Artistic Research
Week 2024

A Work in Progress

Aisha Nasser (name changed for privacy) was twelve years old when she saw her neighbor disappear into an open sinkhole on a dusty street in front of her aunt’s house in her Palestinian village within the borders of Israel. This film’s starting point is a real story from legal transcripts. At first glance, it appears to be a minor case of little significance, shrouded in dry courtroom jargon. A closer look reveals layers of gender issues, psychography, malingering, and surveillance.

The Pit – A Witness Tale seeks to illuminate the unfathomable phenomenon of disappearance. How might mental disappearance function as a possible way out of an impossible situation, whether intentional or not? And how might the architecture of disappearance be manifested through a film? Mrs. M fell into an open sewer hole while holding her two-year-old daughter. Although she was not physically injured, she developed severe psychological problems, while the village council argued that she was an impostor. There was only one eyewitness to Mrs. M’s fall: a young neighbor named Aisha Nasser.

Years later, far from her village and childhood, living in a rented flat in the city of Haifa, Aisha receives her own forgotten testimony, which compels her to investigate and uncover this pit. In the film, Aisha’s visual memory is reconstructed and superimposed on her present through audio-visual, archive footage, video compositing, animation, and rear projection. What remains hidden? Who has disappeared? What does it mean to be a witness to an event? To see The Pit, one must have safe ground beneath one’s feet. But it has vanished. This story suggestsively echoes in our own time, when communication and access have become impossible, and voices echo through a screen.

The Pit Re investigates the details of the juristical case of the physical and mental disappearance of a woman who fell into a sinkhole. The fragmented narrative is reassembled in the film through a polyphony of women’s voices, spaces, and a collaborative imagination.

Frank: sonnets, Diane Seuss; All Lives Have Their Tropes.
As a woman, I feel that there is an unspoken code of endurance between us—a cross-play of validation and doubt. Seeking the line between resilience, fragility, and imposture is a notion that my research has sought to grasp through archival footage, filmmaking, and writing. Illuminating the unfathomable phenomenon of disappearance. Dissociation is a state of mind that disrupts the existence of a narrative. In this state, the “I” (the protagonist) becomes secondary to objects, light, and space, being detached from or assimilated by them. Structures from the past, such as emotional states, are reincarnated in the present, creating a cinematic structure of collapsing time.

Throughout my artistic research in and through cinema, I aimed to undermine mental branding not because I believe all mental diagnoses are necessarily bad but because they can be limiting, particularly due to how these diagnoses are perceived in our society and within the judicial system. I believe that neurodiverse humanity offers many different perceptions of reality and that cinematic language could benefit from broadening storytelling to include these experiences.