Passengers of earth, by Noran Bakrie
Following text and photographs by Noran Bakrie.
We are, intrinsically, insignificant pieces of the universe; and that is why, I always try my best to keep connecting myself to earth, to not fall out of it… to stay by the gravity. To preserve humility.
My name is Noran, I’m a daughter of exuberant obstinate mother and a suicidal poetic father, and I like to transcend through physical limits. Visuals are mediums to me, objects and subjects are converging in notes, some are beautiful and some are broken; but together they are forming a lullaby. What I actually do is humming.
What I’m singing is life; the wrinkles in mother Gaia’s old beautiful face, the falling and flying feeling that human’s heart delivers, a little bit background in stranger’s look in the eye so I can reflect myself, and some episodes of people’s lucid dreams that converse — between the reality they never realize and the phantasms they already live in.
What I’ve been meaning to say in my works is an open book. Nothing needs to be translated, or interpreted, there are no hidden messages that will justify people’s acknowledgment of art and things. All we have to do is just… listen. Listen to it. Life is, a grip of notations between truth and fantasy. And to live, people need to drift and float and fall, and drown and, feel. People need a medium for doing so. That is why art, and by art photography is also a part of it, always makes sense.
Have you been lost in the crowd with the constant sound of your head? Have you ever witness how everything surrounds you hustling down, in mute? I bet you have. How reality sounds is really frightening at times, so I just open my eyes, open my chest and shut my ears. A lot of people claim that artists tend to live in their own world, but let me rephrase, everybody lives in his own world. No one is strong enough to face the actual world. Everybody’s dreaming while walking on the streets.
Have you ever seek for balance and once you found it, you’re so scare of it? It doesn’t feel right when things fall in its right place, I mean, they will, eventually, but now is not the time. What’s the fun of it? What will it leave us? Perfection kills. I adore flaws. I love imperfection. It makes life understandable. That is what I’m doing with my works. I preserve mistakes, I’d like to stay stupid. It makes me human, it humbles me.
People seem to keep forgetting that life is a ride. The more money they have, the more static they have become – stick at one point and piling up inventories to make them a little bit proud, to build a little kingdom of their own. Everybody wants to have a place of their own, while there in the outer territory, they are already parts of a kingdom. Nature offers them places to discover, earth is a big enough space for humans to intersperse. I’d rather see what’s in front of my window than to see what’s inside my living room, that is why I join the ride, I travel. I need to wander. To make a connection with life. With strange cultures. With peculiar principles. With the unknown world. Out there far from home, I’m just one microcosm who’s trying to form with others, praying that someday our shape will be seen from heaven there and will make God smile. And I hope I can touch Him by doing so.
I am a passenger of Earth. Like any other, I make stops, stay in there for a while. I watch how civilization can be constructive and the origins of human nature can be formless, I try to comprehend the varieties of value and appreciate the new found structures of nature that I don’t find everyday, then I continue. In fact, everyday is every single day for me. Daily routine suffocates my brain, or maybe I’m just shallow person and have ridiculous short attention span. I can’t stick to repetition. You would notice that from my works, I tend to differ. I don’t feel comfort in repeating the same treatment over and over again, I can’t see the point. Furthermore, I need to alter, to fade my autograph every time it starts to appear clearly. I feel weightless when I’m anonymous.
I believe that when I work, I’m not speaking of myself, I’m speaking of how the place/object/subject had influence me, sometimes I’m just speaking of how my life and emotion have made me become. I’m representing them, and each of them breathes differently.
I have an issue with emotion. I tend to overload with it. Maybe that’s why I use photography, to let things inside me… out. Unleashed. So I don’t keep them anymore.
Speaking of emotional release, there is this one album, Fragments, which was made after the passing of my schizophrenic only brother. It is probably the most honest project I’ve ever produced, well, so far. It’s starkly human;
it delivers a plain feeling of losing, despair, alienation, cultural ambiguousness, the scattered moments I need to figure out, before I can finally lead to acceptance. It creates a world where narratives are simultaneously suggested and undermined; where drips of emotion leak and heightened the intense rawness in a period of being lost and finally found.
So by all means, for me, photography can be a therapy, I use it to deal with poignant memories. I use it to overcome, to erupt and let things out so they can passing me by. Sometimes, it heals. Sometimes, it helps me in treasuring moments.
It helps me appreciate life and the nature I’m living in. It grows curiosity within me, tells me to never stop moving, to always learning from the simplest things in life, to always discover something new. To always develop. To always be grateful in life. To always find a way to be content with earth. To remember.
See, here’s the thing, you don’t need to describe anything. Just tune in and listen to the frequency. Life is calling, amid billowing harmonies. I always have this urge to keep moving, and tasting what life offers in many points of this planet. Yes I’m leaving my comfort zone all the time, why not? — Earth is here, an unsolved symmetry, waiting to be found.
There are bigger things from your personal life and success, there is a debt we human need to redeem to this planet who has contain us ever since the time begins.. and that is, to appreciate. And the easiest thing for human to appreciate is to experience.
We are micros, together we are forming a myriad of organism. I’m asking you as one passenger of earth to another, “Touch the unseen, explore. Broaden your horizon.”
