GOLESTAN REVISITED: PERFORMANCES (2019)

Ruquyya’s Reverberation

They called themselves the caliphates / The resurgence of Islam / They were funded by the big banks / The same ones running the heart of Sheitan - Lyrics from “Nohe for Fatin”

On the last day of August 2019 at midnight, on the first night of Muharram,  I led and organized a live ritual in association with Golestan Revisited that featured an original Nohe I wrote in English dedicated to a 10 year old martyr who was killed named Fatin. Nohe for Fatin was performed live by Jessika Kenney and Katya Hage as well as a choreographed ritual chest beating by a queer femme and gender non-binary collective.

I undertook a ritualistic self-flaggelation with zanjeer (chain flogger) as a way of deinstitutionalizing rituals of lamentation together. The stories of martyred women and femmes killed during the “neo-crusades” which I have been documenting and tracing through the larger Golestan Revisited series were projected behind on a loop throughout the 30 minute performance. The act, forbidden to be performed by non-masculine presenting people in public was also queered and performed in a nightclub, a traditional space of queer cultural meeting and organizing. A ritual of commemoration and of self-humiliation, flagellation, lamentation and sacrifice transferred from religious icons to everyday femmes, women and girls, who in their murder become forgotten.

MASOUL

This site-specific performance based in Sufi spiritual practice that made reference to accountability and self-blame took place on November 9, 2019 on the window of Track 16 Gallery overlooking out onto the skyline of the bank and power buildings of Los Angeles. Working with the in-progress Golestan Revisited database of women and femmes martyred in the wars of the current neo-crusades, I enacted a ritual of self-humiliation as ablution by using my own blood drawn the night before by a phlebotomist ⁠—specifically for the performance⁠— to hand paint roses and the names of these contemporary martyrs onto the window, appearing to be written on the skyline to glorify those whose blood has been senselessly spilled.