Moved to Stillness — Anri Sala’s Dammi I Colori
By Regina Gleeson
Anri Sala’s video project, Dammi I Colori, works against the unspoken rules and formulas for creating ‘moving’ media. It shows Tirana’s changing urban facades as a manifestation of its changing socio-political climate. The work is formed around the notion of the luxury of the banal quotidian replacing the tyranny that had previously prevailed.
This fifteen-minute video traverses the streets of Tirana in the company of its mayor, as he unfolds his account of this city’s passion for colour throughout its re-invention as a united community. The large semi-derelict apartment blocks and remnants of city streets are being revitalized by liberal use of vivaciously coloured patterns on the walls; not as highly stylised as Gaudi’s Barcelona or Hundertwasser’s Vienna but certainly with more energy, passion and purpose than both put together!
The colour patterns in the video are not presented in a manner that seeks to cash-in on a Cinderella-style slum to stardom status. Rather, the filming is executed in a rough-cut style. As it was mostly filmed in the darkness and stillness of night, the video’s strong, artificial lighting clarifies the cityscape’s shape, colour and pattern. The pale, ghostlike, bareness of the trees in the foreground appears as organically shaped veins and arteries of negative space, contrasting with the vibrant, bold buildings behind them.
Dammi I Colori is about more than a documentary narrative concerning the passing of communism or the regeneration of a cityscape. It speaks of the human’s ability to rejoice in the freedom to surround ourselves with vibrant life, and of our deep love for the physical and mental space that we call ‘home’.
What is more, the film makes a passing reference to cultural cynicism. Edi Rama speaks proudly of Dammi I Colori’s artistic mission: to describe "a city of choice and not a city of destiny is a utopia in itself." Indeed, it is much easier to be sceptical of the integrity of this work than to allow yourself to be open to its underlining naivety. The work asks the viewer to accept the fundamental importance of colour as a celebration of the individual and the collective. It posits a manifestation of hope into a community’s efforts to reclaim their streets through such simple measures.
It is interesting to note the difference in reading this work at two major international exhibitions — the first was the 2003 Venice Biennale and the second was EV+A (Exhibition of Visual+ Art) in Limerick, Ireland in 2004. In Venice the work was shown on a television in a simple room with benches and warm yellow lighting. It was on show when temperatures soared in excess of one hundred degrees and this ambient temperature enhanced the perception of the work’s warmth of colour, warmth of heart and heated passion for ones ‘home’. In Ireland, it was shown as a large video projection in a blacked-out room in the cold north-Atlantic spring, where gallery visitors shivered from the bitterly cold rain outside. In this later setting, the work appeared as more of a dream than a reality because the glimpses of warm sun as seen in the video was foreign to the viewer’s experience in Ireland. It seemed that the experiential dimension of heat within the work was lost on the Ireland audience, not only because of climactic conditions but also because of the dark enclosed room used for the projection. However, this also heightened the clarity of the colour and the depth of field. Regardless of the influence of the screening space, the video’s language of courage and hope for change is always comprehensible.
This work speaks of a community’s rejuvenation in the ending of a tyrannical past and of being on the cusp of a comparatively optimistic future. It successfully creates a stillness of mind and body in the viewer, drawing us into that moment of holding the breath — of being still — of profoundly feeling what is happening in a given instant, without being pressured to look back or forward. And so, we are moved to be still.
