Ira Goryainova

Selected for AFI'26 by argos centre for audiovisual arts, Brussels, Belgium.

What compels you to work with moving image, and when did you first become interested in the medium?
I became engaged with moving image after I moved to Belgium in 2009. I was always deeply tied to my mother tongue: not only did I ‘live’ in it, it was also my main means of artistic expression. When I moved to Belgium, it felt like I lost a huge part of myself: I could not express myself the way I used to, and I felt reduced to a very basic form of being. It’s quite painful when you can’t properly express your emotions, let alone make a joke if your main modus operandi lies exactly in language. No pain, no gain. I began to discover or reinforce other languages, including visual and audiovisual ones, and really, when I started to master the moving image, I felt I could breathe again. So, what compels me to work with moving image beyond this autobiographical aspect? Precisely the fact that the visual appears to be less constrained by a grammar. Making a new work is like building a new alphabet each time, one that has the potential to be understood by many, regardless of their place of birth or origin.

This year’s theme, A Kind of Power, brings together films which explore the ethics of looking, watching and witnessing. In a world where images circulate instantly and visibility can both empower and endanger, how do you navigate the responsibility of looking - and of asking others to look - in your work?

It is not only that images circulate instantly, they are also captured instantly, and sometimes quite imperceptibly, or involuntarily, against the will of their subjects. Image-making and image-taking were always a form of power. From the very beginnings of cinema, those in front of the camera were subject to those behind it. Think of Workes Leaving the Factory by the Lumière brothers. The protagonists of this picture were the employees of the directors, performing their own – yet slightly bourgeois – selves. They had to dress well and appear as if they are leaving not a factory, but a theatre. I often thought: what a peculiar name for this profession – ‘director.’ Indeed, they were directors both of their factories and their films. The one being filmed is always in a vulnerable position, especially in ‘documentary’ filmmaking. Protagonists are asked to sign release forms that basically allow the directors and producers to do anything with the footage they made. Beyond being aware of the power relations inherent in film production, my work engages directly with these dynamics. I want to make the viewer aware of how their own gaze may form or deform what is in front of their eyes. I want to make the act of portrayal tangible: through my gestures behind the camera or while editing the footage, as well as through the viewers’ own act of looking.

Please share a list of books, music, films, artworks, thinkers, spaces and places that inspire your practice, and in particular have fed into your thinking around this film.
As his quote is present in the film itself, the starting point here was Georges Bataille and some of his writings. I like to read and was reading a lot of Michel Foucault in the period when this film was made, especially parts of The History of Sexuality or The Birth of the Clinic. The Skin of the Film by Laura U. Marks was an essential book for me, as well as Hélène Cixous’ écriture féminine. At that time, I also got captivated by the haunting films of Marguerite Duras. In music I am particularly fortunate to work with Patrick Stevens (aka hypnoskull) on all my films – most of my projects start with the sound compositions he creates after I share the first ideas about a project I am working on. Most importantly, Faustine, my heroine was the greatest source ofinspiration. Our meetings, conversations, the places we visited, the whole process of working together on The Ruins of Europe – from which residual footage found its way into this new short film – were fundamental.

What new projects or lines of research are currently preoccupying you?
I am currently working on a project that continues to explore themes already present in Regarding Faustine: portrayal, fascination, death and melancholia. The new work is more grounded in the here and how, shaped by the angst of ongoing global sociopolitical and environmental crises. They are spread in the air like some milk that makes everything appear opaque, kind of blank, yet overwhelmingly full. In this sense, we are blind to what is happening around us. Focusing on how we look might seem futile. The moving image then, is not only a medium which can go beyond language, for me it is something which goes beyond or against vision itself.