Taking the contemporary moment in Palestine as a starting point, New York and Ramallah-based artists Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme address the eclipsing of political radicality and the search for a new political imaginary in the first US presentation of their sprawling, multi-segmented installation The Incidental Insurgents (2012–present). In The Incidental Insurgents: The Part about the Bandits and Part II: The Unforgiving Years, the first two chapters of their trilogy, Abbas and Abou-Rahme fold Jean-Luc Godard into Roberto Bolaño into Victor Serge, using a suspiciously slick video component and a convoluted script made of sampled text and images. The installation was most recently exhibited at the 2014 Bienal de São Paulo.

This exhibition also serves as an incubator for the third and final chapter of the project. In line with their archive-based, research-driven practice, Abbas and Abou-Rahme will utilize the vast resources available at ICA through the University of Pennsylvania and other Philadelphia institutions to further develop Part III, which will debut at the Sharjah Biennial in March 2015.

This exhibition is organized by Assistant Curator Kate Kraczon, and will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue. The exhibition will be preceded by a related workshop organized in collaboration with Alex Klein, the Dorothy and Stephen R. Weber (CHE’60) Program Curator.