Anri Sala: Music Before Language
'It's about reliving an experience.' Interview with the acclaimed Albanian-born video artist Anri Sala, who doesn’t trust language, and so increasingly uses music in his video art. Sala feels that language can be used to veil the truth. Thus he is preoccupied with music and rhythm as a form of communication among people: 'It produces a choreography instead of producing a verbal discourse.'
This interview mainly revolves around two of Sala’s video works which were shown in the fall of 2012 at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark: 'Answer Me' (2008) and '1395 Days Without Red' (2011). The latter was recorded in Sarajevo in Bosnia, which came under permanent siege in the 1990s. At the time, many of its residents avoided wearing red - and colourful clothes in general - in order to minimize the risk of being hit by snipers.
Sala also talks about his method - as an example, the places where he films have a specific impact on the storyline of his videos: '... the place can tell the story and influence the story.' Anri Sala (b.1974) is an Albanian contemporary artist whose primary medium is video. Sala has exhibited at venues such as the Barbican Centre and Serpentine Galleries in London, New Museum in New York, Kunsthalle Wien and Hauser & Wirth in Zürich.
Moreover, he represented France at the 2013 Venice Biennale. Sala lives and works in Paris. Anri Sala was interviewed by Marc-Christoph Wagner the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark in 2012.
