6 Video Arts
If 20 Fingers is an attempt to glue seven pieces into one so that - if nothing else – at least it conveyed a perception of a broken unity, then Mania Akbari’s 6 Video Arts - Self, Repression, Sin, Escape, Fear and Devastation, shot between 2003-2005 – come as a project which no longer cherishes such (idealistic?) hopes. There’s even more to it: its artistic credo is expressed and constructed literally on the scraps, very tiny pieces. The basic means of expression used by the authoress in every single of the six videos is the so-called ‘split-screen’, the combination of a several smaller, separately framed images – scraps – within the same action. Sometimes such images are only two, sometimes they multiple into dozens. Although most of these images are symbolic, at some points even abstract but always monotone and repetitive (so that it could be probably better watched as an installation or live picture in a gallery) – this time Mania would have serious problems denying the explicit and primary political context of all six videos. Their individual titles speak for themselves, and every doubt left is definitely dispelled by Mania, broken to pieces; the only protagonist of every moving picture, and her alternatively raged/scared/provocative/ dead look that stares directly at the spectators’ eyes which this time – whether they want it or not – take on the role of the tradition or the man on the dock from the 20 Fingers. Various situations that Mania puts herself in or creates directly evoke the issue of (female) dependency and forced restraint – not necessarily in the Middle East, but maybe even easier in the domestic backyard. It seems as if Mania had dreamed her videos while shooting 20 Fingers: so that she could have dreamt out everything that could interfere with the movie’s status of allegory; and the other way around: she filmed 20 Fingers so that during the shooting she could dream out 6 Videos, i.e. elaborated in details six mordant social statements.
Organisation: City of Women
In collaboration with: Kinodvor
