Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme's Digital Postscript Explores Loss and Erasure

Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme, artists based in New York and Ramallah, launched the online project 'May amnesia never kiss us on the mouth' in December 2020 as part of Dia Foundation's Artist Web Projects. The first chapter, 'Postscript: after everything is extracted,' is a twenty-minute web-based work that begins with a postscript, referencing the displacement and forced exile of Palestinians. The project, co-commissioned with MoMA, takes its title from Roberto Bolaño's 'Infrarealist Manifesto' (1976). It incorporates recordings from the Arab Revolutions of the 2010s that the artists saved and screenshotted, many of which have since been removed from the internet. The work features pop-up windows with texts, videos, and sounds, including footage of protests in Palestine, Syria, Yemen, and Iraq. The artists conceived the postscript structure during the COVID-19 pandemic when they were stranded in New York, unable to return to Palestine. The project includes two avatar figures based on low-resolution images of protesters from the 2018 March of Return demonstrations near Gaza, processed through avatar-generating software that interprets pixelation as scars and injuries. The work also features performances by Palestinian dancers and electronic musicians such as Makimakkuk, Haykal, Julmud, and Rima Baransai. A physical exhibition will open at MoMA on April 23, 2022, and later travel to Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst in Zurich and The Common Guild in Glasgow.