Etel Adnan, a Lebanese-born visual artist and writer, was arguably the most well-regarded Arabic-American multihyphenate of the 21st century. She was a prolific minimalist. Museums such as the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art and Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art have hosted retrospectives of her work. The year before her death, she was awarded the prestigious Griffin Poetry Prize. Perhaps, you can categorize everything she did as poetry: a translation of the world without a thesis. Or, everything as painting: a flattening of the world that reveals its texture. Or, simply, as looking.
In the ‘80s, Adnan stayed at a friend’s high-rise apartment overlooking the East River in New York and filmed out its windows with her Super 8 camera over several visits. Three decades later, under her supervision, the footage was retrieved, digitized, and edited into her only feature-length film, MOTION (1980-89, 2012). Although the film is amateur in design, it is not in its artistry—a home movie if homes were smokestacks and families were seagulls. It opens with the note: “This movie could be seen in silence, or not.” Not a gimmick, just a fact—sound makes no difference here. There’s no music, dialogue, or barely any noise in it at all. It’s as if we’re inside Adnan’s head—where language is optional—seeing through her eyes. What does New York look like to this visionary? She is not interested in its chaos, iridescence, or grid design, but its sky. Her focus is on birds, clouds, planes, and buildings. She assembles shots as she does in her paintings—spare yet full of life, structured by bold geometries and softened by organic motion. Her New York is nearly unrecognizable, at least at first. For those who live here, she reveals what we so often overlook: the gentle shifts of light and air that we take for granted.
This rare screening at Anthology Film Archives is hosted by Bidoun—an arts organization focused on the Middle East—and precedes a two-day symposium celebrating Adnan’s centenary at The Poetry Project. The film is repetitive—long, nearly identical shots recur over its 92 runtime. It might even be best experienced in a gallery setting, where viewers can absorb it in shorter intervals and place it in context within her broader body of work. Watched in one sitting, its slow pace can feel tedious, demanding more patience than her poetry or paintings do. Yet, for those willing to settle into its rhythm, MOTION offers an opportunity to engage with Adnan’s enduring concerns—landscape, light, and movement—rendered in film instead of paint or poetry.
Motion screens this evening, February 27, at Anthology Film Archives as part of the series “Bidoun Presents.”
