Per°Form Open Academy of Arts and Activations 2024 Closing Keynote — Unearthing the Archive by Saodat Ismailova

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Synopsis

In her 2017 film “The Haunted”, artist and filmmaker Saodat invokes the now extinct Turanian Tiger to examine historical changes that led to its own extinction. Now years later, she revisits the impulses that brought “The Haunted” to life. In the process she unpacks the different trajectories — ecology, tradition, living with the non-human, colonialism, and the female universe — that dominate her oeuvre.

About Saodat Ismailova

Saodat is an Uzbek filmmaker and artist graduated from Tashkent State Art Institute and Le Fresnoy, National Studio of Contemporary Arts. Interweaving myths, rituality, and dreams within the tapestry of everyday life, her films investigate the historically complex and layered culture of Central Asia which stand at the crossroads of diverse material histories and migratory legacies. Departing from her personal history marked by growing up in the post-Soviet Uzbekistan, she reaches out to the collective dimension of memory. Her research encompasses the region’s ancestral knowledge and traditional spiritual practices as well as modern history of Uzbekistan which manifests through the interlacing of archival footage from its cinematic history.