"In Dreams I Walk With You," 2013; mixed media, dimensions variable. In collaboration with Onkar Kular. Photo: Delfino Legnani.
Noam Toran
Artist Statement
My work involves the creation of intricate narratives developed as a means to reflect upon the interrelations of history, cinema, literature, and memory, and primarily examines how fictions influence the collective consciousness, be it as history, myth, or memory forming. This is realized through an original way of deconstructing and reconfiguring cinematic and literary codes, conventions, and structures, and weaving them with historical materials, thereby complicating the relation between artifact and artifice.
While At Headlands
While at Headlands I hope to begin the residency by researching the history of unionized labor in the bay area. Sourcing from archives, interviews, and site-visits, and working with local designers, I aim to script a narrative, to be adapted into a piece of “worker’s theatre” or “political cinema”. The various “anatomical parts” of a play/film—the script, set, props, soundtrack, and lighting—will be “infected” with historical materials, and made accessible to the audience/visitor in a variety of ways. Having grown up in the bay area, and as my work incorporates historical, and, occasionally, autobiographical materials, I have wanted to produce a project specific to the region for some years, and see this residency as a unique opportunity to realize this.
