During the winter months, the site-specific installation BEHOLD GOD IN ALL THAT EXISTS IN HIS NAME at Klosterruine Berlin is extended by a silent video intervention as part of the exhibition series Unfinished Histories. The approximately five-minute video (NOT I) is shown on an LED screen in the rotunda.

BEHOLD GOD IN ALL THAT EXISTS IN HIS NAME consists of four illuminated taxiway signs arranged as a twelve-meter-long linear light sculpture within the former church. The signs retain the formal language of aviation signage: rectangular aluminium bodies with internally illuminated surfaces, normally used on airfields to provide orientation and direct movement. In the installation, the four elements are placed side by side to form a continuous line carrying the sentence BEHOLD GOD IN ALL THAT EXISTS IN HIS NAME. Removed from their original function, the signs bring a system of direction and orientation into the architecture of the former sacred space.

The video intervention continues this use of text and light through moving image. A close-up shows a mouth articulating (NOT I), a poem written by the artist. There is no sound; the text becomes legible exclusively through subtitles. English, German and Farsi alternate, repeat, overlap and shift against one another, at times remaining untranslated.

The title and visual setting of (NOT I) refer to Samuel Beckett’s play of the same name. The connection lies less in thematic correspondence than in the way language articulates a state. (NOT I) likewise does not follow a linear narrative. The poem unfolds through repetition, assertion and withdrawal, and through shifts and breaks between languages. Humanity and divinity, memory and motherhood, and the act of speaking in the name of God do not appear as separate themes, but as simultaneous linguistic states.

Multilingualism is part of this movement. English, German and Farsi do not function as complete translations of one another, but introduce different registers and fields of meaning. Language is taken up again, altered, or continued in another language. The poem remains in motion, holding its statements between formulation and dissolution.

The fixed, illuminated text of the sculpture is thus joined by the moving image of a mouth and by text that appears and disappears on screen. While the text sculpture places language in space as a continuous sign, the intervention renders it temporal, bodily and linguistically shifting.

The video is visible from outside and temporarily extends the existing installation through moving image and multilingual text, adding another illuminated textual layer within the ruin.

The exhibition series Unfinished Histories is a project that has been established for ten years and takes place during the winter months in the monastery ruins. At its center is a multimedia LED installation that is brought to life by rotating artists and curators through lyrical, essayistic, or artistic interventions.

Poem and video: Nazanin Noori
Performance: Kate Strong
Camera and film production: Alushi Kanaan
Make-up: Joe Onde
Flyer design: operative.space