Zer / störung
Editor: Raisan Hameed - Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst, Leipzig
The work Zer-Störung by artist Raisan Hameed tells the story of different periods of his city of birth, Mosul. The starting point for the work was the photographic material from his family's archive, as well as his own photos taken in Mosul. As carriers of memories, his photos have visible and invisible layers, an observation that is already expressed in the title. Conceived as a play on words, the English translation of “Zerstörung” is ‘destruction’ and describes the brutal damage that man inflicts on the world, his environment, and other people. “Störung,” in turn, means ‘irritation’, a term that for the artist is strongly connected to the impermanence of things. Hameed uses abstraction as a strategy to break down the original function of images and change the way of reading them. By focusing on the materiality of the images in the project Zer-Störung, observations and their political contexts are transformed. They become a metaphorical documentation of past, present and future. This process allows for the opening of doors, negotiation, reflection and exchange.