The Road to Oxiana is a series of 4 video installations, two completed and two yet to come. The title is inspired by a book written by Robert Byron on his travel from Italy to Oxiana in Afghanistan in the 1930s. Travel logs such as Byron’s, told in the tradition of British colonial culture, have had a huge impact on my conception of the world. My strategy for developing these works is to travel to places loosely related to Byron’s route and to examine conceptions and representations of the actual places, before, during and after the journey.

In The Road to Oxiana, Station I: Cairo I aimed to balance the romantic impressions by studying political history from the region. I combined different styles of representation, seductive/poetic with powerful/journalistic.

Station II: Istanbul was a commission for Henie-Onstad Art Centre. The film includes my own reflections on places, names, seductive images, the body's movement from one place to another, perception, and problems of changing established conceptions.

I prepare to approach my third location of investigation, Armenia, on an upcoming visit in June. I am interested in the relationship between the body’s movements in space and memory – a tendency to repeat from memory an already rehearsed pattern– and I want to pursue this line of reflection in the work. I think of the following installation as a set design in which the audience’ movements and positions become important. The organization will play on the Armenian landscape and compass points.

During April–May 2009, I will stay at The Platform China Residency in Beijing granted by OCA , where I will conduct research for the last of my planned projects. Seen from Beijing, Oxiana no longer lies in the east but in the west, which means I will transcend my reference point. I expect to have my sense of orientation disturbed and to experience history differently. I will have to collect information anew, from another position.