Here I am! I tried few times to write but the link to the IAA post didn’t work, and most importantly, I was not functioning! I had few days feeling the Post natal depression after the birth of ”Light Matter” at the Cambridge University Senate House - I ‘ll include some images later.
Last weekend I was feeling like a pigeon with a nail drilled in its head! With so many hands at work, last minutes compromises prevent seeing one’s own vision. Any way, The evening went well, and I had some feed back “The whole show, in fact, does what all the best art does: renews the way its spectators see the world”
Talking about the world, I liked your experimental piece Damascus , and the way you are playing with monochromic colours, sound, water light and movement (part 1) then with contrast colours (worm and cold) and deeper sound and textures (part 2)- Is there more to come about Damascus? Hope so.
As for The right side of the road .. to Mazen, I was delighted to see it too; very good composition, the wall taking most of the screen and the road is in its right.
I know it very well; I used to take this rout to/from my half-room every now and again, particularly in the spring when you are able to be enveloped by the sound of Barada. And by the way this is too the rout my “Perfect painting” was taken by the wind, and whitened by Barada -from Bab Al Salam Mill all the way to Bab Toma’s Bridge - and I was running, shoeless, beside the river, trying to catch glipmses of my lost painting untill I was brethless and with one painting-less! I remember asking someone standing by the river selling vegetables, if he saw my painting IN THE RIVER ( I am sure, you can imagine how silly my question was for him, so he cut it short, he gustured with his thump that it went that way, meaning eastward, to one of Barada’s Seven Branches.
Now about my latest work; I am working (for the last few years) with light and playing with its transformations/offerings (archaeological, spiritual and sculptural ), Light Matter , as before it Let Newton be! were attempts to work with light as a canvas, too and media. The images attached are from the first-half opening piece, on Discovery and Experiment, called ” Composition of whiteness”, which deals with layers hidden under the white light, and peeling it to its core, like an onion, white again is reborn but this time as duet performance.
The second-half opening piece on Eternal Quest, was called Mirror in the Mirror and the closing piece called Analemma, I don’t have pictures for them yet, but will have the whole performance on-line soonish.
Today, I was given big collection of old (and expired) Polaroid films, and I went around the city asking for an old Polaroid Camera (I feel nostalgic to its sound, and the waiting action in order for the image to revail itself! Alas, the digital era is her to stay.
This brought another thought that I wanted to share with you and might be something that we could think about somehow; It might sound rather childish (or maybe playful), it is about communication in general and the way how our ancestors used messengers, pigeons and even bottles filled with massages and I wondered if I am to write (by hand ) a letter on paper and make a paper boat out of it, take it to to the river Cam, and address it to - To Hazem Al Hamwi, Barada, Damascus- I was wondering if it will make it to you oneday?!
Now I am serious, what about thinking the two Rivers, Barada and Cam?
How it is going with your (frame by frame) new Experimental about woman? I look forward to see you thought on this.
Now I am ready to be horizontal! I can’t attach the images, I’ll do tomorrow from my studio.
Good night
Issam
