HAYATI MOKHTAR AND DAIN-ISKANDAR SAID
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s conventional boundaries become obsolete in our contemporary world, the desire for definitions shifts to a zone that is defined by no state—it is global. Landscape becomes divisible, inter-visible, invisible, and we become border-jockeys of the in-between zones navigating the language of contemporary contact—cultural, physical and imagined. Charles Merewether chose this ‘zone of contact’ as the theme for his 2006 Biennale of Sydney. Malaysian artists Hayati Mokhtar and Dain-Iskandar Said explore it as intervisible lines, a surveying term and the title of their film for this year’s biennale.
Paul Haggis’ recent film Crash (2004) opens with the statement that ‘sometimes we just crash into things compelled by the need to feel human contact’. Near Intervisible Lines does not have the violence of a ‘crash site’, and it is relatively free from human contact, so why this reference? Like Crash, Mokhtar and Said’s film is a site for contemplating ‘self’ as we navigate today’s world—one film uses racism as the vehicle, the other uses landscape. Implicit to both is the need to intersect and the use of memory as a meter for change, loss and resilience.
In topographic maps contour lines never intersect. They record landscape through a cadence of lines, intensifying to express form, tensions, depressions—but they never connect. Playing with surveying terms to parallel the mapping of cultural terrains, the viewer’s intersection with Near Intervisible Lines is not merely a temporal engagement but a physical interaction. The multi-screen panoramas frame the viewer within an exquisitely beautiful, but decisively ambiguous environment. This forced visitation is at the same time displacing, nostalgic, romantic, and strangely, comforting.
The ‘zone of contact’ operates on two levels: the casual visitor who witnesses... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline