BOMB Magazine: Shirin Neshat by Arthur C. Danto

Iranian crew.
BOMB Magazine: Shirin Neshat by Arthur C. Danto 5/17/10 1:58 PM
Shirin Neshat, Rapture, 1999, video still.
AD When you began to work on Turbulent, were you thinking of it as part of a
trilogy—which is what, evidently, the three films constitute—or were you thinking of
it as a single statement, which, as it turned out, led to two other films?
SN I didn’t think of it as a trilogy at first. It is just that one subject—one project led
to the other. The topic of masculine and feminine in relation to the social structure
of Iran started with Turbulent. As I finished it, I immediately moved on to making
Rapture, which although very different, raised similar issues. Finally Fervor was
made, which in my opinion closed the chapter on this series. What inspired me to
make Turbulent was a strange experience I had on the streets of Istanbul, seeing a
young, blind woman singing to make a little money; her music was extraordinary
and the public gathered uncontrollably around her. I fell in love with her music,
bought a cassette. Later I had her songs translated and became obsessed with how
much her blindness—not having a visible audience—affected her music.
AD This is one of the things that struck me about Turbulent. The male singer is on
one screen, and he’s singing with a great deal of passion, but with his back to the
audience. The camera is backstage, so we see him singing, and we see his audience
behind him. The female singer is on another screen and she’s facing an empty
auditorium. You only see her from the back; she’s quite mysterious. As a matter of
fact, she looks like a death figure from the Inquisition. All through the man’s
singing, you just see her from the back. And you don’t know what this is all about.
The man’s audience is extremely responsive; they applaud. As I remember it, he
turns around, bows to the audience and then faces back, and the woman who is on
the other screen begins to sing. Her singing is very different from his; it seems
electronic. It’s modified, it’s not ordinary singing. And then bit by bit her face begins
to emerge and you see her sing. The camera pans back and forth over the empty
auditorium. And on the other screen, the man is staring at her. So he at least is in
some way a member of her audience, although you’re not quite clear how that
happened. So that was the juxtaposition.
SN Turbulent is similar to Rapture in that both films are based on the idea of
opposites, visually and conceptually. The male singer represents the society’s ideal
man in that he sticks to the rules in his way of dressing and in his performance of a
passionate love song written by the 13th-century Sufi poet Rumi. Opposite to him,
the female singer is quite rebellious. She is not supposed to be in the theater, and
the music she performs breaks all the rules of traditional Islamic music. Her music
is free-form, improvised, not tied to language, and unpredictable, almost primal.
AD When you say she’s not supposed to…
SN An important aspect of Turbulent is that women in Iran are prohibited from
singing in public, and there are no recordings by female musicians. The piece took
off in various directions and brought about other important questions about the
http://bombsite.com/issues/73/articles/2332 male and female contrast in relation to the social structure. The ultimate question
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was how each would go about reaching a level of mystical expression inherent in
the Sufi music.
AD But her song is not a traditional song.