The Fountain @Frequent Defect
The Fountain (Frequent Defect, 2019)
In lieu of the release of its first two books, Barakunan teamed up with Frequent Defect to create an audio-visual experience that presents Zahreddine’s concept of the Gesamtroman– or Total Novel.
This engages with the idea of an eternal digital archive that plays host to cyclical literature – literature that forever unfolds and turns back on itself, with no ends and no beginnings. The audiovisual installation places poetry, fiction, non-fiction, propaganda and sacred texts in representations of various archetypal spaces, exploring how these architectural limitations impact the delivery and reception of the literature.
The installation was accompanied by a live modular synthesizer performance by
Jad Atoui
, featuring music composed for Barakunan over a three month period. From opening and for a two hour period, Zahreddine themselves performed a live, improvised text, typed on the spot, to an anxious audience, accompanied by the mysterious sounds of Jad Atoui. “I have to begin the story in utero. To conceive of a world contained within a single womb-like structure, acting as an incubating home, and afterwards, imposing itself upon the world, extroverted, enlightened.”
- Zahreddine, cross-dimensional poet-pilgrim / This is not the voice of any one in particular, but there is a voice that spans a half-generation that is awake in the channels now. They deliver from the wealth of their experience a politics of the future, a politics of the body and mind.
- Zahreddine, cross-dimensional poet-pilgrim / This is not the voice of any one in particular, but there is a voice that spans a half-generation that is awake in the channels now. They deliver from the wealth of their experience a politics of the future, a politics of the body and mind.
To access the live, improvised text, follow this link!
