THE PLACE PORTRAIT

BAKU - RASIM ISMAILOV

Place
Baku - Republic of Azerbaijian

Location
Place Natavan

Local time of recording
02.00 p.m.

Camera person
Rauf Nasirov
Panasonic 9000M

Other participating people (from left)
Nasim Ismailov, President of the Communist Party IN-AST
I - Rasim Ismailov

Click here to read the Recording Script

Description of the recording place
This it the centre of Baku, the pedestrian zone. On the opposite side of the place is the cinema theatre "Azerbaijan", closer is a monument of the Azerbaijian poetess Natavan, 19th century. In Baku are a lot of interesting places, because the town is like an amphitheatre. But into the south direction there is no interesting place - I tried to solve your problem - except the shore of the Kaspian Sea which is rised, and there has been an ugly renovation

Description of the location
There are two streets connected with the place into the direction of the shore of Baku. Former the left street was called "Bolschoe Morskoe" and the right street "Michailowski". The building behind the monument is the cinema theatre. There has been a casino in this building at the beginning of this century. The place is a part of the of Baku broadway, this means the main street, where are a lot of shops, cafes and restaurants and where the inhabitants and visitors take a walk the whole day and night

What is special to the choosen location
I wanted to choose a place, where are a lot of people, because the recording should be at 2.00 p.m. I thought that most of the people are at this pedestrian zone at noon. This is often a very hot time in town and therefore are not so much people on their way. In the other streets are less people and you cannot hear the noise of the cars at this place

What does the recording show
1/3 of the image is covered by illuminated earth. You can see the shadows of the buildings slowly moving from the right side. In the centre of the image is exaclty the direction of the geographical south pole (with magnetic deviation of 4'15")
Atuoamtic focus and iris are turned off, therefore the image is a little bit unsharp. The recording is taken in the pedestrian zone of the city Baku. There are visitors, "Beschenzi" (tramps) and gipsies

What can be heard
Unfortunately the 9th of September was a windy day and you can hear some noises of the wind at the microphone (the microphone was protected with a wind-shield) ...You can say that we were lucky. Baku means windy town, at 300 days per year there is a lot of wind. In the distance you can hear some voices: "this is TV" or "very hot" etc. Sometimes you can hear music from a shop nearby. Right side behind the image there is the shop and from there you can hear the conversation

What happend at your location on the 9th of September
Nothing special happened at this place. One pedestrian shouted very loud and angry over the place during the time of recording, how bad he was treated in a shop. Then he went along in the depth of the image with two plastic bags in his hands

What happend in your country on the 9th of September
The 9 th of September was a quiet Saturday. The President recovered, a lot of people stayed this day in their "Dadscha" or on the beach. The cotton workers started to pick the cotton. The armee did no coup d'etat. The party refreshes for new votings of the parlament. With one word an ordinary day with no catastrophe

Personal Commentary
It was difficult to find the place of recording, because it should not be too boring. But the handicap was the direction exactly to the south. There are much more interesting places in Baku
The recording was taken without a break, because we could use electrical power from a shop. We used a videocassette SONY VHS PAL. We didn't use the external microphone, because it's not so good for noise. The camera was set up in the shadow of a tree at a tripod. I don't know all of your work, but I think you will make a multi channel installation with 24 monitors, where all recordings are synchronized. I believe this is a great but very expensive idea. I learned a bit about video art and saw a lot of very good works. Once more my best whishes