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17/8/2015

Shezad Dawood

Yarat Contemporary Art Centre, Baku

'Towards the Possible Film' is a study in parallel universes – and the sparks that fly when worlds collide. As much of a projection into a far-off future as a flashback to a long-forgotten past, Dawood’s vivid 20-minute tableau combines the resonance of a mythic fable with the hallucinatory haziness of a waking dream.

Emerging from the waves, as if transported from another dimension, two blue-skinned astronauts materialise on a red-rocked shoreline (Sidi Ifni in Southern Morocco). Blinking into the light, and feeling their way around the sensory contours of this strange new landscape, they are confronted also by the glare of the local inhabitants, who jump up and down in a red mist of rage at the spectre of these mysterious arrivals.

This slow, tense standoff evokes those pivotal moments in colonial history when isolated civilisations first make contact – as well as other alien encounters beloved of science fiction. Less likely to result in a meeting of minds than a clash of cosmologies, the impact (and fallout) of these initial interactions is implied, throughout the film, by a subtle back-and-forth between shifting, distorting optical perspectives. A further layer of complexity is added by an intermittent monologue delivered in the Berber dialect of Tamazight; a language undergoing a revival in modern Morocco, and whose origins are both ancient and unknown (despite its possible roots in a lost Phoenician culture that once stretched as far as the Gulf of Mexico).

Shezad Dawood
b.1974, graduated from Central St Martin’s and the Royal College of Art, completed a PhD at Leeds Metropolitan University. Dawood works across film, painting and sculpture to juxtapose discrete systems of image, language, site and multiple narratives, using the editing process as a method to explore meanings and forms between film and painting. His practice often involves collaboration, working with groups and individuals across different territories to physically and conceptually map far-reaching lines of enquiry.

Image: Shezad Dawood

August 18, 2015, Time: 9 pm

YAY Gallery
Old City, Kichik Qala str, 5 Baku

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