Melik Ohanian.

On the recommendation of our contemporary arts teacher, I visited Galerie Chantal Crousel to see Melik Ohanian's new exhibition- DAYS, I See what I saw and what I will See.



At the centre of the exhibition, a specific double sided screen had been installed to screen his new film. Conceptual cinematography is not always my cup of tea. Sometimes I find that the arists struggles to convey such a complex message that the meaning ends up totally eluding the viewer. The text accompanying Meliks film was rather brief and did not explain in great detail and therefore I was left with many unanswered questions. But perhaps this is what he wanted, to spark curiosity in the viewers mind?

In brief, the video's aim is to explore the notion of "producing a continuous representation of space and a discontinuous representation of time". Lost you already? Hold on in things will become clearer, I promise. The film was shot over a period of 11 days from February 24 to March 6, 2011 in a Labour Camp in Saaj, Sharjah, UAE. The artist constructed 100 metres of tracks to make traveling shots which lasted about 4 minutes. The next day he moved the tracks forward 100 metres and filmed again. He did this over a time span of 11 consecutive days, shooting during daytime and night creating two corresponding films, representing 1100 metres of space and a total time of 42 minutes.

Interestingly enough, the film was proposed to be screened at the Sharjah Biennal 10 on March 14 however for somewhat unknown and undisclosed reasons, despite the best efforts of the artist, the film was never screened and only the poster was shown and Ohanian decided never to return to Sharjah. Therefore it has been screened here in Paris for the first time. It is thought that although it is not visually overtly controversial, the world of Labour Camps in to which we are welcomed is conceptually a politically challenging subject.

As a viewer with virtually no previous knowledge of Labour Camps or their workers the sight was particularly alien to me and I felt like a definite outsider to this largely unknown existence. As the text surrounding the exhibition was pretty brief and vague, I decided to do my own research. Labour Camps, like the one shown within the film can really be likened to 21st century slavery. They are extremely closed communities in which workers are exploited for all their hard labour in return for little pay. Rumour has it that within this particular Labour Camp, the workers were actually laboring to create structures for the Louvre Museum in Paris. It is therefore a huge embarrassment for the French government who are (perhaps totally unintentionally) disregarding social values in order to benefit culturally. Perhaps those at the Louvre are totally unaware of where the fabrication is taking place, but it ultimately their responsibility. With this in mind (and I would hasten to add that it is not confirmed fact), I wonder whether the film is in fact a criticism of Western Values and whether this underlying story is the true reason behind the refusal to show the film at the Biennal. I supposed we will never know....