Rasel Ahmed
Bio: Rasel Ahmed is a community-based video artist who uses traditional cinematic tropes and techniques to combine documentary with fantasy. Characters in his films function as an anchor to synthesize the iconography, visual metaphor, and psychogeography of cinematic spaces. Rasel’s experimental videos are a means to explore his dialogical relationship with displacement, citizenship, border, and loneliness. He uses a combination of participatory documentation, archival research, and collaborative re-enactment to finalize the performance and movement choices in the film. Rasel has an MFA in Visual Arts from Columbia University. He is currently appointed as a post-MFA scholar at Ohio State University in the Theater, Film, and Media Art department.
Thesis Exhibition
Artist Statement: Although I am trained as a documentary filmmaker from Bangladesh Cinema and Television Institute, my recent body of work deals with narrative fiction and experimental genres. My MFA at Columbia University has informed a research-based filmmaking practice. In my latest two-channel film Who Killed Taniya, I used a cognitive visual research technique to culturally analyze a large repository of videos, interviews, records, and other mixed media items to develop the script and finalize movement choices. The qualitative research critically analyzed the series of media items by drawing upon the theoretical framework of bio/necropolitics. I used the hypothesis of the research to develop the murder mystery story (Who Killed Taniya) of five drag performers who fantasize about killing one another.
My filmmaking is deeply rooted in political and community organizing work. My participatory relationship with subject matters is the primary character of my artistic creation. I am currently editing my thesis film Goodby, Snowball, an experimental documentary that follows an imaginary queer anarchist who is ready to euthanize his pet to attend the revolution. The film is an urgent response to the murder of George Floyd, the Capitol riot, MAGA rallies, and other urban protests that sprung all across the world during the Covid-19 pandemic.
GOODBYE, SNOWBALL, (00:48, HD Video, 2021)
First Year Exhibition
Who Killed Taniya?, (16 min, Two-channel HD video with sound, 2021)
Open Studios
