About the project

The two video portraits, about paradise I/II, were conceived as a continuation and an extension of the real-time-nomads video works. These new works were realized in 2011/2012 for and in Hamburg.

In a variation on the work of real-time-nomads, the new video-films delve deeper into the relationship between personal and cultural memory, shedding light on the connection between cultural memory and the construction of space*. The working process remains unchanged. Quotes from interviews are woven together with 3D simulations of imaginary spaces and with video recordings from the business spaces of the interview partners.

One important and long-standing community in Hamburg is the Iranian community. Among other groups, it consists of many merchant families, some of whom have been there since the 19th century. Amongst these businessmen and businesswomen, many carpet traders can be found, since carpets are one of Iran's most significant exports.

The basis of the video works about paradise I and about paradise II are thus conversations with Iranian carpet traders. In these conversations, the central theme is not so much the individual's memory of a concrete room. This time, it is much more about symbolic-abstract space and the different layers of past histories of which the carpets are witnesses. Some recurring motifs in the carpets are plants and elements or symbols which recall landscapes or gardens. The latter has a central meaning in Persian culture, whose history dates back to the pre-Islamic era. In a land which is predominantly covered by desert landscapes, the garden is associated with paradise. (The word paradise originated in ancient Persian.)

about paradise I/II Using video and 3D animations, the films lead us associatively from the real situation of the carpet traders in Hamburg, by way of the carpet as a consumer good, to the ideas and emotions the carpets inspire in the traders as artefacts of cultural memory. 3D simulations are used to make experiences of those spaces possible which cannot be entered with a video camera (imaginary spaces, spaces of memory, etc.). By coupling these simulations with video recordings from the interview partners' places of business , the videos are bound to the “real”. The combination of both media (3D and video) is constructed in such a way that the two cannot always be differentiated from one another. In this way, the overlapping of the visible and the invisible, of the abstract and the concrete and of memory and presence is made evident.

*Space as the result of social relationships, arising from the acts of individuals or groups.

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