Document:Q11422

A single-channel video that explores no-mans-lands, border crossings, and nomadic childhoods through the prism of windows filmed in 11 different countries is deconstructed into a series of databases that through user interaction dynamically generate an unfolding sequence of QuickTime windows, while simultaneously being reconstructed as a fragmented score and text that remix the sounds and sense of the original into the new patterns created by each viewer's unique trajectory through the material. The result is an experimental documentary reconstituted as a documented experiment, a narrative spliced with poem and essay and splintered into a database, a remembered journey snapped into film-souvenirs and swapped to extend a conversation between friends and strangers, and a linear video unpacked into a twelve-channel interaction: all designed to dislocate viewers from their ordinary lives and re-place them in the crossroads of the hybrid generation, that difficult, absurd, productive zone where borders blur and cultures intersect, overlap and exchange.

Video + web design by Mariam Ghani. With music by Qasim Naqvi, text by Zohra Saed, sound mix (video clips) by Michael Floyd, and programming by Ed Potter. Shot on DV in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Palestine, Turkey, Armenia, Italy, the Netherlands, Russia, the UK and the USA. Commissioned for the summer 2004 issue of artwurl.org.