[-empyre-] Introducing Isak Berbic and Larissa Sansour

Fri Feb 4 05:10:42 EST 2011

Thank you Renate and Tim for inviting me to be part of this exciting month of discussions.
Below is a short text about my work. For visuals and more information about my work, please visit my website: www.larissasansour.com
Larissa

The dichotomy of belonging to and being removed from the
very same piece of land – be it physically, mentally, administratively,
militarily or otherwise – is central to my work.

While ordinary understandings of identity are linked to the
idea of belonging to some kind of geographical unit – a region, a land, a
country – for most Palestinians, the experience of being removed, exiled or cut
off from the very same place they belong to and identify with is just as
crucial for their self-understanding. In my work, the notion of belonging
manifests itself in anything from architecture, ownership and geography to
social relations, local produce and gastronomy. In contrast, tangible
restrictions on mobility – walls, fences, checkpoints – maintain a permanent
sense of being cut off, uprooted and kicked out.

In my artistic practice, I investigate critical strategies
of resistance to the Israeli occupation of Palestine and to clichés that are
present both in the world’s understanding of Arabs as well as in the making of
art. My work tackles issues such as terminology and its effect on the
unconscious collective understanding of the crisis in the Middle East, artistic
agency and politics, representation of victim and oppressor, the psychology of
victim-hood, race issues and Orientalism, history and its documentation and the
role of art in engraving as well as subverting a historical narrative.

My work is interdisciplinary and
utilizes video art, photography, experimental documentary, the book form and
the internet. I try to contextualize Middle Eastern politics and culture within
a more universal language related to pop culture, film and music. References
and details ranging from sci-fi and spaghetti westerns to horror films converge
with Middle East politics and social issues to create intricate parallel
universes in which a new value system can be decoded. 

I attempt to create scenarios where the Palestinian is no
longer the victim, but instead enjoys the same power as anyone else in our
media-driven, entertainment-led world. Works like ‘Bethlehem Bandolero’, where
I enter town like the lone gunslinger of spaghetti westerns, or ‘Happy Days’,
which shows the military occupation in a series of cozy vignettes, turn the
world upside down. The people who are usually the subject of news reports and
diplomatic initiatives instead become the commentators. No longer the
underdogs, they stand at the same level as the rest of the world’s media and
power-players. The double irony is that something is lost in the translation to
a more fluent, funny and glossy medium. In doing so, I try to foreground an
unspoken absence. Smiling through its pain, one might say.

‘Space Exodus’ continues this line by re-imagining one of
America’s finest moment – the moon landing – as a Palestinian triumph.
Everything is the same yet with a Palestinian touch, from the details of
embroidery to the curl of the space boots. Even the sadness that pervades the
film is not necessarily Palestinian. Of course, the work reflects the fact that
Palestinians are in limbo without a state, as their homeland shrinks like a
spot on the horizon. Yet the sadness of ‘Space Exodus’ is also implicit in the
contemporary reactions to the US space program, from Kubrick’s ‘2001: A Space
Odyssey’ to Tarkovsky’s ‘Solaris’ and even David Bowie’s ‘Space Oddity’. The
moon landings reflected a widespread anxiety that, in leaving earth, we risked
never being able to return home again. Yet because this anxiety is universal,
the pain of the real, forced exodus of the Palestinians is doomed to remain a
private grief, forgotten by the rest of the world.

> Date: Thu, 3 Feb 2011 12:19:33 -0500
> To: empyre at gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> From: rtf9 at cornell.edu; tcm1 at cornell.edu
> Subject: Re: [-empyre-] Introducing Isak Berbic and Larissa Sansour
> 
> We are delighted to introduce this week's guests, Larissa Sansur and 
> Isak Berbic.   We're appreciate their willingness to agree to open 
> this month's discussion of New Media and the Middle East.
> 
> Isak Berbic (UAE)  is an artist, writer and lecturer born in Bosnia 
> and Herzegovina, at that time called Yugoslavia. In 1992 as 
> Yugoslavia dissolved and Bosnia was under attack, he and his family 
> became refugees, moving from Croatia, through the Czech Republic to a 
> refugee camp in Denmark, and lastly to the United States. Isak first 
> learned about art from his mother, father and brother. He studied 
> Photography, Film and Electronic Media at the University of Illinois 
> at Chicago. In Chicago, he practiced art, worked in theater, and was 
> art director of a political monthly journal. In 2007 he moved to the 
> Middle East; United Arab Emirates, where he currently teaches media 
> at the College of Fine Arts and Design, University of Sharjah. He is 
> a continuing contributor to numerous projects and publications on 
> contemporary art. His research deals with histories, politics, 
> tragedy, memory, humor, exile, and the limits of representation.
> 
> Isak has exhibited internationally including: Thirst 2010, Bait Al 
> Serkal, Sharjah Art Museum, United Arab Emirates; Dojima River 
> Biennale 2009, Osaka, Japan; Singapore Biennale 2008; Jatiwangi Art 
> Festival 2008, Indonesia; The First International Photography 
> Biennial, Teheran, Iran 2007; Odavde/Otuda, From, Here/From There, 
> Hunt Gallery, Webster University, St. Louis, USA 2007; Normalization, 
> in honor of Nikola Tesla, Galerija Nova, WHW Zagreb, Croatia 2004. He 
> participated in the International Symposium on Electronic Art, ISEA 
> 2008 Singapore, the Chicago Festival of Bosnian-Herzegovinian Film 
> 2006, Take a Deep Breath: an interdisciplinary symposium, Tate 
> Modern, London, UK 2007.
> 
> 
> Larissa Sansour (UK) was born in Jerusalem and lives in London after 
> studying  Fine Art in Copenhagen, London, and New York.  Her work is 
> immersed in the current political dialogue and utilizes video art, 
> photography, experimental documentary, the book form and the 
> internet.  Sansour borrows heavily from the language of film and pop 
> culture.  By approximating the nature, reality, and complexity of 
> life in Palestine and the Middle East to visual forms normally 
> associated with television and televised pastime, her grandiose and 
> often humorous schemes clash with the gravity expected from works 
> commenting on the region.
> 
> Larissa has participated in the Busan Biennial in Korea, the Third 
> Guangzhou Triennial, Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris, PhotoCairo4, 
> Istanbul Biennial and Liverpool Biennial. Her short film, A Space 
> Exodus, was nominated in the Best Short category at the Dubai 
> International Film Festival.  In 2009, her graphic novel, The Novel 
> of Nonel and Vovel--a collaboration with Oreet Ashery--first appeared 
> in Venice Biennale bookshops and was later launched at Tate Modern, 
> UK, and the Brooklyn Museum, US.
> 
> Welcome to -emypre-, Isak and Larissa.  We're very much looking 
> forward to learning about your work and to profiting from your 
> perspectives.
> 
> Renate and Tim
> 
> Among the highlights of 2010 are solo shows in New York, Paris and 
> Stockholm as well as the Liverpool Biennial.
> 
> 
> -- 
> Timothy Murray
> Director, Society for the Humanities
> http://www.arts.cornell.edu/sochum/
> Curator, The Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art, Cornell Library
> http://goldsen.library.cornell.edu
> Professor of Comparative Literature and English
> A. D. White House
> 27 East Avenue
> Cornell University
> Ithaca, New York 14853
> _______________________________________________
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> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre

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