Naeem Mohaiemen

Two Meetings and a Funeral
88’, three channels, 2017
Courtesy of the artist and Experimenter (India)

“The Third World was not a place, but a project.” (Prashad, The Darker Nations, 2007). This was to be a utopian alliance where the Global South would reconfigure planetary leadership, ending Euro-American dominance. The Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) attempted to navigate a “third way,” but parallel participation in the Petrodollar-driven “Islamic bloc” by some member countries shredded fragile coalitions. Two Meetings and a Funeral explores a “pivot” moment between the 1973 Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) meeting in Algeria and the 1974 Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) meeting in Pakistan. The unraveling of old alliances began from a barely discernible pivot between these two groups, one that would take on world significance after the OPEC oil crisis, the Iranian revolution, and the invasion of Afghanistan.

Traveling through the residues of transnational architecture (Niemeyer, Moretti, Le Corbusier) in New York, Algiers, and Dhaka, the film considers the erosion of the idea of the Third World as a potential space for decolonization, and an always imperfect understanding of Socialism. Conversations between Vijay Prashad, Samia Zennadi, Atef Berredjem, Amirul Islam, and Zonayed Saki look at the contradictions of decolonization movements that never remembered to liberate their own leadership.

Two Meetings and a Funeral premiered at the 2017 edition of documenta 14 (Kassel), and has since been exhibited in Solidarity Must be Defended (Mahmoud Darwish Museum, Ramallah), Propositions for Pan-Peripheral Network (Metal Workers’ Union, Budapest), Na leđima palih divova (Labin Industrial Biennial, Croatia), etc.

Commissioned by: documenta 14 (Germany)

Co-commissioned by: Sharjah Art Foundation (UAE) and Ford Foundation/Just Films (USA)

Supported by: Bengal Foundation (Bangladesh); Tensta Konstshall (Sweden); Arts Council (UK)

Additional support by: Tate Films (UK)