Slide sets, 2009–2010

The images in Mohaiemen’s series of slides show snapshots of the interstices between political life, activism and the media in a globalised world. It is an almost casual glance at reality from the perspective of mobile phone cameras. Billboards, demonstrations, police actions, street scenes and personal details merge into a narrative about the foundations of trust and distrust in digital culture.

Sound: Kaffe Matthews

About the artist

Naeem Mohaiemen is an artist and writer working in Dhaka and New York. He uses text, photography and video to explore histories of the international left and utopia-dystopia slippage.

Mohaiemen’s projects have been shown at venues including Gallery Chitrak (Dhaka), Experimenter (Kolkata), Third Line (Dubai), Ashkal Alwan (Beirut), Queens Museum of Art (New York), Shedhalle (Zurich) and the Finnish Museum of Photography. He organised the Visible Collective, a group of artists, lawyers and activists who had a video project shown at the 2004 Whitney Biennial ("Wrong Gallery"). Excerpts from his current research on 1970s ultra-left movements will be shown at the 2011 Sharjah Biennial.

Naeem also works on activist projects in Bangladesh. He writes on religious and ethnic minorities in the Ain Salish Kendro Annual Report (askbd.org) and the Daily Star newspaper. Working between two countries, this work explores contradictions between Bengalis in marginal migrant status in northern countries, and majoritarian (and authoritarian) status inside Bangladesh. As part of this work, his film Muslims or Heretics: My Camera Can Lie was screened for an ancillary meeting of the EU Human Rights Commission at the UK House of Lords.

His essays include Everybody Wants To Be Singapore (Carlos Motta’s La Buena Vida/Democracy, 08), AdMan Blues (Indian Highway, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Serpentine Gallery, UK. 08), Fear of Muslim Planet: Hip Hop & Islam (Sound Unbound, MIT Press, Paul Miller ed. 08), Mujtaba Ali: Amphibian Man (Manifesta 7, European Biennial, Rana Dasgupta ed., Trentino. 08), These Guys Are Artists & Who Gives A Shit (Jamini Journal, Dhaka. 07), Beirut, Silver Porsche Illusion (Men of the Global South, Zed Books. 06), Why Mahmud Can’t Be a Pilot (Nobody Passes, Seal Press. 06), Enigma of Transit” (The Book of Bangladeshi Fiction. 06), the book Collectives in Atomised Time (with Doug Ashford, Idensitat Press. 09), and the comic No Exit (with Glenn Urieta, Secret Identities: Asian Superhero Comics, New Press, 09).

Naeem studied economics and history, and was awarded a Thomas Watson Fellowship to make an oral history of the 1971 Bangladesh genocide.
Further information: Shobak

TRUST
30 July–5 September 2010

Dortmunder U – Centre for Art and Creativity
Floor U3
Leonie-Reygers-Terrasse
44137 Dortmund

Map Dortmund