BEK Off-Centred: Shuruq Harb
Published
BEK is proud to announce that we have been collaborating with Kunstnernes Hus, co-producing a new film by Ramallah-based artist Shuruq Harb, as part of our remote residency programme BEK Off-Centred.
“Al-Mashrou’” is a film commissioned by Kunstnernes Hus and is co-produced by BEK for an exhibition in March 2025. Entitled “Interrupted Futures”, the show will focus the complex history and present of the Arab Development Society (ADS), a proposal for an independent Palestinian future that has been continuously obstructed.
The film is created with architectural historian Nadi Abusaada, that revisits the futuristic proposals of the ADS. The ADS was created in the aftermath of the 1948 Nakba. Its goal was initially to support the welfare of Palestinian refugees in the Jordan Valley by providing housing, agricultural opportunities and education, with the aim of fostering a sense of self-reliance away from the dependence on foreign donor aid.
Combining historical with present footage, the film oscillates between an autonomous Palestinian future and the geographic and economic fragmentation produced by the unfinished, never realised Oslo Peace Accords, which resulted in a division of the ADS estate and continues to hinder access to one of its primary sources for survival: water.
By conceiving the work in both Palestine and Norway, the work and the exhibition in Kunstnernes Hus aim to create a conversation about how these distinct distant landscapes and geographies are bound with a shared visions of the future that have now been interrupted.
SHURUQ HARB
Palestine-based artist, filmmaker, writer and editor Shuruq HARB focuses in her works on online visual culture, and traces subversive routes for the circulation of images and goods. She received the award for best short film at Cinema du Reel Festival in Paris for her short film The White Elephant (2018). Harb won the 2019 Han Nefkens Foundation – Fundació Antoni Tàpies Video Art Production Award, which provides an international platform for emerging video artists.
BEK OFF-CENTRED
BEK Off-Centred is a remote artist-in-residence programme for international artists barred from travelling. Developing new projects such as commissions, workshops, and methods, invited artists continue working in their homes or studios during the 3-month residency, while drawing on unique resources offered by BEK, from remote access to software and hardware to an interdisciplinary resource group. The programme is supported by Vestland County Council.
Image: Shuruq Harb, still from “Al Mashrou'”.