Mariska van den Berg and Katarina Jazbec discuss film as a medium for imagining what is unseen or unspeakable. In its striving for veracity and truth, documentary film often aims to access worlds remote from those of the filmmaker and viewer. But we need to delve further to better understand the full potential of a documentary approach.
Deleuze already stresses that cinema may depict the world yet simultaneously produces a reality in itself, creating a space-time that can present ways of seeing that do not coincide with the world as we know it. This exchange around cinematic approaches is part of an ongoing conversation between curator Mariska and artists Katarina Jazbec , Lavinia Xausa and Heidi Vogels , which informed their exhibition series Joined Narratives.
Mariska van den Berg: In Joined Narratives, you show two films that stem from your interest in the joint reading of literary stories. Our Bearings brings the women of your family together to read The Woman with the Wolf. Their reading sessions provide an intimate space in which the stories bring out fear, anger and hate but also hope, friendship and courage. You conducted these conversations based on your view of what literary fiction can do. Could you tell me more about this?
My fascination with what fiction can do, especially when reading together, was informed by my perplexity about how divided the world is, with all these borders everywhere that are sometimes invisible but always defining. It made me question how to live together in a world where the tendency toward separation is on the rise. How do we build mutual understanding? For me, this requires empathy, making an effort to gain the perspective of the other, and making such an effort without knowing what it will bring.
Permeating Hearts strives to create a work where everyone involved is given the space to make this effort, including me as the maker, the participants and the audience. Gaining an understanding of the other person is a laborious and courageous undertaking. We must often first deal with our fears, insecurities, inertia and cynicism. What I see happening when you read literary fiction together is the story becomes a physical and imaginary in-between.
