[ISEA2013] Artist Statement: Angelica Mesiti — Citizens Band (2012)

Artist Statement

Anne Landa Award for Video and New Media Arts 2013. 

Four channel video installation.
High definition video, 16:9, PAL, surround sound
Duration: 21’25”

Each video documents a moving performance filmed by Mesiti; these are all music based performances where singing, whistling, throat singing and water drumming are performed by immigrants to Paris, Sydney and Brisbane. There are no words spoken in any of the videos. Perhaps the most moving part is an Algerian man, Mohammed Lamourie, singing on a Paris subway train while he plays an old, beat-up Casio keyboard. There is a stark sadness to this work: it makes manifest the distance between where he has come from and where he is now. Ideas of dislocation and out-of-placeness run through my mind as I watch – but perhaps it is also about the new, boundless and international identities of these people. [source: Kathleen Linn, https://www.artshub.com.au] https://www.angelicamesiti.com/selectedworks#/citizens-band