AN ARAB SPRING 2014. 14 channels

Each pitta bread was partially painted, on one side only, using matte black paint. They were photographed once on the black side, and then on their natural, unpainted side while placed on a black wall-hanging that was purchased in a Home Depot store in New Jersey. Surrounding them is a white chalk border, as a reminder where to aim the camera. The camera is placed on a tall tripod, above the elements that are placed on the floor. The pitta breads have been placed intuitively, cerebrally and visually. The result evokes associations concerning several people, many voices, black and white, the Arab Spring, East and West, and randomness.

There are two books on the carpet, both published in 1975, 'Un printemps arabe' (An Arab Spring), and 'Fayçal, roi d'Arabie' (Faisal, King of Arabia), both written by Jacques Benoist-Méchin, who was a friend of Marcel Proust. In the Second World War, Méchin worked for the Vichy government, and later wrote a series of books on the formation

of the Middle East in the previous century. His books have a clearly colonialist perspective.
The pictures are presented as series of 32 photographs or as perfectly synchronised digital animation. That is, all the films are simultaneously screened by a computer or DVD, so that the documents constantly run in a loop of one to three minutes for each file. The animation increases or reduces the number of pittas.

The numerical combination method influences the visual impact of animation - now intensified, now weakened - on what is the anyway random basis according to which the pittas were placed.