Screening of 'We Have Always Known the Wind's Direction' (2019-2020)

We Have Always Known the Wind's Direction (2019-2020)
Inas Halabi
26 October 2021

The second commission in the Psychic Refuge programme is a screening of Inas Halabi's film We Have Always Known the Wind's Direction.

'We Have Always Known the Wind's Direction' has an outward subject and an inward one. Following research conducted by a local nuclear physicist, the work probes the possible burial of nuclear waste and the presence of man-made radiation, in the south of the West Bank. By placing red plastic filter sheets in front of the camera lens in various locations, different shades of red are generated to make visible the levels of radioactivity. In various ways, Halabi deliberately thwarts, withholds or delays the delivery of information, and the film comes to turn on issues of representation and conveyance. The isotope Cesium-137, invisible but deadly could be seen as a synecdoche for a more ungraspable invisibility- the systemic networks of power and control in the region- and this work as a meditation on how to account for the un-filmable but inexorable.

CREDITS
Filmmaker / producer: Inas Halabi
Edit + Sound: Inas Halabi
Sound mixing: Jacob Oostra
Length: 12 min
Countries attributed to the film: Palestine
Year of production: 2019-2020
Languages spoken: Arabic

BIOGRAPHY
Inas Halabi is an artist working predominantly with film. Her practice is concerned with how social and political forms of power are manifested and the impact that overlooked or suppressed histories have on contemporary life. She holds an MFA from Goldsmiths College in London and recently completed a two year residency at De Ateliers in Amsterdam. In 2016, she was awarded first prize for the A.M. Qattan Foundation’s Young Artist of the Year. Recent exhibitions and screenings include the Mosaic Rooms, London (2019); TENT, Rotterdam (2019); De Ateliers, Amsterdam (2019); Silent Green Betonhalle, Berlin (2019); Smith College Museum of Art, USA (2018); Alte Fabrik, Rapperswil (2018); al-Ma'mal Foundation for Contemporary Art, Jerusalem (2017); OFF-Biennale Budapest (2017), and the 13th Sharjah Biennial’s Offsite project, Shifting Ground (2017). She lives and works between Palestine and the Netherlands.