Distorted Reality
Interview with artist
Faisal Samra
Q:
In a statement on your work, Brahim Alaoui, previously the
director of the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris, writes:
"Art is nothing but an instrument of expression and knowledge,
which is far different from the ordinary perception of reality
that is provided by our senses. Art form is precisely the
medium of that other vision which the artist gets to realize
through his work. This alternative perception can only be
translated and conveyed by works of art." The unique
way in which art understands, interprets, and depicts the
outer world appears central to Distorted Reality.
What is your view on how reality is experienced through art?
How does it differ from the ways in which reality is absorbed
through our senses? In what ways are these differences commented
on, if in fact they are, in Distorted Reality? What
about the relationship between art and the real world? How
do you see this relation? Has it been handled at all in your
work?
A:
I firmly believe that the role of art is to expose the naked
truth, to unmask the disguised reality. Today, what we see in
the world around us is not real. Art goes beyond the fake
exterior or covering of things as we superficially experience
them. Digging past layers of pretense, it attempts to reveal the
truth that lies concealed within. In my view, one of the major
functions of art is to act as a raw documentary of its social
time. Art is, indeed, a form of record of artists' reactions to
the world that they live in. Among its main roles then is the
documentation of the feelings, perceptions, and thoughts artists
have regarding their surroundings. In such a sense, in terms of
its function, art is timeless. But in another way, with respect
to its content, art is actually time-specific. Any artwork,
after all, deals with the reality of a very particular period of
time. In fact, I would go as far as to say that there is no such
thing as purely abstract art or utter abstraction. All art is
linked to reality at some level or in a certain way. Abstract
art conveys our sensational perception of the physical world but
does so in a much more nuanced manner than its figurative
precedent. Indeed, I see abstraction as a reflection or a
manifestation of our more developed way of thinking and
perceiving. Thus, I resolutely uphold that art should remain
frank and bold about its time and that it should penetrate into
the heart of the truth.
Q:
You have talked about how artists often manipulate rather than
represent reality in their work in order to portray the real or
at least aspects of the truth. You claim, in a personal
statement written on Distorted Reality, that
the artist is a "'non made-up image producer,' who distorts
reality in a way to produce an image that unveils the hidden
truth… and that vehemently opposes and fights against existing
dolled-up images."
In your photographs and videos, you have constructed
strange and sometimes surreal compositions and happenings so as
to comment on the image in contemporary society. Can you
explain why you have opted to distort instead of directly
delineate reality in your attempt to expose what is true and
what is false? What does such an alternative approach to
expression or communication offer?
A:
To begin with, I consider my work to be documentary but only in
the indirect meaning of the word. My art does not directly log
situations or, more generally, chronicle conditions. Rather, it
indirectly documents them, as most art does, by, as I stated
previously, capturing my sensations toward, responses to,
discernments of, and ideas about the world that I inhabit. What
I did in Distorted Reality is somewhat similar to what
the Dadaists did, particularly in their ready-mades. I took
something existent - in this instance distorted imagery - out of
its functional context (advertisements, mass media, and so on)
and put it in a wholly different one (in a frame, in a gallery).
By doing so, I added another dimension to the imagery and what
resulted was an artwork.
In
Distorted Reality, I engaged in a kind of catch 22. I
constructed a warped reality in order to illustrate that the
reality that we believe to be true is actually continuously
being twisted and made-up by wide-spread image producers.
Through the performances that I carried out, I depicted what is
being done to us or, more accurately, what we are being
brainwashed into doing to ourselves. I suggest that it is not
only what surrounds us that is being altered in the process; we
ourselves are being changed as well. It is a venomous culture,
that which is being sold to us, a detrimental way of life that
we are eagerly buying into, one in which everyone is the same:
everyone walks alike, talks alike, dresses alike, and even eats
similar food. And so, by means of this obliterating lifestyle,
our identity – our unique face – is stealthily being robbed. In
Distorted Reality, I have imitated or better yet
simulated the experience of being immersed in, even a part of, a
fake reality, of being under the charm of a manufactured and
managed culture.
With
Distorted Reality, I have actually undressed a question
that has troubled me rather than expressed an idea. Above
anything else, this ongoing art project is not an articulation
of a notion or conviction but a materialization of an aggressive
– an offensive – self defense system against deceiving agents.
In short, Distorted Reality has two roles. The first,
which is realized through the form of the work, is that it
embodies my individual approach or reaction to the overwhelming
programming campaign that we are being subjected to. The second,
which is achieved through the project's general concept, is that
Distorted Reality invites everyone else to produce their
own personally tailored self-defense system.
Q:
What do you think your individual approach or self-defense
system tells about you?
A:
I suppose that answering a question like that would be somewhat
similar to psycho-analyzing myself. I think that the aesthetic
of the work that I have created and the slant that I have taken
towards its subject are playful. In Distorted Reality, I
poke fun at the hypnosis that we are undergoing and at how
hypnotized by image producers we have become. At the same time,
I think that the commentary that I make through the project is
sharp, critical, and satirical. Distorted Reality has a
sort of double personality then, mature and solemn in its
message yet childish and good-humored in its method, potentially
reflecting certain aspects of my character and of my attitude on
the whole.
I
always want for my work to be lighthearted both visually as well
as in its conceptual take. When I produce art, it is vital that
I enjoy the images that I have made, that I savor the visual
factors that I have incorporated into my work. My pieces are
generally highly formally though out and developed and yet
conceptually provocative at the same time. It is key to me that
there be something aesthetic which attracts the viewer first. I
have to catch the viewer's eye and then I can take him to other
layers of meaning. I think that this also tells something about
me, particularly about me as an artist.
Q:
It seems that materiality/plasticity has been a constant concern
in your previous artworks. In the past, specifically in the
Mu'allaqāt,
you have broken down the traditional canvas and moved away from
it, blurring the physical boundaries existent between sculptural
forms and paintings. Throughout your artistic career, you have
traversed between materials and media as well as combined them.
What of your treatment of performance, photography, and video?
How have the material qualities or natures of these media
factored into the work that you have produced with them?
A:
I think of the medium as something that is an internal necessity
of the artwork. What I mean by this is that the medium makes
demands and imposes itself on the final product. When I am
considering a piece, I invariably choose the medium which I feel
helps me most eloquently convey the concept I wish to deal with.
Sometimes I come up with a concept and then I settle on a
working medium or media and other times I decide on the two
simultaneously but I never think of a medium first and then
search for a working concept.
Distorted Reality
began with Improvisation. The idea came to me when I
realized the extent to which our lives have been invaded by fake
images and lies. I was looking outside of my car window one day
and it suddenly struck me that there was not a single meter in
my entire field of vision that was not covered with images,
advertisements, or information. Even the radio that I was
listening to was frequently being interrupted by commercials and
announcements. I woke up abruptly then and I understood that I,
among others, was being drugged, on both an aural and a visual
level, with an overdose of illusion, an illusion of an altered
reality. I immediately felt a desperate need to escape. When I
stopped and thought about what was all around me, when I really
focused on what it was that I was observing, I began to see
things more clearly. I asked myself, "What do I need to do?" and
the first thing that came to me was "I need to improvise." Then
I thought, "What are the tools that are used to distort
reality?" Ultimately, I arrived at the answer: "Images, and
above all, performance." So I decided to perform improvisations.
In the act that followed, in the performances that I put on, I
employed the same canvas as the one that I employ in painting,
but, this time, I wrapped myself up in it. It was a complete
improvisation – a spontaneous gesture. I developed this
performance for a while until, eventually, I stopped. At that
point, I thought, once again, about what to do next, about where
to go from there. I decided to take off from the performed act
that I had carried out and I began to take photographs of
various performances. Afterwards, in 2006, I started to develop
another video to complement and add to the photographs that I
had amassed.
Q:
Why has this work been called Improvisation when its
overall structure has been staged and when similar versions of
it have been performed numerous times?
A:
All artwork begins with improvisation. When the thinking process
surrounding a work starts, even before any physical labor is
made, improvisation starts. Improvisation continues until the
work is finished, regardless of the final form that it takes. In
this piece, I improvised in front of a camera. While each
gesture was being played out, I was thinking, thinking about
what my following gesture would be. However, the minute that any
one of these gestures was executed, was translated from thought
into action, was born, was also the minute in which it died.
Every action, after all, has a beginning (a birth) and an ending
(a death). As such, every gesture that I performed ended – died
- instantly. This is the peculiar nature of creation. Creation
is, in essence, a continuous cycle of construction and
destruction. Thus, any act of destruction could be viewed as an
act of construction and vice versa. On the other hand, the
minute a work is looked at or played, the gestures made within
it, and even the work itself, are resuscitated, are brought back
to life.
Q:
So you're suggesting that any gesture made in a work is revived
each time that work is viewed or watched?
A:
I believe the viewer or audience to be an integral part of
every artwork. In fact, in my view, all of the artwork, the
viewer, and the artist are active, interdependent players
in any act of artistic creation; the feat of producing a work
of art is somewhat triangular in form as every artistic undertaking
has to move and negotiate its way between these three participants.
Any creative initiative that is made is, thus, never really
final or complete. So, while it is undeniable that each artwork
contains within it something of its creator (the artist),
it also undoubtedly has an existence independent of him.
Often
times, I look at a previous work of mine and I have different
ideas about the work or what it means than the ones that I had
at the time of its making. Sometimes, I don't even recognize
myself as that work's artist just like when I look at an old
photograph of me and I do not see myself in it. This experience,
the experience of not being familiar with one's self, factors as
a central idea in the video Looking in the hole. The
video explores the almost impossibility, at present, of finding
one's true self when looking in the mirror. In Looking in the
hole, a kind of symbolic hide and seek is being played out
or performed by the inner or true self.
Q:
You have just talked about having named your work
Improvisation because, as you stated, that is how it began
and how it unfolded, yet you have also claimed that all artwork
begins with and develops through improvisation. Why is it then
that this particular piece is titled as such? Why isn't it that
any other or maybe even every other one is called so?
A:
As I have mentioned before, I believe that the initiative behind
the creation of any work of art starts with improvisation. I
chose to call this particular work Improvisation,
however, because I wanted to illuminate, by way of it, this
specific facet of artwork and image creation.
Q:
The video Improvisation consists of several takes:
"Improvisation 1," "Improvisation 2" and
"Improvisation 3." In each take, you are seen as
though cocooning yourself in canvas. Every sequence begins
with you walking on, already heavily draped in cloth and stirring,
and ends with you walking off, still draped and still stirring.
Why have you chosen to include no climactic point or major
development within the takes? Furthermore, all of the takes
are quite similar to one another with the exception of the
stark difference in their color scheme. Why the variation
in color?
A:
In Improvisation, I moved about underneath sheets of
canvas so as to create fantastical forms and imaginative
personages. For the entire duration of this performance, I was
continually thinking about the possibilities of shapes and
figures that any one movement could make. With each action I
carried out, I was consciously building on or changing a form
that a previous action had constructed; I was formulating
something new out of something that already existed. In every
single one of the takes of Improvisation, I composed my
act as I went along, blindly, for I could not see the formations
that I was making as they were being made. It was important for
me, however, to try, as much as I could, to produce a variety of
characters for aesthetic purposes. It is for these same reasons
as well that I focused on having different visual components –
diverse lighting, color schemes, perspectives, and overall feels
- in and sometimes within each take. Basically, in
Improvisation, the same concept is explored throughout in a
similar manner but with a changing physiognomy.
As for
the question regarding the lack of a climactic point or a major
change in all of the takes, each take - each improvisation -
shows footage from one filmed session. For every session, I
pressed record and then improvised in front of the camera. When
I was finished, I simply walked off and pressed stop. The
resulting footage was, of course, edited and cut down. The
reason why I chose to conduct and arrange the performances in
this way is, I suppose, related to the nature of the performed
act, which I have already talked about in detail, as something
that ends the moment it begins.
Q:
You are both the subject and the producer of most of the works
in Distorted Reality. Why have you chosen to position
yourself as the two?
A:
The motive behind this choice is actually twofold. First of all,
I wanted to establish a direct tension between the camera (the
medium) and myself (the subject). Secondly, I don’t think that I
would have come as close as I did to achieving the effects I
desired had I directed another performer, specifically because
of the highly improvisational nature of the performances that
were carried out.
Q:
It seems that the sources of the imagery that you have used in
your artistic oeuvre are never-ending: at times local and at
times global, in an instance contemporary and in another
historical. What about the imagery that you have employed in
Distorted Reality? What types of images have you utilized in
this work? Why have you chosen these particular ones? Where were
they derived from and what have they been inspired by?
A:
The outfits and objects that appear in the photographs and
videos that make up Distorted Reality are tools that I
have employed in my performances. Like an actor in the theatre,
I have many masks, costumes, and props. The choice of which of
these to use is made based on what could be hinted at through
them. For example, in one performance, I parodied the
stereotypical portrayal of warriors like Don Quixote. In this
act, I employed a fluorescent light as though it were an arm or
a sword. Of special significance is the fact that it was my
treatment of such materials in my performances that produced the
sense of motion that is so vividly present in my still
photographs.
Q:
How is the Distorted Reality exhibition held at Darat al
Funun different from the one held at Gallery XVA in Dubai in
March of 2007?
A:
The exhibition in Dubai was the first showing of the work. I
guess you could think of it as Distorted Reality I. Since
then, I have added more pieces to the project including two
video installations (Earth to earth and Looking in the
hole) as well as the triptychs of the large photographs.
Q:
How has Distorted Reality developed since Distorted
Reality I? What lies ahead?
A:
I would say that the works that I have made since Distorted
Reality I are an extension of what has already been done in
the project. I am currently working on continuing Distorted
Reality and adding other pieces to it. When this project
will end, however, even I do not know.
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