The Door
“In The Door two opposite movements unfold. First a repetitive invasion: Light invades darkness as a door is suddenly opened and a person enters the room.
Image and sound follow one another rhythmically while the short sequence, at the pace of a heart beating, slowly spreads across the screen.
A strange house takes shape consisting of identical open doors. Soon we are presented with the opposite story, the story of a door closing, accompanied by an equally insistent rhythm. The strange house disappears one slam at the time until we are back on the bare ground or in a dark room, or possibly on a dark continent.
The work is mesmerizing and grabs hold of the spectator like a popsong with a refrain that invades the brain, or like a gif or a meme which goes viral on social media.
The work also fills the exhibition space with a sound which is simultaneously traumatic and hopeful: The sound of a door which is slammed shut and opened.
In my experience, the artwork stays with you for a long time; my mind continues to generate questions, thoughts and associations to this work which operates on many levels at the same time. As I see it, this quality is linked to artistic quality; the artwork induces a thought expansion, in this case in a potentially unpleasant way.
It is not easily dispelled from one’s mind. There is a nightmarish element present even though the work may be said to describe something fairly trivial and universal.”
Susanne Christensen
Hasan Daraghmeh is based in Trondheim, Norway.
Hasan Daraghmeh: a Palestinian video artist lives and works in Trondheim, Norway.
He works primarily with video, multimedia installation and photography, in most of his works and research; the camera is the starting point.
Daraghmeh’s works explore the interlacing relationship between the individual and place.
Hasan Daraghmeh: a Palestinian video artist lives and works in Trondheim, Norway.
He works primarily with video, multimedia installation and photography, in most of his works and research; the camera is the starting point.
Daraghmeh’s works explore the interlacing relationship between the individual and place.
In many of his works, the impetus is driven by an he attempt to explore questions of layers of identity that exists between the real and the imaginary, between invention and deeply rooted absence of narrative and how this is situated and articulated in relation to place.