Survival Under Atomic attack

Reworking historical film and video footage of ruins from around the world, Survival (2017) is an animated film from my Recycled Series. In this work, I used a copy machine and techniques of degeneration to rework a compilation of digital images selected from archival films and newsreels documenting destruction caused by war. The selected footage includes aerial and ground views of the atomic bomb destruction in Hiroshima and Nagasaki; the ISIS-led demolition of ancient sites in Aleppo, Palmyra, and Nimrud; and the Taliban’s destruction of the monumental Buddha statues in Bamiyan. The recycled video follows the complete process of degeneration until the final copy fades almost entirely from view. The soundtrack of the work combines the noises of a copy machine with the voice of journalist Edward R. Murrow, extracted from his narration of a 1951 documentary, in which he explains how American families can protect themselves during a nuclear attack. Watching the recycled video from beginning to the end, viewers become witnesses to the degeneration effects intensified in time – the cycles the copy machine takes to completely ruin the images. Viewers witness the gradual unmaking of historical images that first documented places damaged, destroyed, and reduced to rubble by war, and are then subjected to a second process of ruination through repeated copying. As the images degenerate, they are increasingly distanced from their identification as historical evidence. Instead, they testify to another form of indexicality: the material presence and contingencies of the copy machine itself.

© Maryam Muliaee, 2017