A review on Neda Razavipour's installation-performance at Azad Gallery, by Ali Ettehad, Dec. 4-5, 2009
When an artistic event provides the possibility of interaction between artist and audience, the work is often made up of the initial object or event, a series of interactions in which the audience gets involved, and the resulting piece. Even though this definition is true for most interactive artworks, in Neda Razavipour’s case it is the very action of the audience that plays the central role in defining the meaning of the work. What Razavipour gave to her audience were Iranian handmade rugs covering the floor of the gallery, together with scissors and blades. Those who managed to cut a piece of a rug could take it with them. Only after cutting a piece, which was much harder than the audience imagined, they were given a bag to put it in. On the bag a passage from Plato’s The Republic, Book IV, was printed – in which Leontius, upon seeing the dead bodies lying on the ground at the place of execution in the port of Piraeus, struggles with himself, first covering his eyes and then opening them shouting, “Look, ye wretches, take your fill of the fair sight”. After reading this the audience members, tired and sweaty from cutting the piece, will look at it inside the bag; and, perhaps, like Lady Macbeth, they will wash their bloody hands again and again in the hope of getting them clean. Or maybe, without any feeling of guilt, they will take the piece that they cut, like a treasure they have gained through force, home with them and then lay it in a corner. Whatever they do, the sentence printed on the bag will have its impact on the audience. For now the cut piece of rug, like the Iranian carpet itself as a cultural symbol, faces its demise: its fabric will disintegrate and, like the dead bodies lying on the ground at the place of execution in the port of Piraeus, it will not be long before it is gone. The Azad Art Gallery, too, which at the beginning of the performance was covered with the millions of knots of the Iranian carpets, lost them piece by piece in less than eight hours, in two four-hour sessions. What remained at the end was a layer of dust that looked nothing like a Tabrizi or Qashqai rug.
Self Service, as is obvious from its title, is a work about individual pleasure-seeking, pleasure which is the result of violence. The totality of the work could be seen as a study of the desire for violence, one from which we often escape with the aid of our superego. But by creating the grounds for the overflow of this desire, Self Service forces the audience to face their “hidden self” in an incredible moment. I do not imagine that the artist had a clear image of the final result of her work (meaning the actions of the audience in the final performance). And this is the very point that brings Self Service close to being a study or fieldwork, within which issues such as social context and especially the time of the performance have a decisive effect on the outcome.
| سلف سرويس |
چیدمان ندا رضوي پور سيزدهم و چهاردهم آذر 1388، گالري طراحان آزاد |
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