Before Falling Seek the Assistance of Your Cane (2020)

A poster at the Kunstverein in Salzburg warns of an air raid. A passer-by sees it and calls the police. They view it as an immediate threat and start to evacuate the building. But the poster is actually part of an exhibition by the media and performance artist Rabih Mroué. It reproduces a leaflet dropped over Iraq by the US Army to give notice of immanent bombing – a practice as common as it is cynical, of providing a warning before an air raid. In his non-academic lecture Before Falling Seek the Assistance of Your Cane Rabih Mroué uses the events in Salzburg as an example to raise questions about the relationship between art and public life. How can an art object be turned into an object of threat? He masterfully combines aesthetic questions with social and political realities and investigates how images and stories can be constructed and instrumentalised as fiction and reality merge.

Rabih Mroué, born in Beirut and currently living in Berlin, is a theatre director, actor, visual artist and playwright.  His works include: Hartaqat (2023), Cheers to our wishes (2020), So Little time (2016), Ode to Joy (2015), Riding on a cloud, (2013), 33 RPM and a Few Seconds (2012), The Inhabitants of images (2008), Who’s Afraid of Representation (2005), looking for a missing employee (2003) and others…