This is the video component of an installation titled Nonspheres IV at Program Berlin, 2007. It is an amalgamation of two previous works exhibited at Staadgallerij Heerlen, NL:

‘Verde que te quiero Verde’ (title is excerpt from ‘Romance Sonámbulo’ by Lorca, 1st iteration of the Nonespheres, series, 3m58s, Kabul, Afghanistan 2006) was an intervention war-torn urban environment of Kabul. Instead of being its initial conception, a seminar in public art for Afghan art student-members of the Center for Contemporary Art of Afghanistan, it became a workshop for conveying the transforming possibilities of performance and installation. Atop Bibi Mahro, a hill right off the center of Kabul, there is an abandoned soviet-built pool and billboard then used for propaganda. After being a strategic site for urban warfare during the anti-Soviet war, folk stories tell that this pool became the site for clandestine executions during the Taliban period. The project was commissioned by Professor Rahraw Omarzad, director of the CCAA, and supported by The Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture of MIT. The piece was largely documented in this video by the artist and photographed by Massoud Hosseini.

‘Teufelsburg’ (or Devil’s castle, the 2nd iteration of the
Nonespheres, video, 2m49s, Berlin, Germany 2006) is a
parallel, like an entry in the Talmud, to the experience in Kabul. The video was produced during the summer and winter of 2006. It was filmed at Teufelsberg in western Berlin at the abandoned NATO Secret Communications Survey Station. Teufelsberg (or Devil’s hill) is literally a mountain built out of the ruins of WW2 bombings. Being in Berlin, the edge between the once opposing superpowers, now a critical mass of contemporary life, reminds the blowbacks of the Cold War. It reminds the ensuing selective amnesia over actions during the 70’s and 80’s that facilitate a cozy erasure of events that otherwise would easily explain the seemingly ‘unexplainable’ political environment of today. The forgotten yet beautiful figures, domes and weeds speak of nature as it reasserts itself, as reminders of misappropriated ideas distorted into brutal, futile projects of control and ideology.


Nonspheres VI / Verde que te quiero Verde, Kabul / Berlin 2006.