#ismaïl bahri

Eclipses(2014), Ismaïl Bahri

A paper shutter is grafted on to the camera lens. It just lets you see what is occurring at the edges; it almost totally obstructs the field of vision. The paper functions as a shutter but also as a screen. It lets you see what the wind decides to show you. It hides as much as it shows: it leads the eye to the margins and shows the premises of the off-camera scope.

Dénouement(2011), Ismaïl Bahri

This video deals with a sort of acuity of the eyes, as an echo to the seamstresses’ activity focused on the tenuous event that is the formation of a knot or the movement of a line in space. The tight thread is a line in alarm, a vibratory vector conveying the hands’ poundings. Like the alarm thread linking the spider to its web, the tight link probes the empty space that separates the black silhouette from the viewer. It shows the movement of the hands on the camera. Slowly, the body enters the image field. As it moves forward, the video comes to an end: the space plan becomes deep, the white area becomes a landscape and the line becomes volume. The formation of the knot looks like an envelopment operation, a wound up condensation of the crossed space, as if holding the reel in our hand was like taking this space with us.