Anri Sala

In Long Sorrow, we see and hear the free-jazz saxophonist Jemeel Moondoc. In this scene, he appears to float high above the ground, just outside the open window of a flat building on the outskirts of Berlin. The video takes place in the Märkische Viertel: a typical 1960s residential district filled with tall, grey flats, not far from where the Wall once stood. The inhabitants refer to the longest building as Lange Jammer (Long Sorrow). Moondoc improvises and responds to the city around him. Artist Anri Sala (1974) filmed the musician in a way that does not reveal his exact location, making the experience of sound and place a “prolongation of the architecture of the Long Sorrow”.

Long Sorrow, says Sala, is the result of a “rather particularly set-up situation, rather than a narrative structure. It’s more a succession of tinted situations, coloured by moments of tension, gestures and music that can make you feel.”

Sala’s work is rooted in the political and social context of his homeland, Albania. In his oeuvre, he explores the relationship between music and stories, and between architecture and film. He weaves together various media in an intuitive and complex fashion, allowing their specific qualities and characteristics to merge with one another. Sala uses a sober yet poetic visual language to create rich works with multiple interpretations. He makes extremely precise and ingenious use of the possibilities offered by the medium of film. His camerawork is generally static, whereas sound continues to take on greater importance in his oeuvre.