Rima Najdi: Think Much.Cry Much.

Rima Najdi lives between Beirut and Berlin. She finished her Masters Degree in Performing Arts the New York University, Tisch School for the Arts, Manhattan, New York, and got her Diploma in Dramatic Arts at the Lebanese University, Faculty of Fine Arts, Hadath, Libanon.

Rima Najdi’s work occupies and (re)negotiates in-between spaces. She grapples with the ways in which identity is constructed and perceived, focusing on the lived experience of the body. She is interested in the vulnerability of the body in relation to the politicized tropes of gender, safety, mobility and representation. She thinks it is much more interesting and rewarding to change a performance process live than to have everything memorized, regurgitated, restated, reiterated, recited, parroted. Her work is thus mostly process oriented and ends with formats such as lecture performance, interventions in public space, performances, participatory installations…

More information: www.rimanajdi.com

Think Much. Cry Much.

Think much. Cry much. was created after six months of intensive research of borders. Rima Najdi made a series of artistic residencies in Maribor, Tallin, Udine, Dro, Muenchen, Helsinki … where her main occupation was searching for and researching borders – in Slovenia for example, she was researching the barb wire on Slovene border and the experiences of refugees.

The performance, which is created as a complex choreography, executed by the performance participants with help of instructions, received through a set of headphones, is a two-hour group experiment about the ways our bodies understand and execute various roles in border processes: being a refugee, a social worker, a policeman, a border officer…

Rima Najdi is one of the Urban Heat network’s artists and the theme for her performance was created and researched during the artistic laboratories, conducted by the network partners in different cities.

Welcome to Think Much. Cry Much.
A performance piece that will not change your life.
For your safety, this piece will not represent refugees, or try to create empathy towards refugees and
asylum seekers. For your security, this piece will not attempt to reach an understanding of human
suffering. It will not explain terrorism, Islam or sexual harassment in public spaces.
This piece will work to keep you comfortable, so that you don’t go through the experience of a
refugee crossing a border. You wont feel like a refugee at all. This piece will not create an emergency,
so it will not explain or offer a solution for the refugee ‘crisis’. It will not mention the word ‘crisis’ at
all.
This piece will assist you by working on border rituals, to understand borders as a construct, and on
the sound body of the borders. This piece will explain how we are all responsible for borders.
Welcome to borderlines and boundaries.
Welcome to Think Much. Cry Much.

“OK. Whatever. We’re just anti-politically romantic about actually existing social life. We aren’t responsible
for politics. We are the general antagonism to politics looming outside every attempt to politicize, every
imposition of self governance, every sovereign decision and its degraded miniature, every emergent state
and home sweet home.”
The Undercommons
Stefano Harney & Fred Moten

More information: http://www.rimanajdi.com/Think-Much-Cry-Much
Concept and realization: Rima Najdi
Dramaturgy: Nadine Vollmer
Music: Farahnaz Hatam & Colin Hacklander
Sound design: Farahnaz Hatam & Colin Hacklander
Graphic design: Maria Kassab
Technical director: Federico Nitti
Production manager: Sigurdur Finnsson
Co-producers: Centrale Fies Art Work Space, SAAL Biennaal, Baltic Circle International Theatre Festival, SPIELART festival, Bunker – Festival Drugajanje.
In collaboration with: Dialoghi – Performing Arts Residencies at Villa Manin / CSS UdineIn
The work takes place within the URBAN HEAT project initiated by FIT / Festivals In Transition network.
Supported by Creative Europe program of the European Union.

PERFORMANCES

Premiere:

23 July 2017, Villa Manin, Udine, Italy

Upcoming performances:
May 2018, Spring Festival, Utrechn, The Netherlands

Past performances: 

27 July 2017, Centrale Fies, Drodesera, Italy
22 – 26 August 2017, SAAL Biennaal, Tallin, Estonia

6 – 11 November 2017, Spielart Festival, Muenchen, Germany
15 – 17 November 2017, Baltic Circle Festival, Helsinki, Finland
28 November 2017, Festival Drugajanje, Maribor, Slovenia

Video:

Supercontinent / Drodesera / Rima Najdi “Think much. Cry much.” from Centrale Fies on