Roy Dib

Q&A about "Objects in Mirror Are Closer Than they Appear" for Videobrasil 18th edition online platform

1. What was your research work like on creating Objects in Mirror Are Closer Than they Appear?

In making this video, I was interested in producing an image of Beirut, a city that I had got to know through the television as a child. I moved to Beirut in 2001 to pursue my university degree. Beirut, the lived city of 2001 was different from the televised city of my childhood. I decided to create my personal contemporary footage of the city in order to understand it.

I opted to use my iPhone to produce this footage, as I didn’t intend to stage my findings in professional set-up. The aim was to document my existence in Beirut, instead. As my comprehension of the city, through television, was mainly of interior spaces in studios or nightlife venues, I decided to take outdoor shots of spaces in the city. I later realized that I actually was not interested in these pieces of footage, and was more naturally inclined to document the city through my own interiors, parties and micro-scale conversations with confined space. In doing so, archival footage from my childhood became relevant again, in defining my perception of the city, but I was persistent that all material that would be used in producing my personal contemporary image Beirut were to be shot in the “now”. Any archival footage would be re-shot with my iPhone as it played on the television screen.

Another layer of the video is the parameter of accessibility of Beirut, the televised city. I was able to reach Beirut and produce my own interpretive image of it, but what is the contemporary image of Beirut to those who can’t? In order to harvest this information, I held audio-recorded conversations with some of my Palestinian friends on different trips where we would meet in Jordan, and ask them about their idea of Beirut. These conversations lead to my curiosity of how their Palestinian cities looked like, hence commissioned them to shoot their own footage of their contemporary cities.

The filtration process of this amount of sporadic material needed to be liable to the idea of the existence of the city in perception versus reality. The construction of the video processes a confused map of Beirut, dwindling and reappearing between different logics of maneuver, concerning constructed imagery versus experience. The outcome became an installation that produces physical obstacles to perceiving a whole image of the city, forcing the viewer to construct their own representations of a potential Beirut.    

2. Which aspects of your creative process would you like highlight (aesthetical, ethical, poetical, political etc.)?

I think that one of the main aspects that I wanted to experiment with in this project was the physics of perceiving footage. As an artist with different work in video and performance art, I was interested in creating a work that physically compliments the conceptual framework of the video. Objects in Mirror Are Closer Than they Appear mainly invests in the distortion of the city within different modes of storytelling. As different narratives of the city exist, it is impossible to look at the city wholly or objectively. In its format, the unattainability of perception of the two video works, super-imposed back-to-back, recreates this dynamic of helplessness and loss in an unaggressive manner reflecting the matter-of-fact impossibility of the discourse at hand.   

3. How do you locate the conception of this piece in relation to your own poetics?

I consider my work constantly related to the subjective constructions of space, using scripted and archived footage to represent notions of the evasive self versus real place. This video presents a dimension of the narrative of the self versus the narrative of the city, their intersection, their outcome, representation and distortion. In this project, my work with archival footage acquired more volume, both conceptually and technically, where archived footage only becomes valid after being recaptured (filmed with an iPhone while playing on screen) in the present. On another hand, the use of video as a designed character within a space, not transferrable wholly on screen pushes my personal discourse of the relationship of a video work with a setting and an audience, and the significance on the overall statement being laid out for discussion.   

4. Which references from the art world or other fields of knowledge have driven the creation of this piece?

I’m not sure there is a direct reference or inspiration that the piece sprouted from. I generally have an interest in the idea of layouts of objects in space that create a relationship between the body of the work and the body of the spectator. Given that my background is in Theatre, setting and space are intrinsic to my thinking process. That being said, staging a metaphysical medium (video) physically as a character, and proposing its viability as a spatial object as opposed to a projection in an auditorium was a conscious choice to expand the ideas of the perception of the city that are present in the work.

5. Further, which dialogues and/or emotional exchanges arose from your creative process?

The process of shooting the footage of Objects in Mirror Are Closer Than they Appear was not staged or scouted, but my day-to-day existence in the city became a more aware one for the period of producing this work. Mundane events became iconic. Simple gestures became worthy of recording and filming. While doing so, this shift of the notion of “understanding the city” became in the foreground of my thinking, distancing myself from the events I shoot. This distance became a gap that allowed me to think of being in this place, as opposed to my usual, normal existence. This gap became a major layer in scripting the final video content and installation.

6. In what way did the social, cultural and political contexts interfere with the development of the work at hand?

The work is a direct conversation with the social, cultural and political contexts of Beirut, the city that is the setting and main character of the video installation. Discretely, the work puts all of this matter into its foreground in a visceral manner, not in an academic discourse. The fact that the footage was shot with an iPhone camera limited the interference of security restrictions to the liberty of the ideas of the video. In the visibility of the real world, I was just a man shooting videos of his everyday life, not an artist having a critical conversation with his city. This created an opportunity to discuss socio-cultural and identity-related topics on a human scale. Society became a dance-floor in a wedding. Sexuality became an underground theatre. Psycho-geography became a mission to find the Casino de Liban. The city became an object in the mirror closer than it appears.   

7. What contemporary and/or historical experiences, fictions, and narratives does your piece address?

This piece addresses contemporary Beirut. It conveys its presence in different consciousnesses. It elaborates on the perception and consumption of space using my personal experience as a vehicle, proposing relevant and relatable narratives in video that are open for deconstruction and reclamation within the space of the installation.

8. In what way do you think that the form and the language adopted in conceiving this piece structure out and convey those issues?

The aesthetic choice of the video, being shot with an iPhone camera creates an aesthetic common to informal everyday consumption of the city, liaising the artwork, the artist and the viewer automatically within this familiar medium. The structural choice and layout of the video installation creates a system where the viewer and the “familiar” video are in a sort of confrontation, where the viewer is allowed to edit and re-edit their narratives of the city indefinitely without the consent of the city or the artist. Both of these terms reinforce the ideas of the relationship of the city, the idea of the city, and its people as being fluid and indefinite. This viewpoint to the city, constructed by the form and language of this video installation, create a conductive medium for what is being conversed. 

Click here for a preview of the video installation