Offing

Germany | 2021 | 28 min | Experimental What narratives escape the frame of war? How do struggle and desire coexist in the frame of war, and how do those undergoing the unfathomable stress of war, in turn, consume media? Offing was produced in the aftermath of the 2021 Israeli onslaught on Palestinians residing in the Israeli-besieged Gaza strip. It engages the personal stories of Gaza-based artist Salman Nawati, against footage shot by Toukan that focuses on the tender and the mundane as acts of life. But also, on the inadequacy of representing suffering. A film by Oraib Toukan Oraib Toukan is an interdisciplinary artist, educator and scholar born in 1977 in Boston, USA, and raised in Amman, Jordan. She is currently a EUME fellow at the Forum Transregionale Studien in Berlin and was a Clarendon scholar at the University of Oxford, Ruskin School of Art, where she completed her PhD in 2019. She is the author of the book “Sundry Modernism: Materials for a Study of Palestinian Modernism” (2017) and the essay-films “Via Dolorosa” (2021), “Offing” (2021), and “When Things Occur” (2017), among others. Until 2015 she served as head of the Arts division and Media Studies program at Al-Quds Bard College, Palestine. Her works have been shown at KW Institute for Contemporary Art and Akademie der Künste in Berlin, CCA Glasgow, Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, Asia Pacific Triennial in Australia, Istanbul Biennial, and Biennale für aktuelle Fotografie at Heidelberger Kunstverein.