MELVIN MOTI

The work Moti has made since about 2001 consists of interventions, installations, publications, films and videos. His early videos are primarily based on documentary footage, such as 'Stories from Surinam' (2002) and 'Texas Honkytonkin’' (2003): loosely knitted testimonies of the history of the Indian plantation workers in Surinam, where the artist’s own roots lie, and of the (little known) black origins of country music in Texas. His most celebrated ventures are perhaps the four films 'No Show' (2004), 'The Black Room' (2005), 'E.S.P.' (2007) and 'The Prisoner’s Cinema' (2008). These films are comparably structured by presenting extremely reduced, almost abstract images, accompanied by a compelling soundtrack: a scripted monologue or a fictional interview, to which the image slowly and inexorably attaches itself. Moti produces relatively little work and pays a great deal of attention to documenting and researching his subjects. He often seeks the collaboration of scientists to contextualize his artistic output through essays and talks. Although his work may differ in terms of form, it can always be connected to the artist’s interest in the mechanisms of history, in relation to the processes of remembrance and imagination. In his recent film work he moreover focuses on psychological experiments and paranormal phenomena, like ‘out-of-the-body experiences’, hallucinations, hypnosis and Surrealist ‘sleep-writing’.
The title of the 35 mm film 'E.S.P.' refers to the paranormal Extra Sensory Perception movement of the 1930s. The film combines exceptionally slow, hypnotical images of a bursting soap bubble with the story of the dream logs kept by John William Dunne (1875-1949), who displayed precognitive powers. At the age of eighteen Dunne discovered that fragments of his future were appearing in his dreams. In 1927 he published a book entitled An Experiment with Time, in which he describes his dreams as experiences in which past, present and future occur simultaneously.
In a monologue written by Moti, a male voice talks in the first person about Dunne’s dreams and daydreams. It is a narrative concerning human consciousness, the experience of time, speed, and the pursuit of an impossible goal: the ability to see into the future.
'The Prisoner’s Cinema', Moti’s latest work, premiered this spring at the FRAC Champagne-Ardenne in Rheims. The 35 mm film shows an image of light shining through a rose window. As the viewer looks at this abstract light projection, slowly geometric patterns take shape. The title refers to phenomena which are recognized in neuro and optical science as hallucinations occurring in response to prolonged visual deprivation. Prisoners, confined in dark cells, seem to have repeatedly reported these apparitions. Again, the abstract image strangely resonates with the spoken narrative, in this case the voice of a female scientist who gives a rather dead pan description of the geometrical patterns.
It is amazing to see how Moti is able to unearth forgotten and sometimes quite obscure material in his research on human consciousness, the visionary and imagination and bring it to life in daringly experimental combinations of sound and image. Doubtlessly there will be more surprises to come in this project to catalogue the musings of the mind.

‘When things cast no shadow’, 5th Berlin Biennale, Neue Nationalgalerie, 5 April – 15 June 2008, Berlin. ‘The Prisoners Cinema’, FRAC Champagne/Ardenne, Rheims, 6 May – 16 June 2008.

Martijn van Nieuwenhuyzen is curator at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam.

Uit: Flash Art International, No. 260, May - June, 2008.