Lamia Joreige • Sleep

2004

Super 8 film transferred to video
7 minutes
Original soundtrack: Charbel Haber

The film ‘Sleep’, which is part of ‘Time and the Other’ (exhibition and book), is a succession of photograms (taken with the help of a camera with a programmed intervalometer), each of them a fragment of actual sleeping time.

This sequence repeats itself expanding at each replay and transforming its content as well as the rhythm of its images every time. The bodies in motion of the couple become abstract, blurring the border with reality.

‘Sleep’ is the place of total separation, a unique moment of solitude to which the other has no access. In this video, sounds and images are worked to create a kind of lyricism haunted by anxiety, and to express the swing between discord and harmony that lies in the relationship to the loved other.

‘Time and the Other’ is the story of love and separation of a couple, viewed from the subjective angle of one of the lovers. That experience is expressed in the absence of the other. It includes 3 chapters: Embrace, Sleep & Lost Chords.

This intervention is part of the public program of the exhibition Five Hitchcock Films As You’ve Never Seen Them Before by Jalal Toufic.