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Fascinating as a Youtube video, in its intended context the two screens are as big as the wall and facing each other in a dark room, with the viewer stuck in between. It is visually arresting in black and white, and like Possessed has the most mesmerising soundscape, inspired by ancient Persian vocal style. It portrays two singers, one male, on the left singing in traditional Persian style to a responsive audience of men, and the other female, on the right hand screen, swathed in darkness and singing to no one. Once back in Brighton I looked her up and found Turbulent on Youtube, which was originally a two screen video installation first shown at the Venice Biennale. The artist’s name is Shirin Neshat and I didn’t forget her for the rest of my sunny trip. I left The Broad having had a more intense experience than I had bargained for. I finally managed to face walking through the darkness to the exit, and dashed out of there as if Leatherface himself was behind me. She is ignored and shunned until she takes a platform, where her suffering becomes public and contagious, and chaos ensues! As she wanders, her hair and eyes wild, without the required cover up, she comes across groups of men, playing children and other completely covered women in the town square. The woman is possessed ( Possessed is the name of the piece) and wanders through a labyrinth of streets and passageways, which bear more of a resemblance to ancient Persia than modern day Iran. There’s no cultural references I can understand in the setting, and this adds to the pant-pooping scariness. There’s a definite post apocalyptic feeling, because the scene is in Iran, a place I don’t recognise. The film began seemingly part way through, a lone woman in a barren landscape, a place reminiscent of Giorgio De Chirico’s metaphysical paintings of deserted town squares. It was like falling into The Exorcist, and too scared to move or leave, I sat down, tentatively, on a bench in front of the screen showing a film that had just started. The voices were vaguely female… and demonic… The breathing of someone who was in direct fear for their life (apart from me). As my senses adjusted to the vacuum of blackness I realised the sounds were many, many voices and breathing. Too frightened to turn back and wondering what the actual hell, I edged forwards slowly.
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There were incoherent sounds coming from in front, beside me and inside my own ears. Feeling my way along the soft wall, followed him, wincing that I’d be caught and told off again.Īll around me was pitch black, like I’d fallen into a hole. There was no sign of a door in the panel wall but he had indeed gone, so I made a u-turn against the current of tourists. But then Sam disappeared inside the cushioned walls of the gallery, without a trace, inappropriately into the janitor’s closet? We had done all three floors of The Broad, I had been ordered to wear my backpack on my front and was good ‘n’ hangry for Koreatown. Obnoxious Liberals by Jean Michel Basquiat.