Atchoo

That stuff, in a strategy I always find both disorienting and germane, is what makes up the physical approaches to the films themselves—the objects precede their context, plucked from the innards of the films, and become collectible totems that you can’t really collect: the room full of pearl-covered bunnies, replete with baskets of multi-hued teardrop pearls, is peppered with the not-so-seldom squawk of the museum guard scolding people not to touch. One itches to touch.

Splendidly normal objects that are in constant mindless mechanical motion—ceiling fans spinning, frying pans catching drops from the ceiling, an air conditioner whose condensation waters a plant, a pony tail bobbing as if in a rhythmic jog—struggle with their own inner tormenting itch: they yearn to break free from the inconvenient physical matter that forms them and the context that defines their purpose in the world of humans. Matter changes forms all around them—liquid into gas, gas into liquid, liquid into solid—when, they seem to wonder, will it be their chance to transform? Perhaps that is the real purpose of the Sisyphean drudgery that the films display in kaleidoscopic detail; by mutating these objects beyond our earthly comprehension, the artist and her unlikely cast of cohorts attempt to achieve something transcendent and primal: to set these objects free.

Hurry! 'Mika Rottenberg: Easypieces' is at the New Museum through September 15th, 2019. Lead image: Film still from 'No Nose Knows'. All images courtesy the New Museum.

Art

Dead + Juicy

November 07, 2018

Where were you this Halloween? Were you covered in white face paint and squishing shaving cream beneath a wig on your head? Were you surrounded by CTV cameras in a simulated barber shop as you performed random acts of non-technical artistry with various uncanny objects around you?

If you answered yes to these questions, you must be the German artist John Bock, whose immersive ‘horror musical’ installation at Anton Kern opened on Halloween night. The artist’s improvised performance took place in one of various set pieces that are mirrors of those in his nearly full-length film at the center of this installation, Dead + Juicy. It is a funhouse of subversions, where the physical meets the ephemeral, the idea of the thing and the thing itself find miraculous, discordant articulation, and a performance is the central piece, one that exists only in the memory of those who witnessed it.

Interview by John Martin Tilley

office met with John Bock the day after the opening to talk about barber shops in Austin, Texas, the fleeting nature of desire and the fact that you can use anything as a medium—even Pepto-Bismol.

Tell me about your horror musical.

It’s true—it’s a horror musical. I did it for a museum in Austin—The Contemporary—and we shot the film in four days. In the end, it was 60 minutes long. The story is about an uncanny barber shop with all different kinds of people. Everything they do is abnormal—they tell stories and sometimes, they do different things with uncanny objects, then they sing. It was mostly improvised—I asked them what they like, and one of them said they like funk, or whatever band, so I'd have them sing a funk song and a song by that band. The Spanish guy was a great moment—suddenly, he said he was a singer and could play the harmonica, and it just went from there.

So, a big part of the process was that it came from Austin and the people there?

Yeah, I took an Austin barber shop and made it uncanny. The lead character disappears in a time warp into a hut, then a jungle, then suddenly, she stands in front of her own little apartment and looks in, and she sees herself. There’s the twist. What I liked most was the time in the barber shop—it’s kind of magical, they wait there and they switch off the brain and try to relax. It’s Americana, but it’s also a ritual. I thought, 'What happens when they’re there all the time?' Each day, they go to the barber shop, and they’re with each every day, with all the same guests in this same shop, and they don’t even cut their hair. They do other things though, little miracles and rituals. Then they’re singing. It’s a little bit like a '70s sitcom or a soap opera—like, All in the Family.

How did you decide on a barber shop?

We relax in a barber shop. It’s different than a coffee shop—everyone knows a coffee shop—but a barber shop is more for males, for shaving; a woman goes to a salon. I like this atmosphere where the guys are there, their shaving, cutting their hair. It’s a man’s world, but I was drawn to it, I don’t know why.

Right. But then the lead character is female.

It’s also a little erotic—this young girl and these old guys. But also, I wanted to incorporate different ethnicities—Mexican, black, white. But this is Texas. First, I looked at the faces.

What about the faces?

Oh, they look very good, right? You can tell something from them—the faces tell stories. It’s very easy to shoot animals, and to shoot old men and women because their face speaks in the so-called wrong way. They have so much experience—that's why I don’t understand why Americans get facelifts and all of that.

I was just talking about plastic surgery with another artist.

Yeah, it’s just, why? The thing is, your face is like a painting and it changes, but it’s the best thing you have. Normally, when you have a car, you keep it—only when you crash it do you need a new one. But with a face—it’s crazy.

I overheard some talk about cycles and I noticed a lot of spinning in the video.

And doubles. In the exhibition, there are pairs—two plates, two silicone creature objects in the barbershop—they are like twins, mirrors. And then I built not only one object, but two—and they come together.

How does the performance play into that?

This was a big improvisation, and it was the first time I’d done it. Normally, I work with a script, and learn text, then recite it. But in this case, I wanted only to be there and do something.

Why improvisation?

I don’t really know why I did this. It was the first time.

How do you feel about the result?

It was very new. In the beginning, I was wondering what I should do, but then I looked around at the objects and it came step by step. But the beginning was very difficult. I started with reading text and didn’t like that, so I used some objects—I worked with wigs, then later with shaving cream, then the machine.

It was really fun to watch you play with the materials. Why do you think you’re so attracted to these gooey things like shaving cream?

It disappears. Normally you fix everything, you build it in a frame, it’s a figure. Shaving cream—nobody cares about shaving cream—it’s not necessary to preserve it. The other point is the fear of these art objects. When I look at art, I feel fear because it’s art, because it’s expensive, it means something, it’s in a frame. When I work with shaving cream, or toothpaste, or liquids, then they have no detailed shape. And people don’t think about the shape with these materials. With traditional painting, you’re always thinking about shape, but when you work with liquids, you have no control over it, it flows, and people don’t want shaving cream to be in a shape.

Right. It doesn’t matter.

This is the language: it doesn’t matter. It disappears. They don’t think about the shape, they think about the material. And this is a different way to look at the world—instead of preserving everything, following the rules, speaking the right words, this is different. Art is a language—a different language than our language—and this is good, because our language is political. They check everything that you say, you can’t write without a certain shape to it—but I can. Art can say something that is not so directly political—it can talk about a sugar cube and it means a sugar cube, not a ‘white’ sugar cube, you know what I mean? So, it’s a different language that’s able to speak in many directions—it’s not physical, it’s not systemic, it’s not economic, it’s not political, it’s different. It’s political when the art is very expensive and society is interested in money, getting it, saving it, selling it. Then, it’s like a car.

Your work isn’t necessarily within that context.

It’s also difficult to buy this stuff. How can you buy art made out of shaving cream, or Pepto-Bismol? And the smell? Pepto-Bismol smells almost like candy—it’s so sweet, and it’s pink, and I handle it and you see it. But there’s no frame.

It’s kind of like something you have to experience, but that’s all that you get—the experience—then it vanishes.

But there’s also the movie—then there’s a frame, you edit it, there’s a soundtrack, you create a product. But the performance is less of a product.

So, you’re interested in this lack of control, or letting control go. It's almost like—not chaos—but something else. Maybe randomness?

Entropy, yeah. It’s like in a library—everything is in the right order, but some people say, 'No, I like this book, I don’t want to put it in M, I want to put it in B,' or 'I don’t want to put it in Art but in Politics, because nobody should see it.' Something happens in that moment.

I wanted to talk about the sculptures, as well. I love the idea of bringing something from a film into real life—I’ve seen it one other time, and it’s so interesting.

It’s very easy. When I studied art, I didn’t like to build the objects in the studio, and that’s it. Then you have to bring it in the closet, make another one, then wait for the art dealer. I said very early, 'No, the best is to do a performance and create the objects directly in front of the audience.' So, I used these kinds of cheap, secondhand materials, so the audience has no fear of the objects, because they have no larger value. Then I would do performances and combine this with language. Normally, the performances in the '70s and '80s, and also now—it’s always about pathos.

It feels like you’re breaking the fourth wall in a lot of ways—pulling people into the piece.

To me, it’s important what people see and what happens with them, not how I create the object, which material, or which technique. When I find that I have a technique, then I destroy it—that’s important. You perfect a technique and things get better and better, but the energy is lost. And when you do things, and you’re not a professional, it’s more charming. Like Jack Smith’s movies, for example—like Flaming Creatures from the '60s.

Have you ever thought about doing a professional film for a broad audience outside the category of art?

I did movies, but I didn’t show them at film festivals.

What about something more traditional?

Well, this is traditional. There’s a narrative, the editing is normal. But in the installations, they are collages, there’s more intention, they’re more expressive, you can’t explain what’s happening. The pictures come in layers. There’s a game between the object and the projection—suddenly the original object is a part of the movie. Downstairs, there’s a projection where nothing happens—it shows a space and nothing happens, and it’s across from the barber shop we built in the gallery, which is a real space.

So, they’re both spaces that aren’t moving, but one is physical, and one is an image.

And in this little flat there are objects: the bike, a rat, the two plates—always double. The character in the film creates sculptures from tinfoil TV dinner trays, and these objects are in front of the projection. So, it’s like a mirror. One is a video projection, the other side is a shadow. It’s about the possibilities of how to show something. In the movie, they do something, but in the installation, they do the same things and suddenly it’s different. I tell the story in different ways: in a normal narrative way, and then through the installation.

It’s like you’re adding layers but also removing them at the same time—or inviting the viewer to become a layer.

You can go around the screen and suddenly you see the objects. Things mutate. When you first enter the gallery, you see a projection on a curtain and when the curtain moves, the image mutates. So, there’s this idea of mutation and change. It’s a play with pictures and how you look at it—the point of view.

It reminds me of the part of the film where the main character’s describing some strange thing growing inside of her. It feels very psychological.

Most people want to buy a car—they’re interested in buying things. I’m interested in people’s brains, they’re stories. And it’s funny—when you buy something, you desire it until you have it. Once you own something, the desire for it disappears, and it becomes just another object.

So, it’s about economics in a way.

It’s about economics and how people exist within economics. I don’t think people are very happy with this system. We think it’s normal, but inside we feel weird. In the barber shop in the film, there is no money—they tell stories and sing. It’s about a connection between people in one space, and not always glued to your phone like people always are these days, even in Germany.

Right. They’re engaged.

It’s like a dreamland—a paradise. No one knows about it. It’s old guys, in an old style. And my language is more absurd in German than in English. I don’t believe in language; I actually hate it—that's why I work with it. There are a lot of mistakes and levels with language, and I want to break it down entirely.

Installation view: John Bock: 'Dead + Juicy'

'Dead + Juicy' is open now through December 1 at Anton Kern Gallery in NYC.

Photos courtesy of Anton Kern Gallery.

Art

Made in _______

November 06, 2018

Objects have personalities. Part of what builds their character is their backstories—their origin, their function, their inherent grace or lack thereof, their sense of humor.

Objects made by hand were once the only kind of object, other than those which occur naturally. Now the handmade object seems to possess an intrinsic value—as if because they were created and handled by another human hand they contain a powerful physical energy: the plot line of another person’s life, however far away, has now intersected with our own, through this handmade object.

Objects made by machines embody a seamless fluidity that, we assume, cannot be achieved by the human hand—they cue to cold perfection, mechanical precision, robotic transcendence.

Interview by John Martin Tilley
Photo by Luke Paige

What happens when the two meet? office spoke with artist Nina Beier to find out.

Tell me about the installation at Metro Pictures.

This show is very much a sculpture show. It’s a culmination of an interest in materials and objects that travel. I have been looking at how a material is extracted from wherever it’s from, how it’s traded, how it’s taking shape, and the intentions that go into the making of objects as opposed to how they’re used, and how we then understand or interpret them, and finally how they can then turn into symbols over time. I am interested in how everything that happens to the object along the way somehow sticks to that object and the way we understand it—I tend to work with objects that have encountered problems along the way and involuntarily have changed the way we understand them. For example, I’ve worked with baguettes in many sculptures. That’s just one example of something that, from one perspective, is basic nutrition—but it’s also become a symbol of colonial power and the way French culture has traveled all over the world and made a mark everywhere. So, the object has a different identity depending on how you look at it—it could even just be a sculptural material because it is shaped by hand and made into particular forms.

And you use sinks in this show?

The sculptures downstairs are based on ceramic pastel colored bathroom sinks that I’ve been collecting. They're stuffed with hand-rolled cigars, an object that carries a lot of different meaning, both as a good that has traveled the world and a power symbol, but also as a problematic trade object with a certain history. Another thing that attracts me to the cigar is the fact that it’s hand-rolled—the human effort attaches itself to how we perceive the value of the object. I’ve worked with Persian rugs with an interest in how value is constructed and perceived..

Do you feel like there’s a comparison between something that’s made by hand and something that’s mass produced?

Yes, there’s something about these ceramic sinks, which are mass produced, but are extremely sculptural in their shapes. They’re also design objects. When you look at it from the top, from the front, this is the design object—this is where the attention has been focused—and then, when you look at the underside of the sink, there's a lot of form there based on practical issues—all the piping and tubing, the hanging systems, which have come about from a practical motivation. These two ways of giving form are meeting in this one object, and depending on what side of it you’re standing on, you’ll experience one or the other. But they actually go together so well. It’s such a voluptuous shape in the end—it can almost only reference a body.

Which is kind of like the title of the show—Baby.

It’s also the title of a piece that is made out of waterbed mattresses that have been filled with water, pebbles and coins. So, there are these muddy pebbles that have been pushed in through the little hole of the waterbed where the water goes, and they’re hanging on the wall, heavily carrying all this content.

Kind of like a pregnant woman.

There’s definitely a feeling that the water may break. It’s also a very direct sculptural presence of the mass and this thin membrane that holds this heavy material inside. There’s a slight transparency to the plastic, so you can see the line of the water, and at the bottom, you can see there’s like a cellulite texture, because the little pebbles are pushing against the membrane.

How did you come upon this idea?

I watched these videos of waterbeds—the advertisements for waterbeds where they have tractors running over them without them breaking. I guess the big fear within the waterbed industry, which is a shrinking one—another part of why I’m interested in it—is the fear that they will break. The most important thing is to prove that they won’t—that they can really hold a lot. So, how an object like that, a big hat that promises to hold whatever you put into it was a sculptural proposition that I couldn’t resist. This is how I usually work: I get interested in a material, my studio is overflowing with stuff that I collect, some stuff returns, like Persian rugs or human hair wigs, there are things that I can’t seem to finish, or they’re around my studio—I don’t know what it is, but they keep popping up. I don’t always know why, when I start collecting objects—sometimes I need to live with them for a while, and then they find their way into being a sculpture.

Have you ever actually slept on a waterbed?

I’ve actually never slept on one, no.

Above: 'Plug' and 'Man's Mind,' 2018.

I love the sinks because they look like little people smoking.

The starting point was the meeting of the materials, but I love when this thing happens—there is a very direct logic of the plug, the drain hole and you close the drain, but a compressed bit of tobacco is also called a plug. I think I was thinking of these almost as ears, with the plugging, like a very straightforward gesture. But the fact that so many images come to mind once the object is there with the plug inside—there’s a broad range of references that pop up, from sexual imagery to the digestive system. Some people see corroded pipes. So, it has this potential to show you things about yourself.

I’m thinking of a little cartoon character, and the title being Baby.

So, a baby smoking a giant cigar?

Yeah! Have you ever seen Who Framed Roger Rabbit? There’s that baby that smokes cigars. That’s what I picture.

I’ve never heard that before. That’s good! But that’s what I really like, or what I’m interested in—if you focus on different aspects of these objects you can have different experiences. If you just think of them as materials, or if you just think of them as currencies in this world, or if you think of them as design objects, or as symbols, you’ll have different things to take away, and I like that those can coexist without any of these understandings having any authority over the others.

I love the pun with ‘plug'—it’s a fun reference to wordplay and language.

The most impossible object that I started collecting are thee marble lions—the guardian lions that stand in front of buildings. I have a show up in Copenhagen at GL Strand with some of these works, and here I have one, as well. I’ve been collecting the beards of some of the guys working here at Metro Pictures. I made a little nest in one of the creases of the lion, as if an animal had collected this material, or if the wind had blown the beard trimmings and they landed in these areas. But it also creates an image at the same time, that recalls this optical illusion of Freud, called 'What's on a Man’s Mind,’ where you see a naked woman in his face. I was reminded of it while I was looking at it. The nest of beard trimmings translates the marble, which is an organic shape, into a different organic shape because of this marker of the pubic hair.

Which is an actual organic material.

It’s also a nice reference to the fact that we never see pubic hair depicted in marble. It’s the one material that cannot be represented, for different reasons—there’s both a very practical one, and a bunch of other historical reasons.

It’s so conceptual and fun that you interacted with members of the gallery to remove their hair.

They were donors! It just so happened that quite a few of the people here have beards.

But it's funny too, because it’s men’s hair and you're saying it recalls a female form.

There's something about a beard that is really a mystery to someone who is not able to grow it. I’ve always had a deep fascination with this material, and I’ve been wanting to work with beards for a long time. Now, I finally got a chance.

'Baby' images courtesy of Metro Pictures.

'Baby' is open now through December 21 at Metro Pictures in NYC.

Art

In Creation There's Destruction

Her aesthetic is drastic simplicity crossed with florid intellectual eloquence: internet Clipart and a robotic digital audio voice clash, mesh and blossom through concepts of God and country, nuclear power and nature, family ties and, of course, the digital interface that has become the go-to medium through which we navigate it all.

After a walk through Rubber Factory, office spoke with Majeed about Islamic kitcsh and theoretical physics.

Tell me about the show.

So, the show is called In the Name of the Hypersurface of the Present. It’s based on two years of research I did around the nuclear history of Pakistan. The investigation started with looking at a monument that commemorated the nuclear armament that happened in the 1990s, and the monument doesn’t exist anymore, so in a way, the research and the work retrace this recent past. I use both material I got from Facebook, nationalist groups around Pakistani military, and also I looked at my grandfather’s photographic archives—he was an analog photographer, and he had nationalist leanings, so his political stance was very pro-Pakistan. Then, I also looked at Urdu literature around science and poetry—Urdu is the language of Pakistan.

So, it’s an amalgamation of all these things, but when you go to the show, it’s based around this idea of green, and the green kind of represents an intersection of Pakistani nationalism. But it’s also the color of Islam, which it’s known as. Saudi Arabia uses green as a color, and Malaysia—multiple countries look at the color green as the color of Islam, so it gets used in a lot of Islamic kitsch. I also refer to green as the digital interface, this idea of green-screening, a space for projection. Green is also representative of the military, and I'm looking at the nuclear history, the military history. Using the color green also refers to landscape, homeland, so in a way, when you enter the show, it’s an unfolding of that—where green refers to landscape and body, and this intersection of poetics of love for homeland, as well as science and state propaganda that’s used to uphold nationalist love. So, it’s a mix of all these things.

Do you know what happened to the monument you were referring to?

I’m actually working on putting together a lecture performance where I chronicle the history of the monument, looking at the rumors. Because the state monument is this really ugly fiberglass reproduction of a mountain, it basically is not taken seriously by architects, academics. So, the the motif of the mountain itself becomes like looking through the perspective of a monument, a kind of alternate history. That’s how I was trying to look at it—through this monument. One part of the lecture performance is basically gathering all the pieces of information that have been put out there by the state. So, for example, the monument was built in the 1990s and it was built to commemorate a holiday that translates to ‘The Day of God’s Greatness,’ and it happens every year, and the monument was built to bring the public—meaning men, who occupy public space—to come to the monument to celebrate.

So, it was built in different metropolitan cities—in Karachi, Lahore, and Islamabad. In Karachi, it was destroyed in the early 2000s because the father of the atomic bomb in Pakistan—the guy who headed the nuclear project—he got arrested by the state because there were rumors that he leaked nuclear scientific knowledge to other countries. So, he was under house arrest for ten years. During that time, because of the weight of nuclear history and religiosity is so intertwined, they look at this person kind of as a figure to represent their religion and nationalism all in one. So, when he was arrested, the public—and by ‘the public’ I mean very specific male patriarchal, the dominant class—they ended up burning the monument. In Lahore, the monument was built near a railway station and it was taken down by the state because there were rumors that the station was invaded by terrorists and they used the monument as a shield and attacked people in the railway station. Then in Islamabad, the capital, in 2016, the monument resided in this roundabout, and due to the current urbanization policies of the recently deposed prime minister, they were expanding roads throughout the country, and the monument was supposed to be relocated. It was removed and destroyed so they could expand the roads, and it was supposed to be relocated in a major park in another part of Islamabad.

One of the main videos I made for the show starts with the relocation of this monument. It’s thinking through this monument that is returning to a kind of pure, natural—even though a park is not necessarily a pure landscape—but in a way, it’s a return to origins, a return to nature. So, that’s where the entire show is encapsulated—these references to flora and fauna and landscape and the garden and the way of the garden.

There’s a kind of female re-imagining of history happening as well, correct?

In the first two videos in the first two rooms, is my voiceover, but my voiceover is through a fictional poet. So, there’s a querying of this poet, who represents the state. It’s a feminist re-articulation, but also making visible how women are used as containers for state propaganda. The atomic bomb or landscape can also be intertwined with the idea of the woman, the rebirth of the nation—so, in a way, making that visible is a part of the project. The female form is visible even in the reference of the flower—in both of the videos in the front, there’s a constant reference to flora, and that is a direct reference to the woman. In the back room, in the projection piece, there is the visibility of the female as a kind of sampler of the way in which you can gain the purest national love, the performativity of pulling the ear, and allowing the green light to enter certain parts of your body. I actually published a spec fiction piece about green light entering the body igniting the motif of the cone. This overall large, two-year project is continuously expanding, so what I’m showing at the gallery is like an excerpt to test your taste about all these ideas.

It almost reminds me of a video game—it feels like there’s a plot.

One of the narrative tools is looking through the interface. I used certain imagery, certain memes, and collaged them and played with them to see that there’s a kind of violence within this imagery that is disseminated and passed down.

I just read this article about how the internet and social media’s original goal was to make a more open society, but actually it’s helping autocratic urges more than it is helping people to be more open and democratic. Do you feel like this connects to your show?

Definitely. There’s a connection to these nationalist uprisings and conservatism—these uprisings that have been happening for the last few years—and it’s looking at ways in which the digital interface is subsumed by those nationalist movements—it becomes a tool used as an extension of state propaganda. You can look at the ways, beyond the context of Pakistan or any specific state, that these patterns form. Post-Arab Spring in Egypt, for example—the state has so much control over censorship, over the internet, and that was the very tool to bring people together and mobilize people to protest, but then that very tool has become detrimental to the very people that mobilized in the first place. It’s very easy for the state to target these individuals.

What’s interesting to me in regards to the digital interface are the subtleties. My interpretation when looking at the nuclear history wasn’t this kind of spectacular dominant narrative, but looking at the smaller, the micro-lens—looking through these memes that are disseminated that are kind of subversive techniques of state propaganda. I’m also looking at say, my grandfather’s photography, that is quite beautiful, but the fact that he showed at a government institute in the '90s in Pakistan reflects his politics at a certain time as someone who’s an artist. So, in a way, it’s a very difficult line to draw between the military, art infrastructure—it’s all subsumed. That’s how the nuclear project came about: in the name of God. So, in the name of God, the nation of Pakistan had to protect itself because of larger threats. So, there was a lot of material through media that was disseminated about becoming a nuclear power, and at the start of it, the rhetoric around it was ‘This is the only way,’ which is how state propaganda works. It was embedded in love, and beauty, and in the name of Pakistan, so therefore it’s a very thin line to distinguish what's real and what isn’t. And we can see the implications of that in other nations today. So, I use Pakistan as a site, but I’m also thinking about larger, global ideas, of how the state functions and how the interface is used. I’m also interested in how the body, as a citizen, reacts to that, and how it’s used in that whole process, even through the digital interface.

I’m interested in this idea of Islamic kitsch you mentioned earlier. I love the idea of kitsch—what do you define it as?

Right. I was talking about the color green and how it’s used in a lot of religious iconography as a symbol of Islam. Throughout the show, there’s a juxtaposition of internet art—I wouldn’t necessarily want to label it as kitsch—but there’s a lot of collage. There’s a lot of material from books—for example, the Urdu books I refer to all have appropriated imagery from let’s say Google, pixelated imagery. The colors, the luminosity, they’re actually from the materials I gathered myself. So, it’s not necessarily labeled as Islamic kitsch, but it’s a form of publication that is used in Pakistan, and the internet—I appropriated from that.

The title of the show is really bizarre and fun. Where did it come from?

It actually refers to ‘In the Name of God’ rhetoric. ‘Hypersurface of the Present’ refers to theoretical physics, it’s an actual theory—it’s a measurement of space and time. There’s an actual formula. I, basically, in the digital publication I’d mentioned, take diagrams and references of the cone, and write this fiction around it. So, the show is a combination of these poetics—of science and how the state represents science, and this state religiosity.

I’m still stuck on this monument you were talking about.

It was the start of the whole project, actually. I can see why—it’s a replication of nature, tied to a religious holiday and commemorating nuclear arms, and it no longer exists. There’s a lot attached to it. In the lecture performance, I use this fictional poet to speak about the poetics of that—when is the moment that this monument exist? Is it the moment that it’s destroyed? Similar to the atomic blast—the atomic blast, or nuclear power, is only visible in this kind of destruction. The fact that none of these monuments no longer exist—is that a reproduction of that power? One of the lines in the videos is, ‘In this creation there is destruction, in this destruction, it can be created.’ There’s this fine line—which is what nuclear power is—there’s this suspension and anticipation. That’s the narrative around nuclear power.

I’m actually going back to Pakistan in December for another project. I’m interested in expanding another chapter of this project in relation to a specific poem that my grandfather used. So, the reason why I introduced my grandfather’s archival material was that I found out that my grandfather gave one of his photographs to the father of the nuclear project. There’s a photograph of my grandfather giving his photograph to that guy, and there’s a poem that’s written on the bottom of the photograph, and it’s a reference to Abraham when Abraham was thrown into the fire and flowers bloomed, and that’s one of the verses I used in the collages. It refers to a nationalist poet, Allama Iqbal. So, I’m interested in writing another chapter talking about the photograph itself, and the relation of that quote referring to Abrahamic fire, and this nationalist poet who was censored with this poem, but it is still, somehow, a part of the nationalist imagination.