thaqil al awwal [A Rhythmic Exoskeleton]
Audiovisual Performance 45’, 2026
thaqil al awwal is an audio-visual performance that contemplates and experiments with an ancient 8- beat rhythmic cycle used as a clinical "dosage" to balance the stagnation of the Black Bile (Melancholy). Drawing on the 9th-century Al- Khindi's treatise on the cosmological mapping of the humors, preserved in the Escorial, the performance restructures ancestral frequencies and the concept of the rhythmic exoskeleton to serve as a healing apparatus rather than merely an attempt to cherish antiquity's lore. The performance proposes a sonic healing in response to the melancholic stasis inhabiting the incomprehension left by history and the remnants of defeat and grief, through gestures of ritualized rhythms, repetition, and recitation, and techniques to dispel the haunting presences.