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Raha Raissnia
Born in Tehran, Iran, in 1968.
She lives and works in Brooklyn, New York, USA .

Raha Raissnia’s multimedia practice profits from her long experience working at New York’s Anthology Film Archives. Well versed in the cinematic avant-garde, she is also deeply interested in experimental music. Her projection performances often involve collaborations with musicians Aki Onda and Charles Curtis. Working in painting, drawing, and film, Raissnia initially respects the medium-specific conventions of her artistic means, but later renders their boundaries ambiguous by manipulating and layering her source materials. Building her practice by modifying previous works, the artist superimposes different layers of signification to produce films that oscillate between figuration and abstraction.
Raissnia’s recent three-part 16mm black-and-white and color film Longing (2013) was developed from a series of visits to a poor area of New York’s East Harlem. Not wishing to arouse suspicion among residents, the artist decided to hide her camera in her pocket; as a result she was unable to frame her shots. By having to use her whole body to aim the lens, Raissnia’s whirling and erratic movements created abstractions throughout the footage, and those are enhanced by positive–negative reversals, known as solarizations in photography. The resulting film stands out as an honest portrait of the people of East Harlem, whose integrity and lively spirit made a lasting impression on her. The soundtrack to the work was created by the New Yorkbased artist Panagiotis Mavridis, who composed them on instruments he personally designed and produced, some using rolls of celluloid film mounted on gear motors. Producing sound from film, Mavridis’s instruments fuse cinema with music to reimagine the genre of the soundtrack.

Details

  • Title: Longing
  • Creator: Raha Raissnia
  • Date Created: 2014
  • Rights: Courtesy the artist; Miguel Abreu Gallery, New York; Galería Marta Cervera, Madrid, Photo by Alessandra Chemollo; Courtesy: la Biennale di Venezia
  • Medium: 16mm film, color, b&w, optical sound (20’), sound by Panagiotis Mavridis

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