Sunsets, Everyday

Basir Mahmood commissioned a production team in Pakistan to create and film, in his absence, a repeated scene of domestic violence, based on his instructions and some reference images. While the main crew was busy with this task, two camera operators were asked to constantly film the entire process and the elements of the set, down to the last detail. The process of staging violence is what generates the images on the screen, but the act itself is almost completely hidden from the viewer. Rejecting spectacularization, the artist focuses instead on the cinematic process and the codes of its language. The characters are the technicians and crew members struggling with his exhausting demand that they repeat the scene for sixteen straight hours of shooting. The almost obsessive repetition of identical actions, like washing the floor, becomes a way of expressing the routine nature of violence.