Nabati
video essay and urban performance, 2016
With: Lorenzo Gerbi
Commissioned by KINGS Artist-Run, Melbourne and developed
as a part of the project Starting Point
Realised with the support of the City of Melbourne
2016 Arts Grants Program
‘Nabati: A Lap Of The Realties Of Present-day Melbourne’ is a video tour which deals with colonial and neo-colonial migrations that underly the construction of Australian national identity. In a patchwork of apparently mismatching elements, the four chapters organizing the tour draw attention on the unseen connections of Australia with the Arab and Persian worlds in the areas of sport, land, defence and borders. By looking at different typologies of journeys and transformations that span from uranium to DNA, and from humans to weapons, Nabati follows the movements of different foreign agents and how they contribute to moul Australian sovereignty and economy. The project is thus twofold: if on one side it posits national identity as a process and not as a fact, on the other it questions the parameters that regulate the construction of the foreign.