Son[i]a #299
Naeem Mohaiemen
With a modus operandi based on wandering and endless searching, Naeem Mohaiemen (b. London, 1969) repeatedly delves into Bangladesh’s history through a detailed examination of its documentary heritage. His films meticulously analyse the way in which historical events are filtered and stored in national audiovisual archives, and reveal that the borders of those archives contain significant geopolitical narratives in a latent state.
Mohaiemen describes his research as “following the work down, down, deep into the rabbit hole,” without knowing where it will lead, picking up lost narrative threads that we wouldn’t have imagined we’d find there, which point in an unexpected direction.
In this podcast, Naeem Mohaiemen talks about pragmatic politics and failed masculinities, about Yasser Arafat, Muammar Gaddafi, and Salvador Allende, about the backstories of “Two Meetings and a Funeral”, and about the Non-Aligned Movement and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation. We also talk about the generative aspect of melancholy, behind-the-scenes politics, and the importance of keeping up the search for the things that we still do not know.
Haig Aivazian
Through media such as lectures, performance, video, drawing, installation, and sculpture, Haig Aivazian’s multifaceted works intricately blend the personal and the geopolitical as well as micro and macro narratives. They uncover or perhaps even fabricate complex threads, timelines and visual networks with multiple layers of meaning and ambiguity. His stories are intended to puzzle, reveal intangible connections, and evoke a sense of ghostly friction among conflicting ideas. In this podcast, we talk to Haig Aivazian about counter-propaganda, sports, blackouts, Palestine, fugitivity and what he calls “the dumping grounds of democracy”.
Bouchra Khalili
Through a practice that combines documentary, conceptual art, installation, and oral storytelling, Bouchra Khalili explores questions of self-representation, political agency, and the resistance strategies of individuals and communities rendered invisible by the colonial, oppressive, and exclusionary dynamics of nation-states. Who is a witness? Who tells the story? Who documents, archives, and transmits the accounts that reach us? These are the central questions that run through all of Khalili’s work. In this podcast, we talk to Bouchra Khalili about what it means to produce images and to approach film and documentary practice from new places and perspectives.
Deleted scenes
We dig up some unreleased fragments of the interview with Naeem Mohaiemen that we were unable to include the first time around.
Deleted scenes
We dig up some unreleased fragments of the interview with Raqs Media Collective founder member Monica Narula, that we were unable to include the first time around.
Raqs Media Collective
Raqs Media Collective founder Monica Narula talks about raga, the technological body, public domain, the ineffability of time, the Mahabharata, politics of language, exhaustion, dilation and the legibility.