︎

<<





IMG_5917,

10mins, 2021, retreat (Sulaïman Majali, Camara Taylor) & Collective Text





A video still. Light yellow text sits in the centre against a grey background. It reads, “Mmmm…”
A video still of a fallen tree in woodland. The prostate tree is centre frame; its upturned base is a semicircle of root, moss and shadow from which its wide trunk dappled in sunlight extends towards the viewer. In the background, the sun shines through thinning woodland. The captions are positioned in the centre of the frame, three lines of text in pale yellow, purple and green respectively that read, “I feel strange— / (voices clash) / Our desires.”

A video still in pixelated greys, distorting a landscape. To the left, emerging from the grey are green and purple hued tree trunks, grass and dirt.

A video still of a fallen tree in woodland. The prostate tree is centre frame; its upturned base is a semicircle of root, moss and shadow from which its wide trunk dappled in sunlight extends towards the viewer. In the background, the sun shines through thinning woodland. The captions are positioned in the centre of the frame, one line of text reads, “You just came back”.

IMG_5917 was commissioned for GIVE BIRTH TO ME TOMORROW, the 2021 edition of Glasgow’s Artists’ Moving Image Festival co-programmed by Tako Taal and Adam Benmakhlouf.


In the work, flat planes of grey, green and purple convolute an encounter with a collapsed tree on a long walk; the device weights conversation in a misremembered image.

retreat is a collaborative endeavour between Majali and Taylor that grabs, evades and inhabits slippages. Concerned with the implicit failings of research, praxis and (a lack of) practice; retreat floats amidst the outlines of absences; trace, gesture and evidence of that which has been expelled, or refuses to be held. The work also stems from frustration, fatigue and cognitive dissonances: a desire to retreat from particular ways of working, being, making publics.