ANTWERP.- While We Count Our Earthquakes is the first solo exhibition in Belgium by internationally renowned Palestinian-Danish artist Larissa Sansour. From the losses of the Palestinian people to the persistent threat of environmental catastrophe, the exhibition delves into studies of grief, memory and generational trauma.

Sansour’s work uses speculative narratives and science-fiction methods to peer into the future.

All throughout the former Dominican church, visitors encounter the haunting voice of Palestinian soprano Nour Darwish. She is heard performing a composition by Lebanese composer Anthony Sahyoun, based on Gustav Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder and the Palestinian traditional song ‘Al Ouf Mash’al’. The aria is featured in the centrally placed large-scale videowork As If No Misfortune Had Occurred in the Night, co-directed with Søren Lind. This work depicts an Arabic-language opera on loss, mourning and inherited trauma.

While We Count Our Earthquakes also includes the acclaimed work In Vitro, first shown in the Danish pavilion during the 2019 Venice Biennale. In Vitro is an Arabic language, black-and-white sci-fi film set in the biblical town of Bethlehem, in the aftermath of an eco-disaster. The film places genetics at its core, a theme that is further expressed in the entirely new sculptural work From the Remains of Those We Lost.

Past, present and possible futures align in this exhibition. Larissa Sansour interweaves sculptural strategies with moving image, and opera with science fiction. All in an attempt to reimagine the history of her embattled home- land, a nation on the brink of annihilation.

The videoworks in this exhibition are Arabic-language with English subtitles. The central videowork, As If No Misfortune Had Occurred in the Night, has been provided with Dutch subtitles.

As If No Misfortune Had Occurred in the Night is a 21- minute, large-scale video work depicting an Arabic-language opera on loss, mourning and inherited trauma. The aria, performed by Palestinian soprano Nour Darwish, is a new composition by Lebanese composer Anthony Sahyoun. It draws inspiration from Gustav Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder, an early twentieth-century song cycle about the senseless loss of children, and the Palestinian tradi- tional song ‘Al Ouf Mash’al’.

Filmed in a derelict chapel, the opera chronicles a century of trauma. The original lyrics of ‘Mash’al’ describe a woman mourning the loss of a Palestinian man executed for having resisted being drafted into the Ottoman army. In the decades that followed, the original song lyrics expanded to encompass further disasters and exoduses, thus becoming an ever-evolving reflection of the Palestinian experience. In the spirit of the song’s evolution throughout the decades, As If No Misfortune Had Occurred in the Night introduces new verses, merging them with Gustav Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder. Throughout the aria, Mahler’s European starting point gradually morphs into the Palestinian song, blending the two musical traditions along the way.

In the film’s aria, a Palestinian mother mourns the endless cycle of trauma. What started for Sansour as a collaboration with scientists researching epigenetics led to a work around the notion of inherited trauma passed on from generation to generation. The work also raises broader questions on the ejection of Palestinians from historical time, as a people in permanent limbo, waiting for its own history to begin. In the final scene, the mother replicates a traditional Palestinian mourning ritual in which grieving women’s dresses are dyed indigo.

Surrounding the video installation, imagery from the film has been made tangible, reflecting on the operatic staging of grief and sorrow.

Majestic tree trunks hang in the church’s side aisles. Indigo- coloured fabric reiterates the traditional Palestinian mourning ritual. The intense and slowly fading pigment symbolises how mourning settles into ‘the fabric of life’ and how loss inscribes itself into the collective memory through generations.

The Arabic-language, black-and-white sci-fi film In Vitro is set in the aftermath of an eco-disaster. The catastrophe originated in and around the Church of the Nativity, revered as the birthplace of Jesus in Bethlehem. An abandoned nuclear reactor under the biblical town has been converted into an enormous orchard. Using heirloom seeds collected in the final days before the apocalypse, a group of scientists prepares to replant the soil above.

In the hospital wing of the underground compound, the orchard’s ailing founder, 70 year-old Dunia lies on her deathbed, as 30-year-old Alia comes to visit her. Born underground as part of a comprehen- sive cloning program, Alia has never seen the town she is destined to rebuild.

The conversation between the two scientists soon evolves into an intimate dialogue on memory, exile and nostalgia. Flashbacks bring back a promise that was never fulfilled. Central to their discussion is the intricate relationship between past, present and future. Setting the catastrophe in Bethlehem provides Sansour with a narratively, politically and symbolically charged backdrop. What kind of clean slate is necessary for any kind of renewal and the reimagining of Palestine?

In Vitro was commissioned by the Danish Arts Foundation and premiered at the 2019 Venice Biennale. The lead roles are played by Hiam Abbass (Dunia) and Maisa Abd Elhadi (Alia).

The newly created work From the Remains of Those We Lost is a dystopian sculptural installation that touches on several themes explored in this exhibition. It expands on the themes of genetics and inherited trauma as addressed in Sansour’s opera film, while also engaging with the post-apocalyptic concept of human cloning central to In Vitro. Unlike in the latter film, in which the protagonists seek to prevent an impending doom, this work is about the attempt to recover from it.

Positioned near the altar, this futuristic-distopian work consists of epoxy droplets in which silicon foetuses appear to float. Built-in light sources suggest a laboratory environment, lending a clinical distance to the perceived tragedy predating this act of human replication. The formal purity of the cloning droplets lend a minimalist aesthetic to the experience of loss and destruction.

The present-day decimation of the Palestinian population casts a dark shadow over this work, which has been long in the making. The sci-fi notion of cloning people, creating a new generation that needs to take over, clearly references the tremendous loss of lives. These sculptural objects will also serve as key elements in the artist’s upcoming feature film.

The early videowork A Space Exodus from 2009 is Sansour’s first sci-fi project and serves as a quirky epilogue to this exhibition. It clearly references Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and places it within a Middle Eastern political context. The iconic musical score of the 1968 science fiction film is replaced with arabesque chords, matching the surreal visuals of the film.

A Space Exodus follows the artist herself on a phantasmagoric journey through the universe, echoing Kubrick’s thematic concerns of human evolution, progress and technology. However, Sansour imagines the first Palestinian in space, and, referencing Armstrong’s moon landing, interprets this now-fictional gesture as ‘a small step for a Palestinian, a giant leap for mankind’.

The ‘Palestinaut’ planting the flag is Sansour’s satirical way of addressing the limited freedom of mobility Palestinians have. Or as is sometimes said amongst Palestinians: ‘It’s easier to reach the moon than it is to go to Jerusalem’.

Palestinian-Danish artist Larissa Sansour (b. 1973, East Jerusalem) is an internationally acclaimed video and installation artist whose multi-stranded career extends from the early 2000s to the present. Sansour started her career in painting but soon moved on to photography and video.

Her early works combined popular culture, humour and activism. Today, Sansour also focuses on political topics through science-fic- tion and experimental film narratives. She works closely with author and director Søren Lind, and most of her recent artworks have been created through this collaboration.

Larissa Sansour’s work has been shown in numerous art institu- tions around the world. She recently had solo exhibitions at Amos Rex in Helsinki, Göteborgs Konsthall in Gothenburg, KINDL in Berlin and The Whitworth gallery in Manchester, among others. In 2019, Sansour represented Denmark at the Venice Biennale. In 2020, Sansour was the joint winner of the prestigious Jarman Award. She has won several prizes for her video works and her works are part of several significant art collections.