"Paradoks - Festival for Video Art at the edge of documentary" 2026 at UT Connewitz Leipzig
Resonance in Resistance
2026, 3-channel-installation, 12 min. 41 sec., 5.1
In a 3-channel experimental music video installation (loop), two drag* performers and a classical opera singer en travesti sing, perform and lip-synch in an abandoned theatre hall. Each presents a song from experimental soul, Arabic electro, and a classical opera aria written for cross-gender casting, addressing queer love, identity, and their societal constraints, while confronting specific power structures and articulating forms of resistance across personal, cultural, and historical contexts. At the same time, the political and cultural narratives embedded in these musical genres intersect, creating a solidaric dialogue across cultural, political, and gender identities.
Each piece engages with specific power structures and forms of resistance. Mozart’s aria “Non so più cosa son, cosa faccio” expresses the confusion of newly awakened queer desire and questions of gender identity within the framework of an opera that reflects resistance to aristocratic power by casting servants, rather than nobility, as its protagonists. "RDMRDM" by Queer Falafel feat. Blast explores queer love shaped by religious restriction and postcolonial structures in West Asia, intertwining electronic dance music with melodic material drawn from well-known Arabic folk songs and in this way reclaiming the genre from its white, male-dominated mainstream through a queer decoonial lens. „Soaked in Sin“ by Mandhla Ndubiwa approaches queer and trans* identity through the legacy of Soul music as a political genre shaped by the civil rights movement.
Separated across three screens, the performers listen and respond to one another through dance, movement, and lip-sync, becoming resonant bodies for each other’s performances. Performed individually and simultaneously, the songs form both collective and personal moments of resistance.
Attention is drawn to the desynchronization between lip-sync and pre-recorded voice: small hesitations, misplaced breaths, and delays reveal a relation marked by interruption and temporal lag. In lip-syncing each other’s songs, the performers approach their self through the voice of another, embodying borrowed speech as an act of attentive listening and relational becoming.
Cast: Queer Falafel, Mandhla Ndubiwa, Idunnu Münch
Concept, directing, editing: Binha Haase
Music: Queer Falafel feat. Blast, Mandhla Ndubiwa, W.A. Mozart
Director of Photography: Ginan Seidl
Camera: Tim Nowitzki
Camera assistant: Merlind Papke
Sound recording: Jonathan Richter
Costume design (Idunnu Münch): Nari Haase
Hair and Make up (Idunnu & Queer Falafel): Antina Christ
Set manager: Pata Popov
Music postproduction recording: Lukas Kowalski/Emil studios Berlin
Strings: Meike-Lu Schneider, Rebecca Beyer, Xina Hawkins, Stefano Cucuzzella
Sound mixing: Jochen Jezussek
Color Grading: Desiree Pfenninger
Dramaturgical advice: Daniela Kinateder
supported by Werkleitz e.V.
