2024 - 2025
2/4 What you see is a forced whole.
It was never meant to be complete.
These pieces should have been kept or sent. The work is shaped by fragments you’ll find throughout
In Between Seven Lines is a short film essay made from and with:
1. Edited from B-roll footage (unimportant scenes that didn’t show images of happiness or family) from Hi8 tapes recorded in the 1990s. These videos were filmed and meant to be sent to my aunt, who was forced to leave the country in 1980s, but they never reached her. After 30 years, I wanted to send her this edited film in Copenhagen as a gesture to finally deliver what was never delivered. Yet again, it didn’t get to her. I held back because I didn’t want to forcefully remind her of the past while the present is all about the current war.
2. Composed from current voice messages of family members (mom, aunts, grandma) reading aloud sentences they once wrote to each other in letters from the 1980s; sentences that carry silences. Composed by Saba Alizadeh. These recordings were meant to be sent to my cousin in Nantes, who was forced to leave the country in the 2000s, as a renarration for our generation. I held back because I didn’t want to forcefully remind her of the past while the present is all about the current war.
3. Blank letter papers, for you to write me, in between seven lines, and to participate in a collective act of remembrance. To share how you relate to these fragments emotionally or historically, through personal or collective memory. The seven-line limit on A5 paper was the same limit for my uncle and many more uncles, thousands of uncles, while they were forcefully kept and couldn’t reach their loved ones.
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