Artist Statement

Motion Within Motion, a two-channel video screening, reconsiders and challenges the common notion of linear time and motion in digital video, by revealing time and motion at level of pixels that are linked to the recorded events. The work is inspired by Persian Islamic philosophy of time and motion introduced by Mulla Sadrā Shirazi (I571-1641), whose theory of ‘substantial motion’ (al-harakat al-jawhariyya) challenges the common human-centric view of change,time and motion. Sadrā posits movement/change within substance as an act of existence (a process involving internal time and motion), suggesting that our experience of change is interwoven with an invisible time and motion. Sadra’sview of time and motion disrupts the common approach to physical movement and linear time in video making. Since there is an invisible time and motion in each entity, non-living beings (e.g. pixels) also experience the universe,change and becoming. Employing this idea to the cinematic time and motion in the digital world, an exploration of the pixel’s being introduces possibilities for new ways of seeing from a non-human point of view. It also demonstrates a different form of time and motion from the perceived time and motion in the frame. The pixel’s activity and point ofview is explored in relation to recorded events in Iran, showing what we cannot see on the surface of the image. To renegotiate cultural differences and experiences of a society largely unfamiliar to the West, this work reveals hidden ‘experiences’ of pixels whose internal movement took place in Iranian society. Here, the pixel, as the substance of digital video, demonstrates different modes of time and motion compared to the experience of time and motion within the overall frame of the video.
In this talk, a documentation of the two-channel video screening is discussed, showing videos of Iranian society and abstracted patterns of domes and coloured tiles of 15th century Persian mosques, which are juxtaposed with screens showing entire pixels and their internal change. The activity of an isolated pixel on a smaller screen is identical with that of the source pixel in the footage of Iran on a large screen. This juxtaposition attempts to explore new ways of seeing, from non-human points of view. The process involved in this work and its conceptual development suggests a reconsideration of our conventional views of time and motion, particularly for thinking and making of digital video which is subtly political and poetically transformative.

• Dr. Azadeh Emadi, Unaffiliated researcher-artist, Auckland, New Zealand