Middle East Impromptu

Dear Hassan, I hope you’re doing fine. I wanted to speak with you more, but you were quite busy at your opening in Le Plateau. And I was in a rush myself for that was my last day in Paris. I was asked to make a work for a project called “Central Asian Portraits”. I made an anti-prologue for it. As we know, a pre-face is always a post-script, written after the main text. I wanted it either way. I have dedicated the work to you and let us take this dedication as a praise of at least one nameless in the works of yours I’ve seen. There is nothing Gnostic about what I say. Shall I call this an essence? A substratum if you prefer, but I see shifts and no anchors, no centers if you prefer. The video is neither about you nor your works, but deliberately and partially about what I find in confrontation with those I’ve seen of you, of being still undercurrent. It’s important to notice that I am not merely disputing the central as an opponent of the marginal; your works have set a good example for the