A silhouetted woman standing in front of a large window looking at her phone. Through the window you can see high rise housing blocks.
Studies on a Comfort Pillow, a video work by Joe Namy & Nour Annan for Young Shubbak’s Bayti Baytek

A note from the artists

Studies on a Comfort Pillow is an unfinished project exploring coping mechanisms for dealing with the complexities of self-care, technology, relationships, and stillness in quarantine.

Over WhatsApp messages and calls, the artists Nour Annan and Joe Namy exchanged video and sound from Beirut and London.

In these interactions, they discussed how even intimate spaces like the bedroom have been complicated and compromised by the screen.

Studies on a Comfort Pillow

For Young Shubbak's Bayti Baytek (My Home Is Your Home), six geographically remote artists that otherwise would have never met pair up and take a room of the home as their stimulus for a digital exchange process. In a rapid timeline of five days, three new works have been created.

Over a day in quarantine life, Joe Namy and Nour Annan exchange sound and video investigating their common quest for post-internet stillness.

Once an intimate space of comfort and solitude, the bedroom is invaded by incessant technological intrusions of pings and vibrations from two cities resisting a global halt. The disruptions overwhelm the artists’ desire to take pause: Namy turns to creating a lockdown sound archive, Nour captures the sights of home in a city that rests quietly after months of uprisings.

Joe Namy is a Lebanese media artist & composer based in London. He is often preoccupied with questions of memory, power, identity and technology as they relate to ‘organised sound’ and music. Nour Annan is a Beirut-based writer, photographer, and interdisciplinary artist who spends her time between the stage, paper, cameras and screen. Find out more about both artists here.

Presented by Young Shubbak with support from The Paul Hamlyn Foundation.

Details

19 May - 30 June 2020

This video is no longer available.