Organised by Whitechapel Gallery
Ahead of the live event on 1 July, On Akka’s Shore will be screened for free here from 25 June – 2 July 2021.
Migration across water can come at great cost. Lebanese born artist Umama Hamido‘s essay film explores the chaos of memory in relation to personal and collective history; a meditation on a past, present, and future that has been continuously disrupted; from Palestine to Beirut to London. Here the water is both material and also a form of imagistic vessel, carrying a life, identity and belonging in flux. Hamido will be in conversation with Andrea Luka Zimmerman.
On Akka’s Shore is a fictional memoir of Umama and her friend Tareq Al Jazzar based on hallucinations, dreams and out-of-body experiences, scenes slip between Akka in Palestine, a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon, Hamido’s city of birth, Beirut and London, their current home. On Akka’s Shore takes us on an exploration of the chaos of memory in relation to personal and collective history.
“Yesterday I dreamt that I was flying over the streets of Beirut. I was my camera, my body and my eye and all of me was one with the lens. You asked me how it was. I told you, the feeling resembles everything in it. Do you think places get stuck in time when we leave them?” – Umama Hamido
On Akka’s Shore was supported by Jerwood Charitable Foundation, Pacitti Company and Artsadmin.
This event is part of our season Ways of Knowing: Water / Fluidity.