Light-Meter | 2015 – Parking Video Library

Curator:
Amirali Ghasemi | Parking Video Library

Statement:

There are two ways of spreading light: be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.
Edith Wharton

About two years ago, I met Marlies Poshl in Tehran, an enthusiastic Film/video maker who came for a one-month Residency at the Austrian Embassy. The encounter caused a series of conversations that led to further collaborations. Next year during the 5th edition of the Limited Access Festival, we had the pleasure to invite two members from Golden Pixel (Marlies Poshl and Nathalie Koger) to curate a screening program from Vienna. The vanishing point was a response to that invitation. Now LIGHT-METER is a counter program curated from Parkingallery’s Video archive. Iranian artists question the notion of «Light» in parallel to their various concerns and perspectives using everyday objects to Music and from performance, found footage & Animation to Music.

How can we remember the passing time?
A lost memory, even recorded, captured, but cut out of its context, can just belong to the past, a time defined by its disappearance. The video attempts to deconstruct and reconstruct a moment, a breath repeating to infinity in an empty space, virtual and endless.

Full moons are the action of repeating something that has been already said or written or happened. Something that has made a different action is put together, and unlike in nature, form, or quality, it is not the same as anything else.

In a dance film, choreography could be done two times. Once on the set, and once behind the editing desk. To make a sense and a relationship between your choreographic materials which are achieved by an improvisation, sometimes editing could offer the key. A key, to make your movements more reliable.
The dialog on the last scene has been taken from a dubbed version of Hamlet movie in Persian which links this piece to the following phrase: To be, or not to be…

Etude for A Five channel video – digital video installation – In theory, every rainbow is a circle. Still, from the ground, only its upper half can be seen. Where’s the other side of these light paths?

When a rainbow appears above a body of raindrops, rays of lights reflected on mirrors in some anonymous hands conjoining these two individuals, merging, masking, and fading them into each other’s reflections.

“Balance” is the name of a video series created to investigate the concept of “dialectic of nature. “These series discover objects feature and phenomena to find themselves in a balanced situation. For example, in the first part, Balance No.1: we observe three phases of one specific article under various primary infrastructure conditions. In this video, after an hour, three stages of an article combine and reach balance.

Rasping Music is an audiovisual installation aiming to highlight the potential aesthetics of some mundane aural/visual phenomena surrounding our daily lives. The work involves four mechatronic sound sculptures, entitled Rasper, that employ some basic objects of the urban technological life shift the medium in which they usually exist and formalize them through patterns of a rhythmic grid. In these instruments, DC motors and actuators are detached from the realm. They are tools to help run our machines and turned into a medium for sonic expression. In contrast to their everyday location, here, their bodily existence is fully exposed in clear enclosures, flaunting the physicality of their noise. This physicality is further highlighted in accompanying arrays of fluorescent light, tightening the audiovisual connection. Inspired by Steve Reich’s Clapping Music, simple phasing rhythms are used as a framework in which the extra-musical noises of the machine, as well as the insipid florescent lighting, gain accessibility and are forced back to the domain of aural/visual attention.

When I was making this video, I was trying to experience the power of contradiction and breaking your predictable reflections and defaults—some walking through the feeling of fear, feeling of calmness, and happiness.

A mysterious ball of light appears in the room, in protagonist›s cigarette break. It seems at the reach of his hand at first but ….

This series of works is inspired by Plato’s quote, «The sun’s body is seen by everyone, its soul by no one.» Also, the mirror symbolizes illumination and honesty in Iranian culture, deeming this concept to be utilized in traditional architecture. The artist attempts to reflect the sun with a mirror in the camera’s scope: her attempt to materialize the light by reflection asserts a metaphor of being and nonexistence. Her movement zooms out and gets further from the camera while she carries a 50×50 cm mirror. She reflects the light in various distances until a tiny star-like light becomes visible. The function is remarkable as it is done by intention: a little reflection leads to reflection. It brings up various purports in layers of meanings. The mirror is an industrial element, and it is rare to find it in nature. However, there are lots of phenomena that cause a reflection of light in nature. At the same time, there are many light reflections in new modern living spaces, a review of light from glass windows of skyscrapers, metal objects, signs, and even the glass cover of your watch or cellphone, for instance, that seizing the attention unexpectedly.

The action of the Screen Scene occurs at (and on) the two-dimensional plane that mediates recorded light and observed light. The reaction of the Screen Scene is bridging the physical with the metaphysical. A film projector shoots its beam directly into the camera. In a cinematic environment, the process is mirrored by the presenting projector. So, eventually, the light falls onto an audience. In recreating the recorded event, viewers are subjected to new sights, extending the trail of observation. As such, perception is explored both within and without the video.