by Salome Erni
How to look at photographs while witnessing a genocide? The work Interesting Things is an insight into conversations around archival photographs from Palestine. Fifty-nine negatives were found in an envelope that was labelled “Des Choses Intéressantes” – Interesting Things – by Frank Scholten, a Dutch photographer who travelled Mandate Palestine from 1921 to 1923.
For the video essay, Salome Erni chooses to be present in front of the camera herself. By inverting the video footage – thereby turning the negatives into positives – the essay engages with the political act of looking. Who gazes at whom, and what power dynamics are at play?
For the book the artist invited collaborators to add new meanings to the more than 100-years-old photographs. It is an attempt to deal collectively with these images that are ambiguous, political, historical and urgent at the same time. Moreover, the book is also a comment on the many ways archival processes create and change narratives.
There are many “others” to be encountered in these images, and the installation provides a space to both explore these relations, and to position oneself in them. We are not mere spectators; everyone relates to imperialist projects that continue to intersect in Palestine.
Salome Erni
Salome Erni, born in Switzerland in 2001 and based in the Netherlands, is a research-based visual artist who explores narratives and collective narrations. Conversations, collaborations and research intertwine in her work that takes shape in (video) essays, books and exhibitions. Often, she takes found imagery as a starting point to investigate how the individual relates to larger socio-political power relations and hegemonic narrations. Thereby, she understands her work as explicitly political.
Next to her art practice she works as a curator for an artist-run space. Earlier professional experiences include multiple years of journalistic work and project coordination for a museum.
