This year’s /si:n/ Festival for video art and performance kicked off in Ramallah in an attempt to change the concept of commercial streets and display tools adopted by shops, to convert its spaces to exhibit video art and performance and transform the the whole commercial street into a single visual arts piece, dominating the visual environment of the traditional commercial street. The Festival used the main commercial street, “Rukab street", as its venue.
Public and cultural institutions jointly organised the sixth edition of /si:n/ Festival for Video Art and Performance including; A.M. Qattan Foundation, the Municipality of Ramallah, and Les Instants Vidéo Numériques et Poétiques from Marseille. The festival was inaugurated with the screening of The Image Book, Switzerland, 2018, by the exceptional French Director Jean-Luc Godard at the A.M. Qattan Foundation headquarters. The Festival was not only granted the right to screen his film, but was also gifted a special piece that was presented at the opening.
The screening was followed by the launch of “Video Art” on the main street in Ramallah. The opening ceremony also featured a performance titled ‘LOUKOUM’ by Geneviève, in which the artist invokes the beauty and richness of Middle Eastern culture and raises questions about the contemporary customs of East and West through lively discussions with the general public.
Today, at 6 pm, a children's event will take place on the main street, by children's performance group “Away from the Theatre” in Ramallah. The group will be presenting an artistic performance representing animals in shopping areas, specifically in Ramallah city centre, where the children group, aged between 9 - 13 years, will be dressed in animal masks they made themselves especially for the occasion. The group participants will also be dressed in animal costumes and embody the sounds and movements of the animals during the walk through the festival.
/si:n/ Festival was founded in 2009 by a group of institutions working in the arts and culture field in order to create spaces to display and research video art and performance practices, and encourage the creation of new forms of vision and interaction. Its creation was based on the cooperation of partner institutes to create new forms of collective cultural and artistic work that try to challenge geographical and political barriers, and seek to expand the geographic and audience base of the festival in various places in Palestine. The Festival believes in the importance of maintaining the involvement of the Palestinian society in the contemporary artistic dialogue and practices in the world, by exhibiting works by international and local artists who interact, engage, and exchange artistic practices.
In this edition, the festival aims to make multiple artistic interventions through video art and performance in the commercial centre of Gaza, Ramallah and Marseille. A crowded urban commercial area was chosen in each city, which has been historically designed and developed to attract passers-by to consumer goods and purchase displayed products in storefronts through eye-catching advertisements and offers.