Sacrifilm – An interactive new media installation By: Semco Salehi

SACRIFILM from Semco Salehi, Nuit Blanche 2011

Today’s news cycle is immediate, providing live often unprocessed, up-to-the minute footage and commentary of the world’s events via a plethora of news and information sharing outlets.

With a simple click of your mouse, a tap on your smart-phone, or the switch of your remote you can access images and eyewitness reports from anywhere in the world.

Today’s breaking news is tweeted, blogged, YouTubed, streamed and shared minutely with very little editing or processing.  The world of social media and portable recording and transmission devices has made it possible for ordinary people to become producers of news and citizen journalists.

While the availability and transmission of news from one part of the globe to the next makes it possible to hear and see reports and experience events as they unfold, it has yet to succeed in engaging viewers to interact and engage proactively with the world’s happenings as active agents of change rather than passive consumers.

Sacrifilmed is a commentary about the alienation experienced in a world where the news cycle is devoid of the human connection.

In this in-our-face installation viewers are confronted with the reality of a dying person, pierced by a large glass shard, bleeding on the ground before a screen portraying a herd of media vans and reporters preparing themselves for a story.

The members of the media remain unmoved and unaware of the scene unfolding a few feet from them.

The dying man pleads for help; meanwhile the reporters and members of the media continue to be preoccupied with their mundane tasks.

The installation will also include a twitter feed that will be projected on a nearly screen, viewers will be encouraged to participate in the creation of the news cycle by tweeting their personal reports and commentary about the scene that is unfolding before them.

The aim of the installation is to place the viewers inside the scene; the passerby’s become intermingled in the happening.  Much like the media outlets they are placed in the situation of reacting or failing to react in response to the victim before them.

The interaction between the passerby’s and the dying man will also be streamed via a webcam placed in the corner of the installation.  A screen projecting the streamed video footage will be placed at the exit door of the gallery – allowing the viewers to see themselves as part of the created news.

DI-GI ZOORKHOONEH a video installation bassed on traditional gymnasium sport

DI-GI Zoorkhooneh from Semco Salehi

Seen in Tehran

Semco Salehi’s exhibition, Di-Gi Zoorkhooneh, is a microcosm of the inherent contradictions in a society whose identity is being constantly put to the test, one in which reconciling traditional values, its indigenous evolution and imported westernization come to represent an existential challenge.

Digital Illustration of Gholamreza Takhti is the most famous wrestler in Iranian history. He was most famous for his chivalrous behavior and sportsmanship, and he continues to symbolize the essence of sport to the Iranian people.

In a central “pit” TV screens are installed in a circular fashion representing clips of men, young and old, performing the traditional sport of zoorkhané, accompanied by a scratching staccato of drums and voices and bells operated by a “DJ”. The picture quality on the TV screens range from snowflake effects to discoloured yellows and greens to sharp and clear contrasts. A closer scrutiny of the clips reveals some of the men wearing “Marlboro Classics” or “Addidas” T shirts, combined with the traditional zoorkhané knee-length tights, lifting huge wooden clubs and dancing in ritual circular motion. The bodies of these athletes, some with pot bellies, others wiry, contrast clearly with clips of young men on a video screen on one of the walls. In these videos, young men with perfect silicon-fed torsos and protruding abs, symbolizing modern day concepts of beauty appear to be observing the pit with an air of boredom, bordering on alienation. Here the physical body itself becomes the object of veneration. In yet another contrast, on the opposite wall, there is a green, Warhol-like picture of the late Takhti who was the prized wrestler, actor and superhero venerated and held up as a model of honour, fairness and justice for many young Iranians. On the third wall, between the two, there is a stylized reddish print portrait of Imam Ali with an aura of terse rigour overseeing the whole. On the floor above, there are clips of men preparing for battle during the Iran-Iraq war, going through the motions of zoorkhané, replacing traditional wooden clubs with Kalashnikov rifles.

This exhibition mirrors the dilemma of a society which is in the process of shedding its old skin and growing a new one, caught in a limbo, much like the Camus-like stranger who has lost his origins and has yet to attain the promised land. This identity crisis which permeates the society in all facets of life is exemplified in a clash within a culture that is feeling its way, reaching out for change, and yet is inward looking. It is driven by traditions seemingly irreconcilable with the exigencies of a “modernity” to which it aspires, the intricacies of which, more often than not, it has failed to fully internalize.

 

Kamran Kossar

Designed by Mehdi Fatehi

 

Semco Salehi
Di-Gi Zoorkhooneh
SIIN Gallery, 30 July – 8 August 2010
16 Twelfth St.
S. Piroozan Ave., Hormozan Ave,
Shahrak Gharb Tehran 14666, Iran