Distorted Reality
Faisal Samra
Saudi Artist
Improvisation, a video made in 2005, is the first
work that I produced in the ongoing series Distorted Reality.
Its underlying concept evolved from an understanding of the
performed act (the gesture), the camera, and the computer
as tools which are employed to create the warped images that
make up the hypothetical
(illusory) reality that we live in, a reality that has been
twisted and contorted. These tools are continuously (ab)used
in commercials and advertisements as well as by politicians
and the mass-media. The distorted reality that results from
their misuse or manipulation is parallel to that of our actual
lives but is also, in several ways, in control of it. This
skewed reality takes over our lives through its agents' artful
handling of the universally known "free" market
– through their orchestrated treatment of supply and
demand. The catch in their conduction of the market is that
supply, in fact, determines demand and not the other way around;
supply dictates demand through the constant increase in the
variety of available products as well as in the multitude
of ways in which these products are presented as offering
solutions to the problems that riddle our daily lives. The
never-ending and unremitting proliferation of goods turns
us eventually, over time and with developed habit, into addicted
users. And so, in truth, it is that with the current surge
in supplied products, there is a reactionary surge in demand
and not, as the traditional market theory states, that as
supply increases, demand decreases naturally. Alas, the
hellish cycle of contemporary
economic chaos
has already been set into frantic motion.
Initially, the question was: How can I use these same tools (the
performed act, the camera, and the computer) to create an
alternative hypothetical reality, one which rejects the reality
we are immersed in without immediately reducing itself to a set
of clichés that are an almost certain product of direct and
impassioned rhetoric? This is, after all, what happened with the
social realist art that emerged in the Soviet Union, the art of
a movement which aimed to fight against the capitalist system
but did so in an overly direct, self-promoting manner, a manner
ridden with excessive and exaggerated communist propaganda.
The answer
to this question was the production of an artwork that simultaneously
contained within it a personalized self-defense system - insinuated
at through the distinct approach taken towards the subject
of the work - as well as a statement emphasizing the necessity
of collective resistance - expressed through the overarching
concept of the piece; In other words, the answer was to create
a work of art that would instigate every individual, if possible,
to produce his own self defense system, a shield against the
visual, mental, and psychological campaigns being waged against
us day after day, whether we are aware of them or not.
Based on
this, I began by placing a video camera at a fixed point,
and I took to improvising performances in front of it using
a sheet of canvas, the same canvas as the one I normally paint
on, to construct theatrical characters. I destroyed the characters
I made instantaneously - the moment they were born - in order
to build new ones from their ruins.
Every
performed act, every gesture, has an open beginning (open onto
that which has preceded it) and an open ending (open onto that
which ensues). The performed act, in this instance, was the
folding of the canvas around my head and face to fashion a
turban and veil. The collection of turbans and veils that I
created became like masks, each of which was born from the womb
of another.
I ended up
with a long video of improvised acts from which I selected three
to present in this work. Each of the three acts exhibits
different aesthetic, specifically color, qualities.
Note: I believe
that the symbolic link between turbans, veils, masks, as well
as the act of masking and the effect being engulfed by an
encroaching hypothetical (illusory) reality is obvious.
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Improvisation,
2005,
video, 9'58"
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Where
does video art end and cinema begin?
Gilles Deleuze
discusses in his book Cinema 1: The Movement-Image
a statement that I wished to cite in this commentary
as a source for my views on the incorporation of the
moving picture into the visual arts by means of the
latter's adoption of the video or cinematic camera.
Deleuze says
that in the beginning, in cinema, images were recorded/captured
from a fixed point and, as such, the direction of the
video camera during shooting was one with that of the
film projector during screening for the projector was
placed at a fixed point as well.
I interject
here to say that this early period in the beginning
of dealing with the moving picture (or picture of movement)
is what appeals to me most in that what transpired then
was appropriated by video art. In other words, video
art is always filmed from a fixed camera. Indeed, video
art ends here, with this development. Deleuze adds that
further progression of cinema came with the introduction
of the moving video camera and, consequently, the separation
of the once-fixed point from which a video was shot
from the point from which it was projected. This is
where cinema really begins...
On this basis,
the direction in which any of my video art pieces is
projected is always the same as that in which the video
camera was pointed during its filming. It is for this
reason that the videos Earth to earth and Looking
in the hole are projected onto the floor and not
the wall. This was, after all, the way in which they
were shot, with the video camera pointed towards scenes
unfolding in/on the ground.
The idea
I wish to emphasize most, however, is that the choice
to use moving pictures in a visual art piece or in what
has been labeled as "video art" should derive
from an artist's urge to document his senses or express
his idea more intensely and not from a desire to narrate
or maybe even entertain as is the case with cinema.
I envision the difference between video art and cinema
to be similar to that between poetry and the novel.
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The circumstances
surrounding the making of Earth to earth
and Looking in the hole:
-In the beginning,
there was Earth to earth. The preliminary plans
for its production go back to 2006. Changes and revisions
continued to be made until mid-2007 when its execution
began. I needed a hole as deep as the length of a man
so that I could carry out the scene in which a head
emerges from the earth (as required by the scenario).
For a few days after the hole was created, I stared
into it and I mentally questioned the possibilities
for the scene, doing exactly as I do when I look at
a blank piece of paper or stretch of canvas. It was
at this point that the idea for my next video Looking
in the hole was born. As the title suggests, that
is precisely what happened when I initiated work on
the piece immediately after having finished Earth
to earth: I looked in the hole…
Because of
their linked production, I think of Earth to earth
and Looking in the hole as twins that make up
one installation and that are to be displayed within
a single installation space.
- Earth
to earth is a reminder of the cycle of the actual
reality of humans in juxtaposition with the hypothetical
(illusory) reality we live in and identify with.
- Looking
in the hole signals that a gap has developed in
our mental and visual memory so large that we now no
longer see our true selves when we look into the mirror;we
see our masks instead.
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