Women Cinemakers Childhood, which shows a cube of sugar which ignites and burns little by little. The duration is long, waiting is difficult, even for me. Chantal Akerman wrote: "Time is not in the shot, it is also in the viewer in front who looks at it. He feels that time in him. Yes. Even though he claims he is bored. And even if he is really bored and waiting for the next shot. To wait for the next shot is also to feel alive, to feel you exist. it hurts or makes feel good, it depends. " You are a versatile artist and your practice is marked out with a stimulating multidisciplinary feature that allows you to mix several media, including installations, performances, as well as videos, embroidery. German art critic and historian Michael Fried once stated that ' .' What are the properties that you search for in the materials that you include in your works? I do not see things that way. The material is in itself significant, even though I do not necessarily know it immediately (cf using biscuits instead of liver). It calls out an imaginaire, associations of ideas, plays on words... My video , shows the
Women Cinemakers slow "explosion" of a pomegranate (https://vimeo.com/133266243). In French the word for pomegranate, « grenade », means both the fruit, and a hand-grenade, the weapon. The shape is also quite similar. And the inside of the fruit has something to do with flesh. But all that meaning came afterwards, after it was done, or in the making. Everything started from the desire to film a pomegranade. And the pomegranade brought me there. This is often what happens. The material leads to one place rather than the opposite: an idea leading to the search for the right material. A short while after I wash my hands of it was completed, my mother found this note, which now appear at the end of the video : "Summer 1985 in front of a painting of the Dutch school in Venice, with bodies, some standing, another dead. Reflection of Anaïs in front of the blood that escapes from the head of the one who died: "it looks like a pomegranade". It looked a lot like that. " We dare say that responds to German photographer Andreas Gursky when he stated that . What are you hoping will trigger in the spectatorship?
A still from
Women Cinemakers Stage director Claude Régy talks about "the desire for a theater that would no longer be theatrical, in that it would be the place of all presences, the place of things themselves”. In a general way, it's the real that interests me. Saying that means everything and nothing at the same time because the notion of real can be understood at different levels. But what interests me is what is, in the concrete sense of things, rather than other worlds or dimensions. And in the processes of creation, at least those of my personal work (since I also work a lot in theatre where the model is the one of repetition) I am interested in the first draft, the first time. Not so much because it comes first, but because the fact it is "what happens", what happened, what was there, in front of the camera, in the sense of that it is unique, and not the result of multiple trials. Accidents, clumsiness interests me, because gestures in general interest me, in themselves, in what they once were. But filming the real, a reality, it is always already a choice, a fabrication (since I'm not making documentary or capturing events that I come across). I film a reality that I have made. Moreover, by saying that the whole question of what reality is reappears... It reminds me of a dialogue in
Women Cinemakers Jean-Luc Godard's movie Alphaville "- And that, is it too transparent or not enough? It depends if you want to show the truth. How is the truth? It's between appearing and disappearing » The truth, the reality, the real... In the video véhemence , this relationship is specific since the inversion of time could be one of the means to look behind reality. Does this reversal of time reveal another side of things? The filmmaker Jean Epstein considered that this upside down, this reversal of temporality by means of the cinematograph, was a radical subversion. In the case of véhemence, there is a part of resistance. The reversal of time creates a strangeness of the gesture, a disturbing strangeness, because it is not immediately noticeable. It introduces a doubt. Finally I will not swallow back my vehemence, I will expose it. And it's not just a matter of reversing the course of an action, but of bringing in a new one that would otherwise be impossible. The video is part of a series project, called Actions, that works on elements on which I stumble, on lacks of sense, inner impossibilities... A series that would use reversal as a principle. Marked out with subtle allegorical qualities, is rich of objects rich with evokative quality, belonging to domestic ambience: how important are symbols in your practice? More than to symbols, I am sensitive to the evocative power or simply to my attachment to certain objects or elements. I love objects. I love them in themselves for what they are, their use, but also for their history, known or unknown, and their aesthetic potential. The two videos La mémoire déplacée (Displaced Memory) and Inventaire alphabétique (Alphabetical Inventory) mirror a series of precise descriptions of objects and the "exposition" of these same objects, that I've kept from my grandfather, in a simple and
Women Cinemakers meticulous process of successive appearance on a white sheet (like a projection screen for the imagination), with only the passage of my shadow and the sound of my steps. In Supplément à la vie de Barbara Loden, Nathalie Léger quotes this article from the famous 18th century Encyclopédie: "The descriptions are mainly used to make singulars or individuals known. A description, then, is properly the union of accidents by which one thing is easily distinguished from another.” I like this idea of accidents. We have appreciated the way in you sapiently mixed realism of gestures with a subtle surreal quality of the ambience: as an artist particularly interested in developing works around your own childhood and family history, how does your everyday life's experience fuel your creative process? It's hard to say, things are mixed up all the time. The passage from one to the other never stops. Objects of everyday life, events, difficulties are starting points or obstacles for the work. There are also kinds of appointments: waiting for the pomegranate season to rework with it, hoping for the snow and the ice over the pond to make an installation there with butter... Art historial Ernst Gombrich once underlined the importance of providing a space for the viewer to project onto, so that they can in the creation of the illusion: how much important is for you to trigger the viewer's imagination in order to address them to elaborate ? In particular, how open would you like your works to be understood? I like when the meaning is open. I can tell how things happened, or how I can interpret them afterwards but it is not essential. My relationship to work is quite intuitive. There is often no predefined intention, at least not in the sense that : I mean something specific. I have made a series of drawings titled Soit que
le puits fût très profond (Either the well was very deep , issued from the sentence of Lewis Caroll, "Either the well was very deep, or Alice fell slowly". This title came after few months. As for the drawings, I first wanted to make this primary experience of drawing lines and these lines have gradually created forms, spaces, which for me echo my inner space, made of voids, strata and meanders. But I don't think about it when I draw. I draw lines, the pen and the space of the sheet lead me, I do not know the final form and my gesture does not try to translate my state of Women Cinemakers
mind. It is only afterwards that I can say that it evokes me that, but it is not what I saught to represent. So it would not make much sense to impose on the viewer a way to read my work. That 's why I always find it difficult to write about my work because I always feel that it limits the openendedness. I think that the duration of my videos, even if it is a risk, is also a space of thought available for the audience, of daydream, of abandonment. It also forces the spectator to be present. The images do not come looking Women Cinemakers
Women Cinemakers for him or her. S/he must be there. And they give her time. Many artists express the ideas that they explore through representations of the body and by using their own bodies in their creative processes, as you also did in the interesting , that can be viewed at https://vimeo.com/159673003: German visual artist Gerhard Richter once underlined that " ": how do you consider the relation between of the ideas you explore and of creating your artworks? I like to work alone, which explains, in a way, my presence. I am one of my materials. Creation for me is in doing this "physical act » and not making someone else do it. Basically it is more important to me than the idea itself and it often comes beforehand. I also have the feeling that introducing someone else's presence would bring a fictional dimension that makes no sense to me and would make me work differently. I will quote Chantal Akerman again, who said that "Wandering is a lonely habit. When we are two we always go somewhere." I often do not know where I'm going. The link, the path, between the action and the idea, or vice versa, is often made of a series of chances, intuitions, back and forth, accidents and echoes. Things appear by doing, so the doing has all its importance. Pleureuse (Mourner) is not about me, nor about any living face, since I'm filming a photography, an old photography bought at a fleamarket, a particularly beautiful woman portrait. But this video is one of the bifurcations of a project where this relation between the idea and the act has taken on all the dimensions that I have just mentioned. This time, everything came from an idea: to find old family photos, abandoned pictures, forgotten - since the descendants of these people did not keep them - and to sew the faces to complete their disappearance ( ). Very quickly, the needle let the light appear through the paper, through the perforations. The covering had given way to clarity,
Women Cinemakers transparency. Revealing a landscape through a face, a perforated body. Creating bright ghostly presences. And the process of programmed disappearance has become one of apparition. Making new stories, anecdotes, appear in the photo. Tracing organs, signs of life. The initial idea was diverted by the gesture and the way the object, the material reacted to it. Photographing these photos has become a new declens, another dimension, with shaky and evanescent presences ( ). The video films that face with eternal tears accompanied by the sound of blond hair slipping through the little holes and the cicadas songs, because it was summer. And recently, looking at the back of the photos, I was struck by the volume created by the passage of the needle, leaving a set of small mounds of paper and revealing the posture of the bodies of seated women (tense, packed, truncated forms...) ( ). All of these tracks continue to deploy simultaneously. And from these remains of an inheritance that was not mine, I continued these processes on postcards reproduccing works of art, postcards gleaned during my visits to museums, churches... since childhood, interfering with the works of others artists, enrolling me in a larger story ( ). Over the years your works have been internationally showcased in a wide number of occasions: one of the hallmarks of your practice is the ability to establish with the viewers, who urged to from a condition of mere spectatorship. As an artist particularly interested in the role of performance art as a tool to break the boundaries between artist and audience, how do you consider ? And what do you hope to in the spectatorship with your works? I come from the theatre and I keep working there. There are certainly signs in my work of this place of presence, of the "direct", of "being with", that one experiences as an actor. But I do not really think about the audience when I create. The question comes
Women Cinemakers interview after. How to show? And then I have a desire for proximity, intimacy. Maybe because I'm not someone who thinks big. Things are human-sized, or rather body-sized. When we look at a painting in a museum, we often prefer to be alone, regardless of the size of the painting. Whereas we can accept a great human density in movie theaters. I think this is how I work with the audience, in intimacy. That's why the space of the exhibition or the installation, which also lets the spectator free to stay or to go, better fits my work. Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Anaïs. Finally, would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects? How do you see your work evolving? I would like to film again, to find the availability. To start an installation about fear, a kind of dyptic: silent video / chorus of mechanical mouths shouting. To make a video project around the family meal, maybe with dancers, with their hands only. To continue the series of video actions with time reversed. And to find other directions for the drawings.
Women Cinemakers
Hello Joanne and welcome to : we would like to invite our An interview by Francis L. Quettier and Dora S. Tennant [email protected] readers to visit https://joannedorotheasmith.format.com in order to get a wide idea about your artistic production, and we would like to start this interview with a couple of questions regarding Joanne Dorothea-Smith Women Cinemakers meets Lives and works in Plymouth, England My work is a series of observances of the world around me, my opinions on it and my place in it, I hope that these observances are comments that may be relatable for others who have had or are having similar thoughts and notions about what surrounds them also. Even though each of us is individual and distinct we can at times struggle with what seems remote and our own intimate humanity. The world moves fast, we move within it creating our own meanings and understanding, making efforts to mediate and live a life we want to live. Photography and art are my tools for exploration and experiment— this is what my work is about, process based exploratory and flexible. It is often a responsive act to either make sense of a situation or fact or also a way through to gain illusory control of things that are out of my control. This can be past or present, musings on the future, time and space and personal existence. I can only respond. This blending of technology, idea, reality and fiction is something I have regularly used, as my work deals in my memory as well as intangible spaces it is useful to understand the place that fiction and fantasy have in creating our own versions of reality. Memory is unreliable and subjective, changes over time and is sometimes dramatic or romantic in its recall — much of what I recall and then create as a result is not fixed, the methods used are disruptive, adding opaque areas, printing, re-printing and filtering - colour changing and inserting into layouts, animating and intervening in surfaces of land and print. This short animated piece falls under the overarching title The Reality Project, this took me to places and ideas that cannot be seen, pushing against my reality as I understand it from my human perspective. Asking questions about what might be actually be real, what is true and how does photography represent this? Creating montages of fake Nebulae and space images alongside real images of space (captured by myself locally) and the Hubble space telescope, The ‘Reality Thins’ film is also a self portrait made using stop frame animation that seeks to further explore the magical insignificance of the individual in the universal space. The complex nature of life and humanity is immensely unlikely and beautiful, this concordance is always a temporary and elusive realisation that we are chasing as a horizon.
Joanne Dorothea-Smith Photo by Sue Hall
Women Cinemakers your background. You have a solid formal training: you hold a BA in Photography and you are currently pursuing your MA in Photography at Plymouth: how did these experiences address your evolution as an artist? Moreover, does your cultural background direct the trajectory of your artistic research? Yes and No… My background is working class, I did not take up Photography until I was in my early thirties as a result of illness removing me from work. I have always had an interest in the creative space and when leaving school I trained briefly to be an actor. My BA was a fantastic introduction to may different disciplines and in particular choosing filmmaking was a revelation, realising you can represent abstract forms and ideas alongside photographic installations with a ‘punk’ approach to production. I made a super8 short and was enthralled. My Masters has refined my ideas and writing, moved me forward as an artist and given me the confidence to present my ideas in new ways — one of the ideas I am currently working on an idea that uses script writing techniques but for a non-film setting. For this special edition of we have selected , an extremely interesting experimental video that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article and that can be viewed at https://vimeo.com/93283870. What has at once captured our attention of this stimulating work is the interview
Women Cinemakers
Women Cinemakers
Women Cinemakers way it examines the relationship between experience and imagination, to blend the artificial boundary between humans and Nature: while walking our readers through the genesis of , would you tell us how did you develop the initial idea? Firstly that is a good point about experience and imagination, for me there is really no gap, we are subjective beings and the land and subsequently space are a series of surfaces with which are indexically linked to us and our internal perceptive space. Here is an excerpt from an accompanying bookwork which explains my impressions further; Dynamic duress creates flow, ebbing from the centre, pushing outwards composing our surface for touch. The slow motion of degeneration over ever lengthening spans of history, continuing existence decreasing, erosion determines weight and location is varied via force. Diminution is not the finality presence, falling off the edge of perception into dust. The relationship we have with land is complex, subjective and illusory there are many layers to the land/ spaces we occupy. I was at a presentation last week where the speaker commented ‘ Place is space occupied with intent’ this is true of not only the place we call earth but also the worlds we are now expanding into with space exploration. For example we now visit Mars ‘with intent’ we have made human marks on its surface, interview
expanding our own occupation to include a distant surface. Most of us currently looking on can imagine these places from the increasing number of photographic imagery emerging, from explanations of temperature, surface composition, weather and so on and they seem tempting — Like the explorers of past times we are drawn toward the sublimity and promise. Reality Thins, and the wider project it is a part of began whilst reading a copy of New Scientist, the particular issue was concerned with current (at the time) concepts/ theories regarding what constitutes the fabric of reality. This was something I was already engaged with in a different way, the nature of subjectivity was part of my education in photography, but this really opened things up. Reality for a scientist, engaging in theoretical physics is very different from mine, I started to visualise these things as a means to aid my understanding. We are as dust, insignificant in comparison to wider
space and yet complex and miraculous these thoughts and questions are contained in this short. The theme of memory plays a crucial role in your creative process and as you have remarked in the introductory lines of your artist's statement, your work is a series of observances of the world around yourself: how does every life experience fuel your creative process? My latest work is called Event Horizon, Britannica online explains it thus; “Event horizon, boundary marking the limits of a black hole. At the event horizon, the escape velocity is equal to the speed of light. Since general relativity states that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, nothing inside the event horizon can ever cross the boundary and escape beyond it, including light…” Once a memory or experience enters us it cannot escape, but, we cannot seem to re- access this as a true event again, our memories are altered upon
Women Cinemakers each visit coloured by our contexts and opinions, every experience I have may or may not lead to work but it is still there. Our memories are visible to us, excepting certain circumstances, but not tangible — a melancholic glimpse of disappearing time. I feel my work expresses these experiences as duality, the sadness is enmeshed with excitement and fascination with the world around me. I have had some challenging life experiences but my enthusiasm for creativity and thirst for exploration makes just a part of the work, I suppose I am lucky to be able to have these outlets and time for discovery. We have highly appreciated the way your film challenges the audience's perceptual parameters to explore the struggle between reality and dreamlike dimension, your film provides the viewers them with a unique multilayered visual experience: how do you consider the relationship between reality and imagination within your process? I wanted the viewer to be immersed in an abstract place, along with me. I am the subject and I have deliberately used the speed of the montage sequences so they cannot be fixed upon. The film was made using stop frame animation and then reprojected twice. In the frame I am inside a fluid, struggling to not only remember but to perceive the wider universe and life I live inside. Wanting this to be about surface and form I used black and white for the figural elements and interview
Women Cinemakers
Women Cinemakers
Women Cinemakers colour for the ‘thoughts’, vivid moments that are sometimes real and sometimes fictional. The relationship between actual reality and dream is also a fluid space, using process to effectively communicate this for me requires abstraction, my neurones physically enable what I create but the experience of this is dreamlike, I cannot knowingly fire certain parts of my brain, I cannot control completely what I remember and when it occurs, I can only respond. The soundtrack of is based on recording from NASA of storms from space and white noise from night time silence, and provides the footage of your film with such an ethereal and a bit enigmatic atmosphere: how do you consider the relationship between sound and moving images? In this case I consider it as an extension to the fluid I am immersed within, sensorially the experience for the viewer should be in a small enclosed space enabling a certain level of claustrophobia. I am no sound artist but as I use the nebulae and disparate images of surfaces that surround us, the sounds represent the same in the aural space. I would like to work towards immersive presentations in several of my projects. There is also another reason for using actual NASA sounds, how many people know you can even do this? It would be interesting if anyone who views this then interview
Women Cinemakers goes on to investigate explore space resources online as a result… seems to reflect German photographer Andreas Gursky's words, when he stated that Art should not be delivering a report on reality, but should be looking at what's behind something: are you particularly interested in structuring your work in order to urge the viewers to elaborate personal associations? In particular, How open would you like your works to be understood? Thinking what I would like people to take away is sometimes a difficult task but overall I would like to ask more question than I answer, to start discussion but not to tell. This work is particular is quite open whilst others are more forceful, this depends on what the subject matter requires for me. Some works unfold and are mysterious until complete others start with a definite idea for production. I think when your work is out in the world people take from it what they will and this is good, viewers can really only have their own personal associations. As you have remarked in your artist's statement, is also a self portrait made using stop frame animation that seeks to further explore the magical insignificance of the individual in the universal space. We have appreciated the way interview
Women Cinemakers
A still from Women Cinemakers
Women Cinemakers Reality Thins brings the nature of relationship between the body and its surroundings to a new level of significance, unveiling the ubiquitous bond between the individual and outside reality: how do you consider the relationship between outside reality and our inner landscape? I think I may have answered this above? However, blurred lines….Often the inner reflects the outer and what we choose to image or create in relation reflects the inner, it seems a circular mode of creative process is happening. Reflect/ create/ reflect. My journeys into these places, alone or accompanied, are not just reclamation, they are attempts at reconnection with the self and a way of breaking away from the dulling affect I find contemporary culture and lived experience offers up. The offer of digital connectedness and access to the whole world, and a good portion of the wider universe as visual feast, moves me away from the real. Connections that disconnect. Discourse, place, biology and geology - a mediated space of contextual historical cynicism. Traverse through these places allows negotiation, both physical, metaphysical and political. Falling through the cracks, grasping for purchase. This reclamation concerns the physicality of the surface that both extends from and includes my body. interview
Women Cinemakers Many artists express the ideas that they explore through representations of the body and by using their own bodies, as you did in . German visual artist Gerhard Richter once underlined that "it is always only a matter of seeing: the physical act is unavoidable": how do you consider the relation between the abstract feature of the ideas you aim to communicate and the physical act of creating your artworks? I agree that the physical act is unavoidable, creation of any sort requires physicality. For women especially the act of using ones body is political, not conforming to ideas of beauty does not always require revulsion although it is useful as in the case of some of Helen Chadwick’s works, however I wanted to stress the human, dreamlike state and in the film I am becoming invisible, intangible a memory of the physical. I wrote about this recently — A piece of writing I came to make after being influenced by this included the line ‘I do not have the eye of a goddess’ as I do not. It talks about exploring on foot and moving through, which is how I negotiate my work physically and metaphorically, I purposefully include places where I come against some barrier or thick vegetation and where my path is blocked, these things then demonstrate my human journey. This was in the Book ‘Shifting Horizons’ which is exclusively about female photographers who engage with the land. It rebukes the ideas of the 18th Century explorers and settlers to the Americas and the sublime representations of the romantic era, I do not view from on high or hold a controlling gaze, I am
within. I realise this is all a little academic but thinking about my position of repose is an ever changing problem to negotiate. We have really appreciated the originality of your artistic research and before leaving this conversation we want to catch this occasion to ask you to express your view on the future of women in contemporary art scene. For more than half a century women have been discouraged from producing something 'uncommon', however in the last decades there
are signs that something is changing. How would you describe your personal experience as an unconventional artist? And what's your view on the future of women in this interdisciplinary field? I think things are moving forward and the female artists I am inspired by show this, they are all eclectic and interdisciplinary and non-conventional, if there is such a thing? Women like, Sophie Calle, Tacita Dean, Annette Messager and Helen Sear, all successful. Helen Chadwick is still a good example of a woman who
Women Cinemakers challenges, but I don’t know how things will go, I only hope that this continues, I am still early career so I will let you know. My experience through arts education has borne this out in a way, I have on occasion had a hard time explaining the varied nature of my work and the ideas that connect it, the fact that you need not be one thing or create one type of thing can be difficult to justify but I am pretty well versed in explaining my work and hope that the abstract nature of it will be compelling to some. Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Joanne. Finally, would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects? How do you see your work evolving? Thank you! This is a fantastic opportunity to discuss my work and I am glad you selected it. I have just last week finished my Masters degree so am discussing upcoming ideas for showing work and have been developing an idea with a local organisation that uses microscopy and landscape, watch this space. However, I have several projects which need to be resolved and am hoping to find places that will accept the uncommon nature of what I make. Phd could be next….. An interview by Francis L. Quettier and Dora S. Tennant [email protected]
Hello Sunara and welcome to : we An interview by Francis L. Quettier and Dora S. Tennant [email protected] would like to invite our readers to visit http://www.sunarabegum.com in order to get a wider idea about your artistic production and we would start this interview with a couple of questions regarding your background. You have a solid formal training and you graduated from the prestigious Central St Martins Sunara Begum Women Cinemakers meets Lives and works between London and Jaipur Art for me is the thread with which we sew together our collective memories. In all my work I try to tell the story of our forever evolving identities. How we came from the root and branched out is always different....Our connection is how we go back.” I am a seeker of truth, a dweller in the unknown and a dreamer of the impossible. A visual- anthro-mythologist. My art expresses a universal spirit encompassing my sense of ancestral memory and ethnic identity in which the essence, form and textures of the past shape my interpretations of the present and sense of the future. In building bridges spanning the past, present and future, local knowledge is transcended to exemplify a world communality. My own identity is defined through a personal voice and view enlarged by a critical awareness of contemporary aesthetics and events. On exploring the sculptural potential of composition, form and dimension interrelated with natural materials such as bamboo, earth and twine in creating works that are concerned with issues of the encroachment on nature and inroads into the external and internal human condition, the selected materials used become an affecting metaphor reflecting upon our fragile environment and our human vulnerability. In making cross-cultural references and synthesising Asian and Western elements through metaphors and symbols to create works that reflect both the fragility of the environment and the vulnerability of humankind, I call to mind the now threatened symbiosis of nature and humankind. Through the appropriation of native and folkloric materials and motifs, I speak also for the continuity of cultural heritage and for spiritual survival in the context of the contemporary world.
Women Cinemakers College of Art and Design where you completed your BA in Fine Art and a MFA in Fine Art: how did your studies inform your current practice? Moreover, how does your cultural substratum due to your Bengali roots direct the trajectory of your artistic research? As a visual artist and filmmaker based in liminal spaces my practice is simply guided through the embrace of the unknown. It takes a while to get there, to let go and to completely submerge myself within the elements of chaos and questions, but when I am in that place I believe all is possible and one could really see the function of art ‘for’ oneself and ‘beyond’ oneself. This feeling in itself is gratifying and puts me in a position of true inner selfempowerment. Attending Central Saint Martins in London gave me the licence to dwell in this very space. They provided me with a blank canvas and to just let go with no ropes attached. I was completely free! The critical assessments were invaluable and some of the tutors were incredibly helpful in pointing me in new and unusual directions, to challenge my practice and to remain open to explore different processes. I remember relishing this freedom at the time as it gave me a sense of autonomy in terms of honing my voice as a visual artist. As a young person growing up in London with Bengali roots there were still cultural voids that I felt the college was unable to fill. Growing up in a Sufi household I was surrounded by my mother’s chants, stories of homeland, folk songs and alternative world views, none of which could really be addressed fully in art school as they had very different reference points. In my third year of university, I found myself looking for places to intern to give me that grounding I felt I was missing. I started working at Halaqah Media, a London based South African media company. There, I was immediately thrown into the deep end. We were working on feature documentaries from conception to production and postinterview
Women Cinemakers
Women Cinemakers
Women Cinemakers production. I was attending film festivals, organising screenings around the world and adopting an entirely new process of working. It was in my final year that I found balance and both Central Saint Martins and Halaqah media fed aspects of my hunger as a young creative wanting to find fulfilment in the arts. They were both two opposite extremes! One day I had complete structure, order, technical grounding and the next day I was completely free, abstracted from the concrete and given immense scope to find my voice. Though they were so contrastingly different they were in some ways very similar and weaving between the two in my final year gave me a place I could call my own. On the MFA at Central Saint Martins I really honed in on forging a path that I could continue on as an explorer, an enquirer with the myriad of rich cultural reference points I could draw on from my own background to inform my journey. For this special edition of WomenCinemakers we have selected Project 21 - A Meditation on Stillness, an extremely interesting experimental film that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article and that can be viewed at https://vimeo.com/188095952. When inquiring into the shifting gender roles between East and West, your captivating work invites viewers to explore the themes of spirituality, femininity and identity: when walking our readers through the genesis of Project 21 - A Meditation on Stillness, would you tell us how you develop the initial idea? In particular, how do you consider the relationship between the necessity of scheduling the details of the video and the need for spontaneity? What importance does improvisation play in your process? After university I spent several years travelling between UK, Europe, South Asia and West Africa and spent several months interview