Martin Clarke e Alicja Rogalska

Nodar Audio-visual Plateaus

Our first experience of Nodar was total darkness, the smell of mint and grilled meat. We arrived in the evening, and the next morning all we could hear were goats’ bells and the ever-present sound of the Paiva river. A very different place to where we had just come from but familiar in that we were both brought up in similarly rural places.

From the outset, rather than look from the perspective of complete strangers and focus on that kind of experience we decided to explore the place from the perspective of local people–we wanted to talk to them and see Nodar and its neighbours through their eyes. Our decision to focus on old stories wasn’t accidental either–the essence of a place, to us, lies in its history as told by the people who live there.

What we wanted to create, as artists in residence, was an impressionistic reaction to this “people’s mythology”. We collected our data in the form of recorded stories and recollections. The response was a sound-film/poem or series of audio-visual plateaus.

The visual aesthetic of “Contos do Paiva” was inspired by “TheColour of Pomegranates”–a film by Sergei Parajanov. His use of visual interpretations of the poet Sayat Nova’s life and works resonated with our desire to interact artistically with the area and its people.

In terms of content, the work reflects our respective backgrounds in cultural anthropology, collaborative arts practice, phonography and film making. Sonically, the desire was to do more than simplyenhance the visual aspect of the work. The black screen during the interviews served to highlight this thinking–as we wanted to force concentration on the stories themselves.