FARI SHAMS

The order of things 2013
5-channel sound installation
Installation view
Museum Glaskasten Marl

This sound installation comprises of a series of nineteen readings (approx 6-11 minutes each) of the text Three reflected images-The Dressmaker’s Dummy written by Alain Robbe Grillet and found in the book titled Snapshots.

The sound installation follows the book published in 2012 Reflections on three reflected images, The Dressmaker’s Dummy and is a direct result of the that work in failing to realise any objective representation of the text by Robbe Grillet.

Five empty white panels hang on the walls with speakers attached behind each. The 19 recordings can be heard one at a time but not from one panel to the next. The recordings are played at random so that each time the recording comes from a different part of the room.

The text is read by Thomas Krause, a professional German speaker/actor. Thomas is not a fluent English speaker and is asked to read the text in English from beginning to end without making any mistakes. If he makes a mistake he completes the reading and repeats the text. The nineteen readings took two hours and seventeen minutes to complete.

In a second version of the work, presented to a German audience, Jean Faure, a professional French speaker/actor reads the text in German. The German version includes 10 readings.

This process enacts once again the endless reading of the Robbe Grillet text that a reader experiences and insists on leaving the composition of the room in the imagination of the listener as a space that is continuously recomposed and resistent to a photographic representation.