“In The Anticipation of a Future Need to Know” is a four-part video installation in which artist Ash Moniz recasts the performative rituals involved in the production of official documents and physical records. In excavating the layers of meaning behind these records, this work exposes the way human conduct - movement, speech, and action - is inscribed within the machinery of bureaucratic systems.

The different scenes tell the inter-related stories of a World Bank Loan from 1980, an agreement for a biometric passport, a corporate advertisement for a paper factory, and a supply chain scheme. When set on a stage, logistical processes that originate in factories, municipal offices, international bodies, and corporations, are stripped of their quotidian normalcy and thrown into relief.

An orchestrated series of split, decentralized videos plot how a commodity - the physical document - is transformed into a record imbued with meaning. They reflect the transition of manufactured goods into human databases that dictate mobility, identity, nationhood, and personhood.

Presented in an old paper factory, the video installation - in structure and content - dramatizes the corporeal mechanics of logistics, emphasizing the performativity of cogs and their machines.

Opening Saturday 17th of September, at 7pm
September 17 – November 1
Townhouse Factory

—

Ash Moniz is a multi-disciplinary artist, based in Cairo, and working primarily between the realms of performance, video, and installation. Moniz holds a BFA from OCAD University (Toronto, 2014) and had participated in the Mass Alexandria Independent Studio Program in (Alexandria, 2016). Most of his recent projects, work with the role of the nation-state within the politics of transportation logistics and citizenship. He was the assistant curator of the AMNUA Museum in Nanjing in 2013/14, and the director of the Boxes| Zones Quarters mobile residency/exhibition in Casablanca in 2014. Moniz has shown with galleries and museums internationally, such as Sishang Museum (Beijing), Minsheng Museum (Shanghai), Birch Contemporary (Toronto), Le Cube (Rabat), Pari Nadimi Gallery (Toronto).

This exhibition is supported by Mophradat