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7th Solicitor

Performance documented by Julia Bauer

2024 · 22 min · Live Performance

7th Solicitor unfolds through seven phone calls, drawing on my encounters with the UK Home Office’s hostile immigration system. The work examines the pressure to make personal experience legible within bureaucratic processes, where decisions about what to disclose or withhold can determine an application’s outcome.

Waiting becomes a defining condition of exile, with the right to remain unresolved and plans for the future dependent on institutional decisions. Through the voice, the performance explores how these processes shape the telling of a life and reach into its most intimate details.

For years, concerns for my safety required me to conceal my queerness and restrict my artistic expression. 7th Solicitor draws on this history of self censorship, exploring how the need for protection continues to shape what I feel able to say.

Buzzcut Emerging Artist Award recipient 2022, supported by BUZZCUT, Take Me Somewhere & CCA.
Creative Scotland through the open fund.

Performers: HUSS, Caitlin Muir
Set Design: HUSS, Annie Graham
Sound: KAVARI
Styling: Oona Knox

Performances:

2024
Counterpoints x Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival
Glasgow, Scotland

2023
BUZZCUT Festival, CCA
Glasgow, Scotland

“The first solicitor hangs up in your face.

You’re told to still be hopeful.

The second solicitor interrogates you.

Mohammed Hussein Al-Chokhdar

The third solicitor denies you of your hope.

System failure.

The fourth solicitor does not view your struggles in urgency.

Come back in a month.

A day is all you have.

The fifth wants you out of his country.

Will you ever belong?

The sixth one has a fee you can never aﬀord.

Your existence is outwith your means.

The seventh solicitor entices you with opportunities that do not exist,

Smoke, Mirrors and Scammers.

Privileged men in positions of illegitimate power,

deny you of your humanity,

they do not care that you are gasping for air.

Hope is not for the faint of heart.”

Huss Al-Chokhdar

Selected Works:

The Ship That Left

Without Us (2026)

Until We Return (2025)

7th Solicitor (2023)

I’ve Stopped Understanding

Myself (2021)

And The Flowers Have

Time For Me (2020)

Meet Now (2019)

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