Walking and Talking , 2018-2019

Single-channel video installation, 6 min 21 , Color, sound

In Walking and Talking (2018-2019) we listen to a message to a friend, an appeal made from a museum in London, where the woman reflects on her position as an African in a European museum of modern art. She speaks about concerns such as identity, class and artistic heritage and questions the position of a non-Westerner in relation to modern Western art: that very Western art which, while making a claim to universality, also excludes other narratives.

In Walking and Talking the 'brutal' manner of filming, combined with the round form of the image which suggests the absence of a beginning and an end, seems to bring about a negation of the film's narrative structure. As a result the voice in the video assumes a crucial role. The technique is not voice-over, but voice-on, shown on the screen, via the image of the narrator's mouth, as a means of accentuating the physical presence of the voice. By situating the English transcript of the text in the middle of the image, Halloubi allows the viewer to be 'guided' through the decoding of horizonless images which have a certain weightlessness due to their circular shape.

In this way the image, being neither entirely documentary nor purely fictional, is literally and figuratively reduced to its elementary form. Meanwhile, the position from which the artist acts is characterized by distance and the deliberate avoidance of a direct correlation between the text and the image. It is up to the viewer to find his or her own way through the image and to appropriate the text for interpretation. The same holds true for the exhibition's title, which is partly a quote despite the absence of any reference to the author. The quote provides no explanation; and consequently, removed from the original context, its words acquire the power to undermine certainties and presuppositions, and... to turn our dreams into chaos.