kalimati
KALIMAT 2020
Moving Art Installation
Nasser Alsalem / Amira Nazer
2020
In the midst of this sequence, order as we know it was ques- tioned, and we were asked to create new lives for ourselves according to the information we received from isolation. These words governed our lives in this time of disorder, determining our actions, and in conse- quence, restructuring our existence.
Kalimat 2020 is a series of forty words that has occupied the most space in the Saudi conscience during COVID-19. The words were selected from formerly unused vocabulary which inundated our daily rhetoric during the pandemic. First inscribed with ink onto paper, the words were writ- ten using a traditional transcription method mimicking the condition of a historical record. They were then photographed and processed in order for them to operate within a carousel slide projector. The projector is then set up to display the installation in five different points on the map of Jeddah, creating a circular route that imitates the shape and mechanism of the device, in addition to the cyclic occurrence of pandem- ics in history. The intrusion of new language is presented through the invasiveness of the projector on the city’s walls, and the registering of disease is displayed through the shifting and recurrence of the forty words’ projection. Through its exhibition in spaces of gathering - the old town, a mall, a health clinic, a testing facility, and a party area, the installation will move from location to location across Jeddah, sim- ulating the spread of disease, while concurrently recreating the docu- mentative component responsible for history through its written and analog display.
The installation pursues the marriage of COVID-19’s synchronic termi- nology in the contemporary conscience with the history of disease cy- cling through the course of humanity. It works to shed light on the rela- tionship between modernity and history, revealing how what we perceive to be a contemporary catastrophe, is in fact, a disruption that has befell humanity time and time again.
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