Catalogue > At random

Nooshin Farhid

Ellipsis

Fiction expérimentale | dv | couleur et n&b | 9:0 | Royaume-Uni | 2010

Ellipsis is part of a trilogy called Conic Trilogy, based on an island called Orford Ness off the Suffolk coast. This small island has been the site of a number of activities over the years which touch upon the political and includes scientific research, espionage, international communications, military equipment testing as well as being a First World War prison camp. In making this video work Farhid implemented a mathematical concept based on a geometry of surfaces and curves: Ellipse (from Greek åëëåéøéó meaning ?to come short?). can also be described as the intersection of a plane with a conic surface when the inclination of the plane to the base of the cone comes short of the inclination of sides to the base. Ellipse through its Greek etymology, also has non geo-mathematical characteristics, ?Ellipsis? refers to: ?missing words in a sentence? which would be needed to complete the grammatical construction or fully to express the sense. Conceptually the video takes the form of a set of fragmented narratives, an eclectic mix of images drawn from a range of different sources and collaged together to make a coherent but inconclusive whole. Whilst images filmed on Orford Ness constitute the main structure these are as it were glimpses of the islands usage , its surveillance equipment, idiosyncratic architecture and ground markings where once secret military equipment was tested. Added to this are a range of images that refer to the act of leaving, escaping, migration and transience perhaps a reference to the instability of what might appear as fixed, stable and even autocratic

Nooshin Farhid was born in Tehran, Iran and now lives and works in London. She came to the UK as a political refugee. She has been involved in a number of exhibitions, film festivals and screenings of her video works internationally. Her work is primarily concerned with the moving image, which takes the form of single screen works, installations, interventions and animation. Her video works whilst employing different subjects and scenarios have a connecting thread, a commonality, namely there is a certain kind of agitation, a restlessness and a deliberate disjuncture that ruptures the familiar trajectory of the traditional narrative. This agitation and an unwillingness to settle for what is ?on offer? (this is the way things are) reflects upon the current state of things socially, politically and ideologically. This work continually picks away at those familiar stabilising forces that we encounter on a daily basis both within the social space of the everyday and also within the domain of contemporary art itself. Farhid?s work is eclectic and conceptually nomadic, she uses the camera as a visual notebook collecting fragments of encounters, events and chance meetings. At the same time she appropriates that form of ?making dumb?, the popular media ? soaps, reality TV, Bollywood, MTV. This raw material is savagely and uncompromisingly edited and undergoes a form of post production, collaged fragments are welded together, each one activating and qualifying its predecessor. It is within this approach to her work that her radical position is to be found, her deliberate lack of regard for status, image hierarchy and historical continuity allows for an essentially tangential trajectory to her subject matter.