Thursday, August 14, 2008

experimental | Take 1

Despite the lack of large audience, the limited space and the few equipments available the show went out very well...
I'll explain the projects here though I will not pass my own judgment on the pieces. Soon I'll be uploading a video of the show.

Behind the Walls | Dina Khayyat


Dina dealt with the issue of violence and how it can cause harm to the human being. She has used two videos. One was projected in a corner; this video had a woman sitting in a dim setting with newspapers cladding the wall behind her... the woman repeats the word "violence" over and over... and there are other images inter-cutting her image. The second video is a slide show of personal snapshot images of her and her friends in a happy shiny situations. The second video is projected on the ceiling just above the corner. Dina emphasized that though she used herself [a woman] in the video she wasn't referring to domestic violence or women beating in particular.


Killing Me | Laura Nofal


Laura had two videos as well one was projected in a small size of a man sitting and going through intensive display of emotions. A sound track taken from the Pop song [Killing me softly] is repeating through out the video. On the other wall there is a projection of the same man sitting and doing nothing, staring at nothing and saying nothing. Then the first video stop and in the second one the man says [It's killing me]. What Laura was trying to show is the two different ways of expressing emotions between being excessive or passive.
For me I was thinking of how nowadays with all the troubles we have around us. People seems to take either one of these two sides and in both cases it is killing them.


A Piece of A Piece | Hanada Khatybeh


This piece is interactive in its nature. Hanada was working with the same mindset of Nam June PAik's meditative works like "TV Buddha". So what she did was having one projector projecting a video of a projector. It looks like the projector is looking in the mirror. And just next to it she had a seat with a web cam in front so a viewer would come sit and see his/her projection in front of him as well. She had thought that people would be sitting in a more contemplative mood but what happened is that most of the audience started playing around in front of the cam. Which gave the work another meaning.


Roller Coaster | Dana Qabani


This is a video art piece dedicated to people who suffer from Tourette Syndrome. Dana's work look more like digital art since she made abstract animation that translated some of the phases that patients of Tourette Syndrome suffer from.


Mediatate | Dina Ridwan


This video art dealt with the issue of consumerism and how it is the new religion of our times. So the video depict the artist doing some yoga and meditation while repeating names of famous brands as she breath in and out.

CRT | Hiba Abdallat


This is an experimental visual video. The video starts with Hiba drawing the basic shapes of Circle, Rectangle and Triangle and then she plays a fast show of her own photography that contain these shapes while confusing the viewer by saying the wrong name of the seen shape.

A Box | Aml Serhan


This video try to confuse the viewer by stating that the viewer is actually being watched by the man they see int he video who is sitting, staring at them while munching on some snacks. We hear two people having a conversation as to who is inside the box.

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