In 2014, Rima Najdi performed the intervention known as “Madame Bomba: The TNT project” in her hometown of Beirut. Feeling the need to act and open a conversation about anxiety and fear caused by suicide car bombings and pervasive violence everywhere she wore a fake cartoon TNT bomb around her chest while roaming the streets.
Taking off from this action, “Happy New Fear” blends elements of experimental music, sound art, visual projections and live radio drama as it follows Madame Bomba and her search for her lover in the city, a stranger who exists in the collective consciousness and of whom everyone is afraid of. Using audiovisual material sourced directly from Beirut, Najdi maps out Bomba’s walks, her negotiation of her own fear of walking as a breathing bomb.
The work explores the feeling of being alone, inadequate, and to confront the illusion of having control over one’s fear. The story reflects how violence is not only direct, explosive and spectacular, but structural, gradual and anonymous, targeting everyone. Together with musician Kathy Alberici (of Drum Eyes fame) and visual artist Ana Nieves Moya, Najdi aims takes us through an environment of emotions, their multiplicity, their uncertainty, and the contradictory nature of their temporality.
Commissioned as part of the CTM Radio Lab, led by CTM Festival and Deutschlandfunk Kultur – Radio Art / Klangkunst in collaboration with Goethe-Institut, ORF musikprotokoll im steirischen herbst, Ö1 Kunstradio, and The Wire magazine.