Salih Albarrak is a designer based in Riyadh, he has a profound interest in the overlap between storytelling, alchemy, and design. This journey has allowed him to construct a fabric of works and techniques, effectively capturing the essence of speculative social and political structures that reside on the fringes of reality.

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Salih Albarrak is an architect/artist based in Riyadh, he has a profound interest in the overlap between storytelling, alchemy, and design. This journey has allowed him to construct a fabric of works and techniques, effectively capturing the essence of speculative social and political structures that reside on the fringes of reality. 

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 What Comes After? (2022) 


performance + video + sound (collaboration with Balqis Alrashed)



What Comes After? is an experimental, performative/music project that documents, dissects, and reconfigures the process of spontaneous production using fictional rituals inspired by a tale that acts as the foundation for the performance. The collaborative work involves participants taking on their roles and operating simultaneously. Each has assigned characters which correspond to their purpose in the flexible, dramatic, and at times, hypnotic performance. The participants attempt to homogenize and harmonize, actively using each other as signals to tap into altered states of consciousness collectively through music, dance, and poems.

The performance takes place at night, where the two participants settle in a large, empty space for a private performance. This seclusion allows the performers to be intimate with one another as they attempt to unravel the strange ties between identity, death, and loss. It is divided into parts, each mimicking a snippet of a lossful tale. The experimental project is an attempt to execute the complexities of mixed performances with lower levels of agency. The performers are influenced by each other, using their fellow’s role as energetic inputs to give subtle tonic depths to their roles within the main sequence.