East-West: in progress
Work in progress for new video-based work.
Research references:
Maria Hlavajova, Rabih Mroué: A BAK Critical Reader Series in Artists' Practice, BAK Publishing, 2012
Edward Said, Orientalism, Pantheon Books, 1978
Zoe Carl, Des Homes Dans le Soleil, Association Vacarme, 2015
Mahmoud "Max" Kashefi, The "Arab Spring" And Its Theoretical Significance: Samuel Huntington's "The Clash Of Civilizations" Revisited, International Review of Modern Sociology, Vol. 39, No. 1 (Spring 2013), pp. 29-51
Hatem Bazian, Islamophobia and "The Three Evils of Society", Islamophobia Studies Journal, Vol. 3, No. 1 (Fall 2015), pp. 158-166
Olivier Roy, Breakthroughs in Faith, World Policy Journal, Vol. 28, No. 4 (Winter 2011 / 2012), pp. 7-13
Edmund Burke III, A Comparative History of the Modern Mediterranean, Review of Middle East Studies, Vol. 46, No. 1 (Summer 2012), pp. 47-53
Artist references:
Trevor Paglen, Trinity Cube, 2015
Gianfranco Rosi, Fuocoamarre, 2016
Vajiko Chachkhiani, Living Dog Among Dead Lions, 2017
Kieth Coventry, Estates, 1990s
Francis Alys, REEL-UNREEL, 2011
Francis Alys, The Green Line, 2004
Lucy Mackenzie, Something they have to live with, 2013
Faig Ahmend, carpets, 2016
Topic
Overcoming media-imposed narratives of East-West (including clash of civilizations thesis) by generating alternative forms of representation. In general, this is a work on how images construct a worldview and operate politically on us. The ability to generate alternative 'narratives' through images implies worldmaking. The work will likely focus in particular on the history of image rather than a cultural critique
Motivation
Want to know how Orient sees us
Want to offer a new representation of Orient
Dig into self-fulfilling vlash of civ thesis and what strategies can be offered to counteract it
Want to know where the two come together
Questions to answer
Where does East begin both historically and geographically?
What are the cultural intersections (through Medieval Spain, etc).
A general question to pose: where do you see yourself in the other? Or, at what point could you envision yourself as part of the other's society?
Strategies of representation
Format: two screen - reflection of each other
Focus on colour and form - abstract images
Conversation between two individuals from East/West trying to overcome what they understand as East/West.
Centered on a specific historical event, or geographic point, or image i.e. finding the point at which both come together, where an image can contain both simultaneously.
Perhaps one story told from 2 perspectives or oposiving views on a historical moment
Allow moments for narrators to place images in our minds, and for images to speak for themselves - alternating between silence and image, narration and black screen.
Perhaps narration converges near end?
Abstraction - Think of more metaphorical strategies (refer to Alys and Mackenzie)
Think of other non-didactic strategies of representing
i.e. images that cross borders in globalized world
a general idea - the topic of abstraction (East/West being an abstraction) and posing a challenge to it through image making
Or through a narrator explaining an image of the other in their own words. That is, trough image making that I engage in, I arrive at an image informed by both speakers, using their own language to inform the work.
No longer just about East/Westbut making figurative our abstracted experience - an abstract pattern emerges
i.e. Coventry provides an iconography of an abstract egalitarian idea of allotments
Explore taking the image into other realms (i.e. arriving at an iconography transformed into a wallpaper design, tiles, etc.) - work no longer about a singular subject but touch upon many things forming a body.
Note: Godard and Mieville turn their production method into. Revelation of their own politics in Ici et Ailleurs - reflection on the chain of production of pictures and sound makes it possible to think about the conditions of representation.