6 Video Arts
If 20 Fingers is an attempt to glue seven pieces into one
so that - if nothing else – at least it conveyed a perception
of a broken unity, then Mania Akbari’s 6 Video Arts -
Self, Repression, Sin, Escape, Fear and Devastation, shot
between 2003-2005 – come as a project which no longer
cherishes such (idealistic?) hopes. There’s even more to
it: its artistic credo is expressed and constructed literally
on the scraps, very tiny pieces. The basic means of
expression used by the authoress in every single of the
six videos is the so-called ‘split-screen’, the combination
of a several smaller, separately framed images – scraps –
within the same action. Sometimes such images are only
two, sometimes they multiple into dozens. Although
most of these images are symbolic, at some points even
abstract but always monotone and repetitive (so that it
could be probably better watched as an installation or
live picture in a gallery) – this time Mania would have
serious problems denying the explicit and primary political
context of all six videos. Their individual titles
speak for themselves, and every doubt left is definitely
dispelled by Mania, broken to pieces; the only protagonist
of every moving picture, and her alternatively
raged/scared/provocative/
dead look that stares directly
at the spectators’ eyes which
this time – whether they
want it or not – take on the
role of the tradition or the
man on the dock from the
20 Fingers. Various situations
that Mania puts herself in or
creates directly evoke the issue
of (female) dependency and
forced restraint – not necessarily
in the Middle East, but
maybe even easier in the
domestic backyard. It seems
as if Mania had dreamed her
videos while shooting 20
Fingers: so that she could
have dreamt out everything
that could interfere with the
movie’s status of allegory;
and the other way around:
she filmed 20 Fingers so
that during the shooting she
could dream out 6 Videos,
i.e. elaborated in details six
mordant social statements.
Organisation: City of Women
In collaboration with: Kinodvor
