Jyoti Mistry: AIR 2016/17

How can artistic expression challenge theory or offer alternatives to it? 

“I saw this residency as an opportunity to enter a new environment and experiment with ways in which my being a filmmaker informs my teaching practice. Research in more orthodox university settings is currently being challenged through artistic research. Knowledge production is no longer being exclusively expressed in prescriptive forms that are text-based or published texts. Instead they may take the form of exhibitions, installations, material objects and other linguistic paradigms – in this case film,” South African visual artist Jyoti Mistry writes in her AIR publication Places to Play. 

As a filmmaker and theorist, Jyoti links filmmaking to a theoretical investigation of ideas. She is inspired by historical and political contexts, questioning prevailing ideas by exploring counter-hegemonic narrative strategies. These strategies provide space for artists to explore alternative expressions in the field of film. In this way, issues such as cultural specificity and the importance of personal histories and stories can act as a counterbalance to the histories created by the dominant paradigms – especially in a colonial context.

In her exploration of different narrative strategies, Mistry has tried out various formats and genres to find out how the subject and content of a project can best be expressed. This artistic research has resulted in, among other things, the 24-channel synchronized audio-video installation Building an Invisible City; the projection Commuting; the sound installation A day at the Johannesburg Beach and the triptych Xenos. In addition to these projects, she has written and directed documentaries, experimental films, and the feature film Impunity, which has been described as a ‘post-apartheid noir thriller,’ about the history of violence in South Africa.

For her residency, she wanted to focus on practice-based research, foregrounding the question of how film can be used not only as an artistic expression but also as an exploratory tool. In her own practice, this tool is used to research the relationship between geography and history. This fascination, together with the traces of historical routes and the reinterpretations of culture and rituals through the ages, forms the breeding ground for the project that Jyoti developed in Amsterdam which revolved around the historical ties between South Africa and the Netherlands.

Collaborating on these topics with the students of the Master’s programme was central to her residency. “Combining my experience as practitioner, garnered over time and through numerous disparate projects, I would describe my role as a facilitator of processes in which students are encouraged to explore and experiment in the ‘teaching-learning’ institution. This contrasts with the notion of the teacher as ‘superior’ or ‘knower,’” she writes. 

During her time as an AIR, she worked with material from the archive of the EYE Filmmuseum with a focus on material about South Africa and Indonesia. Alongside her own research – the outcome of which was the short film When I Grow Up I Want to Be a Black Man (2017) – Jyoti also worked with the Master’s students, inviting them to rub their own research questions against this archive material. 

The outcome of the students’ process was an exhibition entitledArchive as a Place to Play which took place at the EYE Film Museum. “My central interest in the process was that it allowed me to mobilise my position as a practitioner concerned with film archives being a resource for reimagining histories, narratives and experiences, letting me bring my practice to the fore as part of the process with the students, while using my research objectives with the archive to enable the students’ own research interests.”

Jyoti Mistry is a filmmaker and Professor of Film at the University of Gothenburg. She has taught at many other universities as guest lecturer or scholar as well as participating in a number of artist in residence programmes across the world. Her artistic practice moves seamlessly between filmmaking and installation art practices. Her installation work draws from cinematic traditions but is often re-contextualised for galleries and museums that are outside of the linear cinematic experience. She has made a number of critically acclaimed narrative, documentary and experimental films. She has also published widely on the topics of multiculturalism, identity politics, race and memory. 

Year

2016