Ritual of Oblivion Performance Duration: 20min Installation: Photo Fragments, Video Footage, Video Projector, Overhead Projector, 2 Air Blowers, Electronic Circuit, Iron, Steel, Wood, Plexiglass \ 2015 2015/ Aaran projects, Tehran, Iran Torn apart : What we have in front of us is a collection of photographs of an Iranian family which is torn and thrown away; a box full of tiny bits of photographs that were found in the corner of a sidewalk. Maybe for the person who found them, the most important aspect, regardless of anonymity of the subject, is the fact that they are all torn. Maybe forgetting the people in the photographs was not enough and their bodies had to be destroyed and become unrecognizable - reminding us of creatures that are killed and left by the side of the road and are undeserving of a funeral ceremony. So, in fact this “Ritual of Oblivion” is a memorial for the absent world of these photos. Their re-arrangement is actually a cinematographic act which through its process, the photographs find a chance, a possibility to be presented, and are later banished forever; An attempt to give life or salvage them by imposing places, sounds, and small narratives that seem to have been familiar with these photos at an earlier time. Edges : Everything on these photographs are ruinous: the girl, the hands, the sky, the shadows and the vase on the table. In an equal way, they are all left in a multiplied oblivion. Evidently there was nothing left to be recognized. God of images denies their existence; prohibiting any reality, even the paper bodies: all is torn, and this state can breach the reality of all of these images and erase all of their pictorial contents. This time, new contents are appearing on the Edges. They show inaccessibility. The ability to be situated in the proximity of the others, confirms the fact that this is only an undetectable piece of paper in a crumpled world; The possibility to inject the tiniest flares of life in the exact moment before they get torn away. Urging a probable narrative to momentarily embrace their existence in their last struggles. This struggle is a ceremonial through which, places and subjects become factual in the course of time; a ceremony that makes the photographs real, then teleports them back to their forbidden universe - as if they never existed. Video documentation: vimeo.com/149817705 |