SETAREH FATEHI

swim/او

someone who is(n’t) me, he or she but not you and i

with Nooshin Askari, Yalda Pakzad, Reyhaneh Khakinejad, Behrang Najafi, SM Snider


https://vimeo.com/353078093

2019

performance-research 

swimاو is a practice of dancing with and for friends who are far away. this time-based event has taken place simultaneously in:

a studio in Tehran
a bedroom and rooftop in Karaj
a farm house in Fuman
a living room and a balcony in Tehran
an imvu chatroom
a mixlr.com channel
a music room in brussels 
a studio/gallery/club spaces in Amsterdam

We gather online on multiple channels (3x skype connection , 1x imvu chatroom and 1x mixlr channel) from different spaces. When visitors get in touch through their own devices it creates a web of narrators. swimاو is an invitation to share time in a room filled with glitches and disturbances.



The event ends at sunset to the horizon of Tehran.




 


imagine “it” made of lenses, liquid, holes, retina,
with gradations of opacity
imagine “it” welcomes “my” “dance” for a little while یه جوری که تصویر من رو بکوبونه محکم به کف قرنیه ش و از شدت ضربه ش قلبش شروع کنه به تپیدن
the choreography would be many of those minutes 
where “i” dances for those “eye(s)”.
how can “i” still welcome them, how can “they” still welcome “i”?  
 

now imagine


her nonlocal universe,
where
neither dislocation (movement in space) nor relation (connection between spatially separate things) describes what happens where every existing particle exists with each other, without space-time.
a more complex reality
where
everything has both actual (spacetime) and a virtual (nonlocal) existence.  

enjoy

that beyond my physical (bodily and geographic) conditions of existence, in their fundamental constitution, at the subatomic level, i exist entangled with everything else (animate and in-animate). i enjoy the connection, the exchange, the heat it creates i enjoy the redundancy of the glass borders between us


almost at the same time i feel the parallax,
an impalpable sensation of absence or confusion as to where the other person is actually looking and whether they are paying attention or reading their email on the side [NSH]


what is there to share? time, light, rhythm,heat (?)
what is there to measure? distance, care, synchronicity, presence(?)  

answer this
in the time that the measure of presence is not closeness, where should my body be?
answer this
in the time that the measure of closeness is not touch, whose phone do i want to be hosted in?
answer this
what is the measure of closeness?

which disciplinary knowledge formations, political parties, religious and cultural traditions, infectious disease authorities, immigration officials, and policy makers; do not have a stake in, if not a measured answer to, this question?  

a yes or no answer is not enough
one answer is not enough either

trouble the self

now



i ask them (you know that it can be one person and او can mean either he or she)
ask them to keep their eyes in the frame, just for a maximum of 20 minutes
the rest is up to them
and
and don’t forget to tell them that you are screen recording and don’t forget to tell them later if you ever use those recordings anywhere at anytime

eye
this eye is a metaphor, but also a technology. it understands different shades of opacity. it understands the process of creating surfaces while remembering the curves.
this eye does not need perspective, it needs longing, flirting, the desire of seeing not necessarily looking. it understands the pain of seeing two things or more at the same time

closing my eyes


but not for too long






now

see the image
and let natascha question the simulacrum itself.  
listen to her acknowledging the awkward physicality that is enforced,
it's dire negation of how the eye sees(or even, wants to see), then she turns her attention to the contradictions of representation, replication, and the impossible promise of the virtual world of “face-to-face” communication.  


come closer to the camera and ask them (not with words obviously)
to make eye contact

fail

instead, let the parallax, reintroduce the capacity of seeing strangeness, of discovering and experiencing looking as a painfully pleasurable, obscene, and complicated act, moved by forces inhabiting the domain of jouissance: the domain of wonder.

stay

on the margins of perception
not the realm of the visible,
but the sense of the visual,
in the literal sense,
on the margins of our ability to see images.
  

take your time
take my time too


choreography
as a score to enjoy the impossibility of capturing what eyes see with what hands do when pressing buttons on the phone 
choreography
as “a selection of fragments of an event unusually meaningful (instead of useful) and desirable (instead of entertaining), chosen and arranged to give an illusion of coherence..” 



i felt like a surface 
then i called more people
the ones i love to dance with, who were the ones i danced for
the spacetime did not matter
he wondered if it is possible to dance at the “speed of an image”

surface
depth
time
time-image
movement-image  
music-image
space-image

collapse into one another.

   
image the “avatar” when i say “surface”
image “synchronicity” when i say “depth”
image “dance” when i say “time”

Say Paneer



now