This screening presents selections from Mapping Journey and Straight Stories. In these short films, Khalili molds the narratives of individual journeys to portray the startling terrain of routes and passage, of stories that are rarely shown. In these works the clandestine nature of the journeys are a given as individuals narrate and configure the relationship of their journey to the places they inhabit and subsequently navigate.

The discussion will address the techniques Khalili uses to convey the porous boundaries of the filmic medium. In what ways do aesthetics transform and reconfigure according to medium (including film, visual art and installation)? To what extent can personal narratives be stretched and adapted to these various forms?

This program is part of ArteEast’s 2012 series Making the Real: Practices of Documentation.

Program runtime: 46 minutes 

We will be presenting the following selections:

Anya, France/Morrocco, 2008, 12 minutes, digital projection

Mapping Journey #1,  2008, 5 minutes, digital projection

Mapping Journey #2, France,  2008, 3 minutes, digital projection

Mapping Journey #3, France/Palestine, 2009, 4 minutes, digital projection

Mapping Journey #4, 2010, 5 minutes, digital projection

Mapping Journey #5, 2010, 11 minutes, digital projection

Mapping Journey #7, 2011, 6 minutes, digital projection

Bouchra Khalili is a French-Moroccan video-artist, born in 1975 in Casablanca. She has devoted herself to video work, both in single channel and installation form, since 2002. The artist uses this medium for its impurity, which allows her to place her work at the very limits of cinema and the fine arts, documentary and experimental work, blurring the lines between these two practices. Her videos explore the Mediterranean area seen as a territory dedicated to a wandering, nomadic existence. She documents the places she passes through, their images and the images they generate. Khalili produces representations of these spaces’ mental dimension by placing them in an unusual perceptive experience, thus testifying to the contemporary reality of emigration and its stories.

Barrak Alzaid (b. 1985 Kuwait, MA Performance Studies, NYU) is a writer, curator, and artist, and is the Artistic Director of ArteEast. Recent installation and performance work include Seera Kartooniya [Bushwick closed Studios, 2010] and Diwaniya with Fatima Al Qadiri and Aziz Alqatami [Gwangju Design Biennial 2011]. Curatorial work includes antinormanybody [Kleio Projects, 2011]. His article, “Fatwas and Fags: Violence and the Discursive Production of Abject Bodies” is available in The Columbia Journal of Gender and Law.

 PRESENTED WITH:

ArteEast  presents the works of contemporary artists from the Middle East, North Africa and their diasporas t a wide audience in order to foster a more complex understanding of the regions’ arts and cultures and to encourage artistic excellence. Through public events, exhibitions, film screenings, a dynamic virtual gallery and a resource-rich website, ArteEast supports artists and filmmakers by providing the platforms necessary for them to showcase groundbreaking and significant work. We also give the public the opportunity to learn more about and develop an appreciation for the talent of these established and emerging artists.

This project is made possible in part with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts’ Electronic Media and Film Presentation Funds grant program, administered by The ARTS Council of the Southern Finger Lakes (www.NYSCA.org www.eARTS.org).