Two synced 2D computer animations with sound, video projection, 300 × 500 cm on fabric and 140 × 140 cm on floor, 7 min (loop).
GARDEN_OF_EDEN.ISO, the animated version of Garden of Eden, functions as a manipulated, beautiful recollection rooted in my PlayStation 1 memory card and personal lived experiences: a digital iteration of an emotional atemporality. Knowledge about Southern Iraqi carpet-making is scarce, which leads me to critically fabulate, after Saidiya Hartman. “Fabula” signifies a potentiality that can lead towards a kind of historical speculation, in which one could “present an impossible tale” while emphasising “the impossibility of its telling.”
Symbol by symbol, the imagery presents itself as excavations of visual languages extracted from microliths, found in the disregarded debitage of what has been stolen and misunderstood: the sacred animal Mušḫuššu, Gilgamesh and Enkidu, Inanna, Anzu and Enki, reeds, fish and coracles, baked tanoor bread, a dancing figure, Agumon, and a multitude more. This second-hand archival material is carefully constructed, not quite seeking a subject matter but rather thematic patterns and narrative substance. It signals a process of starting over, inherent to migration and placemaking.
I come from generations of workers engaged in the traffic and logistics of carpet-making. Our home in Iraq was saturated with carpet patterns; stepping into our living room felt like entering a sanctuary filled with chains and chains of motifs derived from Eden. Woven patterns clung to the walls providing warmth, unfurled on the floors providing comfort, were imprinted into our diwan extending shelter, and silk-like tapestries graced the ceiling, as if inviting us to drift through the infinite world they create while unfolding beauty. There I was, sprawled before the TV and my PlayStation, immersed in Legend of Mana, where fragments of the knotted carpets whispered through the game’s pixels, like the woven threads in the tapestries surrounding me, blending reality and virtuality. Everything slowly danced so wonderfully.
Given my diasporic context, pixelation becomes a tool that shows a fragmented reality, one that must be experienced within its fragmentedness. It also becomes a thread between the technologies of weaving and the development of digital computing.
Symbol by symbol, the imagery presents itself as excavations of visual languages extracted from microliths, found in the disregarded debitage of what has been stolen and misunderstood: the sacred animal Mušḫuššu, Gilgamesh and Enkidu, Inanna, Anzu and Enki, reeds, fish and coracles, baked tanoor bread, a dancing figure, Agumon, and a multitude more. This second-hand archival material is carefully constructed, not quite seeking a subject matter but rather thematic patterns and narrative substance. It signals a process of starting over, inherent to migration and placemaking.
I come from generations of workers engaged in the traffic and logistics of carpet-making. Our home in Iraq was saturated with carpet patterns; stepping into our living room felt like entering a sanctuary filled with chains and chains of motifs derived from Eden. Woven patterns clung to the walls providing warmth, unfurled on the floors providing comfort, were imprinted into our diwan extending shelter, and silk-like tapestries graced the ceiling, as if inviting us to drift through the infinite world they create while unfolding beauty. There I was, sprawled before the TV and my PlayStation, immersed in Legend of Mana, where fragments of the knotted carpets whispered through the game’s pixels, like the woven threads in the tapestries surrounding me, blending reality and virtuality. Everything slowly danced so wonderfully.
Given my diasporic context, pixelation becomes a tool that shows a fragmented reality, one that must be experienced within its fragmentedness. It also becomes a thread between the technologies of weaving and the development of digital computing.