Tomorrow May Not Ever Be

Performance & Video Instalation | 2003


Photo Credit: Alireza Rouhnavaz

“Choir our legacy fades and melts away because tomorrow may not ever be.”

– Eloy

The “conceptual art,” in its innermost and most basic aspects, insists on effective and inspiring patterns of thought involved in the process of creation. It repudiates the prescribing necessities such as traditional aesthetics, and hence makes the viewer an indispensable part of the process of creation of an artwork. Taghioff’s performance, through its wealth of intendment and complicated conceptualizes, makes us confront with a unique realm calling its viewer to participate in it, and experiencing a sort of intuition and meditation. Although the work is introduced as a model of “Performance Art”, Taghioff the artist has insightfully combined three artistic media— namely the installation, video art, if not a “video installation,” and performance — in a single work using three different levels which defines themselves according to the attitude of the viewer. In addition to inherent polysemy of the work, its multi-layered nature is insightfully accentuated formally, as well as with respect to its performance efficacy. Solid frame of the television nails the wandering anxious gazes of its viewers, seizing them in the labyrinthine maze of media to such an extent that the view of onlooker is no more from outside but it identifies itself with the dominant medium and passively accepts it. Through this passivity the whole world reduces to a mere appearance. The anxiety arisen from knowing the void of reality drives the viewer to flee from the sovereignty of this solid frame. There is no hope for any human communication, as is no more need to the eyes and hands. One can find complete mental “satisfaction” in this world of subsumed simulacra made by mass media, which seems even more real than the real world, in which there is no more need to use one’s own eyes and hands, but use eyes and hands seeming more real than ours!

– Hamid-Reza Karami, 2003
Performance & Video Installation | Photo Credit: Alireza Rouhnavaz | 2003