Watch Soapy Postmodern Bathwater a short film (24 minutes) produced by Fehras Publishing Practices for the Sharjah Biennale 13 Tamawuj. The film takes the viewer into a not-so-distant future, to a language laboratory where researchers analyse the bodies of people who have collapsed while reading bilingual art books. The film is a part of the series of Institutional Terms; a long-term research project that follows the impact of the language, term, and institution on global artistic practices.

Soapy Postmodern Bathwater tracks a strange phenomenon that has led intellectuals, artists, curators, and exhibition visitors into physical paralysis and to become comatose. Using an analytical laboratory process, the film studies the effect of bilingualism on cultural bodies, which begins with the bifurcation of the bilingual body and leads to the subject to fall into a coma. It traces the authority imposed by language – the construction of terms and institutions – on the cultural body and examines the effect of language on artistic practice and artwork.

This screening weekend is co-presented with Berlin Artistic Research Grant Programme.