Connecting people through art 

The MCAD in Manila and the NTU Centre for Contemporary Art in Singapore present The Jump, the new video work by Shuruq Harb.

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The Jump is the outcome of Shuruq Harb winning the Han Nefkens Foundation – Fundació Antoni Tàpies Video Art Production Award 2019, in collaboration with the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design in Manila; the NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore; WIELS in Brussels, and Jameel Arts Centre in Dubai.

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Set within the tectonic rift of the Jordan Valley and weaving multiple storylines that are joined through a robotic narrator, 'The Jump' explores the psychological terrains of leaping into the void.

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Dizzying shots of the sublime landscape that itself becomes a protagonist in the story are interwoven with intimate monologues. The idea of jumping into the unknown is paralleled to a rush to take a chance, the physical thrill it entails, and how our perception and sense of time can radically shift in an instant. When we jump, we are in the moment yet outside of time, between acceleration and suspension, defying while adhering to gravity and the laws of nature. The fearless jump as a desire for adventure, a wish to fly, a longing for freedom.

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Interested in acceleration, history, survival, and escapism in relation to narratives that provide agency in thinking about the future, the artist looks at the possibility of storytelling through fragmentation. She views fragmentation as a technological condition of our contemporary era— the way we navigate our lives virtually online through our devices, our condition of short attention spans. It also references the condition of geography and history as a Palestinian. Without giving up on the possibility of narratives, the artist is committed to finding new ways of narration that present sound and image without the total blur and abstraction of the human subject.

Shuruq Harb is an artist, filmmaker and writer. She is the co-founder of several independent art initiatives such as ArtTerritories (2010-2017) and The River Has Two Banks (2012-2017). Her artistic practice focuses on online visual culture and traces subversive routes for the circulation of images and goods. Her film The White Elephant received the award for best short film at Cinema du Reel Festival in Paris, 2018, and was shortlisted for the Hamburg International Short Film Festival, 2019. Most recently she published her first short story “and this is the object that I found” (2020) at Mezosfera. Her upcoming solo exhibition at Beirut Art Center brings together for the first time several of her artworks in one exhibition.