Interview at Carleton College in Minnesota with Toni Serra * ) Abu Ali ... about reality and its transparencies.
Toni Serra
37 Archival description results for Toni Serra
A conversation with a woman who washes and massages the women who go to the hammam (public baths), helps bring the neighbourhood children into the world, and to wash the dead.
Anonymous guide. Fes el Bali, the old medina of Fez founded in 809 by Idris II, is still completely contained within city walls. The gates (Bab Bou Jeloud, Bab Fteuh, Bab Er Rsif, Bab Guissa...) therefore retain all their social and symbolic value, associated with the different activities of the city and its inhabitants.
The search for water, the descent deep into the well of the heart. Based on a 17th Century Persian poem by Najmudin Kubra. The most probable is that sooner or later we will meet in an apparently dry and arid wilderness. Unexpectedly our footsteps have left us there, all roads are possible, but none of them seem to lead anywhere. In our loneliness we find that contemplation is our only company, the quiet gaze shows us a quiet world, a world that slowly begins to show itself outside of the parameters of desire or functionality to be a world with no outside or inside. Now we understand better, that that which we see is no stranger to us and this journey takes on a diverse and interpretative sense. A small group of men appears in the distance, we go closer and follow them. One of them is a water diviner, he looks for water with an olive branch, his steps are quick, suddenly, as if receiving a blow he falters, and perhaps will fall, we fall... On a dry bush in the wilderness a few small flowers have bloomed, our steps now pass over a path of dust, stones, brambles and acacia, crossing gates, and whispers, murmurs, or laughter of children... Lying on the dirt, like the dirt, so that a well can open in our chest and consciousness can descend close to the heart, there we will see without words, with the sounds of heartbeat breathing, a reminder of the place we come from, of where we belong, from where appearance springs, like those clouds that form whimsical figures that linger only a moment... A search for what there is of life in us. The presence of that which makes us live. Video Serie: El Hamdulillah Tapes.
Los Sures is the name of a Puerto Rican neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York. Recorded in 1991 and published in 2008, this video is not so much a portrait of the neighborhood or a memory of it, but a journey of initiation through different interior landscapes that are reflected in the urban wilderness in the evocation of death and loneliness, but also in contemplation and celebration of life.
Portrait of Nam June Paik in her presentation of “Discover European Video” in the Anthology Film Archives, NYC 1991. It is the time of the first Gulf War.
1998, Tangier. Conversations in the bar La Poste with Tangerian writer Mohammed Chukri and New York poet Ira Cohen, stories of death, separation and loss under the mantle of friendship.
Video made from a conversation recorded in the 70 in Mumbai (India) .. between a traveler and Nisarghadata Indian philosopher, author of "I am That", one of the most recent and important examples of Advaita Vedanta. Satsanga is a Sanskrit word, which means: (Sat = truth, reality, Sanga = company) describes in Indian philosophy: 1. in the company of truth. 2. company in reality 3. accompanied by an assembly of persons who listen, speak and assimilate reality. This practice also takes the form of hearing or reading scriptures, reflections, discussions and assimilating their meaning, meditating on the source of these words.
From the series Fez Ciudad Interior. Silences and wind in the olive trees, contemplation, labyrinths and dreams. Abdelfettah Seffar, a craftsman who lived in London for years and decided to return, talks about Fez, a veiled city, and reflects of the West and its conflicts.
Untitled"In the universe, there are things that are known, and things that are unknown, and in between, there are doors..." [William Blake] An old pilgrim dressed in rags observes a flower in the dark of the night ... The old man is a door between the things that are known and unknown ... symbolizes the decline and the end of what we have taken for real, and now it is perceived as ephemeral and inconsistent, as the poverty of his clothes dragged by time. The proximity of death as an unavoidable truth gives his own vision; a new and deeper insight not limited to visual perception, and beyond logic and laws of the world. Maybe that's why in the dark of night can contemplate the beauty of a flower.