Conversation with Kahena Sanâa
Revue Tête à tête n°19, Méditerraner
With Ismaïl Bahri, Barbara Cassin, Elina Duni, Tony Gatlif, Marco Godinho, Valérie Jouve, François Laplantine, Jean-Paul Thibaud, Jean-Paul Mari
January 27, 2018
Translated to English from French by Hana Barhoumi
Interview / pdf / français
Kahena Sanâa (TàT) : In your most recent video, Esquisse, shown at the end of your Jeu de Paume exhibition and created with Youssef Chebbi, you place a flag on the shores of the Mediterranean, specifically in Gammarth, a suburb of Tunis. Interestingly, it is the same location where, back in 2002, before leaving the country for France, you created a series of fluidic imprints, attempting to make a print with sea foam. In both instances, the matrix seems to gather the movement of the waves. Looking back fifteen years later, what would you say is the significance of this gesture by the Mediterranean?
Ismaïl Bahri (IB) : Three weeks ago, I went back there to film and asked myself the same question: why, fifteen years later, return to the same place when the world is so vast? Especially since this place has nothing special about it. I think it might be one of the beaches I used to visit as a child, which could play a role. When I think of a spot to film the sea, I instinctively go there. The difference between the flag and the sea imprints is quite small because, in both cases, it's about capturing the flow of passing elements. However, in 2000, while I was a printmaking student at the Beaux-Arts in Tunis, capturing the sea’s imprint was the last thing I did before leaving for France. That final act was an attempt to print the unprintable, as the sea, by its very nature, is in perpetual metamorphosis. It was at the point of the ebb, where the land, the sand, and the edge of the Mediterranean meet. What fascinated me at the time was trying to capture a small piece of this landscape that forever escapes us, that has always been there, and will outlive us, but that escapes us the very moment we settle on it. It was about taking a small cross-section. I think that work was the spark that ignited my desire to work with natural elements, defining small zones for experimentation or observation, waiting for something unexpected to appear. Fifteen years later, the flag evokes that same sea. And formally, there’s a real connection: you find the same turbulence, whirlpools, waves, and the tension between capture and escape. The question of the threshold is particularly interesting here in its relation to space and the border represented by the Mediterranean. It’s about working at the threshold of geography, the threshold of the landscape, where the land ends and the sea begins, where Tunisia ends and elsewhere begins. But here, the horizon is captured through its grains. What interested me with Esquisse, which was created with Youssef, is this turbulence captured by a meaningful object, one that is strongly associated with the horizon: the flag. Keeping its infinitive form as a dark, unmarked fabric, the flag filmed on the beach transforms into a screen or optical lens, revealing a fragment of the Mediterranean in turmoil. It captured and absorbed the movements and energies of the surrounding environment in which the film was made. The space transforms into a field of forces, observed through its grains and its turbulences. It’s a banner that simply signifies: “I am planted here, and I show what is happening right here, not anywhere else but precisely here.” It becomes both the projection’s medium and the emblem of the zone, of the landscape where it’s planted. That day there was strong wind, which is important because everything was extremely agitated, accelerated — the sea, the wind and the sand. What’s touching to me is the idea that this unsettled landscape sits in a geographic zone with its own worries. I think this work is tormented, which wasn’t the case with the sea imprints. Those were born from the desire to capture a cross-section of the landscape, to create a slice of the sea as one might make a cross-section of a stone. Here, the priority is the desire to be in the midst of unease. And this experience is now shaping everything that I do. I’m asking myself : what if I focused on the idea of a storm? What does an unsettled landscape mean? Seeking out restless landscapes, in Tunisia or elsewhere, and following a wind that moves through an agitated world...
TàT : I’d like to explore the notion of milieu, which features prominently in both your journey and in your work. The word medius, a root of “Mediterranean”, carries a double meaning: “between,” as in between two or more things, and the natural environment, an ecosystem, a living habitat. The first interpretation translates as a threshold, a challenge to fixity, certainly, and rigidity. And the second implicates movement between two places, two cultures, two languages. How has milieu shaped your trajectory as an artist who lives between Paris and Tunis?
IB : The question of the milieu perhaps began to emerge when I arrived in France. I started to understand, like many others, that my work and life would unfold within this back-and-forth between the two shores of the Mediterranean. For a long time, I could only work in Tunis. More than Paris, Tunis inspires in me the desire to create images. If I had to find a metaphor, I would say that Paris is a dark room where desires and a certain form of slow maturation develop, and Tunis is the bright, frenzied projection where images come from. This is, of course, not a rule but I often find it to be true. The question of the medium plays out in this constant back-and-forth, without a fixed place. One always acts as the absent counterpoint to the other. This in-between space brought a strong interest in elements and things that pass by, slip away, and escape into my artistic practice. Formally, this was expressed as a spontaneous interest in water, light, wind... The work involved creating devices that gesture toward or make contact with this sense of slipping away, without necessarily trying to fix it in place, as I previously explored in Esquisse and Empreintes de mer. The complexity of the work can be framed as follows: how can one probe something that is constantly slipping away, always in flight, without trying to stop or capture it? This requires positioning oneself within the flow of things, inhabiting the very fold of this movement of escape.
TàT : It seems that this way of situating yourself comes from an emotional, sensory, and bodily experience. Do we have the same body here and there?
IB : The question of the body is very interesting, but I haven’t fully thought it through. What is certain is that the atmospheric and social environment influences our own bodily perception. And like many people with a dual cultural background, it is often the "foreign" side that is more exposed to others. Here in France, it’s sometimes the Tunisian side that stands out or causes friction, while over there, it’s almost always the French side that feels out of place in the Tunisian environment. This form of permanent incompleteness can turn into a source of energy for work, often when you place yourself right at the point of this contact. For example, films like Orientations or Foyer are situated at this point.
TàT : Whether on one side of the Mediterranean or the other, European or African, this sea between lands represents a convergence of plural projections, real or imagined, of the people of the South on the North, and vice versa. On a completely different scale, your first work in the streets of Tunis, Orientations, created in 2010, invites us to explore the urban environment through an elementary projection screen: a cup filled with ink that reflects its surroundings. How does this video translate the question of projection for you?
IB : I made this video myopically, without really knowing what I was doing. And it ended up being a video about myopia. It started from a very simple, formal, visual experiment on reflectivity. After experimenting in the studio, I wanted to go out in the street. Naturally, I did the experiment in Tunis because the light produces a particular intensity of color. And I wanted to do it in Tunis to sharpen the friction I mentioned earlier. Here, different levels of projections come into play. The first projection is very simply the appearance of the moving image in the glass. The other level emerges at the end of the film, at the moment when the camera records the exchange with the person who came to ask me what I was doing. His voice and his words become projections of the ongoing process through his questions. “What are you doing here? What are you doing with that glass?” These questions become a contrechamp , a mirror of the filmer, whose face is never seen, but is described: “You are white, you have an accent, I can’t quite place you”, etc. What interests me in this video is that it becomes a bundle of multiple projections, moving in concentric circles from the glass filmed to the contexts it crosses. On a small scale, the image that appears in the glass reveals the surroundings, an enlarged perspective. The experience will disturb and be disturbed by the environment in which it takes place.
TàT : You often introduce delicate experiments that start with a simple gesture and explore its phenomenological impact over a set duration. For example, the filmed experiment of the burning of a piece of paper, the weight of a handful of sand as it pours out, or the minute rhythm of a pulse revealed by a drop of water on the forearm. This approach could be seen as a form of distrust that seeks to remain on the threshold of the ephemeral, where nothing truly settles, yet everything is captured, as every experience is recorded by the devices. Could you expand on this paradox in your approach regarding the status of the video medium?
IB : It's a question I ask myself: why pretend to pinpoint the place of a supposed tremor and make a point of putting it in a box? It might seem paradoxical. I didn’t question it in the beginning, but now it’s something that poses a problem. I've wondered whether it would be better to give an account of the experiences in the form of a story, or even fiction. But in the end I think that's not where the problem lies. The problem is in navigating the tension between what happens during the experience and what can be communicated from it. This involves basic questions like: will the recording include sound and image? Image without sound? At what scale? Will there be movement or not? Ultimately, recording remains tied to the idea of giving. Recording is a way of returning a bit of the lived experience to others.
TàT : That said, we can also transmit through gesture. In your work, the question of gesture is obviously important, but it’s articulated with cinematic concerns: framing, the temporality of recording, sound quality, voice-over, etc.
IB : To make a gesture is to make something visible. Making a gesture, even when it surpasses us and exceeds our will, still reveals to the other what is unfolding within us, the energies passing through our body. I am particularly interested in moments when this gesture, often involving the action of a hand, intertwines with the act of filming. The way this coupling becomes the gesture itself. I believe the most powerful moments occur when the act of recording affects experience and vice versa. Like when the experience in progress is shaped by the recording, or when the recording itself becomes an experience, as in Foyer or Orientations. In Orientations, the act of filming is coupled with the gesture of collecting images in a glass filled with ink. This dual recording process affects itself, up until the point when a passerby arrives at the end of the video, articulating this double operation and revealing its context. In Foyer, what I like is how the voices describing the film as it unfolds become the actual experience of the film. The film is made in real-time through its own commentary, in a way, making this reflective loop its fundamental experience.
TàT : There is often an element of improvised construction in your videographic setups where you introduce some kind of membrane that acts as a filter between the immediate environment and the filming body, as if to avoid confronting things head-on or fully immersing in reality. Is this a deliberate tactic in the way you create images, or does it reflect, more deeply, a way of being in the world as an artist that oscillates between presence and retreat?
IB : Yes, the game of constantly slipping between scales and contexts is carried out through often simple things and elements: a sheet of paper, a breeze, a twig picked up from the ground… These elements create a small gap that makes the slight deviation between the plan and unforeseen surprises possible. These small elements are kind of intercessors, enabling the unexpected to emerge. I say this because I'm always burdened with a somewhat obsessive desire for control when I'm working, and using such filters, such instruments of deviation, creates some room for air. It can mean trusting the wind or using a glowing halo, whose behavior can surprise you. In this kind of protocol, the calculable becomes permeable to the incalculable. And using this type of intermediary allows one to be both the witness and the activator of the experience. It requires playing a dual role, to be the distant observer while also being inside or with the movement of what is happening. That's the great thing about wind, for example. Filming the wind means being in the middle of the subject you’re filming. It comes from everywhere; you breathe it. You are as much in what you work on as in what works on you. On another level, I think all of this stems from a kind of incompetence. I feel unable to tackle things head-on because I don't feel I have much to say, to assert or to put forward right away. I therefore need uncontrollable allies, mischievous companions. Naturally, following the wind to create images calls upon something you can’t control. You know full well it will never show up on cue, that your expectations won’t be met, that you will always miss the event, and that even making such a plan invites betrayal. But I remain interested because the parameters of such futility force you to compose with what the unexpected makes you do.
TàT : The part given to "the outside" in your work stems from the Tunisian environment. And yet, one could not say that you literally depict this society. It's as if you're treading a fine line between familiarity and strangeness. The question then is: what are you seeking to reveal about Tunisia through what you capture? Is it an intimate connection to recalibrate each time, or a distancing that allows for a representation far from clichés?
IB : Each time, I approach my work through spaces, objects, and people that are close to me, from a kind of intimacy. Sometimes this starting point opens up to a kind of universality, something capable of resonating more broadly with others. As far as working in Tunisia is concerned, I think it stems from the fact that there's something working in me that's hard to put into words. I have no intention of reflecting a social reality for the simple reason that it feels overwhelming to me. It’s far beyond me. I’m aware of the immense challenges and stakes involved especially when you’re personally impacted and tormented by that reality. Hence my bias, because I've already tried more frontal approaches where I filmed people from afar, without their knowledge, but I was always extremely disappointed. The rare experiences that have reconciled me with such attempts involved images or situations that caught me by surprise. It happens, but it's so rare that you find yourself welcoming something from the reality around you, without having sought it out. It takes a lot of perseverance to gather these happy accidents. In my case, what interests me is the way in which prolonged observation of a detail will end up capturing something of what surrounds it. In Orientations, for example, the exhaustion of the filmic gesture, of the bodily and perceptive action, led to an unexpected occurrence that surpassed the detail being observed, namely, the encounter with the man who approached and questioned me. Unless this kind of overflow happens, the experiment falls flat and rejoins all the others that will never see the light of day. This idea of rarity is important, I think. Taking on a task also means realizing that something rare has happened, a micro-event that makes something significant take place. Working means working a lot and, in the end, passing on little.
TàT : At the same time, this overflow that you seek and that rarely happens often raises broader questions, notably political ones, somewhat without your intention. In the film Foyer, the words and voices of the people you interact with end up saturating the film’s formal device, giving it a socio-political tone reflective of Tunisian society at that moment. How do you approach this political dimension at the heart of the filmic experience?
IB : Filming in Tunisia seems particular to me. The atmospheric and social moods, mixed with the anxiety the society is currently experiencing, give the impression of a country in metamorphosis. In France, the word "anxiety" keeps resurfacing, but I sense it more as a symptom of a rigid fear of loss. We shouldn't generalize but, speaking generally, I get the impression that anxiety here in France seems to be linked to a feeling of decline. In Tunisia, there is a vague sense that a form, even a very clumsy one, is being sought collectively, and that a disagreement persists about the form to be found. Something not entirely predictable is at work, even if it's also becoming increasingly tense. Being an artist without certainties means that sometimes, at the heart of the filmic experience, the anxiety linked to the search for a form is contaminated by the anxiety engendered by the surrounding context. When, at a certain moment, the formal search takes on the shape of the anxiety within which you’re filming, something can emerge. But it’s very rare.
TàT : It seems to me that Foyer represents a turning point in your trajectory, where the accidental nature of encounters, already present in Orientations, becomes the main material. It’s a sound-based film where we are drawn to listen to people who approach you from offscreen, framed through the luminous nuances of a white sheet of paper attached to the camera lens. Could you revisit the particular context of how this film was made in Tunis, a few years after the 2011 revolution? And, specifically, the question of the encounter and what it opens up in terms of a cinematic point of view?
IB : Foyer emerged from several experiments, initially very formal ones, focusing on the question of light, specifically how a white sheet of paper is tinted by the light surrounding it. So at the time, it was a study of luminous variations, which is why I invented this setup of filming the tints on a white sheet of paper. I was working in a near-sighted manner, not fully aware of what I was doing. I was interested in the subtle variations of wind and light, filming them for weeks, only to be ultimately overtaken by the experience when, as in Orientations, passersby approached me and started asking questions. These encounters became the heart of the film. The camera became a kind of foyer around which people gathered. What interested me was that people came up to me and asked questions after observing the experiment, the camera, and myself filming and without realizing it, they put words to what was unfolding, while I was still searching, unsure of what I was doing. Their questions planted the idea for a film in my mind, one that I hadn’t envisioned at the start. I realized that their voices could form the basis of a film. I gradually recognized the unease conveyed by the friction between the camera setup and these voices. What meaning could this formal experiment have in the Tunisian context at that particular moment? Before 2011, filming in the streets would have been much harder because I would have been bothered by the police. And now, I think it has become difficult again. Foyer was actually made between late 2014 and 2015, but I only understood there was a film by the end of 2015, and shaped it in 2016. The process unfolded across several phases of work, which meant the film emerged little by little. The film came about at a specific moment when filming in Tunis had become easier, mostly because there were so many journalists, cameramen, and photographers in the streets. I kind of took advantage of that moment, not strategically, but because I spontaneously felt that the act of filming had naturally become part of the atmosphere.
TàT : If we revisit the concept of the multitude as developed by Spinoza and later expanded by Negri, i.e., a multiplicity of singularities that derives its political power neither from an overarching exteriority nor from a homogeneous unity, but from its intrinsic plurality and heterogeneity, we might be tempted to argue that it is the multitude as a form of social existence that has, in a way, made this film...
IB : Yes, it’s a populated film. That is to say, it starts from a void filled with a great reservoir of meaning, from a blankness, capable of leaving space for a multitude of different perceptions and projections. The act of the film perhaps simply consisted of removing something to make space for others, for the plurality of voices of those who shaped the film by questioning me and describing the situations, each with their own perspective. Then, during screenings or exhibitions, the spectator themselves joins this act of populating. They, in turn, project their own ideas onto this blank screen and these voices without bodies or assigned faces. The group of young people at the end of the film could represent any group of young people. In a way, all groups of young people are potentially encompassed within that single group. This piece of paper becomes a bit like the foam on a beach that connects two spaces, two shores, in a way. And the spectator watching these films knows that Tunisia is behind the screen, but it remains opaque while all its energy is there and recorded. The infinitive on the screen is conjugated by the intersection of the gazes and speculations of those in the film and of the spectators.
TàT : Bachelard wrote in The Formation of the Scientific Mind: "Every patient and rhythmic work, requiring a long series of monotonous operations, leads homo faber to daydreaming. [...] He coefficients the substance long worked." I have the impression that this quotation reflects your relationship with experimentation in its temporal dimension, where for you it's more a kind of infinitive membrane that takes in the surrounding environment and the natural and human elements. What do you think?
IB : What interests me in this quote is the act of repetition and patience. The Straubs say that “the work of the image comes from long patience.” The idea of repeating, of observing a zone of the world over an extended period, requires patience and care. This means getting down to the heart of what you're observing. Take the time to be in the place you've chosen at a given moment, it could be that beach we talked about, it could be a street, a work table, a fragment of a body... It’s the only way, at a certain point, to grasp the web of affective connections that this zone of observation sustains with its broader surroundings, as seen in Esquisse or Foyer, with the piece of fabric and the white sheet of paper, respectively. To do this, you have to repeat, you have to take the time to be there, to be available. And the fact that we are in a factory, in the repetitive, throbbing work that Bachelard talks about, helps to make us sensitive to the slightest grain, the slightest nuance and the slightest misstep. In the end, I might experiment in order to see what once seemed familiar in a new way, to broaden and disrupt my own expectations.
TàT : Paul Klee’s short stay in Tunisia in April 1914 is famous because this trip marked a singular encounter with light that transformed his relationship with color, turning it into a “luminous value” in his painting. Mediterranean light impacts an important part of your work, especially in Foyer. I’d like to hear your thoughts on this excerpt from Klee’s journal in connection with what you are currently experimenting with through your comings and goings between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. He writes: "Of course, I fail when faced with such a nature. But still, I know a little more than before. I know the path to follow from my insufficiency to nature. This is an inner matter for the years to come."
IB : I read this diary a long time ago, and know these lines quite well. What touches me is the way he seems to have maintained a painterly relationship with these elements and the way he measures that things are beyond him in this encounter with these elements.
TàT : I feel like this encounter Klee evokes resonates with your recent experiences where the sea wind has "overwhelmed" you in both Tunis and Brittany, moving between one place and another. Can you explain this sense of being overwhelmed that you felt during your recent travels in search of the northern and southern sea winds?
IB : After the Jeu de Paume exhibition, when I became interested in the question of storms, people often mentioned the island of Ouessant in Brittany. So, I went there. And as an anecdote, I happened to be in Tunis just before heading to the island. I was preparing myself both psychologically and materially while also checking the island’s weather forecast online daily. I saw that a storm was approaching the island, and that I would just miss it, which is exactly what happened. I arrived the day just after it had passed. You can’t imagine the frustration. I thought to myself: you tried to make a rendezvous with a storm, but you don’t set appointments with these kinds of forces. But the funniest part is that while I was fuming over this missed appointment, a storm was forming, right in front of my eyes, at the very place where I was in Tunis. Without thinking twice, I rushed out with my camera and filmed wildly, on the beach I mentioned earlier, in Gammarth. When I arrived in Ouessant a few days later, it was very calm. I spent ten days waiting. Maybe I’m beginning to understand, these days, that it’s precisely the idea of the impossible meeting, the perpetually missed appointment that is interesting. I think about waiting for a disaster that never arrives where you expect it. In a way, this anxiety is everywhere and nowhere at the same time, so we'd have to follow the same wind across the Mediterranean, connecting Tunis to Brittany, for example, with this same anxious wind as a guiding force. I'm not sure yet... I'll see. In any case, what caught my attention was this feeling of always being on the sidelines. It's always the same thing: no matter how precise and calculated your intentions, it's often in the margins that things really happen.
Kahena Sanaâ was born in Tunis and currently lives and works in Paris. An artist and PhD holder in fine arts from the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, she is currently an ATER (Temporary Teaching and Research Associate) and a member of the EsPAS research team. Her doctoral and artistic research explores phenomenological and micro-political questions surrounding lived experience through the lens of the foreign body, using performative and video-based practices.