Kaelen Wilson-Goldie on Bassem Saad's Congress of Idling Persons, 2021
THE SET OF BASSEM SAAD’S assured, playful, and provocative video Congress of Idling Persons, 2021, is strewn with the accoutrements of pandemic and protest: a tent, a table covered with onions, a spirometer (for testing lung capacity), bottles of medicine that a young woman compulsively cracks open and closes. Some of the objects are for aiding a patient’s recovery from illness, others for enduring protracted demonstrations or mitigating the effects of tear gas. Shot in part inside the theater of a much-loved Beirut cabaret, Congress meticulously braids together three tumultuous events, fo...
Source: artforum.com