Catalogue > At random

Places of Articulation: Five Obstructions takes the spectator on a journey across borders, from Northern Ireland to Tibet, passing through Germany, Albania and Flanders. However, it explores a more deeply engraved border, the invisible border of our oral cavity, which marks and defines the sounds we can emit and the words we can pronounce. Since biblical times and up till nowadays asylum procedures, this border is exploited to discriminate and divide. Moving between territories – sonic, anatomical and political ones – this installation examines how voice and pronunciation are used as identifiers, eventually become mobile checkpoints, determining fates and sometimes costing lives. Employing different imaging methods and visualisations, it renders these checkpoints visible, while questioning the limits of identification and revealing blurred lines or zones of ambiguity that defy binary categorisation.

Effi & Amir, born and raised in Israel, are working as a duo since 1999 and have been living in Brussels since 2005. They studied fine arts at the Bezalel Academy, Jerusalem and The Sandberg Institut, Amsterdam and taught themselves, much later, how to make films. Their work, which employs audiovisual media, performance and participatory strategies, is located on the blurry border between documentary and fiction, and is dealing with mechanisms of construction – of identity, group belonging, history and the artwork itself. Effi & Amir's work was recently awarded prizes in documentary film festivals (docAviv, IndieLisboa, En ville !, Jean rouch festival) and they are laureates of the Scam's 2022 Prix de parcours for audiovisual documentary work.