Ge

2020

4k digital video, 24-bit sound, audio description, subtitles, 10’29”

 

Asad Raza’s Ge is an endless and evolving video narrative that blends fiction and documentary as it moves around the planet. First commissioned in 2020 by the Serpentine Galleries’ General Ecology program, the video serves as a dynamic container for Raza’s wide-ranging thinking, research, and writing around ecology. Named after the original name of the goddess of Earth, Gaia, Ge juxtaposes multiple thematic sections, which change with each release of the video. Audio description and subtitles form an integral part as the work plays with the distinction between “description” and “content,” underscored by the repetition of specific sections with different narration and captioning.

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In its most recent release, the piece consists of four “stanzas.” The first explores the bioscape around the Dorset home of James Lovelock, originator of the Gaia hypothesis, which provoked a major increase in ecological consciousness in the last thirty years. This visual portrait immerses the viewer in the originary context for the idea of the planet as a living feedback loop. The second stanza features the artist and his infant daughter demonstrating how to make fertile soil out of common materials. The third captures an arduous, three-day sailing trip with seven musicians across Lake Erie, set to an electronic composition with verses in the Seneca language. The fourth stanza was shot at the ruined convent where Hildegard von Bingen had visions, and features a reading of a famous passage by Hildegard, translated into Arabic and read by writer Lama El Khatib.

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—Prem Krishnamurthy