13 September 2006
The End of The West
Artprojx with MOT International presents:
The End of the West
Featuring:
'For a Few Rupees More' by Shezad Dawood
with LIVE sitar accompaniment by the world famous Nafees Ahamed
'How I Became a Ramblin' Man' by Rodney Graham
Wednesday 13 September 2006. 9-11pm
Artprojx at Prince Charles Cinema
7 Leicester Place, London WC2.
Box Office: +44 (0) 20 7494 3654 (open 1-9pm)
www.princecharlescinema.com
Tickets £10.00
Artist and Student ticket discount information visit www.artupdate.com/artprojx
Screening organised by David Gryn
Contact/info/press/
events@artprojx.com
+44(0)7711 127 848
Event partners:
www.motinternational.org
www.fetherstonhaugh.com
Artprojx 06 is kindly supported by Arts Council England, Lottery Funded www.artscouncil.org.uk
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Artprojx with MOT International presents:
The End of the West
FOR A FEW RUPEES MORE
Shezad Dawood 2005
The original idea was to produce a 3-channel video with a duration of 40 minutes, transposing Sergio Leone’s Spaghetti western, with its ideas of the border-town and ‘the good, the bad and the ugly’ to a desert village in Pakistan.
With the piece I wanted to continue my investigation of cultural borders through the language of film, as in a previous project entailing a hoax remake of Antonioni’s ‘Blow Up’, set in Karachi.
Having developed the idea for 3 years, including having scouted locations, found non-professional actors (in the neo-realist tradition), and a musician to produce a score based on Ennio Morricone’s original, I realised that there was no need to actually even make the installation. On reflection the strongest signifier of the original films, is the soundtrack.
My decision therefore was to produce a soundtrack for a film that is no longer necessary (the ultimate edit, short of producing nothing altogether). Having produced story-boards and shot lists for the film, I went to Pakistan to work with the country’s foremost sitar-player, in order to produce the soundtrack, which becomes the work. The soundtrack is a solo sitar meditation based on my rearrangement of Morricone’s original scores for Leone’s westerns. Which, in its departure and return to the original melodies, evokes a free-floating site of exchange – something akin to William Burroughs notion of ‘Interzone’.
The idea being to have the piece ‘screened’, in a simple dark room, with a projector projecting white light onto a screen – thus becoming almost a meditative space for visualisation, echo and transience. The audience with what they bring to it and take away from it continuing the levels of appropriation and expansion within the piece.
To come back to the piece with Nafees (Ahmed), the original sitar player, is an opportunity to see how introducing the sitar improvisation as a ‘live’ element might feed back into the cinematic context.
Shezad Dawood, 2006
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