Walk–Over 1973, 2014/23

HD & SD video

The video opens with the tale of a soccer ball crashing through a man’s chest like a cannon shot, then pivots to a soccer stadium in Kalmar, Sweden, where elderly gentlemen exercise, who fled from Chile and from dictator Piniochet after the military coup in 1973. The men talk about their experiences of torture and trauma and how the Soviet team refused to show up for their World Cup qualifying match because of the coup: the Chilean side played alone, surrounded by soldiers, and won against itself. The West—it was no secret that the U.S. supported Pinochet—was the only remaining player on the field, the only true global power, without a coequal antagonist: a political parable pinpointing an epochal turning point. The senior team reenacts the game for Hiwa K’s camera. What it is like when the madness of geopolitical as well as physical horror is your—absurd—everyday reality: that is what Walk Over illustrates with oppressive immediacy.

Single channel HD & SD video, 16:9, color, sound (with English subtitles), 15:19 min

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Hiwa K

**He Who Stares at the Sky Will Go Blind!, 2018**

**0° Blind Spot, Where Beloved is…, 2017 – 2018**

**Pre-Image (Blind As The Mother Tongue), 2017**

**The Existentialist Scene in Kurdistan (Raw Materiality 01), 2017**

**Tonight This Film Will Be Broadcasted In Color, 2016**

**Nazhad and The Bell Project, 2007–2015**

**It's Spring And The Weather Is Great So Let's Close All Object Matters, 2012**

**What the Barbarians did not do, did the Barberini, 2012**

Biography

Hiwa K was born in Kurdistan-Northern Iraq in 1975. His informal studies in his home town Sulaymaniyah were focused on European literature and philosophy, learnt from available books translated into Arabic. After moving to Europe in 2002, Hiwa K studied music as a pupil of the Flamenco master Paco Peña in Rotterdam, and subsequently settled in Germany. His works escape normative aesthetics but give a possibility of another vibration to vernacular forms, oral histories (Chicago boys, 2010), modes of encounter (Cooking with Mama, 2006) and political situations (This lemon tastes of apple, 2011). The repository of his references consists of stories told by family members and friends, found situations as well as everyday forms that are the products of pragmatics and necessity. He continuously critiques the art education system and the professionalization of art practice, as well as the myth of the individual artist. Many of his works have a strong collective and participatory dimension, and express the concept of obtaining knowledge from everyday experience rather than doctrine. Hiwa K participated in various group shows such as Manifesta 7, Trient (2008), La Triennale, Intense Proximity, Paris (2012), the “Edgware Road Project” at the Serpentine Gallery, London (2012), the Venice Biennale (2015) and documenta14, Kassel/Athens (2017). A selection of recent solo shows include the New Museum, NYC (2018), S.M.A.K., Ghent (2018), Kunstverein Hannover (2018), Jameel Arts Center Dubai (2020) and Museum Abteiberg (2021). In 2016 he received the Arnold Bode Prize and the Schering Stiftung Art Award and had a solo exhibition at KW, Berlin (2017). His “Chicago Boys” project is continuously hosted by international institutions.

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