Nohi Abassi

Marks another stage of work which I called “distributed narrative”. In this a strand of thought, an idea or a story, and related or unrelated material that adds or conflicts is constantly re-presented over the course of the work, to create in the totality of the viewing a synthesis that is somewhat open, mediated but not fixed. The story of Nohi Abassi is a rainforest myth and is told within the hard architecture of the computer processing centre, and the hard and yet fluid architecture of videographic operations that enclose and abstract the image, and confront the implicit slipperiness of the ideology and the relationship of mankind and nature shown within the myth. The story is read by a non-actor, undermining easy acceptance and transparent listening, and yet giving a different type of authenticity to the tale. The tale is read many times from different points, repeating, double tracking. Every aspect of the recording is present. The play of videographic operations takes place independently of the talking head narrative and yet confronts it and encloses it, disrupts it, and sets up a tension that is never resolved. Ideas are suggested that are implicit rather than explicable and the text of the work floats in a dream-like space between the various elements and the viewer’s awareness. Nohi Abassi tries to make a work that is balanced between the narrative structure, the text, and its implications which stood aside and outside of the tape but which informed it throughout, and the digital rendering (of the telling of the story) which worked alongside but quite separate to the narrative thread, not reinforcing it, sometimes working against it, or acting as a counter narrative. Throughout the tape a separate text of camera movements, edited plays, formal, separate structures derived from the architectural spaces either formally or metalinguistically penetrates and divides the telling of the story.