Practical Dreamers: Conversations with Movie Artists
Coach House Books, 2008
ISBN 1 55245 200 X
Mike Hoolboom interviews video and filmmaker Jayce Salloum about his artistic practice, which interweaves violent political realities and aesthetic concerns of beauty. Salloum discusses various aesthetic strategies he uses in his video works and how those can be applied to documentary footage in order to transform violence. He exemplifies his focus on the domestic and daily nature of violent realities as a tactic to juxtapose conflict and beauty and "reframe" both to reveal their concurrence in a given moment.
Hoolboom and Salloum discuss the latter's artistic focus on Lebanon (Beirut in particular) as a lasting engagement with the construction and inadequacy of representation of history.
A brief part of the interview pertains to Salloum's views on having his footage sampled in the production of new works.
The interview closes with an in-depth discussion of the making of Salloum's untitled part 4: terra incognita, what considerations are in play, and what an artist's responsibilities are when making work that engages Indigenous communities.
ITEM 2008.193 – available for viewing in the Research Centre
Videos, Artworks and Artists Cited
3b: (as if) beauty never ends.. – Jayce Salloum
This is not Beirut/There was and there was not – Jayce Salloum
Introduction to the End of an Argument – Jayce Salloum
Once You've Shot the Gun You Can't Stop the BUllet – Jayce Salloum
Talaeen a Junuub/Up to the South – Jayce Salloum
untitled part 1: everything and nothing – Jayce Salloum
Episode 1: So. Cal. – Jayce Salloum
untitled part 2: beauty and the east – Jayce Salloum
untitled part 4: terra incognita – Jayce Salloum