Katia Kameli

Interview published in Untitled Magazine, number 37 spring 2006

For several years the Paris-based Franco-Algerian artist Katia Kaméli has explored the representation of Algerian culture and it intersection with French culture. Notably she has addressed the representation of women in the videos Nouba (2000) and Aicha (2002) and situations of immigrants in the projects Nomadic Utopia (2000) and En route pour l’aventure (2000). Her most recent video, Bledi a possible scenario (2004), is part of an ongoing series of artistic propositions, which includes a forthcoming workshop with art students in Algers (March 2006) with the support of the French Embassy, Centre Culturel Français (Algeria) and the Pistoletto Foundation. Bledi will be shown in May at the Grand Palais (Paris) within the context of a large group exhibition of contemporary art.

William Jeffett: What does the title refer to, especially the word Bledi?

Katia Kaméli:
Bled means the land, i is the possessive in Arabic.
We get few images from Algeria, which most of the time tend to stigmatize the political and social situation that is far more complex than the established power would like to have us believe. The Algerian people, oppressed by an insidious civil war, have become paranoid, have closed their windows, searching for and dreaming of democracy through their parabolic dishes. So, Bledi in progress is the temporary title of a series of projects dealing with Algeria.
The series includes three works for the moment. Bledi, a possible script, an imaginary storyboard, a possible narration made up of overlays tracings of images gathered from the Algerian press. The film Bledi a possible scenario plays over the many layers of Algerian realities.
And finally the Montage / Tournage, the video workshop I’m organizing there in March.

WJ: Where did you film it? In what city, and the ferry scenes are between which points?

KK: The journey begins with the departure of the mythical ship Méditerranée from the port of Marseille and unfolds along with thoughts, memories and expectations of the passengers. On arrival in Alger, attention is centered on everyday life, with a particular regard on the conditions of women and the new generation.

WJ: What is the relation of fiction and reality in Bledi?

KK: This is precisely one layer of interest of the film, a possible scenario gives already this idea that all information is relative. There is always so many ways to understand a situation or what we call reality. I have difficulty understanding people that have a single way of seeing things in life. One can always give a judgment and I appreciate that but, like in art, there are so many ways to interpret.

WJ Can you say something about the relation of sound and image and music? In the video the three songs are very important in structuring the film, as well there are the parts where women sing.

KK: The sound is as important as the images in video. In my work music is also treated as a possible source of information, this is also why I chose to use the form of teletext as subtitles.
In Bledi a possible scenario, the first part is a back and forward between personal and collective memories. Visually I used a mix of super 8 and Dv, musically those sequences are balanced with Strange things by Echopark, a French electro-pop band. I’m really close to them and their music. I sang with them several times. Yes: “Strange things happen when you venture in space…this is the way extensive is normality…how can u be so safe to me….”
Then, I choose to display more actual social and political aspects, so the use of the Rap of Double Kanon’s Chkoune li moute? (Who dies, who kills?) was also a good source of subjective information. Ultimately the third part had to be Raï sung by Cheba Karima giving some feelings concerning the ambiguity of the male/female relationship. The literal translation of Raï is “opinion” or “my way.” It is the symbol of a lifestyle of cynicism and anti-authoritarianism.

WJ: Can you explain the relation of processed images and documentary-type images.

KK: Like I said before, this is super 8 that I projected on a wall to digitalize them. I wanted to experiment with different layers of forms, film, fixed images, color, black and white…each one reflecting its own history and giving enough space for diverse interpretations.

WJ: What is the role of modernity in relation to tradition and post-modernity in terms of how you represent Algeria? How do you use images to represent place, for example in the sequences with the conversations with the younger generation, and also in terms of the how images function within Islam?

KK: After ten years of civil war there is for sure some left over paranoia around. It was really complicated to get interviews with people. They have already culturally some troubles with the image that is prohibited in Islam and they really became suspicious toward the cameras within the political context. All the people answering to me on the boat are Kabyles (a Berber tribe).
Well, the question of images is the subject of divergences between the Muslims. Some Hadiths evoking the “soûrah” and the ” taswîr” suppose that all forms of images (that represent animate or inanimate beings) are condemnable, understanding that certain forms are authorized. At least, there is consensus of opinion on the prohibition of the idols and the statues.

WJ: And how do these images connect with popular culture. What I want to suggest here is a layering of different senses of time in Algeria, which represents traditional culture (images of women) as well as a sense of modernity in terms of architecture and technology (mobile telephones, pop music). These registers of modernity, post-modernity and tradition seem to coexist in the present tense in a provocative sense, which perhaps is part of what you are after in the video?

KK: Hum, Algeria is independent since 1962. The country is in the process of development with strong cultural traditions, which create sometimes some really absurd situations, images.
There you jump easily from traditional scenes as the woman preparing the couscous to girls having love stories trough mobile phones because a rendezvous with your boyfriend in a public space is complicated. I could compare Alger to Bratislava. Places that were sleeping for a time and missed some stages but got directly to the last floor. Interesting prototypes of post-modernism!

WJ: And the representation of women in the video?

KK: I tried to dispatch different views concerning women; you can see them in several contexts. They appear freer when they are inside the house or among themselves. In Alger you can find more and more mixed places, but in the rest of the country there are few occasions for them to have the chance to communicate normally with the other sex.

WJ: What about the changing registers between shots in street representing people and shots from moving cars. How does this device frame the narrative representation? Can you say something about the tension between narrative (fiction) and documentary (reality) to give a sense of the reality of the cultural context you are representing?

KK: I have my personal way of shooting, I guess you can feel my thirst, quest to translate and decode the protocols of this society. For example, I kept this long travelling in the capital,
because you could see the hitistes , hit means the wall, literally the ones that hold the walls and some other details such as all the white spots that garnish the architecture. Everyone must have a parabolic dish; like a survival kit.

WJ: A part of your work seems mainly to do with the image (video) and another part is more performative (sculptural). I am thinking about social sculpture or nomadic spaces as sites of exchange in your projects Nomadic Utopia, In Progress or En Route pour l’aventure, which seems more like a documentation of a performance. Can you elaborate this aspect of your work and say how it relates to the issues of representation explored in other videos?

KK: En Route pour l’aventure is an action I did some years ago in a train station. I did it at the same time I constructed the Nomadic. Those bags are icons of migrations. I do consider migration in all its aspects depending if forced or not. The action was a way of presenting my position towards it. Nomadic Utopia is a hybrid space, an in between. Fluxes of people are automatically creating hybridisations, indeed new spaces, thoughts and situations. Which is also the point with Nomadic developing, adapting and interfering in any local context.

WJ: It seems to me you explore intercultural spaces which challenge essentialist constructions of cultural identity. Your work is about intersecting identities and how they are constructed through conversation and exchange. In Bledi this is clear when the students are speaking about themselves, how their country is perceived and their general discontents with the older generation. you have stated that your work is a “platform for heterogeneous discussion to stimulate an exchange…” I like this idea of the work as in flux, understood as a conversation rather than a fixed statement…

KK: I don’t believe that artists have more answers then others, but the frame of the art world allows experimentation. So I decided to use that space, trying to avoid stereotypes, to activate new relationships, new process. The workshop I’m organising there in March is part of this process. I want to give to some students and young filmmakers the possibility of providing their testimony, their viewpoints about their everyday lives. For us it’s a chance to understand through a different relationship than the one broadcast by the mass media.

WJ: Returning to the idea of social sculpture, I was struck by your project Eden Arcadia: Floating Island for Venice. Robert Smithson had a project to make a floating island of trees to circulate around Manhattan, which was never realised in his lifetime, but recently recreated. Your project strikes me as more poetic than Smithson’s, at the same time it shares a kind of utopian drive.

KK: The Floating Island wasn’t realised, its state is totally utopian for the moment. This idea is emerging out of a workshop about new perspective for Venice. This Utopian idea would need some precise development to be realised but it’s possible, it’s just a matter of funds.
Basically the idea isn’t new, you can find some in the Titicaca Lake called los Uros and some more utopian ones as the Laputa from Gulliver’s Travels. But we gave some social and philosophical taste to that one. A floating garden deriving on the Laguna where you could come and grow basil and tomatoes… I know the project of Smithson and its activation. I really like this fantasised image of some forest going around Manhattan. All kinds of good art projects have some taste of Utopia, no?

WJ: In London, where Untitled is published, and where the government is directly involved in war, the art world is oblivious to the current political situation. I wonder if you could briefly give me a sense of your perspective of the general feeling in the art world in France and also your more personal point of view as an artist?

KK: A big part of the Parisian scene is not really concerned by political and social issues. You can even smell some allergy around. For sure, this as to do with the market. We all have to find a way of making a living so it’s certainly easier to have a formal approach for that. Personally this is getting on my nerves and I have often ignited discussion about that. Being an artist isn’t easy, so I wonder, while going on working, if the price is amnesia.
During crisis there are less and less money for culture. The older cultural figures are settled and have some collectors behind them. Of course the task is more complicated for us (the young generation). We all run after funding and visibility. Which is also a problem in Paris. There are very few spaces for emerging artists or the one that don’t surf the wave. I’m not pessimistic, still spaces like Glassbox, Public or some young galleries are trying to show works that aren’t mainstream.
For the future, we have to learn how to get private money without making too many concessions.

Dr William Jeffett is Curator, Exhibitions at the Salvador Dalí Museum, St Petersburg, Florida
Katia Kameli lives and works in Paris.