عريب طوقان oraib toukan
Remind me to remember to forget, 2006
Single-channel Video, 2’50’’
Directed, edited, shot & performed by Oraib Toukan
A short ironic narrative on language, typography and meaning. In a split screen format, the video depicts two separate but synchronized performances. Rhythmically set to the sound of stifled breathing, the video questions an innate constructed memory ‘made-to-forget’. A ‘memory’ somehow created to be raped, disposed of, and eradicated right before its transition from present to past.
The phrase ‘remind me to remember to forget’ thus becomes a play on the meaning of no-meaning. The phrase is also an archetypical mode of societal survival in a social structure built on the maintenance of power/hierarchy relations, often mechanizing precisely the absurd to further these very power relations. The video erupted a chain of successive works that looked to falsify the language/wording of memory and our understanding of it.
Trying to count memories without laughters disruption, 2007
Two-channel Video 9’45’’
“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…”
‘Trying to count memories without laughter’s disruption’ is a raw exploration of the self within the creation and propagation of a history built on the concept of déjà vu. A paradoxical narrative that speaks of the past, present, and future is written in blue beads. The sound resulting from moving beads is systematically synthesized into the sound of battles and ultimately open seas. Together these sounds thrust the viewer from one state of flux to another. Within the video installation space, a small round projection of a blue eye stands high on the wall. The eye blinks at the same tempo of the main projection.