30. MEETING RIVERS: A SPACE BETWEEN ILLUMINATION AND EMPOWERMENT.
The collaborative discusses their creative process.
Film still from 'C-sharp' courtesy of Meeting rivers, 2023.
How did you decide to form 'Meeting rivers? Please can you introduce this body of work?
In the hope of creating a mediation between experiences of borders and a growing sense of displacement, 'Meeting rivers' was formed as a female collective of two.
As how sound relates to the cultivation of seeds, so human beings share space in the forms of distances and physicality. The ongoing practice communicates through multiple locations as a way to expand the possibilities of exchange. Such locations include Germany, India, Iran, Lithuania and Sardinia.
'C-sharp' is an experimental short film that follows a dialogue stretching through zones of time and momentary feelings as a way to reflect on the oppression of both women and nature. Such practice incorporates music produced in collaboration with musicians from India in recent years.
The need for mediation is becoming urgent in order to create an undefined image of peace.
The use of light is immediately very affecting within your works, please can you explain how you use light as a medium?
Light reveals what is veiled and music questions the nature of an answer. Exploring both continuity and distinctiveness.
In this way, the nature of light is similar to that of music. There is always a gap of inaccessibility to grasp them. One cannot hold light or watch melody. Once music and light materialise in space, only then can be perceived as a direct experience.
Both light and music have the feature of “live performance” enabling us to create a metaphor for illumination and empowerment, representing “transformation” and “becoming.”
Film still from 'C-sharp' courtesy of Meeting rivers, 2023.
There is a real sense of movement and observation within your works, I found that to be fascinating especially within the piecing of film footage together so that collectively there is a unity of quest, what is it that you are searching for and what have you learned so far within that practice?
In the world that is torn by ongoing conflict and never-ending bipolarities – the search itself becomes the transition.
In the film 'C-sharp', everything began by evoking the very moment of ‘starting’. The direct use of light, music, and archive footage evokes a growing sense of emergency and confusion while still portraying the process of blooming.
The film is a reminder that myth needs continual reinterpretation.
The journey of 'C-sharp' is inspired by the principles of Permaculture. It is a knowledge of design and the relationship between human beings and space; this provided us with a new direction - a new vision of how agriculture can smooth aggression while creating a mediation between trauma and success.
After visiting Arunachala Shiva mountain in Tamil Nadu, located in south India, we were astonished to learn that the mountain was transformed from a desert into a forested landscape by the legendary permaculture practitioner John Button who noted, that “If there’s a moral to this tale, perhaps it would be that devastated lands have an unseen past, but also an unknowable future”.
Film still from 'C-sharp' courtesy of Meeting rivers, 2023.
You describe your practice as engaging with 'alternative image-making processes', please can you expand upon this terminology?
In expanded cinema, re-evaluating, deconstructing, and subverting cinematic conventions are techniques that have been a focus for many artists, such as Chris Marker and Jonas Mekas. In the search for inherent qualities and liberation from conventional narrative structures of cinema, 'alternative image-making processes' have been employed to create new cinematic languages.
Experimentation with alternative ways of printing, split-screen compositions, filmed images and text projections helped us to look differently, therefore think differently.
Film still from 'C-sharp' courtesy of Meeting rivers, 2023.
The work returns to a sense of specificity of space - as an atmosphere, both physically and very much emotionally - can you explain how space influences and contributes to your practice?
Space in our practice works as an invitation. Space always opens what cannot be perceived. In this way, It is a miracle in itself. It is our main focus to create and expand the politics of effects.
To explore material-spatial components and emotional sense. 'C-sharp' is presented in two screens in order to emphasise the parallels and oppositions. Such a journey of displacement is an attempt to show what is suppressed in the language of borders. It enables us to create a vision where our role becomes that of mediators. Like a romantic manipulation to connect what is disconnected. A short, but possible mission.
Working within a collective is important to your work, can you explain how individually you collaborate and how this union began?
We are inseparable in any of our actions.
Our collaboration is born out of a conversation that started in London in 2015. Both coming from very different cultural backgrounds, through our practice we developed a single voice that focuses on togetherness allowing us to bring a diversity of experiences, locations and conversations, something that we hope to share with our audiences.
Thanks to our desire for expression our collaboration created a unity between two practitioners. It was never possible without one another.
Film still from 'C-sharp' courtesy of Meeting rivers, 2023.