ج-ن-ن

The essayistic three-channel video installation ج-ن-ن is based on the artist’s family conversations during a trip to Iraq and intensive research into the jinn – elusive entities that are deeply woven into Iraqi culture. Mentioned in both the Qur’an and per-Islamic texts, jinn appear in various shapes and forms. Known for their ability to bestow special powers, they are believed to be able to heal, as well as cause a person to lose their mind.
J-N-N is a visual journey through the Iraqi desert, from Ur via Babylon to the secluded living rooms of Baghdad. It fragmentarily questions a culture and society that has been torn apart in recent decades by ongoing wars, civil wars, repression, and terrorism. Cosmovision is linked with historical events and personal experiences. While the work carries out an experimental arrangement from the outside and attempts to comprehend these experiences, it simultaneously circles around the void of the unspeakable, the in-between, on a personally affected level – bouncing off its vehemence.

Ginan Seidl is an artist and filmmaker of German-Iraqi descent. In her work, she explores the boundaries between documentary and fictional filmmaking and video installations, where the fabulative and involved becomes a poetic and essential extension of the documentary material. She explores different perspectives and cosmogonies in order to relate, learn, and find new forms of exchange, knowledge production, and experience through cinematic means. She is part of the FILZ collective and co-curates the biennial expanded media festival paradoks in Leipzig. In 2017 she was part of the Forum Expanded with the film Spin.

Director Ginan Seidl. Screenplay Ginan Seidl. Cinematography Ginan Seidl. Editing Ginan Seidl. Sound Design Binha Haase. Animation Aldo Cañedo. Producer Ginan Seidl. Co-Producers Jonas Matauschek, Kathrin Lemcke. Production company Ginan Seidl (Berlin, Germany).

Films: 2011: inverse geometrie / inverse geometry (10 min). 2012: Stadt aus Silber / Silver City, rotation (with Clara Wieck, 8 min, Forum Expaned 2013). 2013: Ferferak (5 min.), Subconscious Areas (video installation). 2015: Remote City (20 min.), Boy (with Yalda Afsah, 30 min), Istambul (20 min.). 2016: Bacha Posh (with Yalda Afsah, 30 min). 2017: Spin (80 min, forum expaned 2013). 2023: Farah (with Yalda Afsah, 82 min), Moretones / Bruises (with Daniel Ulacia Balmaseda, 89 min). 2025: J-N-N.