Video Out

untitled part 2: beauty and the east

Part 2 in a series of attempts at concretizing the notion of interstitiality, this videotape addresses issues of nationalism & the nation state, polarities of time, alienation, the refusal & construction of political identities, ethno-fascism, the body as object & metaphor, agents, monsters & abjectness, subjective affinities, and objective trusts.  Material was taped while leaving home, arriving at, and moving through the former Yugoslavia (stopping in Ljubljana, Zagreb, Sarajevo, Belgrade, and Skopje) shortly after the NATO bombing.  The subjects conversing come from a range of constituencies; migrants, refugees, asylum seekers, residents (permanent and transient), students, workers, and cultural producers recounting experience, locating sites, shifts, events, and the theorizing and accounting of the issues at stake, and associated ambient imagery forming specific histories of locations, and locations of histories at the intersection of cultures in this/these particular place(s) and time(s).
 

Jayce Salloum has been working in installation, photography, mixed media and video since 1975. Salloum is known for installation works that sensitively investigate historical, social and cultural contexts of place. The grandson of Syrian (now a part of Lebanon) immigrants, Salloum studied in the United States. Central themes played out in his work include questions of exile, ethnic representation and cultural identity. Exhibiting nationally and internationally, his work is held in the collections of the National Gallery of Canada, the Museum of Modern Art and the Centre Pompidou. In 2014, Salloum won a Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts.