Birth of a Nation

Date: 2010
Length: 10:00 min.
Format:  16:9, 6 Channel Installation
Specification: Colour, Sound

What is the most appropriate education for girls for turning them into functional members of society? Do they have to know how to handle weapons and to subject themselves to the discipline of communal living, as well as being able to take care of their appearance and keep their household in order? Daya Cahen invites the viewer to consider these questions in her video installation of a boarding school for female cadets in Moscow. Six screen video projections depict various aspects of the girls' life: they march in parade uniforms, cook, do field exercises, take part in target practice or do their hair. Cahen suggestively pairs up some of these images, simultaneously showing a close-up of a girl loading a gun and her counterpart ironing some clothing. In spite of such disparate activities, the girls' movements seem to be uncannily congruous. A number of Cahen's video snippets concentrate on girls braiding their hair. All cadets wear huge, fluffy, white ribbons that seem to be at odds with the austerity of their military uniforms. The contrast renders the ribbons reminiscent of gossamer-soft feathers attached to the girls' backs. Suddenly, the girls transform  into a flock of little winged creatures: birds or perhaps even angels. This metamorphosis articulates the tension between the imposed image of a woman-warrior and the childlike innocence of boarding school wards.  

OC

Interview:

► 1. Your video has been chosen among over 1700 festival entries to participate in Videonale 13. How central is the video medium to your overall artistic production? Is it complimentary to other media you use or do you work exclusively with video?

Video and video installations play a very important role in my work, but I also use the medium of photography. I think my background as a photographer is visible in my video work.

► 2. Is there a particular theme, concept or problem your art addresses the most?

My work revolves around propaganda, indoctrination and the manipulative powers of the media. I investigate the representation of political icons, symbols of power and the role of the masses versus the individual. In my work I link the political with the everyday and personal, combine archive material with contemporary images and blur the border between fact and fiction.

► 3. What artists do you relate to or find significant for your own art-making?

The Atlas Group / Walid Raad, Aernout Mik, Rineke Dijkstra, Yael Bartana and Leni Riefenstahl.

► 4. Do you think the video medium can address social or political issues better than other art media?

I believe different media can be used successfully for that purpose, but video gives me the opportunity to combine and oppose different levels of storytelling.

► 5. Art can be seen as a mirror that registers and reflects life or as a tool that transforms it. Which of the two positions is close to your own art-making philosophy?

I think when art reflects life it also transforms it.

► 6. How do you understand success in an art-making career?

Having the opportunity to show your work

► 8. What are your upcoming projects?

I am currently working on a video installation that shows how a child’s perception of reality and of it’s cultural identity changes during a civil war, and poses the question of how one citizen transforms into a victim and the other into a perpetrator when cultural identities clash.