First-person politial landscapes: video works by Basma al-Sharif

Born stateless and of Palestinian heritage, artist/filmmaker Basma al-Sharif explores cyclical political histories and conflicts.
In films, videos and installations that move backward and forward in history, between place and non-place, she confronts the legacy of colonialism through satirical, immersive, and lyrical works.
Al-Sharif's work isn't so much about Palestine as it is about being without Palestine. Her oeuvre speaks to a collective struggle of removal from place, and distance from home.

We will screen 4 of al-Sharif's video works:

Everywhere was the Same 2007 11m DCP Engelsk tale + engelsk tekst (ikke undertekster):
In an empty room, a slideshow projection of abandoned places plays alongside the narrative of two girls who find themselves on the shores of a pre-apocalyptic paradise. Told through subtitle text that weaves fact and fiction together, the story of a massacre unfolds. When the image and text malfunctions and the story is no longer comprehensible, the video wanders away from the room of the slideshow, allowing us to see what is happening elsewhere.

The Story of Milk and Honey 2011 10m DCP Arabisk tale, engelsk tekst:
The Story of Milk and Honey is a short experimental video belonging to a larger project, which includes photographs, drawings and text, detailing an un-named individual’s failure to write a love story. Through voiceover narration that weaves together images, letters, and songs, a story of defeat transpires into a journey that explores how we collect and perceive information, understand facts, history, images, and sound and where the individual is to be found in the midst of the material.

We Began by Measuring Distance 2009 19m DCP Arabisk tale, engelsk tekst:
Long still frames, text, language, and sound are weaved together to unfold the narrative of an anonymous group who fill their time by measuring distance. Innocent measurements transition into political ones, examining how image and sound communicate history. We Began by Measuring Distance explores an ultimate disenchantment with facts when the visual fails to communicate the tragic.

Deep Sleep 2014 Foto Basma al-Sharif, Ben Russell 13m DCP Utalet, utekstet:
"A hypnosis-inducing pan-geographic shuttle built on brainwave-generating binaural beats, Deep Sleep takes us on a journey through the sound waves of Gaza to travel between different sights of modern ruin. Restricted from travel to Palestine, I learned auto-hypnosis for the purpose of bi-locating. What results is a journey, recorded on Super 8mm film, to the ruins of ancient civilizations embedded in modern civilization in ruins, to a site ruined beyond evidence of civilization. Deep Sleep is an invitation to move from the corporeal self to the cinema space in a collective act of bi-location that transcends the limits of geographical borders and plays with the fallibility of memory." (Basma al-Sharif)

More/updated info will follow soon!