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Portrait of transmedia storyteller and film director Selim Harbi
Design Indaba
Cape Town, South Africa
Tunisian transmedia storyteller and award-winning director Selim Harbi was selected by Design Indaba to take part in our collaborative initiative with Google Arts & Culture, titled Colours of Africa. Africa is known for its bold, unapologetic use of colour. Stories are told in pigments, tones and hues; a kaleidoscope as diverse as the cultures and peoples of the continent. For the initiative, we asked 60 African creatives to capture the unique spirit of their country in a colour which represents home to them. The projects they have created are personal and distinct stories of Africa, put into images, videos, texts and illustrations. Each artist has also attempted to articulate what being African means to their identity and view of the world.
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- Title: Portrait of transmedia storyteller and film director Selim Harbi
- Original Source: Design Indaba
- What it Means to be African: To be African is to be human and universal, open and tolerant, rooted and detached at the same time, embedding proudly that rainbow of colours in itself, aspiring to the upcoming.
- Subject: Selim Harbi
- Rationale: NOTE: To enjoy the Colours of the Invisible film as the artist intended, please listen to the soundtrack with earphones on. I have seen Stambeli ceremonies since I was a child. The Stambeli is a unique tradition in Tunisia; its roots come from the nomadic sub-Saharan and Tuareg tribes, who moved or have been displaced to Tunisia. It is a traditional music genre that has a kind of spiritual fervor. Over the years, this traditional music has absorbed different languages and developed as a perfect model of cultural syncretism. It is used in celebration and in healing traditions, and reminds us Tunisians of our history and sense of belonging. The music is colourful, intense. It calls from the past and projects into the future, all while having magical roots in the present. It occured to me that Stambeli is a mystic spaceship, going through time and space. Like the Gnawa tradition in Morocco, Stambeli is based on a seven-coloured spiritual system, with each colour appealing to different natural elements and soul moods. Each of the seven sections serves a different purpose in the spirit realm. I understand it to be a futuristic concept, not an archaic one: everything is connected in the universe, the visible and the invisible. That's why I called this Colours of Africa video work Colours of the Invisible. The invisible has all the colours, and all the moods. It's all an imagination or a manifestation of the spirit. So the colour I am hunting is the colour of African spirituality, which is philosophical, conceptual. The blurriness of the images is intended to highlight the in-between space the dance occupies. The 8D spatialised soundscape puts the visual elements on a hyper-realistic level. The figure of Bousadia – a mythical blackman who has lost his child and is stuck in a perpetual search – is a metaphor for Africa, reminding the Africans of their history and roots. He is the invisible made visible out of human's imagination. With his traditional-futuristic style, he is both the human and natural elements in one. With his Qraqeb (iron castanets) he resonates the rhythm of the invisible, infinite power of the soul. The maestro, called Yenna, is playing the Gombri, three-stringed wooden instrument, opening the spaces and moods and designing the soundscape. The Arifa – genderless dancers – are sometimes waves, sometimes wind, sometimes fire or earth, and are the connection of the earth to the invisible, the guiding entity. The Koyo, or the Qraqeb player, guarantees the rhythm, and the trance.
- Project: Colors of Africa
- Location: Tunisia
- Lead Quote: That's why I called this video work Colours of the Invisible. The colour I am hunting is the colour of African spirituality, which is philosophical, conceptual.
- Hex Code: ffffff
- Colour Choice: Stambeli Ritual
- Biography: Selim Harbi is a transmedia storyteller and award-winning director. He graduated with BA in screen-based and audiovisual media from Beuth University of Applied Sciences in Berlin, Germany, and continues to study and learn as much as possible in as many ways as possible. Over the last 10 years, Harbi has been involved with several cross-media projects. As a passionate traveler, he loves to redefine things and focuses on contemporary global mobility, and African issues. With a special flair for tech-trends and innovation, Harbi utilises the newest media tools and cutting-edge technologies in his projects, always looking for ways to make impact and new challenges. He is based between Tunis and Berlin.
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