Wholeness / If It Moves, Follow It

Wholeness (2022) and If It Moves, Follow It (2023) are short poetic experimental animations that I made in 2022-23 as I began to explore animation and digital technology through Wysing Art Centre’s AMPlify residecy and Contemporary Other’s Help Is On The Way Dear digital commission.

Both works draw on Islamic liberation theology, new-age aesthetics and notions of the objective unconscious as developed by Islamic scholars. These works were also greatly informed by my work with Healing Justice London, an organisation working at the intersections of healing and liberation work.

Wholeness: Homage to Maya Deren

2022

Animated film, 2:47

“…But trying to lean into…the ebbs and flows and cycles of time and life and the awareness of it, and also a kind of humbleness towards it, a humility towards it, in such crazy, destabilising, painful times…” 

This short experimental animation study was created as part of Wysing Art Centre’s AMPlify residency. Watch it here.

This project began as a mediation on the limits of subjectivity and the need to transgress them in order to recognise the sentience of the natural world. My initial thinking for this was influenced by writing on panspsychism, the concept of ‘Oceanic Feeling’ as inspired by abolitionist Jackie Wang, and Islamic liberation theology. 

Inspired aesthetically by the surreal dreamscapes of Maya Deren, particularly her films: ‘At Land’ (1944) and ‘Meshes of the Afternoon’ (1943), this study stands as an homage to her exploration of dreams and subjectivity. The resulting animation constitutes a wander through a surreal landscape, where the figure merges into and out of the surroundings. Natural features such as rocky cliffs come to resemble an open mouth and bugs crawl across skin to show continuity between the land and the body, both alive and capable of holding life.

By Sarah Al-Sarraj

Featuring Sarah Khan

Sound by Rosemary Moss

Voicenote by Maria Düster

Special thanks to Uma Breakdown for their guidance and mentorship, Lucy Shipp and Chloe Page for their consistent understanding and encouragement, and all the 21-22 AMPlify residents for their support.

Exhibition and Screenings

  • CineAstra Festival, Glasgow Women’s Library | 2023

  • Arab Women Artists Now (AWAN), Richmix, London | 2023

  • The NAWAL, REFERENCE.POINT 180, London | 2022

  • Two Queens, Two Screens, Two Queens Leicester | 2022

  • F(r)ictions, Camden Arts Centre, London | 2022

  • Mokumkraakt Squatters Collective, Amsterdam | 2022

  • Good Wickedry, TAPE Collective, Online | 2022

  • Mega Mega, Tom Thumb Theatre, Margate | 2022

  • AMPlify Showcase, Wysing Arts Centre, Online | 2022

 

If It Moves Follow It

2023

Animated film, 2:28

This work, commissioned by Contemporary Other for their ‘Help Is On The Way, Dear’ project explores the creative process and the objective unconscious.

Drawing on Jung’s Active Imagination as well as Islamic metaphysical thought into the objective unconscious and Ibn Arabi’s work on 'alam al-mithal’ (realm of images), this work seeks to guide the viewer, through the ebb and flow of imagery and words, to tap into a universal well within each of us where a deepest truth is revealed. Archtypical images emerge and dissipate from an inky screen, akin to a Magic 8 Ball.

By Sarah Al-Sarraj

Words by Shayna Kowalczyk

Sound by Rosemary Moss

Special thanks to Marc Blazel.