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Masturpiece . 2006 . video installation . 16:9, sound, colour

Duration: 12 minutes . Original Language: English

Edition of 5 (+ 1AP)

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Masturpiece, obviously, is a portmanteau word,

made of masterpiece and []. The work is

a possible extension to The Stone Operation

by Hieronymus Bosch.

In the midst of a luxuriant summer landscape,

a surgeon removes an object from the head of

a man tied to a chair; a monk and a nun look

on The open-air operation, its circular shape

suggesting a mirror, is set within a framework

of elaborate calligraphical decoration

containing the inscription: Master, cut the

stone out, my name is Lubbert Das.

In Boschs day, the stone operation was a

piece of quackery in which the patient was

supposedly cured of his stupidity through

the removal of the stone of folly from

his forehead The name Lubbert []

frequently appears in Dutch literature to

designate persons exhibiting an unusually

high degree of human stupidity [](W)hat

the surgeon extracts from Lubberts head is not a stone, but a

flower; another flower of the same species lies on the table at

the right. The flowers have been identified as tulips and their

presence is explained as a play on the Dutch word for tulip which

in the sixteenth century also carried the connotation of stupidity

and folly.1

These have little to do with Masturpiece and The Book of

Masturpiece. The latter is a Bande Dessine (its neither a comic

book nor a graphic novel) made after and based on Masturpiece

and Jxalq. Although the two masturpieces have similar plots,

they are different in imagery, narrative, and ending. The narrator

of the two works is that dismembered stone, a petty phallic entity;

a narrator who does not speak in the book but utters all those

words as irrational thoughts - he thinks, or he thinks that hes

thinking. He refers to Lubbert as his master and to an object of

his dreams as his own pebble. He tries to tell the story of this

other stone, this pebble that he has seen in one of his dreams.

In the first dream the pebble appears like a rolled wax, like the

wax of Descartes Meditations, it becomes distorted because of

proximity to the fireplace. The narrator recounts the process of

alteration of this imaginary pebble into a woman and describes

how he has dreamt of her organs in a creative act of onanism.

After this hurried formation, the wrapped woman that we see in

the works, who comes and goes and never stops is eventually

created, but lacks many vital organs considered superfluous by

her master. This could be the Masturpiece.

1.From: Walter Bosing, Bosch: C. 1450 1516, Between Heaven and

Hell, Taschen, 1996.

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The verb Jxalq [(dlgh) v.t. & i. act of creating a masturpiece]

is originally an Arabic-Persian word. The verb carries equally the

meanings of to stimulate oneself and to create. According to

Qazi Mir Ahmad Monshi Qomi, a 16th century Iranian art historian,

the term was coined by Mehmed Siyah Qualem, a legendary

15th century Iranian painter and inventor. Qazi Ahmad Qomi in

his book, Golestan-e-Honar, writes: And once this painter (Siyah

Qualem) told the greatest of the courtier painters, Master Bihzad

all we artisans do is jxalq.

In the 15th century Gentile Bellini spent 18 months in Istanbul

as cultural ambassador and painted his famous painting The

Sultan Mehmet II (1480). Bihzad and Bellini have two similar

paintings called Portrait of an Artist. To answer why the term

exists in some Latin languages, some nave historians came

to believe that Bihzad had taught this term to Bellini during a

possible collaboration or a cultural exchange between the

Ottoman Empire and Iran. Basil Gray for instance believes that

after the death of Mehmet, Bellinis Portrait of an Artist was

sent first to the Aqqoyunlu Palace in Tebriz, then to the Safavid

Palace in Iran. Before it was returned to the Ottoman palace this

extraordinary painting was copied by Bihzad. The piece is now

kept in the Freer Museum in Washington DC.

1015 . 1385 . "Jxalq" in Dictionary . 1015 cm.

4:3 . 1385 .

) 1+( 5 . /

Jxalq (dlgh) v.t. & i. act of creating a masturpiece .

2006 . Video, 4:3, sound, black and white

Duration: perpetual . Edition of 5 (+1AP)

9 . : . 8002.

notB . snugaR coL dna lecraM reidiD8002 . siraP . trapluP yb detaruc . nolas

rutnediv essop cen ,tnussoP1

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1. 2. msicitsalpA

Camera Ardens;A Performance With the Blind and Those

Who See

2008

Possunt, nec posse videntur1

D. Diderot, Lettre sur les aveugles lusage de ceux qui voient

Pictures become a kind of writing as soon as they are meaningful: like writing,

they call for a lexis.

R. Barthes, Myth Today

A conversation between the curators of the exhibition ,

a public of 80 people and the blind. Pulpart, a collective of ten curaotrs, tries

to read the sculptures of Didier Marcel and images of Loc Raguns to the blind.

They and the audience use microphones and megaphones. The problematics

of semiological signification lead the readings to a polylogue.

To interpret visual and pictorial signs, is to read them in linguistic signs. For

these to mean any significant unit or synthesis; to make sense, is to be verbal-

ised. Translation, In this sense, is the interpretation of units of a source text in

visual signs and the production of the target text in linguistic signs. Semiologi-

cally speaking, the two messages cannot be identical for logically sense and

reference are neither identical nor essentially and naturally connected.

Arts poesis either as Anschauung or Vo

rstellung - needless to say there is

nothing mystical about intuition, and representation here embraces all nar-

ratives of art production - creates surpluses and losses. Here figuration is no

different than refiguration, for having losses and surpluses are inevitable when

we speak of a visual work of art; when we find signifieds for visual signifiers.

Having losses, surpluses and alterations,

we do not reproduce works of art when

we read them. Any told piece of art can be as independent as any untold.

Instead of having to-be-perceived, pas

sive but hungry works of art, we call

for accumulations of lexis. The sightless are not invited to the performance to

perceive through the sighted, on the contrary, they will take part to enrich our

experience of a transitory Aplasticism, and furthermore, to co-utter the told in

order to reinforce the collision of words. In the other hand, they may reveal the

ruse of modern visual percept; we have been taught that the pleasure of ob-

serving sculptures lies beneath our desire to embrace objects, but since works

of art are still sacred untouchable mundane objects held in art museums, we

shall keep our distance with them - if feel free to touch is not indicated.

Hence it should be obvious that this is

not an assistance programme, and if

there will be assistance, it will be for the sighted, for those who while narrating

the seen, do not unlearn the conventions of translation and who write in praise

of jouissance of the looked in oblivion of its coexistent suffering.

1. They can what it seems they cannot.

11

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9090 . HD *

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GKM

GKM . *

Exhibition - With Francis Bacon

(A Twenty-One Thousand, Eight Hundred and Four Minute Unworsenable Aplast

ic) . (2008-09) . for Sam

Oil* and HD video on canvas . Colour, silent . Diptych; each canvas 90 90 cm

21804 minutes (15 days, 3 24)

Produced in cooperation with GKM (Gteborg Museum of Art)

Courtesy Barbad Golshiri

* Francis Bacons Homage to van Gogh loaned to the artist by GKM.

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The exhibitor tried to express a paragraph (the very drive of the

work) dividing it not only into lexis, minimal items with definite

narrative functions, but also recklessly into both important and

excessive or unnecessary words and phrases. The exhibitor

repeated each word or phrase numerous times.

There was but one unchanging act, identically repeated three

times in each rptition and reiterated identically throughout. It

stands for three words. The rest was repeated differently.

The video will start over after twenty one thousand, eight hundred

and four minutes of ceaseless rptition. Rptitions prepare

actors for a series of better rptitions to come; for the loop;

for perpetuating the day one, namely the premiere. Exhibition

never reached a premiere. It did not even receive its last

rptition. It gradually darkened, desaturated, slowed down

and extinguished. Its time came: a black square its leftover.

In Exhibition i exhibits even when they are not there, even

when the museum is closed, like at nights. Then let spectators

be gone begone! while exhibition goes on. No hunger for

being perceived. No! less.

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omer neeb evah srepap dna sgnitniap llAaL ehT shcivelaM fo otohp eht morf dev

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n ,secaps ytpme ylnO .noitibihxE tsirutuF.niamer riahc a dna slia

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)1913 ( 106.2 106.5

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Quod (detail) . 2010 . C print on paper

106.2 x 106.5 (the same size as Malevichs Black Square [1913])

Golshiri argues that the art market is limiting Persian writing to formalist, harmle

ss and exotic calligraphy made for

those who cannot read it. Since reading Quod stimulates nausea, it is deeply roo

ted in the unique experience of

reading it and, hence, only available to those who read Persian.

)( . 1388 89 . .

) 1+( 3 . : . : . 250175100

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Narcissus Echoes . Aplastic play . 2009-10 . Stainless steel mirrors, megaphone (

horn loud speaker).

Approx. 250 x 175 x 100 cm . Sound: mono . Duration: sempiternal . Edition of 3 (

+1AP)

A cutout of megaphone built into the short end of a protruding v-shaped mirror ap

pears as a multi-petalled flower

in Narcissus Echoes. On drawing closer, one witnesses a remorseful confessor

the artist who has gone through

numerous rptitions only to become another descendent, a new echolalic agent

of the ideology.

71

dnuof eb nac taht msissicran tnangilaM lacitilop-oicos sredner spihsrotatcid ni

u ton si erutroT .suominanu seitisrevid ;noitamrofni dna hturt tcartxe ot des

fo retsulc a esopmi ot desu loot a si ti yllausu stnedissid derutrot eht ;shturt

reffo ,metsyS eht rof evol rieht sseforp ssefnoc dna miH ot seigolopa rieht

siw siH fo erawa os emoceb evyeht taht fo shtnoM .nirahkuB rebmemeR .mod

morf tnemhcated etulosba ,tnemnosirpmi hcihw ni noitautis a ,dlrow edistuo eht

p htiw ,detagorretni eb ot geb dluow eno taht serutrot lacigolohcysp dna lacisyh

eht fo ohce na ot rossefnoc eht ecuder dna sdrow tcaxe gnitaeper ,metsys

ereh si ti ;cilalohce gnimoceb ,sesarhp srossefnoC .seohce sussicraN taht

ot snoititpr suoremun hguorht tup era taht metsys a fo stnednecsed emoceb

curtsnoc ;flesti taeper tub gnihton seod .stnega suominanu cilalohce wen gnit

,sereimerp rof meht eraperp snoititpR wohs lacitnedi ,snoissefnoc desivelet

erp htiw ,tnadrom ylrettib era taht slairt derettu sdrow evititeper dna elbatcid

efnoc ehT .snosrep elbaegnahcretni yb aidem etats eht etouq yllufhtiaf sross

tnerefer-hturt a sa snoitcnuf noisivelet eht fo noitutitsbus dna rosseccus eht ,

p srotsaP sti dna sessam eht fo muipo rettu yeht sdrow eht nwo ot gnidneter

ot delaever si taht hturt eht gniveileb dna neila on erehw ,edutilos rieht ni meht

.etartenep nac sthguoht

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1388 89 . .

Vanitas . Aplastic video . 2008-10 . Iron, lamp, lenses, bowl, liver

Through the big iron pipe with lenses inside, the slide is projected

on a wall. The audience can also see the magnified yet distorted

image inside the pipe. The projector lamp, meanwhile, gradually

cooks the liver in the bowl.

Video art is supposed to be a live form of art, yet looped

videos, being apathetic and unchangeable, like deities living in

timelessness, are incapable of dealing with anything human,

ephemeral and mortal. Light art too, can be considered live

art, if only for the reason that, when, for instance, Dan Flavins

fluorescent tubes die, we dont care to replace them. Videos

can be considered live art if only inanimate still-life is living art

incarnate. The exact paradox is found throughout the history of

Vanitas. Vanitas is supposed to manifest the ephemerality of our

lives: memento mori. But it seems that throughout history artists

of this genre like those recently gathered in the exhibition

Vanities; from Pompeii to Damien Hirst at Muse Maillol have

frequently unlearned ephemerality, death and decay, since they

have mostly tried to create undying, imperishable works of art.

Vanitas as a genre, with a handful of exceptions, fails to live up

to its own promise of death. It has become a mere representation

of skulls, clocks and sandglasses, fading flowers and decaying

foods. So where should one look for mortality in ones life? I

believe that video, if truly looped, could be the medium that can

solve the paradox of Vanitas from within.

If one gazes into perfect loops, one would see the desire for

immortality, or one would see that the spirit is immortal, if you

prefer; but if one turns about, one sees that something is indeed

suffering, something enduring the path, something is dying

on gradually: a projector, cathode ray tubes, a VCR, et cetera.

When the transfinite video is the apathetic soul, incapable of the

path; insensible to any experience of suffering, the projector

or the cathode ray tubes or the player function as the pathetic

flesh, the very flesh of the work of art, a flesh tormented during

rptitions that curators (classic ones, custodians) have to cure

during a three month projection. In looped videos the living actor

is the projector.

Claudia Gian Ferrari was an Italian gallerist and collector with

a collection of unique Vanitas works of art and skulls. The last

gallery she opens is her neighbours house. The neighbour had

killed his wife and had thrown her liver into the courtyard. Claudia

rents his house and turns it into a gallery. Later she donates

her assets to museums, then comes to Iran. Barbad Golshiri

meets her. Claudia buys his Handjob, an ephemeral work of

art, a to-be-vanished writing on a crumpled paper (soon to be

fingered by a lawyer butchering Claudias inheritance and assets

and wondering if it is in fact a work of art). They decide to work

together. Claudia goes back to Italy and realises that shes

suffering from pancreas cancer. Golshiri goes to Milan to visit her

and decides to dedicate his solo at Caludias gallery to her last

days. The work consisted of a large chunk of wax at the center

of the space on which Claudia is to engrave her presence in the

presence or absence of the viewers. She would then receive her

friends and the audience in gatherings where they could enter

her house witness her last moments. Golshiri and Olka Hedayat

visit Claudia when she is just back from a chemo session. She

suffers from dry mouth, nausea and dehydration and cannot

stand the smell of food, yet stands and starts to cook liver for

them. Olka helps her. Claudia cuts her hand with a knife. The

blood doesnt coagulate easily. Olka never eats liver. That day

she does. Claudia doesnt make it to the opening. She dies.

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Lth . 2010 . Wood, paint, megaphone (horn loudspeaker)

Approx. 108 x 175 x 46 cm . Sound, mono . Loop

A senseless, apathetic female voice reads in French:

- We have found the river Lethe.

And at the end, before she starts over:

- As the ministry of ecology of Tehran has stated, the morgue of

Beheshte Zahra is one of the water sources of Tehran.

21

1389.

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Adopted Darger . 2010-11

Correction pen on paper (a page of a book with a work by Henry

Darger, masked and censored by a Book City in Tehran). Glued on

mattress with seminal fluid. Soot, oil.

Approx. 220 x 100 cm

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1. Georges Bataill la Chambre Ardente Camera Ardens .2 2008 .

. 3. Antonin Artaud4. Georges Duthuit5. Beckett, Samuel, Proust and the Three Dialogues with Georges Duthuit, (London: Calder, 1965), p 103. Board .6 : . Ironing Board :

. . .7

8. Thtre du Vieux-Colombier9. Quoted in Roger Shattuck, The Innocent Eye: On Modern Literature and the Arts (New York, 1984) pp. 169-70.10. Quoted in: Ruby Cohn, From Desire to Godot; Pocket Theater of Postwar Paris (Berkeley, 1987), p. 59.11. Proust and Three Dialogues with Georges Duthuit, (Calder and Boyars, 1965), p 103.12. Rodney Graham13. City Self/Country Self14. Vexation Island (1997), How I Became a Ramblin' Man (1999) and City Self/Country Self (2000)15. Ouroboros16. Duane Michals17. Paradoxical Western Scene18. transfinite19. architextuality20. hypotextuality21. Marty Robbins22. doxa23. Bothius24. The Confessions of Saint Augustine, Trans. Edward Bouverie Pusey, (Maryland: Arc Manor, 2008), p166.

. : .2526. The Confessions of Saint Augustine, p 165.27. Richard Linklater28. Waking Life29. Winnie30. Beckett. Samuel, The Complete Dramatic Works, Faber and Faber (London 1990), p 160.31. The Confessions of Saint Augustine, p 166. 32. The Complete Dramatic Works, p 147.33. Eva-Katarina Schultz34. Beckett. Samuel, Happy Days: The Production Notebook of Samuel Beckett, James Knowlson (ed), p 150.35. Hbner, A, Samuel Beckett inszeniert Glckliche Tage, Probenprotokoll Von Alfred Hbner (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1976). Quoted in Knowlson. James, Images of Beckett, (Cambridge University Press 2003), p 142.36. The Complete Dramatic Works, p 99.37. Clov38. Hamm39. Ibid, p 107.

40. Ibid, p 153.41. Ibid, p 138.42. Beckett. Samuel, Murphy, Calder and Boyars (London 1970), p 5.43. Harpocrates44. Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, trans. Justin OBrien (Penguin Books 1976), p 108.45. Ibid.

4846 4443: : .4647. Boris Groys48. Boris Groys, Eternal life in a digital world, an interview with Belinda Mckeon, Irish Times, November 27, 2009.49. Timothy Ware, Kallistos (Ware) of Diokleia50. perpetual resurrection51. See: Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Way (St Vladimirs Seminary Press 1995), p 9.52. Ibid.53. Georges Bataille, Visions of Excess: Selected Writings, (1927-1939), Allan Stoekl (ed), (University of Minnesota Press 1985), p 7.54. Smith/Stewart55. How Nancy Wished that Everything Was an April Fools Joke56. Adonis57. Peter Brook, Leaning on the Moment, in Parabola, May 1979.58. rhetorical pathos .5960. echolalia61. Vanitas62. Muse Maillol63. Cest la vie64. Lethe65. Pathetic Rptition

.66. 1356

67. Samuel Beckett, Three Novels; Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable, Grove Press (New York 1965), p 379.68. Play was repeated or played back faster69. Quoted in: Ruby Cohn, Disjecta: miscellaneous writings and a dramatic fragment By Samuel Beckett, Grove Press (New York), p 111.70. onanist

. Second Coming .7172. Esslin, Martin, Towards the Zero of Language in (Eds.) Acheson, J. and Arthur, K., Becketts Later Fiction and Drama, (New York: St Martins Press, 1987), p 44. .73

.119 1388 . rock+(lull)aby : .74

. 75. Mel Gussow, Conversations with and about Beckett, Grove Press (New York 1996), p 88.

. 104102 .76. cura Curator .77

35 .78 .

. 79. Beckett, Proust, trans. dith Fournier, Paris, Minuit, 1990, p 29. clap .80

.

33

1. Camera Ardens of The French Inquisition, also known as la Chambre Ardente.2. Vieux-Colombier Theater, Histoire vcue d'Artaud-Mmo. Tte tte par Antonin Artaud.

3. Beckett, Samuel, Proust and the Three Dialogues with Georges Duthuit, (London: Calder, 1965), p 103.4. Quoted in: Roger Shattuck, The Innocent Eye: On Modern Literature and the Arts (New York, 1984) pp. 169-70.5. Quoted in: Ruby Cohn, From Desire to Godot; Pocket Theater of Postwar Paris (Berkeley, 1987), p. 59.6. Beckett. Samuel, Proust and Three Dialogues with Georges Duthuit, (Calder and Boyars, 1965), p 103.

7. The Confessions of Saint Augustine, Trans. Edward Bouverie Pusey, (Maryland: Arc Manor, 2008), p166.

8. See Leviathan, Chapter XLVIO (Of Darkness from Vain Philosophy and Fabulous Traditions):

For the meaning of eternity, they will not have it to be an endless succession of time; for then they should not be able to render a reason how Gods will and pre-ordaining of things to come should not be before His prescience of the same, as the efficient cause before the effect, or agent before the action; nor of many other their bold opinions concerning the incomprehensible nature of God. But they will teach us that eternity is the standing still of the present time, a nunc-stans, as the Schools call it; which neither they nor any else understand, no more than they would a hic-stans for an infinite greatness of place.Hobbes. Thomas, Leviathan, Penguin Classics (UK 1985), P 609.9. The Confessions of Saint Augustine, p 165.10. Beckett. Samuel, The Complete Dramatic Works, Faber and Faber (London 1990), p 160.

11. The Confessions of Saint Augustine, p 166. 12. The Complete Dramatic Works, p 147.13. Beckett. Samuel, Happy Days: The Production Notebook of Samuel Beckett, James Knowlson (ed), p 150.14. Hbner, A, Samuel Beckett inszeniert Glckliche Tage, Probenprotokoll Von Alfred Hbner (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1976). Quoted in Knowlson. James, Images of Beckett, (Cambridge University

Press 2003), p 142.

15. Beckett, The Complete Dramatic Works, Faber and Faber (London 1990), p 99.

16. Ibid, p 107.

17. The Complete Dramatic Works, p 153.18. Ibid, p 138.

19. Beckett. Samuel, Murphy, Calder and Boyars (London 1970), p 5.20. Camus. Albert, The Myth of Sisyphus, trans. Justin OBrien (Penguin Books 1976), p 108.

21. Ibid.

22. Mark 9:43-44,46,48.

23. Boris Groys, Eternal life in a digital world, an interview with Belinda Mckeon, Irish Times, November 27, 2009.24. See: Kallistos Ware, The orthodox way (St Vladimirs Seminary Press 1995), p 9.

25. Ibid.

26. Georges Bataille, Visions of Excess: Selected Writings (1927-1939), Allan Stoekl (ed), (University of Minnesota Press 1985), p 7.

27. Peter Brook, Leaning on the Moment, in Parabola, May 1979.28. The Complete Dramatic Works, p 53.29. Samuel Beckett, Three Novels; Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable, Grove Press (New York 1965), p 379.

30. Quoted in: Ruby Cohn, Disjecta: miscellaneous writings and a dramatic fragment By Samuel Beckett, Grove Press (New York), p 111.31. Esslin, Martin, Towards the Zero of Language in (Eds.) Acheson, J. and Arthur, K., Becketts Later Fiction and Drama, (New York: St Martins Press, 1987), p 44.

32. The Complete Dramatic Works, p 454.33. Mel Gussow, Conversations with and about Beckett, Grove Press (New York 1996), p 88.

34. The Complete Dramatic Works, p 442.35. It is a unique experience to see them taking care of Grahams 35mm film loops. I saw one of them at Grahams Jeu de Paume exhibition.

mother rockerwhere mother rockedall the yearsall in blackbest blacksat and rockedrockedtill her end camein the end came

And in the end it reads:

the rockerthose arms at lastsaying to the rockerrock her offstop her eyesfuck lifestop her eyesrock her offrock her off[Together: echo of rock her off, coming to rest of rock, slow fade out.]34

Even without philosophising, if one gazes into perfect loops, one would see the desire for immortality, or one would see that the spirit is immortal, if you prefer; but if one turns about, one sees that something is indeed suffering, something enduring the path, something is dying on gradually: a projector, cathode ray tubes, a VCR, et cetera. When the transfinite video is the apathetic soul, incapable of the path; insensible to any experience of suffering, the projector or the cathode ray tubes or the player function as the pathetic flesh, the very flesh of the work of art, a flesh tormented during rptitions that curators (classic ones, custodians) have to cure during a three month projection.35 In looped videos the living actor is the projector. Whether the characters of a video endure the greatest torments, whether they become pathos incarnate; eventually and each time a new life will be breathed into them. And if the video is itself about perpetual resurrections and breathing new lives (as in Mouth to Mouth), the flesh will still die on. Of course we might complain that the content will still remain apathetically unchanged and only the medium dies on, but how can we exclude the medium from the content? Creating art as a succession of habits is the diminishing act of creation, of being bounded to ones own vomit, a little different from ones earlier vomits or a little different from digested puny exploits of others. In Proust, Beckett wrote Habit is the ballast that chains the dog to his vomit. Sun, the sublime symbol of life is the very creature of habitude; a creature that we forget is dying on and is the sublime creature of self destruction.

The habit of living on the Board is encouraged by the grace of the box office; the misery of being trapped in loop is prolonged by it and by the clap, by the roars of encore!, just as the interrogator wants the narrator to repeat the thousand times

repeated narration. One who is aware of ones marking time, perpetuating, renewing, pacing in the dreary road of exhibition, of expressing less, expressing more, of going farther, of not going farther, of saying more, of saying less, is the one who hesitates to go on any farther; one who cannot go on any farther and yet resumes the pacing, the marking of time; one who cannot exhibit since he/she is obliged to go on.

When I was editing Exhibition, a twenty-one thousand, eight hundred and four minute video, I hadnt written most of the words above, but at any rate, for weeks I suffered from a constant nausea without the relief of vomiting. Like now that I am nauseous, that I am repeating excerpts of my book Unwriting, that Im writing a postscript, a prologue to my recent works and Exhibition, A Twenty-One Thousand, Eight Hundred and Four Minute Unworsenable Aplastic. And that is what a loop is or should be, if you prefer. Loop, if lived, does not close back on itself like an Ouroboros that begins anew when ended; loop, if lived, is utterly in contrast with any rptition that desires or is in search of eternity and immortality as godly powers or religious rituals or as the art of persuasion or mere politics of belief ; loop is rather a gradually lessening and diminishing spiral.

Barbad GolshiriEdited by Haleh Anvari

35

never be born again, what am I saying, youll never have been born, and bring your brats, our hell will be heaven to them.29

The playscript of Play ends with a simple yet breathtaking instruction: Repeat. This is also Repeat Play. Here the order is not fulfilled by pushing the rewind button. In a production of Play, the playscript was repeated or played back faster in the first repeat and even faster in the second. Likewise, breathlessness increased and the spotlight grew dimmer and dimmer each time. What trains actors and improves their skills would eventually kill them; rehearsals, ever worsening rptitions. Beckett asserts that the diminishing form was to give the impression of falling off with the suggestion of a conceivable dark and silence in the end, or of an indefinite approximating towards it.30

One acts in loop when one is trapped and any belief in any transcendence or breaking away is unthinkable. That is when one is obliged to do the same thing, as W1, W2, M and the sliding spotlight do in Play. But why are they obliged to do as they do? Why was Artaud obliged to step on the Board? Why does The Unnamable have to go on? Why wont one leave the plane of the feasible? Why did Rothko have to do the same thing over and over again?

B: The situation is that of him who is helpless, cannot act, in the event cannot paint, since he is obliged to paint. The act is of him who, helpless, unable to act, acts, in the event paints, since he is obliged to paint. D: Why is he obliged to paint? B: I dont know. D: Why is he helpless to paint?

B: Because there is nothing to paint and nothing to paint with.

D: And the result, you say, is art of a new order? B: Among those whom we call great artists, I can think of none whose concern was not predominantly with his expressive possibilities, those of his vehicle, those of humanity. The assumption underlying all painting is that the domain of the maker is the domain of the feasible. The much to express, the little to express, the ability to express much, the ability to express little, merge in the common anxiety to express as much as possible, or as truly as possible, or as finely as possible, to the best of ones ability.

What expressing, or what I call exhibiting, with its farthest feasibilities desires is always beyond ones reach. The situation is reminiscent of an onanist who never reaches a satisfactory coming or gets there but recommences and awaits a Second

Coming. An Achilles aiming for his goal, arriving halfway only to aim for the next half and then the next half but not ad infinitum, because when so close to the object/goal, it appears that s/he is not moving forward; that s/he is in fact marking time. S/he is in fact moving downward, worstward, ever worsening. S/he is going on, but worsening on too. One, who is aware of ones repetitions, worsens on. Rothko can be the fictitious Ulysses of this journey, a Ulysses marking time, going, say, from the left wing to the right wing, in search of something next to the same old thing. If one would care to observe him from afar, as a lighting person does, when he is nearly marking time and nearly touching the right wing, one might take him more as a Sisyphus than a Ulysses.

Unlike prefect apathetic loops, such diminishing ever-worsening spirals tend towards non-being with no desire to begin anew; they call upon death not immortality, and to be precise, they die on. In a production, Becketts Play dies brusquely in the third repetition. The diminishing spiral can nowhere be found more emblematical than in Becketts Quad 1 when it led to Quad 2. In Quad 1 all six possible duos, all four possible solos, all four possible trios, all possible light combinations, all possible costume combinations and all possible percussion combinations were given. These were all the feasible on the plane of the feasible, on a quadrate, in a quod or within arts farthest yet emptiest point: Malevichs Black Square. The idea of Quad 2 came to Beckett instantly when he saw the colour production of Quad 1 on a black and white monitor playing back in slow motion. For Beckett, Quad 2 was Quad 1 a hundred thousand years later31. The latter dramatises the entropy of the formers motions, colours, lights and percussions, now no colour, all four in identical white gowns, no percussion, footsteps only sound, slow tempo, series 1 only.32 There, loop is lived, or was, as if the actors had never left the Board. As if they had lived on the Board, not like all other plays that permit their actors to leave the Board, to come back again tomorrow repeating the same thing, say, this time with a better rptition.

Throughout Becketts Rockaby, the woman (W) expressionless rocks on a rocking chair with rounded inward curving arms to suggest embrace. It is the rocking chair that mechanically rocks W on, then off, of its own accord. The piece in its totality is based on a to-and-fro movement: a lullaby, a helpless rocking and death drive; the true forms of repetition, straightening the path to death (like Wiederholungszwang). No wonder, Billie Whitelaw who under Alan Schneiders direction premiered the play had noted in her script strongest drive to death33. Like Nargess, W paces along the same path of her predecessor and rocks towards death. Ws recorded voice, V, reads:

So in the endclose of a long daywent down in the end went downdown the steep stairlet down the blind and downright downinto the old rocker

as they saw Hussein in danger of being killed, and then fooling his enemies, and then being martyred. And when he was martyred, the theatre form became truth27.

The audiences bereavement and mourning are not simple reactions to rhetorical pathos, an appeal to their emotions. They are inseparable parts of the Passion play. We should not neglect the fact that Taziyeh literally means mourning.

Malignant narcissism that can be found in dictatorships renders socio-political diversities unanimous. Torture is not used to extract truth and information; it is a tool used to impose a cluster of truths; the tortured dissidents usually profess their love for the System, offer their apologies to Him and confess that theyve become so aware of His wisdom. Remember Bukharin. Months of imprisonment, absolute detachment from the outside world, a situation in which one would beg to be interrogated, with physical and psychological tortures that reduce the confessor to an echo of the system, repeating exact words and phrases, becoming echolalic; it is here that Narcissus echoes. Confessors are put through numerous rptitions to become descendents of a system that does nothing but repeat itself; constructing new echolalic unanimous agents. Rptitions prepare them for premieres, televised confessions, identical show trials that are bitterly mordant, with predictable and repetitive words uttered by interchangeable persons. The confessors faithfully quote the state media television functions as a truth-referent, the successor and substitution of the opium of the masses and its Pastors pretending to own the words they utter and believing the truth that is revealed to them in their solitude, where no alien thoughts can penetrate.

The Unnamable had always expected surprises. It has no eyelids, for there is no need for lids here, where nothing happens, or so little. Where there is nothing new, or next to nothing, there is no need to blink. Grahams country and city selves await the comic slapstick encounter; the city man examines his pocket watch and the country man looks up at a tower clock. When trapped in loop there is nothing new and everything is expected, even surprises.

Perfect loops counterfeiting immortality, lead to absence of the path, not in its Stoic sense but as a divine property, like that of an immutable god, unmoved by our infirmities. The divine side of Christ the theanthropos was incapable of pathos, for Christs godhead (/theots) should have no defects. Some believers say that it was his human side that suffered on the cross. Since Christ is supposed to be a theanthropos, not as a centaur half this and half that, but fully god and fully human. The Christian idea of an apathetic god stems from a Greek idea of divine perfection residing in the absence of human emotions that are considered defects. This reasoning therefore needed Jesus to regain his human defects in order to feel pathos, a property that was there prior to his godly properties. An immortal omnipotent god never alters, because alteration may appear to be a defect to believers like Aquinas. So as Nezami Ganjavi, the Persian poet, says, God does not accept alteration, he refuses to change.

Video art is supposed to be a live form of art, yet looped videos, being apathetic and unchangeable, like deities living in timelessness, are incapable of dealing with anything human, ephemeral and mortal. Light art too, can be considered live art, if only for the reason that, when, for instance, Dan Flavins fluorescent tubes die, we dont care to replace them. Videos can be considered live art if only inanimate still-life is living art incarnate. The exact paradox is found throughout the history of Vanitas. Vanitas is supposed to manifest the ephemerality of our lives: memento mori. But it seems that throughout history artists of this genre like those recently gathered in the exhibition Vanities; from Pompeii to Damien Hirst at Muse Maillol have frequently unlearned ephemerality, death and decay, since they have mostly tried to create undying, imperishable works of art. Vanitas as a genre, with a handful of exceptions, fails to live up to its own promise of death. It has become a mere representation of skulls, clocks and sandglasses, fading flowers and decaying foods. So where should one look for mortality in ones life? I believe that video, if truly looped, could be the medium that can solve the paradox of Vanitas from within.

Imprints of antique thoughts are easily traceable in looped videos, but since this is the nature of nearly all videos, we overlook the fact. When all citizens of a city are sick, no one is. The inhabitants of apathetic loops, insensible to suffering, have no memory and never tend towards non-being. The only stream of apathetic videos is the stream of Lethe.

The Pathetic Rptition

A looped piece of music or verse would be nothing but a sole refrain. We have often heard of Beckettian circles, but Beckettian cycles, except for a few passages, are rarely circular. The circular repetition could be found in the round jingle Vladimir recites:

A dog came in the kitchen/And stole a crust of bread/Then cook up with a ladle/And beat him till he was dead/Then all the dogs came running/And dug the dog a tomb/And wrote upon the tombstone/For the eyes of dogs to come:/ A dog came in the kitchen/ And stole a crust of bread28

The famous childrens round jingle is not round enough in The Unnamable and is no longer a jingle, a song that contains catchy words and sounds (plot and images in Grahams case). Its like a perpetual dream, or like that old jingle the Unnamable says, mocking the Resurrection:

A dog crawled into the kitchen and stole a crust of bread, then cook up with Ive forgotten what and walloped him till he was dead, second verse, then all the dogs came crawling and dug the dog a tomb and wrote upon the tombstone for dogs and bitches to come, third verse, as the first, fourth, as the second, fifth, as the third, give us time, give us time and well be a multitude, a thousand, ten thousand, theres no lack of room, adeste, adeste, all ye living bastards, youll be all right, youll see, youll

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difference, and Religion has always been stimulated by a desire to escape time, to overcome mortality, to get access to eternity, to immortality, to transcend time. And transcending time has to do with repetition, with erasing the time flow and time change between the original and the copy, with insisting that they are both the same. And if I insist that they are different, for example, that this Catholic Mass is not identical to the previous Catholic Mass, then I put myself, as most of us do, under the control of time. So I become modern, or contemporary.23 Timothy Ware, Kallistos (Ware) of Diokleia, says that he wrote the book, The Orthodox Way, to uncover the deep sources of the perpetual resurrection. That is how the Orthodox Church kept itself alive under the reign of the Turks since 1453 and under the communists since 1917 etc.24 I would agree with His Excellency for its true that Christ did not say, I am custom; he said, I am the Life.25

Bataille wrote:A man gets up as brusquely as a specter in a coffin and falls in the same way. He gets up a few hours later and then he falls again, and the same thing happens every day; this great coitus with the celestial atmosphere is regulated by the terrestrial rotation around the sun.26

Nothing can serve perpetual resurrection and resuscitation better than loop. In loop, pain and remedy, death and life collide as in Smith/Stewarts Mouth to Mouth (1995). Stewart, fully clothed is lying stock-still in a water-filled bathtub that forms a dominant diagonal. Bubbles float up from his mouth. He is desperately dependent upon Smith, who leans over him, but she does not drag him out; instead, she stoops down and gives him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

Smith/Stewart . Mouth to Mouth, 1995Single-channel video, black and white, sound . 3 minutes 1995 Smith and Stewart

One cannot overlook the irony albeit mordant, in repetitive or perpetual resurrections. Rabih Mrous How Nancy Wished that Everything Was an April Fools Joke does not allow Martyrs of The Lebanese Civil War rest in perpetual peace. In each

narrative the four fighters, who serve different militia factions are martyred only to be brought back to life, serve another militia and to be martyred again, producing more martyr posters, all based on political party posters in Lebanon. In Iran nearly all towns and city entrances receive their visitors with this banner: Welcome to the martyr-breeding city of ....

How Nancy Wished that Everything Was an April Fools Joke Written by Rabih Mrou & Fadi Toufiq . Directed by Rabih MrouCast: Lina Saneh, Hatem El-Imam, Ziad Antar, Rabih Mrou.

Individuals die for the permanence of paths. One of the major slogans of the Chilean resistance after the coup was quite bitter: We are this and that martyr we are all one voice. And a flick book shows a running Mexican protestor carrying a flag, then he is shot dead, an identical protestor enters the frame, takes the flag and continues the same path. The first and the last frame are identical.Perpetual resurrections make sense only because there are perpetual deaths, as with resurrecting gods; they die to be reborn. Adonis for instance, represents death and resurrection, decay and rebirth. Like Jesus he was life and death, winter and spring. And the faithful practice their religions and revive its values through repetition. The Dionysian believed that their vitality resided in the month they performed their primitive passion plays, but the month of heroism, bravery and self-sacrifice does not start with the advent of the month, it restarts. The advent of sacred months is never a surprise. In the same way, during passion plays martyrs are reassassinated, the audience cries for expected losses and awaits the next advent to remartyr them yet again. Peter Brook, who like Grotowski was profoundly fascinated by Reenactment, accentuates the fact that the audience knows the story of the Reenactment by heart, but is still profoundly touched by it. Brook, however, cannot see the potential of its dramatic farce:

I saw in a remote Iranian village one of the strongest things I have ever seen in theatre: a group of 400 villagers, the entire population of the place, sitting under the tree and passing from roars of laughter to outright sobbing although they knew perfectly well the end of the story

to say, they play the very roles of actors who are rehearsing/repeating the interrogation scene. The last thing we hear is the interrogators name (who is being interrogated by another interrogator, because he dared to understand without guidance from another and has made a decision by himself). Interrogator 2 asks his name: Name! Name! Name! He eventually answers: Mohammad Yaghoubee. It is Mohammad Yaghoubee who has made his actors and characters repeat/rehearse.

Writing in the Dark . Written and directed by Mohammad YaghoobiActors: Mehdi Pakdel, Ali Sarabi, Aida Keikhayi, Masoud Mir-Taheri, Ma'soume Rahmani, Mohammad Asgari, Ashkan Kheil-NezhadPhoto by: Moussa Hashemzade

Therefore this sun of Ecclesiastes is itself an accessory on the Board, and as Murphy begins, it is obliged to shine:

The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new. Murphy sat out of it, as though he were free.19

Rptitions prepare actors for a series of better rptitions to come; for the loop; for perpetuating the day one, namely the premiere. So like a god trapped in aeternitas, actors of a play - having no yesterdays and tomorrows - are trapped in today. They perpetuate this day. And like in rptitions there is always hope that the actors would do the same thing a little better this day. According to my knowledge, time and duration of such loops

have no name yet, a time that is neither tempus, nor aeternitas and nor aevum. Aevum, as the schools used to call it, fills the space between tempus and aeternitas; and for Aquinas, it was something between the two oppositions of Augustinus dualism. Unlike nunc stans, aevum is the endless continuum of time, the endless sempiternity, so it has both past and future. Aeternitas belongs to God and aevum to eviternal beings: the angelical; the celestial. Loop definitely claims all compartments of antique eternity: incorruptibilitas, incommutabilitas, immortalitas and so on, but it can neither be aeternitas nor can it be aevum. It is not the former just because it has been created after the creation of tempus (for it should be clear by now that I am merely using these references) but simply because its instants can be divided till a nunc semper stans is reached, namely one frame; and if we take the latter as a form of infinity only in view of the future, not also in view of the past saying that it has been created one day it would still be different, for it claims infinity, imperishability, incorruptibility, immortality and unchangeability due to perpetual resurrections: closing back on itself and beginning anew. It should no longer be astonishing that Aeternitas, the Roman goddess and personification of Eternity, largely found on Roman coins, is accompanied by or connected to Phoenix, Harpocrates and Ouroboros, all personifications of the eternal return. So loop indeed belongs to tempus because it is within time and thus tends towards its end; towards non-being. And it is eternal in its unique form of apathia. If other forms of eternity are there to define heavenly eternities; eternal apathetic entities, loop is the very form of mythical hellish punishments and torments as the being trapped in loop is indeed tied to repetition slavishly (akin to happiness, habit and conformism). Camus was right when he wrote of Sisyphus exertion, time without depth20. Camus never wrote that Sisyphus acts apathetically, but when contemplating Sisyphus descent, pushing the rock once again to the summit, he did write:It is during that return, that pause, that Sisyphus interests me. A face that toils so close to stones is already stone itself!21

In an eternal hell where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched22 or as in Dante, sempiternal unceasing flux of punishment of the damned spirits perpetuation of endless hellish punishments requires eternal returns, immortal bodies, or at least a loop till the evildoer has received what he/she deserves. Depending on the punishment, the tormented should be brought back to life or the mangled flesh restored, made fresh all over again to endure the torments all over again, ad infinitum. Vitality of religions and ideologies resides in fanaticism as a sacred form of repetition i.e. revisiting the origin, going back to the True Religion or simply faithful repetition of the same act as the very basis of practising religions. Furthermore, the notion of a true religion lies in refusal of alteration. Bedat or heresy is introducing opinions or doctrines at variance with the original religion and hence, at least in Islam, is a deadly sin. What sanitising clerics do is re-sanctify religion by re-visiting the origin, by repeating what was repeated and in brief, as Boris Groys recapitulates: Fundamentalism is a decision taken in favour of sameness over

39

Perfect repetitions are as divine as a Nunc Stans (like a possible world of text ever-fixed, a paused video as a nunc semper stans; a now-ever-standing). Augustinus would have used video to define the timelessness of God to people who never understood it8, for then he could hold it, and fix it, that it be settled awhile, and awhile catch the glory of that everfixed Eternity, and compare it with the times which are never fixed, and see that it cannot be compared; and that a long time cannot become long, but out of many motions passing by, which cannot be prolonged altogether; but that in the Eternal nothing passeth, but the whole is present; whereas no time is all at once present.9In chapter eleven of Richard Linklaters rotoscoped film, Waking Life (2001), the two characters decide to have a holy moment, staring at each other engrossed and motionless, save for their hair being blown by a fan. A now-ever-standing could only be rendered possible or comprehensible if an instant was repeated apathetically, as in cinema a motionless scene is merely a repeated frame.

The day of Winnie of Becketts Happy Days is indeed another happy day; as a happy day is always another happy day; as happiness is the fruit of pure repetition. Whenever more than ten times she speaks of time, she adds to speak in the old style. And

May one speak of time? [Pause.] Say it is a long time now, Willie, since I saw you. [Pause.] May one? [Pause.] One does. [Smile.] The old style!10

Ever since Winnie stepped on the Board, she has been experiencing timelessness, pure repetition, for on the Board, today never gives place unto tomorrow. Augustinus could address her as he addressed God: Thy years are one day; and Thy day is not daily, but To-day, seeing Thy To-day gives not place unto to-morrow, for neither doth it replace yesterday. Thy To-day, [sic] is Eternity. But when did Winnie start to live a repetitive life? When did that mound of earth (flow of a sand glass?) mire her, embed her up to her big bosom? When she stepped on the Board, or perhaps whenever, say, Billie Whitelaw or Ruth White, start to play Winnie. So Winnie says:

That is what I mean. [Pause.] That is all I mean. [Pause.] Thats what I find so wonderful, that not a day goes by [Smile] to speak in the old style [Smile off] without some blessing.12

For the 1979 Schiller Theater with Eva-Katarina Schultz as Winnie, Beckett writes in his rehearsal notebook:

Relate frequency of broken speech and action to discontinuity of time. Winnies time experience incomprehensible transport from one inextricable present to the next, those past unremembered, those to come inconceivable.13

Beckett explains to his actress that Winnie (italics are mine) could not understand time because she felt existed in a present without

end and because the past could have not possible meaning for her.14 Winnie is trapped in loop like any other actor, but what distinguishes her is that Winnie, like many of Becketts characters, suffers from being on the Board; of being a being-on-the-Board, of being tied to it, of repeating under the dazzling projector of the Board that serves the mordant sun of Ecclesiastes, under which there is nothing whereof it may be said, see, this is new. Nell of Endgame thus asks:Why this farce, day after day?15

So does Clov later:Why this farce, day after day?HAMM:Routine. One never knows.16

Hence the answer to what is happening, since its happening on the Board, is what Hamm says: Something is taking its course.

Winnie begins the second act with hailing the sun Hail, holy light, which is the opening lines of Miltons Book III:

Hail, holy Light, offspring of heaven first-bornOr of the eternal coeternal beam

This would of course bring Elektras (Sophocles) opening chant O thou pure sunlight to mind (For Winnie overpowering spotlights of modernised theaters have substituted the sun). Winnie too is co-existent and co-eternal with this dazzling sun of the Board and is indeed tormented by it: Blaze of hellish light, she says, and recalling Cymbeline Fear no more the heat o the sun and has a parasol to protect her when The heat is greater, but the hellish light burns the parasol, so Winnie, under the sun of always, says: I presume this has occurred before, tough I cannot recall it.17 It is under this sun that in the second act the parasol is as before. That is why what she needs most is peace - to be left in peace - then perhaps the moon - all this time - asking for the moon. Under the hellish light, moon equals coolness and asking for the moon of course is demanding the impossible.

In Becketts Play, characters read their lines only when the dazzling spotlight makes them, as if responding to their interrogator. The spotlight is and is not the sun of Ecclesiastes, it is because the sun of Ecclesiastes is the light of always, under which there is no new thing; under which we repeat. Billie Whitelaw says that in rehearsals (rptitions) the actors rehearsed with the stage manager playing the light, pointing his finger at them, giving them cues. The light played a directorial and dictatorial force. How the spotlight shifts swiftly from one confessor to the other, muting one, making the other confess, resembles how a playwright shifts from an actors monologue to anothers. Perhaps thats why under Alan Schneiders direction the spotlight was nicknamed Sam. And it is not the sun of Ecclesiastes, because it is itself on the Board, that is to say, the spotlight is as obligated as its victims (Beckett referred to Plays characters as victims of the spotlight18). Mohammad Yaghoubees recent play, Writing in the Dark was indeed close to this idea, or at least for me it was the conjunction of interrogation and Rptition: the actor who plays the interrogator and the actor who plays the prisoner were both obliged to rehearse/repeat the scene on the scene, that is

Duane Michals . Things are Queer (set of 9 works),1971 . Gelatin silver prints . 3.3 x 4.9 in. / 8.3 x 12.4 cm.

The universally known stereotyped marooned pirate is marooned, because the stereotypical coconut is there to keep him marooned. And the stereotyped wanted cowboy of Paradoxical Western Scene (2006) is perpetuated, because the universally known stereotype of the lonesome wanted cowboy is perpetuated. So Grahams case is unique not because his loops are genuine, but because the joy of his transfinite cycles stem from the safe haven of intentional architextuality (i.e. western genre), oversaturated hypotextuality (i.e. Marty Robbins More Gunfighter Ballads album cover), quotation, plagiarism, etc. Repeating excessively repeated referential codes functions as remedy to the repetition of received ideas and all that is repeatedly seen, such as mainstream filmic genres, folklore and pop culture codes: a mishmash of vomited gnomic codes. His repetition resides in appropriation - or as he would prefer, annexation and historical reenactment - of the doxical.

Marty Robbins More Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs, 1960 . Album cover

Rodney GrahamParadoxical Western Scene, 2006 Painted aluminum lightbox with transmounted chromogenic transparency . 147.3 x 121.9 x 17.8 cm

The remedy for the emetic effect of perpetuating the doxical is irony; salvaged through the metalinguistic process of superimposing a second code on the vomited code, according to Barthes. Such repetitions are undeniably as joyous and as safe as conformism and orthodoxy, again concealed behind their metalinguistic fortress. So perpetuating here is not like the joy of a Sisyphean spell enriched by awareness, yet as simple as a round catchy jingle, but by no means a Wiederholungszwang. Repetition here is nourished by perpetuation and permanency in their true etymological sense: universality and continuity; perpetuus.Graham repeats the repeated and for Barthesians his works are emblematical case studies: the analysis of the safe haven of cultural/referential gnomic codes; an observation of repeated object languages and, to return to Nargess, an observation of happiness and security as foreseeability and faithful quotations.

The Apathetic repetition

Bothius states that Nunc fluens facit tempus, nunc stans facit aeternitatem, the passing now makes time, the standing now makes eternity. Unlike an apathetic god who possesses aeternitas, immortals suffer from the impossibility of living in a Nunc Stans, living in a living and everlasting instant, or in Augustinus words, their lives lack the sublimity of an ever-present eternity7. To be eternal and immortal, god should be apathetic, for, to possess aeternitas, it is vital to be unchangeably eternal.If one gazes into perfect loops, one would see the desire for immortality. Like trapped deities, perfect loops happen when they are trapped in today, having no yesterdays and tomorrows, creating a closed yet infinite, or at least transfinite space. Hamlet then should be corrected thus: I can count myself a king of infinite space only if bounded in a nutshell.

41

O Come, All Ye Faithful!Reflections on loop and repetition

Rock-a-bye baby, on the treetop,When the wind blows, the cradle will rock,When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall,And down will come baby, cradle and all.

Nargess, who would have burned Bataille in the purifying Burning Chamber1 if she had contacts in the Inquisition, a podophobic who took my head for my big toe, once told me that she had burst into tears when her disabled grandfather revealed the meaning of life to her: Dont worry love, your parents pay for you for we paid for them, for our parents paid for us [and ad infinitum] and thats what life is. Repetition is not only the meaning of life but also the very form of security and happiness.

The Plane of the FeasibleArtauds final appearance in public 14 months before his death in 19472, describes among other wretchednesses of art, what two years later Beckett in conversation with Georges Duthuit, editor of the Parisian review Transition, called the plane of the feasible and connotes the impossibility of quitting the possible field of creation:Beckett: The only thing disturbed by the revolutionaries Matisse and Tal Coat is a certain order on the plane of the feasible3.On the Board(s) Artaud chants a cryptographic, nonsensical, jabberwocky and glossolalic poem/protest pamphlet:o dedi / o dada orzoura / o dou zoura / o dada skizi / o kayao kaya pontoura / o ponoura / a pena / poni

Artaud scars the air with his hands. Gide, who is sitting in the first row of the small Vieux-Colombier Theater, described him as a drowning man4. Quitting possible fields of exhibiting and awe-inspiring revolutions were out of question; Artaud was tormented. He continued: the anal plate of anayou. For almost three hours, repeatedly, he falls silent and starts over. At the end, he tumps his papers over. Gide tries to help him gather them, but Artaud, exhausted and broken gives up, sits back saying (italics are mine): I can see that what I tell you isnt at all interesting. Its still theater. What can one do to be truly sincere?5

The bitter fact is that Artaud uttered this last sincere sentence, Its still theater, on the Board. Exhibiting did not even end when he gave up reading the text or when he stopped acting; it ended after Gide took him to the wings and precisely when they had left the Board. Or perhaps it never ended if we read this exit as exeunt. Duthuit thus asks Beckett: What other plane can there be for the maker? Beckett: Logically none. Yet I speak of an art turning from it in disgust, weary of puny exploits, weary of pretending to be able, of being able, of doing a little better the same old thing, of going a little further along a dreary road.Duthuit: And preferring what?Beckett: The expression that there is nothing to express, nothing

with which to express, nothing from which to express, no power to express, no desire to express, together with the obligation to express.Duthuit: But that is a violently extreme and personal point of view, of no help to us in the matter of Tal Coat.Beckett: --Duthuit: Perhaps that is enough for to-day.6

LoopOn wall notes and captions we simply write loop, but

loop is not just a technical option that we video artists choose while exporting videos, or an instruction we give to curators and projectionists. Projectionists can watch all films in loop and so can we if we hide under theater seats to watch the next screening. So often our answer to Why do we have to watch this video in loop? is Because its a video. Certainly there is not much cognitive value in this tautological response.

To my knowledge, it is only in Persian that the term video () is a palindrome and thus could be read in loop. Rodney Grahams repetitious videos in kitsch mainstream cinema fashion are looped as such. In City Self/Country Self (2000) the foppish dandy city dweller kicks his country bumpkin Other (both characters played by himself) in the arse and throws him on the ground, then the rustic fool picks himself up, sets his hat back on his head and resumes his ambling and the cycle goes on into infinity for now let us call it that. The film starts when one enters the room and stops when there are no perceivers or when the projector is switched off or when the projector lamp is dead.

Grahams costume drama-like trilogy - Vexation Island (1997), How I Became a Ramblin' Man (1999) and City Self/Country Self (2000) - is not unique in its complete Ouroboros as a narrative form; such forms are by no means genuine and untouched. Michals Things Are Queer (1971) is certainly a more sophisticated circular narrative: a labyrinth that closes on itself, a narrative that does not need 1-9 numbers; that its reader can start reading from any desired instant; where its reader takes the place of the narrator. Although Grahams costume drama-like trilogy is a set of perfect circles, one may find beginnings. In Vexation Island for instance, establishing shots set the beginnings of the loop, like a slight darker point on a circle, marking the first touch of the compass pencil. In Vexation Island Graham plays a buccaneer marooned on an island with a bruise on his forehead. The sailor comes to, opens an eye, looks up at the dazzling sun, gets up and goes to the palm tree and shakes it, the stereotypical coconut hits him on the forehead and knocks him out and the cycle goes on.

Opening of the Exhibition

Friday, January 21 2011

AARAN ART GALLERY

NO.12 , Dey St. , North Kheradmand

Tel: +98-21-88829086-7

TEHRAN - IRAN

www.aarangallery.com

AARAN ART GALLERY

Barbad GolshiriAnd I Regurgitate And

I Gulp It Down

To Farzaneh Taheri

In a deserted place in Iran there is a not very tall stone

tower that has neither door nor window. In the only

room (with a dirt floor and shaped like a circle) there

is a wooden table and a bench. In that circular cell,

a man who looks like me is writing in letters I cannot

understand a long poem about a man who in another

circular cell is writing a poem about a man who in

another circular cell . . . The process never ends and

no one will be able to read what the prisoners write.1

1. Jorge Luis Borges, A Dream, The New Yorker, trans.

Suzanne Jill Levine (July 6, 2009)

Pho

to: O

lka

Hed

ayat