Crepuscular Dreams of (Dis-) Alienation, 2018

Crepuscular Dreams of (Dis-) Alienation is a collage of found and homemade audio and visual material, drawn from the artist's multiple camera devices (Gopro, DSLR, BPCC, iphone) and youtube videos, intermingling trips to visit family in Cambodia with personal material from her own unreleased music production. The audio-visual collage presents interviews from women and non-binary people of colour that include friends and family, as well as the artists’ sister. Tracing a diaspora across Paris, Algeria, Reykjavik, the Congo, Cambodia and Dublin, they critically reflect on present day considerations from the position of those who’s parents and grandparents directly experienced the colonial exploits of various European imperialisms.

The work pulses across generations with contributions from Louiza Benrezzak who reads extracts from her father’s poetry, the artists’ sister Dijana Tan, childhood friend Ida Macondo, cousins San Sokchea, Thmey Cheanich (filmed by the artists cousin San bun Theon from his smartphone), Fériel Boushaki, and Martial and friends as they make spring rolls. With a grand optimism, interviewees reflect on the aftermath of colonialism and on-going neo-colonialisms, touching upon the complexities of prejudice today, that include exoticism within popular culture, whilst foregrounding current, and future projects and aspirations of the contributors.

Part educational, part experimental documentary, the work emerges from lived experience as much as from research. A speculative thinking that syncopates online news articles with excerpts from experimental music producers, friends, family, composers and writers, as well as theoreticians.

“I believe that the real battle for people who are like me is to occupy space, the space of discourse”

filmmaker : Louiza Benrezzak