Manar Moursi Website
Rainbow Moon
Berlin, 2024
Rainbow Moon is a three-channel video that explores themes of fertility, transformation, and the connection between water and land. Part of the project Two Stones, and Heaven is a Fountain in the Garden of Your Veins, the piece is based on a re-enactment of the Balkan Peperuda rain-summoning ritual. Initially intended to bring renewal to the dry, disused Sredna Banya bathhouse in Sliven, this Berlin performance served as a practice run for adapting the ritual to different landscapes. Collaborating with anthropologist Nada el Kouny and artist Sera Chen, the re-enactment reflects on women's central role in environmental and cultural care. The performance weaves together communal touch and connection with Berlin’s landscape, using herbs, scents, medicinal plants, and water bodies. It re-imagines the ritual’s power to invoke fertility and moisture, highlighting healing through touch and intimacy.The three video channels depict: the making of the Peperuda plant costume and the ritual, engaging with Berlin’s landscape through embodied, tactile work; a slow-motion shot of the artist in the costume at Treptower Park’s fountain, emphasizing water and transformation; and the creation of a clay German figurine by the river, symbolizing fertility and regeneration. Treptower Park’s layered history, tied to the post-Soviet transitions of Egypt, Bulgaria, and Germany, provides a fitting setting for this exploration of land and renewal.
Vimeo links to the three channels, Channel 1, Channel 2, Channel 3