“How to Make a Mask” + “Sand in the Eyes”

How to Make a Mask is a scripted monologue accompanied by images that put various modes of subjectivity into play. The text is delivered by a single performer who introduces among other things the Big Five personality test, which is used by companies to choose among job applicants. It is believed that this personality test can be a predictor of future performance outcomes. The text reflects the individual in the collective sociopolitical situation through references of theatre theory, to make-up tutorials. The performance also refers to the growing exposure of individual data on social media, its manipulation by big data resource companies and its bio-political consequences on human and non-human actors and their construction of private and public subjectivities.

Sand in the Eye, by Rabih Mroué

A non-academic lecture by Rabih Mroué
In English

For many years, Rabih Mroué has been dealing with images of violence, the mechanisms of martyrdom worship and political propaganda. He collects, disassembles and overwrites materials and creates stage works, installations and texts. In them, he questions how images and stories are constructed and instrumentalised. During summer last year, the Lebanon-born artist began research on videos to recruit Islamic extremists in Hessen, Germany. He collected images and held talks with the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution in Germany. These form the material for his work Sand in the Eyes. The focus is on videos especially tailored to the viewing habits of young people. But it also reaches the limits of what we want to see and can endure. What do these videos reveal about those who produce them? And how do they succeed in recruiting young people for terrorist causes?