Mean While

Video installation (tim), 2017

The video consists of three of my poems scrolling back to back in a mobile screen, where the font is kept small to make a person go closer and read. The scrolling speed is increased more than the normal reading speed at a degree where one can still try to read but looses the flow, and tries harder to catch the thread of text only to loose it again and again. This work is a take on the tendency to comprehend everything by catching it within the parameters of logic, but this results in losing the emotions/sense a certain thing is capable of creating. A text is always meant to be understood but here the reader creates a sense of the text from the fragments s/he is able to capture between the flow. It is the in-betweenness or the mean while of the text which is important and creates different meanings from the same text depending on which words each viewer is able to grasp.
This work was displayed in a phone screen mounted on the wall which restricted the viewers from pausing the thread of text; it is meant to be seen in the same way at a stretch without interruption. Since here you will be given access to the online link, there is nothing to restrict you from the temptation of finding the full meaning by pausing and reading it. This adds another layer to the work by asking the question to the viewer as to how much one can refrain from this temptation/ human tendency of finding meaning; whether one can allow the work to convey something more than its concrete meaning in terms of emotions, feelings and/or experiences?

    favorite