ENCOUNTERS ON THE TIGRIS
Sherko Abbas
Film (video) – Tigris River, 2022 – 2023
Discover ancient oral traditions increasingly at odds with ecological reality in this three part film documenting the music, myth and religious rituals of communities living along Iraq’s storied river.
Commissioned by Ruya Foundation for World Weather Network; part of the weather station in Tigris River & Mesopotamian Marshes, Iraq – find out more here.
Encounters on the Tigris is a films that trace artist Sherko Abbas’ journey along Iraq’s Tigris River in June and October 2022 in search of its mythical past and present ecological reality. The film presents encounters with different communities who live along the river: with farmers, fishermen, scholars and musicians who share oral histories of the river in the form of songs, anecdotes and stories that reveal how the dramatic effects of climate change across the region are interwoven with the country’s ancient culture and unique historical experience.
ENCOUNTERS ON THE TIGRIS
Beginning in the Kurdish Zakho district of northern Iraq and ending at Al Faw where the river meets the Persian Gulf in the south, Encounters on the Tigris follows a journey taken by artist and filmmaker Sherko Abbas in 2022, along the ancient River Tigris, in search of previously undocumented oral traditions and the ecological knowledge they hold.
Featuring interviews with folklorists, Quranic scholars, musicians and local communities, Abbas captures songs and stories about water that have been transmitted orally from one generation to the next for centuries. At a time when climate change is beginning to have devastating impacts across the region, the film highlights the precarity of communities who depend on the river and the interplay of environmental instability with Iraq’s recent history, revealing ancient cultural traditions increasingly at odds with new ecological realities.
ENCOUNTERS ON THE TIGRIS: PART 1 – FAYASH KHAPPOR TO SAMARRA
Beginning in Faysh Khabur in an ancient Christian church, we learn how the Tigris acted as a protective shield for communities living near Iraq’s unstable borders. Abbas then travels to Mosul to an ISIS destroyed neighbourhood where locals share folktales commonly told to children about the river, and some of the historic buildings on the riverbank, before ending this leg of the journey in Samarra where fishermen lament the river’s depletion by drought.
Encounters on the Tigris
is a films that trace artist Sherko Abbas’ journey along Iraq’s Tigris River in June and October 2022 in search of its mythical past and present ecological reality. The film presents encounters with different communities who live along the river: with farmers, fishermen, scholars and musicians who share oral histories of the river in the form of songs, anecdotes and stories that reveal how the dramatic effects of climate change across the region are interwoven with the country’s ancient culture and unique historical experience.
ENCOUNTERS ON THE TIGRIS: PART 3 – AL-AMARAH TO AL-HAMMAR
In the final film, Abbas travels by boat to Al-Amarah to discover the rich diversity of flora and fauna along the river, before travelling to Al-Hammar marshes where locals reflect on the politically motivated drought of 1991, and the ongoing effects on local communities’ socio-economic wellbeing and access to water.
Artist Biography
Sherko Abbas is a Kurdish-Iraqi artist. He was born in Iran in 1978, where his family lived as refugees. They returned to Iraq when he was two years old. Abbas studied Fine Art in Sulaymaniyah, Iraq and earned a Master of Fine Arts degree from Goldsmiths College, University of London in 2015. His work explores sonic and visual memory, with a focus on modern memory that relies on recorded materials. Additionally, Abbas is interested in the current geopolitical situation in Iraq.
Abbas’ works have been exhibited and screened internationally including at: Archaic, the Iraq pavilion at the 57th Venice biennale; Theater of Operations, MoMA PS1, New York; May Flames Pave the Way for You, Arsenal gallery, Białystok; Push Festival, Manchester , UK; Towner International, Towner Eastbourne, Eastbourne; Speaking Across Mountains, Middle East Institute, Washington D.C.; Baghdad Mon Amour, Institut des Cultures d’Islam, Paris; Vernacularity, Alternativa Festival, Gdansk; Estrangement, The Showroom, London.
Also, his moving image works were screened at the Independent Iraqi Film Festival’s online screening, the 38th Kassel Documentary Film and Video Festival in Kassel, Germany, Aashra, Ashkal Alwan Online Film, Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin at the Louvre Auditorium in Paris, the Open City Documentary Combined Programme: What Rules The Invisible in London, Visit Festival Het Bos Ankerrui 5-7 in Antwerp, Belgium, Ruya Shop in Baghdad, and Shasha Movies online streaming.
Abbas also works as a curator, organizer, and coordinator of cultural events. He was the operations manager for the “Post-war Culture in Iraq” project (2010) and curated the Clamour project (2016). In collaboration with curator Aneta Szyłak, he researched and coordinated the “In-between Worlds: Kurdish Contemporary Artists” project. This resulted in a collection of artworks from over 30 Kurdish-Iraqi artists and a book. The collection is now part of the Imago Mundi collection under the auspices of the Fondazione Benetton Studi Ricerche in Treviso, Italy.
To read more about this project please click the link below.
https://sherkoabbas.com/encounters-on-the-tigris-sound-lab/