Thinking with Brecht

Thinking with the practice of Palestinian artist Noor Abed, this essay considers intrusion in its capacity as method, particularly in two of Abed's short films, Out of Joint (2018) and Our Songs Were Ready for All the Wars to Come (2021). Informed by Bertolt Brecht's understanding of activity, this essay interprets the movement of bodies in relation to one another as well as to the camera in each of these films, thereby placing the process of mediation—whose tensions are further evinced by montage—front and center in this analysis. Specifically, the author underscores estranging and ghosting in each film as forms of Brechtian Gestus, a gestural expression of de-individuation and reassociation on the level of the social. To eschew possible formalist reductions, the author reads the usefulness of these activities of intrusion in tandem with the conditions that invoke their necessity.