To what extent can a video artist and a writer share the same platform of creativity?
“Lawrence Durell’s major concern, like that of all serious artists, is with the essence of things,” wrote author Jeremy Robinson in one of his essays.
Ali Kazma shares the same concern and works to reflect the essence of things and the essence of the human condition in his videos.
Kazma’s technique and talent lie in his ability to locate where the purest condition of life exists and then to explore and actualize it with a real and poetic style.
Like Durrell, Kazma is a storyteller. As an artist Kazma tells stories about the human condition and human professions. How people cope with life via their professions. In other terms, Kazma can show how a person “exists” in this life with his or her profession.
The profession becomes the culture and the essence of a human being in Kazma’s videos.
In his current solo exhibition at Gallery Nev, he tells us the stories of a painter, a taxidermist and a chef. However, Kazma not only reflects how those people work but also how they exist in life within the framework of their professions. Kazma redeems himself not to the audiences or to humanity but to those who work patiently and passionately.
Kazma’s camera works like a writer’s pen. He records. He creates irony, story and characters in his videos. Even though he tells the story of a real life with real life characters, it is unlikely to see documentary characteristics in his work. Kazma poetically reveals the unseen acts and characteristics of professions.
As Paul Ardenne, art critique and academic, put it: “Kazma’s camera enters the more unexpected domain of visual ethics. This means that by his overtly manifest determination to never exaggerate, to not yield to the hubris of the image.” (Published by Galeri Nev and Galeri Anaix Forever, translation by Charles Penwarden.)
In one of his videos titled “The Painter,” we see Jacques Coulais, a tetraplegic painter who uses a wheelchair as his brush, paint a canvas in different colors. Kazma never tries to exaggerate or show Coulais as a hero. He deliberately uses the images just to reflect the reality of his profession. The audience can see the serious expression on Coulais’ face and his approach to his work.
The honest images from Kazma make us interrogate the image flood that we encounter every day. He works for days just like an image collector and at the end selects the best images out of those hundreds that have flooded in to make his video. In this sense, the audience may question: “How does my profession define my existence?”
In his video titled “Taxidermist,” audiences witness that Kazma’s main preoccupations in his videos are not only his technique but also plot, story and narration through the scenes. In “Taxidermist,” audiences see how a taxidermist does his job and how a dead animal seems to come to life in the hands of a taxidermist. We witness how the animal’s inner organs are removed and the different techniques the taxidermist uses when he stuffs the creature.
The plot becomes the main issue, while Kazma prefers to increase the number of main characters as he depicts not only the story of a taxidermist but also the story of an animal.
When Kazma enters the kitchen of Relais Bernard Loiseau, he succeeds in opening a new dimension in terms of cooking. This time Kazma explores a “love” theme. We see that the chef takes his time, touches the food, writes about food in a notebook, explores the tastes, sometimes he likes his dishes and other times dislikes them, but in the end he loves it all.
At the end of the exhibition there is some realization on what it takes to exist in the world of an artist.
All of this might remind us of a lecture that Jean-Paul Sartre conducted just after the Second World War, published as a book entitled “L’Existentialisme est un humanisme.” In his book, Sartre tells us a story about identity and destiny.
A man gets up in the morning. He knows, without a second’s moment of self-questioning, what he must do. He must take up the clothes that define his identity as a human being and put them on. He pulls on his black trousers, slaps the napkin across his forearm, adjusts the angle of his chin, and makes for the door. He is, in short, a waiter in a restaurant. That is his nature. That is his identity. That is his destiny.
Such a human being, Sartre points out, is guilty of “mauvaise foi” (bad faith).
Unlike Sartre, Kazma does not suggest that any kind of profession is a mauvaise foi. Because, instead of approaching the stories like Sartre, his approach is like Durrell, the writer of the Alexandria Quartet, treating every kind of profession with high respect.
He opens a new dimension of thought about professions.