Catalogue > Un extrait vidéo au hasard

The visual component of the video ‘Safe Space’ is pieced together from countless YouTube clips of ballroom events from the early nineties—at a time the AIDS epidemic was surging in New York City. Originally a community created by trans and queer people of color in response to a society that marginalizes their existence. The ballroom scene provides a safe space for performers to act out various ways of gender expressions. For decades, the ballroom community has influenced pop culture, and it’s vocabulary has seeped into common parlance. ‘Safe Space’ is narrated by AI generated voices that recite contemporary experiences and statements of LGBTQ+ refugees that have been sourced from the internet. The confluence of image and sound seek to depict both the harsh plight of a minority within a minority and the creative resilience and sense of community that emerges from these experiences.

Mirelle Borra’s interest in urgent global subjects merges with her keen sense of aesthetic to create thought-provoking work. Using moving image, she engages with social and political topics to re-frame these matters in new ways. Mirelle seeks to examine structures of representation through a transnational perspective while staying in constant dialog with the context from which the work is derived. The main focus of her practice is where the personal and the political intersect. In 2017, she founded the online platform 6x6 project which is dedicated to the dissemination of artists’ moving image works, and to create an ever-growing network among peers. Her work has shown internationally in film festivals and exhibitions, including the 20th Millennium Docs Against Gravity (PL), 20th London Short Film Festival (UK), 29th Sheffield DocFest (UK), 19th Vienna Shorts Film Festival (AT), 67th International Short Film Festival Oberhausen (DE), 17th Athens Digital Arts Festival (GR), 3rd FRACTO Experimental Film Encounter, Berlin (DE), 39th Ars Electronica Festival, Linz (AT), and the 3rd Screen City Biennial, Stavanger (NO) among others. Mirelle was born in the Netherlands, and after living in New York City for many years, she is currently based in Berlin.