This history, however, is so abbreviated that it threatens to mislead with its simplicity what is actually a cultural diversity woven into the very identity of what it means to be Azerbaijani. The opening line of Ali and Nino gives a clearer sense of the cultural identity of the nation. Young schoolboy Ali introduces the novel with the observation, “We were a very mixed lot, we forty schoolboys who were having a geography lesson one hot afternoon in the Imperial Russian Humanistic High School of Baku, Transcaucasia: thirty Mohammedans, four Armenians, two Poles, three Sectarians, and one Russian.” The historical narrative of Azerbaijan is conveyed through the diversity and strata of its cultural heritage, keenly aware of its position as a bridge in the space between Europe and Asia. The Space Between Describing her relationship to a feeling of home, Neshat has said, “Once you leave your place of birth, there’s never a complete sense of center: you’re always in the state of in between and nowhere completely feels like home.” VII In her search for that existential center, Neshat has developed a sophisticated use of installation spaces, where, by choreographing an exchange between two facing walls, she activates the room between them. Viewers are thus implicated in the composition of the piece and become active participants in the formation of its narrative. Neshat developed this structure for her installations in the trilogy of films—Turbulent (1998), Rapture (1999) and Fervor (2000)—each presented as a two-channel video projected onto walls facing one another. Neshat, thus, expands the conceptual play of the literary and visual languages she explored in Women of Allah, into an installation environment. In these films, differing, interrelated narratives play on facing walls and visitors must turn their bodies and gazes, choosing which screen to watch in order to capture the dynamic interplay. Bi-lateral installations force the viewer to shift their gaze from side-to-side in order to integrate the action on either side of the room and thus create a unique sequence of drama with each viewing. In all three films, Neshat combined her keen eye and captivating choreography of black and white forms with a dramatic narrative told in gesture, expression and interplay of body and space. Among the themes addressed in the trilogy are the ways society defines communal identity through taboo (Turbulent), ritual (Rapture) and shared mythology (Fervor) and how that identity structures the physical, psychological and social space of individuals. The drama of these films unfurls through a careful choreography of gazes and gestures, as in the exchange between the protagonists of Fervor (Fig. 8). The meaning of these works relies equally on the internal narrative of the film and the visitors’ visceral experience of it. In 2008, Neshat completed Games of Desire, a film and accompanying series of fourteen full-length portraits in Laos as a part of the residency program The Quiet in the Land. Neshat photographed pairs of ceremonial singers in front of the murals at a temple. She, then, translated the creative lyrics of their ritualistic songs of romance into Persian and inscribed them in calligraphy as a second layer on top of the painted walls. Describing the conceptual bridge in these pictures between the cultural significance of Persian manuscripts of romantic epic poetry, and ritual practice of singing romantic Laotian songs, the project’s director France Morine cites the Japanese concept of ma and defines it as, “The interval of space or time between phenomena, such as a room (the space between walls) or a pause in music (the time between notes).” This space, she explains, “is not just
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