Notes on Seeing Double
Sanaz Sohrabi
2018
Vidéo with sound

What is the anatomy of a revolution? Masses of bodies with a collective desire? “Notes on Seeing Double” takes the figure of speech of “temsaal” in Farsi as its point of departure to unpack this question. By juxtaposing a documentary photograph taken in the February of 1979 in Tehran and a painting drawn by Rembrandt depicting the famous anatomy theatre of Amsterdam in 1632, Notes on Seeing Double analyzes the conditions of visuality within different systems of power/knowledge production. The film looks at the threshold of seeing and remembering; a gateway into unpacking the relationship between pre-existing images, language, and memory, and unravels the marginal histories and affective registers with which all images are charged.

Sanaz Sohrabi (b. 1988, Tehran) is a research-based artist, filmmaker, and a Fonds de Recherche du Québec Société et Culture (FRQSC) doctoral fellow at the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in Society and Culture in Montréal. Her doctoral artistic research is conceived as a series of essay film and documentary-based installation mapping an unlikely geopolitical calendar of political affinities, competing and contradictory national projects wherein oil was both the agent of imperial power and the catalyst for anticolonial political projects, examining the ways in which oil was tasked to navigate the political task of nation-building on the one hand and transnational solidarity during the global decolonization on the other. Her work has been screened and exhibited internationally at 50th International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR), Montréal International Documentary Film Festival (RIDM), Sheffield Doc/Fest, IndieLisboa, FICValdivia Chile, Videonale 16 Bonn, Kasseler Dokfest (nominated for Golden Key Award), Images Festival, Centre Clark Montréal, and Beirut Art Center, among others. Sohrabi has been supported by fellowships and artist residency awards such as Forum Transregionale Studien Berlin, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, RAW Académie, SOMA Summer School Ciudad de México, Est-Nord-Est résidence d’artistes, and Vermont Studio Center.