Acclaimed video artist and director Saam Farahmand is to debut his three-minute film Drama, during this year’s Frieze London. Drama sees Farahmand explore themes of elevated femininity and distortions of womanhood that have occupied much of his practice.
In the film, four isolated female drummers independently and ferociously free-form until they subconsciously synchronise. Complex primal patterns that don’t belong together find commonalities – merging into an overwhelming sonic form that leaves little room for breath or thought.
Drama is the result of a process where Farahmand creates the conditions to have his assumed control removed – to be enslaved by his subjects.
The film features the exquisite clothes of designer Simone Rocha, whom Farahmand admires for her tendency to take classic forms and traditional principles of romantic craft and mutate them into something beautifully jarring – an aesthetic that aligns with the artist’s own creative and philosophical motivations.
This is the first time Farahmand has worked closely with the work of a designer since Ghost, his collaboration with the late Lee (Alexander) McQueen, which saw the pair co-conceive and create
a film that, once again, turned notions of gender and violence on its head. Ghost, which took inspiration from renaissance portraiture and Mozart’s Requiem, depicted a hyper-violent female-male duel, where a savage exchange evolves into something symbiotic and glorious.
As with Ghost, in Drama, Farahmand plays with assumed physical hierarchies – the resulting piece being at once brutal and ethereal.
Drama will be installed at Asia House, 63 New Cavendish St, London W1G 7LP
Approximately 10 mins walk from Frieze London. Opening times: Oct 3rd–6th, 10:00-18:00.
