When adjusted to darkness

Racha Baroud et Kinda Hassan

Live performance

maison Folie Wazemmes, Lille
45 minutes
Pass Latitudes
Première Française

When Adjusted to Darkness is a hybrid performance built around a sound composition that explores the resonances and contradictions within Kinda Hassan and Racha Baroud as they grapple with the questions raised by war and exile.

They meet in France in September 2024, at a time when the Israeli aggression against Palestine and Lebanon massively intensifies. The war forces them to confront their identities, their choices of exile, and the impact these events have on the most intimate aspects of their lives. Accompanied by an automaton—part machine, part musical instrument—the piece uses sound, voice and physical and mechanical movement to echo the current events in their region, which we consume and which consume us. Born of the urgent need to express through the body, sound and voice what words can no longer convey, When Adjusted to Darkness is conceived as a moment of pause, a sigh at the heart of history’s inexorable march. In the shadows, the duo creates a dense and fragile space, at the heart of the powerlessness and loss that events impose upon us. A suspended interstice between the collapse of our inner worlds and the necessity to keep building.

Accessibility disclaimer :

→ dialogs are in arabic and in french, with french subtitles

With the support of Lieux Culturels Pluridisciplinaires de la ville de Lille

Biography(s)

Kinda Hassan is a composer and artist based in Paris whose practice spans sound, video, craftsmanship, and software programming. Her works have been presented at numerous festivals, museums, and art spaces, including the Résonance Festival in Marseille (MuCEM), Propagations (GMEM), Le Mans Sonore (Biennale du Mans), Cannes, the Berlinale, Oberhausen, Jihlava, Transmediale, La Maréchalerie, MUMOK in Vienna, Casa Árabe in Madrid, as well as other art spaces, festivals, and platforms across Europe, North America, and the Middle East. Hassan received an MFA from the Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts (ALBA) in 2007 and a Master’s degree in Sound Design from ESAD–TALM Le Mans in 2018. Since October 2024, she has been undertaking an artistic doctoral research project focused on the construction of automated instruments as an electroacoustic compositional practice. She has collaborated extensively as a sound designer and composer on numerous video, film, and performance projects.

Racha Baroud is a Lebanese performer and stage director. Alongside a Master’s degree in Theatre Studies at Sorbonne Nouvelle University, she joined Jacques Fontaine’s Atelier du jeu in Paris. She continued her training with a focus on body and voice at the Grotowski Institute in Poland, and further developed her performative practice with various masters across Europe, notably Irena Tomazin and Theodoros Terzopoulos.

Racha Baroud’s work revolves around death, memory, and intimacy. In 2015, she staged Today Was My Birthday in Paris, a musical tribute to Tadeusz Kantor’s Theatre of Death. In 2020, she co-directed the documentary Ali, Hachem and Khaled with filmmaker Roy Arida. In 2022, she presented her theatre piece What If Those Tears Were Not Only Mine? in Beirut. In 2023, she began a performative research project on the question of erasure with patients at the Malévoz psychiatric hospital in Monthey, Switzerland. She is currently working on her next performance, When Adjusted to Darkness, in collaboration with composer Kinda Hassan, with whom she now forms a duo focused on the creation of sound-based performances. Since 2019, she has been a member of the team at Studio Amalgam, a space dedicated to the performing arts in Beirut.

Performer and director Racha Baroud and music composer Kinda Hassan form a performative sonic composition duo. Their backgrounds mirror and refract. Kinda left Lebanon to build a life in Europe. Racha, born in France but tethered to Lebanon, is perpetually split. They met in France in September 2024 while the Israeli aggression on Palestine and Lebanon was massively escalating. War forced them to confront their identities, their choices, and the most intimate aspects of their lives. Onstage, they create a third space—a territory where sound and movement could hold their resonances and contradictions.

Credits

Production, creation and interpretation :Racha Baroud and Kinda Hassan

Dramaturgy consultant and lighting : Karol Jarek
Set design consultant: Riwa Baroud
Software and hardware engineering: Mr Stock
Carpentry: Tasos Perigiannis

Co-produced by: Mir Festival – Athens

With the support of: Dansomètre – Vevey, Amalgam Studio-Beirut, Grotowski Institut, Zico House, Rencontres Chorégraphiques Internationales de Seine Saint-Denis, Rakha Textiles