“What can be rightly called the destiny of images is the destiny of this logical and paradoxical interweaving of the operations of art, the modes of circulation of imagery and the critical discourse that refers to the hidden truth of the operations of one and the forms of the other.”  [1]

Arabian Stars is an audiovisual installation, part of a trilogy in some sense comprising two other installations Un crime (2004), and the famous Anarchitekton (Barcelona, Bucarest, Brasilia, Osaka) 2002 – 2004, made by the artist Jordi Colomer, born in 1962 in Barcelona and living in Paris, whose work has been exhibited internationally.

Having watched the documentary film Le Mura di Sana's that Pier Paolo Pasolini shot in 1971 in Yemen for UNESCO in order to save the Yemenite architectural heritage, Jordi Colomer decided to shoot in the deserts of certain cities in Yemen – Shibam, Sana and Aden. He has been interested in architectural and town planning issues since the start of his career, but also in the contrasts between different historical periods: the medieval period and our post-modern period. “Yemen seems to be a medieval society with post-modern gadgets,” he wrote in an interview.[2] Again, it is a tribal society – socially and industrially under-developed. However, although there don't seem to be any industries inherent to the country, industrial objects such as mobile phones, plastic objects made in China or India circulate among the inhabitants.
The setting of this mockumentary is just as important as the actors of this false fiction.
The desert, but also the buildings of these cities appear unreal in Arabian Stars, although they are in fact inhabited. An entire family lives in each of these buildings, even several generations of a single family, and this architecture is built up vertically as the family grows.
The long and slow movement of the truck on which the camera is placed is all the more important in that it enables us to see and observe this very specific architecture.

Through his training, but also his personal interests, Jordi Colomer became interested in urban architecture, in the modernity of traditional complexes like those in Arabian Stars, or in postmodernity, sometimes in a highly critical manner, as with the contemporary constructions in Anarchitekton. 

The 'actors' of this fake fiction are city dwellers, most often men, since women rarely leave their homes in this country. The men follow the truck, attracted by the shoot and the fact of being filmed. They wear signs made from cardboard with the names of stars such as: Omer Simson, Bruce Lee, James Bond, Barbie, Asterix, Zorro, Terminator, Godzilla, Saint Nicolas, Abdolla Albaradoni (a Yemeni poet), Mohamed Ali, Sheherazade, Che Guevara, Obi Wankendgi, Mies van der Rohe, Muhamed Mahmud Al-Zubeiri (poet and resistant), Pikachu, Picasso, Amat Alim Susua (human rights minister), Michael Jackson, Zinedine Zidane, Batman, etc. This non-exhaustive list shows the diversity of the personalities that the inhabitant-performers refer to, from football players to Yemeni poets, from revolutionary heroes to the titles of American movies. They are derived from reality, or fictional films or comics. The locals are improvised 'performers' in this work.

The modes of installation were very precisely defined by the artist himself: pale green walls referring to the colour of the Yemeni interiors, 82 different chairs found at flea markets corresponding to the 82 'actors', and a huge projection screen of around 2m x 3m.

The combination of the three parameters (set, script, actors) enables Jordi Colomer to establish a critical observation of the evolution of Yemeni society, the rapidity of capitalist invasion, and the malleability of the inhabitants. We get the impression that the culture has been introduced into its societies without any hierarchy of values. Popular sport and spectacular films occupy the same level as Arabic poetry or modern painting.

Christine Van Assche

[1] Jacques Rancière, Le destin des images, Editions La Fabrique, Paris, 2003 (Our translation) [2] “De Picasso a Pikachu, Une conversation entre Jordi Colomer et William Jeffett”, in Arabian Stars, Jordi Colomer, Salvador Dali Museum, St Petersburg, Flo, United States; Museu Nacional, Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, Espagne, 2005, p. 144 – 151.