The Practice Exchange: Feminine narratives – Pink and red
Gill Addison, Maria Kheirkhah and Alia Syed
Date: Wednesday 25th April 2012, 2-5pm
Venue: Centre Space, London College of Fashion, John Princes St.
Present: Gill Addison, Deniz Akca, Donna Barnett, Lee Campbell, Leonie Cronin, Emma Doubell, Lorrice Douglas, Caroline Halliday, Kiera James, Maria Kheirkhah, Catherine Long, Ope Lori, Elizabeth Manchester, Sarah Rhodes, Alia Syed and Mo Throp.
Present: Gill Addison, Deniz Akca, Donna Barnett, Lee Campbell, Leonie Cronin, Emma Doubell, Lorrice Douglas, Caroline Halliday, Kiera James, Maria Kheirkhah, Catherine Long, Ope Lori, Elizabeth Manchester, Sarah Rhodes, Alia Syed and Mo Throp.
The session began with the screening of three films: a 20-minute section of Alia’s double-screen work Wallpaper, Maria’s animated triptych In Love with a Red Wall (2012), and Gill’s 35min film Talked about Pink (2011). Each artist then gave a short talk on their film, before discussing the films together in a more general way and responding to questions from the audience.
Alia Syed’s film Wallpaper shows four generations of women in Alia’s family taking turns in painting around the outlines of a shadow cast by a leaf held up next to a red wall using gold paint. As one person paints, another directs, filming the activity using a 16mm camera. The person filming is also visible because the event was being documented by video. This results in the double screen format. During the process the dynamics of family relationships emerge as mothers and daughters exchange the role of director and painter. Everybody contributes. Fragments of narrative emerge through conversations between the family members whilst negotiating the filmic process. The section that we saw highlighted issues of what can be seen through a focus on reflections in a mirror and Alia’s grandmother’s interest in the way the camera worked.
Alia explained that Wallpaper came out of a commission the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery in Swansea who asked her to make a film about Swansea. Alia was born there and her grandmother still lives there. She first planned to make a film about her grandmother twenty years ago when she interviewed her and recorded their conversation. These interviews concentrated on her grandmother’s migration from a small mining village to the big metropolis of Swansea before the Second World War. She also had many memories of what happened there during the war. Alia had thought that the film would stimulate her grandmother’s memories but her grandmother become more involved in the film-making process. In her late forties Alia’s grandmother had painted her front room a deep intense pink with gold leaf designs. This ‘wall painting’ became part of the family mythology. Alia had always imagined her using a candle to cast the shadow and gold paint but in fact she had used yellow paint. When Alia’s daughter was about six, her grandmother painted over her wallpaper with pale blue. Alia intended the film to allow the different memories within the family to emerge, She initially intended only to use the 16mm footage – but had decided that the combination of two different technologies and their different ways looking made the film more interesting.
Maria Kheirkhah’s In Love with a Red Wall is made up three photographs of the artist interacting with a red wall – touching it and appearing to address it, reading from text on paper that she is holding in front of it. Maria is wearing black and her head is covered by a black shawl. The wall is so intensely red that her bare flesh is coloured by it. Maria explained that her photographs are about her attempt to communicate with the wall in the absence of a voice and a dialogue. The piece is multilayered and the wall represents many things – her desire for it reflects an illusion about what the wall might be and her position in response to it.
She was using this as an argument in relation to her PhD research into the Muslim diasporic female figure. As an Iranian woman, Maria was thinking about the absence of her own voice within a Western context. She read out an interview which was conducted by Rachel Garfield about Maria’s work and about the double influence in her work – both that of Iran and the UK – thinking about whether narratives are translatable as they move back and forth. RG had asked how an audience can understand the images as a direct commentary. MK replied that the colours red and black were important in their symbolism – for love, passion, death. But they are multilayered – they do not have universal cultural significance.
Gill Addison’s film Talked about Pink documents the artist’s mother and two sisters talking about their makeup habits and history. Gill films them and asks them questions off camera, probing their memories of how they first learned to apply makeup and how much her sisters might have learned from their mother. Gill explained the origins of her film – the difference between her expectation of the work and what actually happens. She felt that what came out most strongly was an exposure of class issues and the complexity of perceptions of femininity and how it is expressed and projected. The viewer is given access to a private ritual exposing how the three women in Gill’s family use makeup. She filmed them in natural light, in the place where they normally apply their makeup, because it was important that they should be at ease. She felt that the film challenged perceptions of femininity showing a troubled relationship to class aspirations. It also revealed aspects of the relations between members of the family, in particular their resistance to Gill’s attempts to direct their responses to her questions – their willfulness.
The three presenters then discussed the issues around using their family in their work – the responsibilities they have to their family and making them vulnerable, and the impossibility of avoiding this. Gill commented on the significance of looking and using different technologies in Alia’s film. Alia said that her family was used to her and her sister making films. An audience member asked Alia how she prepared her family for five days’ filming.
Alia expected her grandmother to tell her stories during the film, as she tells them frequently – but it turned out that this was the one time she didn’t. Alia was anxious about how the tensions in the family were going to come out – there were so many stories to narrate about family trauma – she didn’t want to stage anything but to allow things to emerge.
Maria asked her how democratic the process was – Alia replied that it was empowering – her eleven year old daughter films too.
Mo Throp asked how much the viewer becomes a voyeur in all three films – in relation to films by Chantal Ackerman and Mona Hatoum. AS replied that for her there are three presences in documentary/film-making – the subject of the documentary, the audience and what is outside of both. In her film there is a hall of mirrors effect as each generation mirrors the previous one.
MK commented that for her voyeurism is related to the naked body. Mo explained that she was thinking of reality tv – allowing the camera into one’s own home.
Sarah Rhodes asked Gill whether she is going to develop the many questions that her film opens up. Gill responded that it is part of an ongoing study of troubled femininity, her own attempts to find out where she is in relation to femininity, perceptions of class and knowledge about that. She finds the issues of subjectivity and class very difficult. Significantly perhaps she could only make the film after her father died.
Alia was asked about the significance of the camera’s presence in her film. She replied that the film documents the process of the family members learning how to deal with the situation. The video footage was brought in afterwards. How each person chose to film her mother/daughter is important in the play between subject and object.
EM asked MK about the significance of the pieces of text in her film. MK replied that they symbolize the impossibility of language to communicate. GA commented that the red silences narratives – it colours everything except the body shrouded by black. Red as resistance – demanding us not to go there. The issue of the impossibility of language to communicate makes reference to an intellectual component which is problematic in relation to the near Eastern female body.
A question was asked in relation to the shifting intention of the films and how they were transformed during the editing processes. GA responded that from her film she had ended up with social documentary material that she had put on one side. AS responded that she first hated the footage after it had been developed. She put it on one side for two years before making the film. It was very important that she allowed the material to speak to her rather than contriving in her usual way with set constructs. She made the work in order to deal with issues of the gaze – she was thinking about how the gaze is directed and what tactics she should use for dealing with this openness to look/listen beyond the constructed context.
Mo commented that there are texts by Judith Butler and Toni Morrison that suggest that it is language itself that resolves this.
Gill Addison is an artist-filmmaker and academic. Her research and practice negotiate memory, the archive and event in the context of the auto-ethnographic. Central to her video work has been a critical and formal examination of the filmic essay. The film she will present, Talked about Pink (2011 UK 35mins), examines ways in which the feminine is viewed and understood in the context of familial relations. ‘I was about 12 years old when Rimmel stopped production of the lipstick Talked about Pink. This was the lipstick my mother had worn all my life. It had a distinctive perfume, taste and vivid colour, it was more than just a lipstick, it was a key to becoming your own woman.’
Alia Syed’s film Wallpaper shows four generations of women in Alia’s family taking turns in painting around the outlines of a shadow cast by a leaf held up next to a red wall using gold paint. As one person paints, another directs, filming the activity using a 16mm camera. The person filming is also visible because the event was being documented by video. This results in the double screen format. During the process the dynamics of family relationships emerge as mothers and daughters exchange the role of director and painter. Everybody contributes. Fragments of narrative emerge through conversations between the family members whilst negotiating the filmic process. The section that we saw highlighted issues of what can be seen through a focus on reflections in a mirror and Alia’s grandmother’s interest in the way the camera worked.
Alia explained that Wallpaper came out of a commission the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery in Swansea who asked her to make a film about Swansea. Alia was born there and her grandmother still lives there. She first planned to make a film about her grandmother twenty years ago when she interviewed her and recorded their conversation. These interviews concentrated on her grandmother’s migration from a small mining village to the big metropolis of Swansea before the Second World War. She also had many memories of what happened there during the war. Alia had thought that the film would stimulate her grandmother’s memories but her grandmother become more involved in the film-making process. In her late forties Alia’s grandmother had painted her front room a deep intense pink with gold leaf designs. This ‘wall painting’ became part of the family mythology. Alia had always imagined her using a candle to cast the shadow and gold paint but in fact she had used yellow paint. When Alia’s daughter was about six, her grandmother painted over her wallpaper with pale blue. Alia intended the film to allow the different memories within the family to emerge, She initially intended only to use the 16mm footage – but had decided that the combination of two different technologies and their different ways looking made the film more interesting.
Maria Kheirkhah’s In Love with a Red Wall is made up three photographs of the artist interacting with a red wall – touching it and appearing to address it, reading from text on paper that she is holding in front of it. Maria is wearing black and her head is covered by a black shawl. The wall is so intensely red that her bare flesh is coloured by it. Maria explained that her photographs are about her attempt to communicate with the wall in the absence of a voice and a dialogue. The piece is multilayered and the wall represents many things – her desire for it reflects an illusion about what the wall might be and her position in response to it.
She was using this as an argument in relation to her PhD research into the Muslim diasporic female figure. As an Iranian woman, Maria was thinking about the absence of her own voice within a Western context. She read out an interview which was conducted by Rachel Garfield about Maria’s work and about the double influence in her work – both that of Iran and the UK – thinking about whether narratives are translatable as they move back and forth. RG had asked how an audience can understand the images as a direct commentary. MK replied that the colours red and black were important in their symbolism – for love, passion, death. But they are multilayered – they do not have universal cultural significance.
Gill Addison’s film Talked about Pink documents the artist’s mother and two sisters talking about their makeup habits and history. Gill films them and asks them questions off camera, probing their memories of how they first learned to apply makeup and how much her sisters might have learned from their mother. Gill explained the origins of her film – the difference between her expectation of the work and what actually happens. She felt that what came out most strongly was an exposure of class issues and the complexity of perceptions of femininity and how it is expressed and projected. The viewer is given access to a private ritual exposing how the three women in Gill’s family use makeup. She filmed them in natural light, in the place where they normally apply their makeup, because it was important that they should be at ease. She felt that the film challenged perceptions of femininity showing a troubled relationship to class aspirations. It also revealed aspects of the relations between members of the family, in particular their resistance to Gill’s attempts to direct their responses to her questions – their willfulness.
The three presenters then discussed the issues around using their family in their work – the responsibilities they have to their family and making them vulnerable, and the impossibility of avoiding this. Gill commented on the significance of looking and using different technologies in Alia’s film. Alia said that her family was used to her and her sister making films. An audience member asked Alia how she prepared her family for five days’ filming.
Alia expected her grandmother to tell her stories during the film, as she tells them frequently – but it turned out that this was the one time she didn’t. Alia was anxious about how the tensions in the family were going to come out – there were so many stories to narrate about family trauma – she didn’t want to stage anything but to allow things to emerge.
Maria asked her how democratic the process was – Alia replied that it was empowering – her eleven year old daughter films too.
Mo Throp asked how much the viewer becomes a voyeur in all three films – in relation to films by Chantal Ackerman and Mona Hatoum. AS replied that for her there are three presences in documentary/film-making – the subject of the documentary, the audience and what is outside of both. In her film there is a hall of mirrors effect as each generation mirrors the previous one.
MK commented that for her voyeurism is related to the naked body. Mo explained that she was thinking of reality tv – allowing the camera into one’s own home.
Sarah Rhodes asked Gill whether she is going to develop the many questions that her film opens up. Gill responded that it is part of an ongoing study of troubled femininity, her own attempts to find out where she is in relation to femininity, perceptions of class and knowledge about that. She finds the issues of subjectivity and class very difficult. Significantly perhaps she could only make the film after her father died.
Alia was asked about the significance of the camera’s presence in her film. She replied that the film documents the process of the family members learning how to deal with the situation. The video footage was brought in afterwards. How each person chose to film her mother/daughter is important in the play between subject and object.
EM asked MK about the significance of the pieces of text in her film. MK replied that they symbolize the impossibility of language to communicate. GA commented that the red silences narratives – it colours everything except the body shrouded by black. Red as resistance – demanding us not to go there. The issue of the impossibility of language to communicate makes reference to an intellectual component which is problematic in relation to the near Eastern female body.
A question was asked in relation to the shifting intention of the films and how they were transformed during the editing processes. GA responded that from her film she had ended up with social documentary material that she had put on one side. AS responded that she first hated the footage after it had been developed. She put it on one side for two years before making the film. It was very important that she allowed the material to speak to her rather than contriving in her usual way with set constructs. She made the work in order to deal with issues of the gaze – she was thinking about how the gaze is directed and what tactics she should use for dealing with this openness to look/listen beyond the constructed context.
Mo commented that there are texts by Judith Butler and Toni Morrison that suggest that it is language itself that resolves this.
Addison’s films and collaborations have been screened national and internationally at film festivals and screening centers. She was commissioning editor of Art in Sight/Filmwaves 2003-08, and is a Senior Lecturer in Fine Art at Chelsea College of Art and Design. Gill is a member of the Subjectivity and Feminisms Research group http://www.subjectivityandfeminisms.org.uk/.
Kheirkhah was born and raised in the North of Iran and first traveled to the UK in 1979 where she pursued her art education. She subsequently returned to Iran in 1988, teaching at two major universities in Tehran, Alzahra University and The Academy of Arts. Since her relocation to the UK in the early 1990s she has exhibited extensively both in the UK and internationally. She is currently Assistant Professor at Richmond The American International University in London and a board member of the 198 Gallery in London. In this presentation Kheirkhah will be looking at the different possibilities of an emerging voice.
Alia Syed is an experimental filmmaker exploring issues of identity and representation. Her work investigates the ways in which language and form both define cultural borders and extend beyond them. Interrogating story telling, time and memory, her practice incorporates ways in which various orthodoxies of experimental filmmaking expand the contemporary arena of the gallery; in particular she looks at the means by which narrative and notions of the edit translate through various viewing contexts.
Syed will present Wallpaper, a performative documentary spanning four generations of women. It explores the emergence of intergenerational relationships through the recreation of a wall painting that the artist’s grandmother made. The film was commissioned by Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, with financial assistance from Arts Council Wales.
Syed is currently an Associate Lecturer at Southampton Solent University. Her most recent film Priya was included in On Line: Drawing Through the Twentieth Century at MoMA, Museum of Modern Art in New York in 2010-11. She had a solo exhibition at the Reina Sophia Museum of Contemporary Art, Madrid, entitled Imagine your own history in 2009.
