Art, Media, Memory: Films by Isaac Chong Wai and Mohammad Shawky Hassan

The Silent Wall
Isaac Chong Wai, Hong Kong/Bosnia and Herzegovina/Germany 2014, 11 Min.

Rehearsal of the Futures: Police Training Exercises
Isaac Chong Wai, Hong Kong 2018, 18 Min.

Balaghany Ayyoha Al Malek Al Sa'eed
Mohammad Shawky Hassan, Egypt/Germany/USA 2011, 18 Min.

And on a Different Note
Mohammad Shawky Hassan, Egypt/USA 2015, 23 Min.

The performance video The Silent Wall looks at the bullet holes from the war in Sarajevo and asks how to deal with memorials of a brutal history. In Rehearsal of the Futures dancers slow down the gestures of military riot police. The effect is beautiful, strange, but familiar at the same time. Filmed a year before, it anticipates the images from the Hong Kong protests. Balaghany Ayyoha Al Malek Al Sa'eed is a meditation on the complex relationship of two brothers, exploring notions of brotherhood, mentorship, masculinity and sexuality. And on a Different Note is an attempt to carve out a personal space amid an inescapable sonic shield created primarily by prime-time political talk shows with their indistinguishable, absurd, and at times undecipherable noises.

Mohammad Shawky Hassan is a filmmaker and video artist living between Cairo and Berlin. His video And on a Different Note (2015) premiered at the Berlinale Forum Expanded and was acquired by the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York as part of its permanent collection. He is currently working on his feature-length audiovisual essay Shall I Compare You to a Summer’s Day.

Isaac Chong Wai graduated from Academy of Visual Arts at Hong Kong Baptist University with a BA in Visual Arts and Bauhaus-Universität in Weimar, Germany, with a MFA in Public Art and New Artistic Strategies. He engages themes of collectivism and individualism, geopolitics, migration, historical trauma, identity politics and public sphere. These themes are explored through range of media, including performance, installation, painting, video, photography and multimedia. He works and lives in Berlin and Hong Kong.