Mounir Fatmi

Part science fiction, part homage to film history, this short black-and-white film fuses images of the moon with archival footage of King Mohammed V of Morocco’s face. All this swirling imagery is set to an eerie soundtrack that takes the viewer on a surreal journey. (Heure Exquise)

Part science fiction, part homage to film history, this short black-and-white film fuses images of the moon with archival footage of King Mohammed V of Morocco’s face. All this swirling imagery is set to an eerie soundtrack that takes the viewer on a surreal journey. (Heure Exquise)

Part science fiction, part homage to film history, this short black-and-white film fuses images of the moon with archival footage of King Mohammed V of Morocco’s face. All this swirling imagery is set to an eerie soundtrack that takes the viewer on a surreal journey. (Heure Exquise)

God is Dead is a silent text-based video in black and white that runs 3 minutes and 32 seconds. In the video two sentences alternate in a continuous fade-out: "God is Dead by Nietzsche" and "Nietzsche is dead by God”. In the movement of phrases, the text itself becomes an image, taking on an iconographic value.

The spinning inscription reminded some of the whirling dance that leads to dhikr or remembrance of God.

Against a background of chants and prayers, the image of a minaret, emerging from amongst satellite-clad roof terraces, is repeated in a swift staccato montage. Accelerated clouds cross the sky behind it, and gradually envelop and overlap the sacred building.

Manipulations is a video inspired by the famous game of logic Rubik’s cube. It is a succession of close-ups of varying intensity showing a pair of hands manipulating a cube with colored faces, to a soundtrack of a regular and insistent beat, the clicking of the cubes combining at times with strident acoustic distortions. As the resolution of the logic game progresses, cubes with black faces that weren’t initially present appear, progressively replacing the colored cubes until the brainteaser becomes completely black, with the exception of a row of cubes with a white line. Meanwhile, the hands tirelessly continue their manipulations while images of the Kaaba are overlaid on those of the hands moving around and being progressively covered in black. This piece is part of a larger body of work initiated in 2004 that also comprises a series of photographs, a sculpture and a video game.

Commerciale, taking the form of a still sequence shot, could at first sight be mistaken for video surveillance footage of the entrance to a shopping centre. People walk in and out, pushing the glass panels of the revolving door of one of these temples of consumption that invade every suburban area worldwide. Alone, in couples, wandering past or rushing in, trolleys empty or full, mothers and children, hundreds of people push this revolving door day in, day out in an unrelenting and dizzying ballet. The effects of superimposition and transparency applied to the video heighten this sensation of a ghostly, indifferent and endless flow.

This video is made up of television footage recorded between 2001 and 2004. A large part of the imagery was collected during a residence where participants were invited to record their channel-hopping of television stations from all over the world. A hadith – a narration brought from the prophet Muhammad - concerning women, provides the thread: “the first look at a woman is for you, the second is for the devil, the third is a crime”. (MF)

Always concerned with freedom of expression, which for him is essential, mounir fatmi also considers sex, and does so with great delicacy. To make this jewel of a film, fatmi edited together censored love scenes (literally cut with scissors) from Une minute de soleil en moins. With Les Ciseaux, fatmi has produced a threefold work of memory: first of all, he preserves Ayouch’s original film, to keep it from being forgotten; secondly, he delivers a frontal critique of censorship, to keep that too from being forgotten; and thirdly, it is a discourse on love, to keep us from forgetting. Furthermore, in Les Ciseaux fatmi achieves a juxtaposition or, rather, a shifting between bodily embraces and the dreams that go with them. The memory of the lovers plays the role of the video maker, and in Les Ciseaux we go from intertwining bodies to inner images.

In the faceless city, The Lost Ones, have as a plea occupied the roofs. Standing on the cupola of a grave monument, looking towards the horizon, they declare their wish to be free, to think and feel, to exist.

The video « Face, the 99 Names of God » lists the 99 designations of God as they can be found in religious scriptures and as commonly inventoried by Islamic theology, and shows them one after the other on the screen, using the technique of crossfading. The belief is that reciting these 99 names is beneficial for the faithful who make the effort and that it allows them to access the perception of the essence of divinity. In the foreground, the video shows the names written in western alphabet, along with their translation. The background is a green backdrop where the names appear written in Arabic calligraphy.

Survival Signs deals with the problem of language as an organ of taste, cause of the loss of paradise and instrument of language. It leased men to build the Tower of Babel to reach heaven and surpass God, after which God punished them by destroying their unity. By using electronic language, echographical and televised images, Survival Signs dismantles the loss of the power of understanding and communication of language. As an example, the video presents the fight for survival or Iraqi children deprived of food - a way of cutting off their tongues. And what forbidden fruit had they tasted? What language would we like them to speak? That of having or that or being? Or, do we simply hope that they die without uttering a word?