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15/7/2011

Sara Rajaei

Galerie Duplex, Sarajevo

curated by Martijn Verhoeven

In the presence of the artist Sara Rajaei and Martijn Verhoeven

‘You give up and leave gaps in your memory or you create pieces and glue them to what you do remember.’

Sara Rajaei in conversation with Martijn Verhoeven

MV: Dear Sara, what struck me seeing your videos is that I could not immediately grasp them; you can wonder through your films, and see them again and again, before you grasp them totally. Do you agree?

SR: I agree… they could to be seen a few times in order for all their details to be seen… but that is not a must. First of all that has to do with the basic subject ‘time’… we cant grasp time, can we? How do we describe time? For example, when you speak about an incident, you talk about it as itself together with several things, which have happened around it and around the same time. In my writings, I focus on my memories or things I have seen or heard from others. I try to remember in details, yet there are so many things that I cannot remember. That is when the imagination takes part in my work… then there are things that I remember in several different ways. Each and every of those ways of remembering, contain other subject matters… Which subject is more important than the other, I do not want to decide, so I keep them all in my work. Sometimes a detail that I add later, takes over on my very first and perhaps most important subject matter that is the dynamism of the work, for myself and for my viewer. Same goes to the process of making the work, from when its written to the time its finished, I try several things, try to keep my plans strict yet flexible enough so that I can keep changing them, delete things or add things to them till the very last moment, when I decide a work is finished. Once you view the finished work, you are viewing all the small particles and that is why a work needs to be seen again and maybe again. Also that’s the only way I think, you can make a very personal memory universal, so that others can relate to it…

MV: About these writings: Your texts seem to focus on specific moments, emotions, small details, things which seem to be not so important maybe. Are you interested in the magic of the so-called normal?

SR: I am interested in everyday life and the very small details in and around the so-called everyday life, no doubt. But the thing is, the magic is not there until you begin to think of the everyday life situations. When you begin to remember. It is that moment of remembering which makes things magical. There are a lot that you can not get out of your memory, you can not remember; so you either give up and leave gaps in your memories or you create pieces and glue them to what you do remember. The main reason for not remembering everything in details is, those things being considered as un-important at the moment that they have happened. Either ways, with gaps or with imagination, what you create is absolutely new. It’s magical. Because in reality and in everyday life, it has not been the way you have re-constructed it. What you create is not reality, its unreal, magic. That’s what I am interested in. On the other hand what is normal? Who can describe normal? The normal that I know and am used to, the way I have been brought up, food I have eaten, streets I have walked in, language I have first learned to speak, to one who does not know it sounds absolutely exotic, un-normal, magical… and vice versa. How do we describe everyday life as normal then?

MV: I understand. Lets focus a bit on your artistic practice. How does that look like? There is an idea or image popping up in your mind, and then you start writing? And then you ask other people to participate, to film, to act? How does it work?

SR:It begins with one single frame most of the times…An image pops in my mind… I take that as the starting point and begin to write… the process of the writing is always very long, as I write about the same subject over and over again… each time beginning from scratch, like I am writing it for the first time… never comparing the versions with each other… till I have the version that I like. Sometimes I like several versions so I try to combine them. I keep changing the idea, so normally what I end up with on the paper is quite different with my first image. Once I am sure about the writing, I begin to develop the form in which the work should be made. Shortly after that I begin with the production, looking for my crew… part of my crew have already been working with me on several projects… but I am always interested to involve new people. I keep having meetings and discussions with my crew. I try to keep the plan dynamic and flexible enough so that even on the spot while we shoot, I can change it… after the shooting during the period of editing and postproduction the work can change again. Sometimes I decide to delete a whole chapter of the work… make it simpler and more direct… It happens all the time.

MV:Interesting to hear that on the spot while you shoot you can still change and improvise. Because most of your films look so very precise directed and refined.

(I was thinking about a quote from Cassavetes: “It doesn’t matter if the words are written. Because improvisation has been going on in films by everybody. Theres nobody that doesn’t improvise to some degree. It just depends on what degree you need.” ). Can you say a bit more about this meetings and discussions with the crew? Until what extend do they have influence on the film?

SR: First of all I have to say that Cassavetes is one of my most favorite directors… And I absolutely agree with what he says. Yet I have to say unlike what you have written, there are only 2 or 3 of my works which look precise… the rest do not… But even the precise looking ones are improvised. My works all belong to the experimental genre… experimental and low budget…I make detailed plans for my works but then within the process of shooting, when something does not work for me or does not feel right I improvise, find a new solution, leave a whole chapter out… make new scenes…In ‘Charismatic fates & Vanishing dates’ I had 2 kids as part of my crew… I had to let them rehears… we rehearsed the shooting plan for many times during the day… and then things began to fall into the place… Making changes in the plan was part of that. Or during the 3 days of shooting ‘Shahrzad’, we were a very small crew, yet too many to be in one small room for 3 days… at the same time I was shooting Shahrzad’s daily life… I had to let her be who she was… let her follow her real rhythm, so I only wrote a half shooting plan, the rest I left for what she and he house would bring to me and my crew… This continued later when I recorded her voice and then when I finally edited the film about 2 years later. In ‘Forever for a while’, I deleted 50% of my film just within the last week of postproduction… changed the idea completely…So even in my most staged looking works I have improvised a lot…And then there are works such as a ‘Leap year that started on Friday’… I had written the text and my subject was clear… but only after I recorded myself reading the text and heard my own voice, it became clear to me how I would finish the work. By having discussions and meetings with the crew (from the camera department to the actors) I try to understand and get to know their rhythm, their working energy and their approach… trying to see if everything would work out the way I have planned it…Its like you plan to shoot in a sunny day but then it begins to rain… improvisation is the key.

MV:About your visual style: you often use a traveling camera in your work,

Is that in order to show as much as you can, without putting emphasis on one subject? Can you tell a bit more about that?

SR: Indeed I use this technique to show more … but that does not mean that I equalize the importance of my subject matters… in the end the work consist of image and sound, and sound itself is made of other elements, like voice over, music and room tone… so in an indirect way I manage to put accent on different matters in one work while addressing several other points… For me the searching/ travelling camera expands the content of one work, giving space to the beholder to grasp the aspects that he/she is connect to.

MV:You are a real storyteller. You have been living in the Netherlands for a long time, but do you feel connected to this strong storytelling tradition from your original country Iran? Or is this a cliché?

SR:I am a storyteller but what fascinates me more than storytelling, is the different ways that one story can be told. If you look at my works they each follow a different pattern in storytelling…I don’t think that has much to do with being Iranian, that’s a cliché. I don’t think the storytelling tradition in Iran is that much stronger than other parts of the world… each culture has its own stories, its only the language and not knowing it which makes it more exotic… once you know it you know it…Besides in my work I do not put too much accent on my country of origin.

MV:I see, Now about the exhibition in Sarajevo: In both videos you are going to show A Leap Year (..) and Charismatic Fates(..) not only time, but also coincidence seems to play an important role. Why are you attracted by the theme of coincidence? Can you elaborate a bit on that?

A big part of my work is about everyday life… and everyday life is coincidence. There is no comparison between the amount of the things, which happen by coincidence to someone and amount of things chosen and made happen by someone…My work follows that path very carefully… a lot of the things happen by coincidence and some by choice. But I agree that the 2 works which will be shown at the exhibition are extremely coincidental. ‘Charismatic fates…’ focuses on the notion of DejaVu, is much more flexible in its narration and notion, does not focus on one particular thing, While ‘a leap year…’ in details focuses on a human catastrophe and the memory of it, how it effects someone’s life.

MV: Thank you very much.

Opening exhibition Saturday 16th July 2011

DUPLEX/Galerija10m2
Stakleni Grad. Ferhadija 15. 71000 Sarajevo
Exhibition will be open everyday from 14.00 to 19.00 except sunday

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