Beast Type Song

Beast Type Song is cast against the science fiction backdrop of a solar battle, as evoked by Etel Adnan in her 1989 war poem, The Arab Apocalypse. In the poem, Adnan uses drawings and symbols to communicate what cannot be expressed in words. Similarly, Al Maria explores the revision of history through graphic and bodily gestures. When words cannot express trauma, a new language of drawings, movement and music gives voice to the speechless. The protagonists reflect on the narrative and languages they have inherited as children of various colonial legacies. Each figure encounters some form of violence either through the hostile gaze of the camera or through the imposition of narrative. We are told stories of a violence inflicted on the body, but at the same time are asked to consider the violence of the storytelling itself. In Beast Type Song language, education and writing are interwoven in an examination of the erasure and revision of identities and histories past and future. By weaving together music, literature, oral history, film and dance, the film serves as an escape route from the repetition of dominant narratives of an oppressive past. The work features performance by Yumna Marwan, Elizabeth Peace and boychild, as well as Al Maria herself.

Sophia Al Maria

2019

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