Algerian artist Lydia Ourahmane’s hypnotic 47-minute film reveals the 12,000-year-old rock paintings of Tassili n’Ajjer
In the Sahara Desert, on a vast plateau in southeastern Algeria near the border with Libya, there stands a dense grid of eroded sandstone, a maze of canyons, spires and hoodoos. This is Tassili n’Ajjer, or the Plateau of Rivers, a landscape once carved by water, now sculpted by wind.
“It’s one of the most powerful experiences I have ever had with a geographic region,” Ourahmane said in a recent interview. “It’s powerful for me because, as someone who makes things, as an artist, I am very aware of what I am bringing into this world and what am I leaving in it.
“I just think it’s a miracle they still exist,” she said. “I don’t know how to talk about that place; I can’t describe why it has this gravity. It is mysterious and it is resistant, such an overwhelming reality to confront that language does not suffice. The only way that I could deal with the film was not to have words in it.” Instead, there is moody music, four pieces composed by Nicolas Jaar, felicita, Yawning Portal and Sega Bodega.
“Doing anything in Algeria … the bureaucracy becomes a work of art,” she said. “A simple gesture will require you to get permissionOnce there, the project entailed complete trust in the local guides, members of the Tuareg, a traditionally nomadic Berber people who live in the Sahara. On a first eight-day trip to Tassili in 2019, Ourahmane had tagged along with a group of anthropologists and got an introduction to their guide.
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