Borderline

Borderline was a video installation that incorporated projected and monitor based imagery. This mixed format was designed to situate the spectator within both public and more intimately, private viewing contexts.

The structuring of the installation continues my concern with the crossover between genres, and here focuses on the slippage between documentary, fictional and aesthetic styles. Though I have resisted foregrounding my personal condition as an Iranian political refugee in any of my work, aspects of this subject treated in a general rather than personal sense underlie both the imagery and formal structure of this installation. Programme notes for the installation written following my discussion with the Gallery express well the link between the formal and subjective aspects of the work as follows: ‘The notion of the border, a line between adversaries, territories in conflict or the space between our own certainty and uncertainty, the known and the unknown is explored. The borderline becomes a site of dispute, one to be observed or transgressed whilst within the individual psyche to cross the ‘line’ is to enter into uncharted waters.’

I do not approach the subject in the form of a single limiting and coherent narrative but as fragments with overlapping narratives. I exploit the uncertainty of darkness creating an ambiguity that must be connected by the viewer of the work. This attitude to the images is followed through in the formal fragmentation of the viewing arrangements. My image research was closely linked to my own experience of cultural disruption and my choice of a form for its presentation on monitors and projection drew on my experience of the effect such a form has on the audience in earlier installations.

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