WE'RE BACK! | Moheb Soliman
WE’RE BACK!
22 min film
by Moheb Soliman
with Josh Theroux, composer
and James Irwin, Matthew Million, and Allan Luchenitser
“We’re back! We told ‘em /
Where the hell from? They yelled back /
Where the hell to?”
Florida Georgia Line meets David Lynch in this “conceptual country music video” that spins out multiple meanings of country as a homeland, nation-state, and music genre.
Not much happens to a boy trio from State, but bliss in fine country form (and a hick-hop interlude), while a fourth outsider from nowhere chases their fantasy into the real world and right off the edge. As much earnest as absurd, performance art and spoken word, WE’RE BACK! dwells in the paradox of being authentically American, with first-generation immigrant and interdisciplinary artist Moheb Soliman employing four life-long friends who are actually “from here” as his surrogate country boys in pursuit of a place in the sun next to diverse, and identical, others.
The project complicates the all too obvious problems of romanticizing America with the transgressive, intimate desire to belong to and embody it nonetheless, as many immigrants wish to do in claiming and making home where they have no roots. In WE’RE BACK!, bro country, football mascots, and cowboy poetry are the place this all plays out, a place that swallows up the heartland and maybe everyone in it—can play, cuz
“this truck’s gotta fit a few hundred million… /
We gotta bring everyone in the dominion… /
Or we’re never gonna make it, in our opinion!
Free, no tickets required.
Duration 22 mins.
Join us Tuesday, May 30, for an artist talk with Moheb Soliman exploring his process, the project, and his time in residence at the Momentary.
