Continue playing

(Time remaining: )

Play from beginning

Play from beginning

Continue playing "{{ controller.videos[controller.getVideo(controller.currentVideo)].segmentParentTitle}}"

{{controller.videos[controller.getVideo(controller.currentVideo)].title}} has ended.

{{ currentTime | date:'HH:mm:ss':'+0000' }} / {{ totalTime | date:'HH:mm:ss':'+0000' }} {{ currentTime | date:'mm:ss':'+0000' }} / {{ totalTime | date:'mm:ss':'+0000' }} {{cue.title}}
Add to WatchlistRemove from Watchlist
Add to watchlist
Remove from watchlist

Video unavailable

"The Bell Project"Hiwa K

February 19, 2020

One of five new films from Art21’s winter 2020 programming

Kurdish-Iraqi artist Hiwa K discusses his desire to make artwork that is understandable to a wide audience. Describing his video and sculpture installation, “The Bell Project” (2007–2015), the artist explains how he spent years following and filming a Kurdish scrap yard owner named Nazhad, who collected the U.S. and European military waste that was sold to and used in Iraq during the Iran-Iraq and Gulf Wars. Melted down into bricks of raw metal, these weapons of war took on new life and became, as the artist states, “possibilities of transformation.”

Inspired by the fact that church bells were often melted down to make cannons during times of war in pre-industrial Europe, Hiwa K explains how he became interested in swapping this process by making a bell out of melted down weapons. The artist had Nazhad’s metal bricks sent to Italy, where a foundry cast the material into a large bell, adorned with Assyrian imagery. The bell, installed at MoMA PS1 in Queens, New York alongside the artist’s videos of Nazhad’s scrap yard and the Italian foundry, becomes a simple but potent depiction of the circulation of materials and how countries are linked through warfare. Expressing his own difficulty with the art often exhibited in museums and his intention to make his work intelligible to all viewers, Hiwa K states, “I have an affair with knowledge, I don’t have a relationship with knowledge. I don’t want to overdose my work with philosophy.”

More information and credits

Credits

Producer: Ian Forster, Rafael Salazar, and Ava Wiland. Interview: Ava Wiland. Editor: Misha Spivack. Colorist: Jonah Greenstein. Camera: Jarred Alterman and Rafael Salazar. Sound: Jaime Guijarro-Bustamante. Music: Blue Dot Sessions. Artwork Courtesy: Hiwa K and Collezione La Gaia, Busca, Italy. Special Thanks: MoMA PS1.

Extended Play is supported by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Arts; and, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council; the Art21 Contemporary Council; and by individual contributors.

Closed captionsAvailable in English, German, Romanian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Italian

Translate this video

Through the Art21 Translation Project, multilingual audiences from around the globe can contribute translations, making Art21 films more accessible worldwide. Translate this video now.

Licensing

Interested in showing this film in an exhibition or public screening? To license this video please visit Licensing & Reproduction.

Hiwa K

Hiwa K was born in Sulaymaniyah in Kurdistan, Iraq, in 1975. His sculptures, videos, and performances slyly weave together anecdotes from friends and family members with his biography. As a Kurdish Iraqi and immigrant to Germany, Hiwa K draws from personal memories to tell stories of our ongoing global crises: war, migration, and the effects of neoliberalism and colonialism. Documenting with video, the artist inserts himself into his works, which often involve participatory dimensions (such as group cooking classes, musical performances, and political protests) and collaborations with a wide cast of players, from Iraqi philosophers to Venetian metal casters. Largely self-taught, his multidisciplinary approach draws upon his peer-to-peer education in Iraq as well as his musical training under the Flamenco master, Paco Peña.

“I have an affair with knowledge, I don’t have a relationship with knowledge. I don’t want to overdose my work with philosophy.”

Hiwa K


Material History

12:54
Add to watchlist
9:22
Add to watchlist
18:05
Add to watchlist