbag.net/in-tension/no-entropy-cassandra-2020, last accessed 27 April 2021. Interviewed by Mimi Onouha, available at www.eyebeam.org/residents/bassem-saad/, last accessed 27 April 2021 Listen to music here www.soundcloud.com/baschema. And documentation here www.bassemsaad.com/sculpture , last accessed 27 April 2021
In his video Kink Retrograde (2019), desire and threat sit on a knife edge as Bassem draws on post-colonial politics, poison, seduction and the mismanagement of waste disposal to think through relationships between individuals and the state; all played out in a landfill site in Lebanon.
The explosion at the port of the city of Beirut on 4 August 2020 shook so many of us to the core. After seeing clips of the blast and the desolation of the aftermath played over and over on social media and the news in the weeks that followed, I was numb. I took action to raise money but also I went back to Bassem’s video trailer for Kink Retrograde and his article No Entropy Cassandra several times.
The way Bassem traces out a web that links town planning to corporate interests, ecological concerns and the personal desires and behaviours of the individual gave me a prism through which to grasp how something like this disaster could happen.
Why would anyone store 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate in the port of such a densely populated place? These are the consequences of toxic bureaucracy, with the understanding that this form of extreme negligence and greed are not specific to Lebanon but common across territories. Bassem’s work gives insight into how several generations are living through and with the effects of malign policy driven by profit.
'What if before the storm or flood clears, as we lie wasted and destitute, we might in that moment hope to destitute power itself?' Bassem Saad, No Entropy Cassandra, 2020.2
2 Bassam Saad, 'No Entry Cassandra', Unbag, Fall 2019, available at www.unbag.net/in-tension/no-entropy-cassandra-2020, last accessed 27 April 2021