Tableau no.1

Tableau No. 1: Forms of Violence, Means of Resistance, Multimedia Installation, Acryl paint, 4 I-Pads with steel frames, photographs, handwriting

This multi-media installation acts as an examination of power relations and soft politics, of situated women struggles exemplified through architecture, film, poetry, strikes, and settlements. It aims to give visibility to a set of relations between Germany and Afghanistan by focusing on ties and narratives prior and subsequent to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in late December 1979.

The installation creates a rhizomatic narrative in which the artist herself and her position act as a binder: her role as a film-maker, but also as a German citizen who is granted exceptional “privileges” as a foreigner coming from Western society.

Resembling a non-chronological report, the installation shows still images and excerpts from various films including clips from the feature film Rabia-e Balkhi ( 1974) by Toryalai Shafaq, Khalek A'Lil & Abbas Shaban about this important figure of the new wave of Persian poetry. From the artist’s filmography we can observe images of a reenacted women´s demonstration against the prohibition to work imposed by the Taliban, featured in The Making of a Demonstration (2004); and the poetess Khaleda Forogh reading a poem by Rabia from Balkh in Passing the Rainbow (2007) realized by Schaefer together with Elfe Brandenburger in Kabul, an experimental documentary that deals with performative strategies enacted by different Afghan women to undermine the gender norms in society.

Installation at the exhibition Geographies of Imagination, Savvy Contemporary, 2018

© 2018 mazefilm - Sandra Schäfer