Abstract

In this essay I discuss Zineb Sedira’s two-screen video projection “Saphir” in relation to the landscape which Hélène Cixous has called the “the immense landscape of the trans-, of the passage.” My non-conclusive text explores the acts of transition taking place on the dual screen of Sedira’s video work. The work – filmed in the harbour area of Algiers – forms a multifaceted visual narrative of departures and arrivals. Within this narrative an intriguing choreography develops between two solitary characters, a man and woman, who never meet but nonetheless, step by step, mutually perform a ritualistic dance. “Saphir” – which borrows its name from a French colonial hotel – is filled with ambiguities that evoke the landscape described by Cixous. Contemplating its topography, I become involved in Cixous’s bodily word world. “Passage” is what she calls part of this landscape, but it is also a word. It is a password which when split in two in the French language becomes ill-behaved and unwise. But could the word, I ask, also lead to a wise step (un pas sage )? And where do the steps danced by Sedira’s man and woman lead?