Like An Event In A Dream Dreamt By Another—Rehearsal

In RPGs (role-playing games), one could say that real life can be rehearsed in a superstitious manner, with supernatural beings and worlds. Since the emergence of computer processing power and video games, the third world has been a source for world-building and a space in which to apply game operations. Those games are not isolated from the sociocultural and political environment that they are developed in. However, third-world gamers, developers, streamers, and hackers have managed to modify those games and apply their own hyper-reality in order to rehearse their world. This project explores how Palestinian players, GTA mods, and servers are simulating real life under colonial rule. Like An Event In A Dream Dreamt By Another - Rehearsal examines Los Santos as a corollary to Palestine.

Commissioned by the Singapore Art Museum.

Firas Shehadeh
 

Firas Shehadeh is an artist. His work explores world-building, meaning, aesthetics, and identity. His practice investigates the post-colonial condition through the lens of technology, history, digitalisation, and speculative realities. Working across film, video, and sound, Shehadeh conducts a sustained inquiry into the ways narratives and identities are constructed, contested, and mediated within contemporary society. He holds a master's degree in Fine Arts from the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. Shehadeh's work has been presented internationally at festivals and institutions including the 14th Mercosul Biennial (Brazil), the London Short Film Festival, Centro de Cultura Digital (Mexico), Beta Festival (Dublin), Beursschouwburg (Belgium), Soft Centre (Naarm/Melbourne), Images Festival (Toronto), B7L9 (Tunis), Los Angeles Filmforum, Ashkal Alwan (Beirut), unsafe+sounds (Vienna), the 7th Singapore Biennale, Santa Mònica (Barcelona), A.M. Qattan Foundation (Ramallah), 7th Cairo Video Festival, 4th Digital Marrakech and the 64th Berlinale (Berlin). Through his multifaceted practice, Shehadeh examines dominant paradigms and offers new perspectives on meaning-making and world-building.