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Within the frame of his residency at the Centre, Mark Boulos (Boston, 1975, lives and works between Geneva and Amsterdam) will show selections from many of his videos. The tension between spirit and history is elaborated in his double-projection documentary “All That Is Solid Melts into Air” (2008), which compares the credit-crisis frenzy of U.S. financial markets to the protective rituals of poor Nigerian rebels who battle oil corporations. “No Permanent Address,” (2010) completes this dialectic with a portrait of Filipino guerillas who hold defiant faith in Marxism, and wage their peasant revolution because of love for the other. Encountering yourself in the other is the formal concern of this immersive three-screen installation. “Echo” (2013) extends this concern, as the audience encounters their own image as a three-dimensional apparition: the interactive video installation creates a spatially indeterminate image using unseen screens that are both transparent and reflective.
Boulos will discuss how his work in multi-screen installations developed from his earlier, single-screen documentaries. “Self-Defense” (2001), portrays an Al Qaeda sympathizer in New York, “The Gates of Damascus” (2005), follows a housewife who experiences miracles, “Jerusalem,” (2003) observes jihadists preaching on the streets of London, and “The Word Was God” (2007), compares the phenomenon of Glossolalia with Aramaic, Christ's vernacular. With these, he will discuss his interest in rapture and martyrdom, in myth and in fact.