Trying to count memories without laughter’s disruption
2007 | Two-channel Video 9’45’’
Directed, edited, performed by Oraib Toukan
Shot by AbdelSalam Akkad
Edited at the facilities of GreyScale Films, Amman
“Please stop me from laughing, I cannot hold my memories
any longer…
Just finish making my history for I am dying of laughter even
as you are trying to kill me with it…
Just finish forging my past…
I will stop laughing…
I will learn to forget that I can remember…
I swear I learnt to forget that I can remember…”
Creating sounds reminiscent of crashing waves in a wild sea
and open fire in a fierce battle, bright blue beads are poured
to write these as well as other phrases. Together, the sentences
make up the paradoxical narrative of Trying to count memories
without laughter’s disruption. To the side of this footage,
within the video installation space, is a round projection
of a piercing blue eye. The eye, which incessantly stares
at the viewer, blinks at the same tempo as the movement of
the beads. The narrative of the video, which speaks of the
past, present, and future, examines the place and role of
the self within the collective act of creating and propagating
an account of history - a history that is deeply entrenched
in déjà vu.
Trying to count memories
without laughter’s disruption
questions the original Aristotelian meaning of memory as that
which is necessarily conditioned by a lapse of time. It looks
at this meaning of memory in relation to ‘Middle-Eastern’
existence and conceptions of immortality. Combined, the sounds
and the phrases produced throughout the video, thrust the
viewer from one state of flux to another; they induce in him/her
the sensations experienced as a result of the over-consumption
of a history that has been written by all but one’s
self… a history of one’s own destiny, witnessed
and felt by means of watching satellite television.
The video was originally conceived by Toukan after working
with 60 years of archive news footage of the region. It is
particularly influenced by Mahmoud Darwish’s (multiple)
account of war in his 1982 book ‘Memory for Forgetfulness’.
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