Scene Unseen: Undressing without triggering a security light / Kianoosh Motallebi (2008)

Undressing without triggering a security light, is a work by MA Slade graduate Kianoosh Motallebi (b.1982) it is presented as a 56 minute video projection.

The artist, Kianoosh Motallebi, has set up a game between himself and a security light. The word ‘game’ could be substituted for ‘challenge’: The artist, Motallebi, has set up a challenge between himself and a security light. But perhaps that doesn’t read as well as: The artist, Motallebi, has initiated a challenge between himself and the security light. Or, starting again: The artist, Motallebi, has set himself the challenge of undressing without triggering a security light. For the duration of the 56 minute video we see Motallebi, trying to undress without triggering this light. If the light goes on during an attempt he goes back to the beginning: puts back on what had been removed and tries again, much in the same way as not finding a satisfactory opening sentence I re-write it. Over the course of the video and his many attempts success eludes him. The framing of his figure in this wide shot: it being night-time, the anonymous grey car and black gate in the background, him standing there oddly vulnerable but at the same time defiant, upright but looked down upon by the tilting security light - as though awaiting interrogation, calls to mind Buster Keaton in Steamboat Bill Jr, particularly the scene later re-enacted by Steve McQueen in Deadpan. Perhaps out of shot, hovering over the scene is the spectre of Samuel Beckett, he who wrote: “Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.”

Challenge, test, game, duel: these words are not totally interchangeable in describing the relationship between the security light and the man; but all float around its articulation. There is the sense of a man challenging an automated system, human cunning pitted against the machine. There is also the self-challenge of the activity: “My dexterity and endurance are put to the test against a security lamp. By moving very slowly I attempt to undress, without being caught by the motion sensor. My endeavour is hindered by the cold, passers by and the relentless attention of the security lamp.” The opposition of the two: the light with its aim to illuminate potential intruders and the artist to move beyond its detection, stresses the dualistic/duelistic nature of the situation. The word ‘game‘, for me, contains the others as a subset: it does not ignore the playfulness of the set up, the low stakes, physical, psychological and legal (that’s not to say there are not games with high stakes), but keeps in mind this oppositional quality (which is also spatial) and the self-challenge, finding the discipline not to rush, the upholding of his concentration and so on.

So we are witness to a game of sorts, a constructed-situation designed to elicit results within parameters but not completely foreseeable. There is a curious logic to it: the light is not one of his own making, it is as on ‘off-the shelf’ security light. A pre-designed system, used for his own purposes, beyond those it was intended - serving him by functioning as it was designed. The man aims to undress without triggering the light, if he is successful he will be naked but unseen, if he fails he will be clothed but illuminated, clearly visible. Two types of revelation (one of flesh via clothing the other of environment via light) are proposed - but within the structure of the game they cannot be simultaneously present. So we might conclude revelation is always accompanied by concealment. ‘Conclusion’ itself is being toyed with here; the ending of a situation is classically a climax of sorts… a revelatory summing up or cathartic release. The ‘ending’ often comes with fanfare, a platform in which its finitude is spot-lit. Here, for the protagonist to fulfil his quest there can be no recognition of it having occurred, beyond our extrapolation that it has occurred through a prolonged darkness – but even then we cannot know. It maybe he has stopped midway undressing, if it is dark – we cannot know. Knowing becomes entwined with seeing, but to interchange the two is a trap.

There are four watchers: there is the artist, monitoring his own movements as he gingerly undresses, there is the sensor of the security light, there is the camera recording the scene and there is us. This web of watchers all perceive differently, three also share a time-zone. We are in our own time-zone, we were not present when these activates were recorded. The camera like us, witnesses, but is not part of the activity. However it was there at the time the event took place. The events are documented through its lens, what we can see is curtailed by the sensitivity of what it had the capacity and sensitivity to record. Motallebi, has the same human eyes as we do, he processes light, brightness, colour with the biological system that we do. Lastly there is the security light, which processes movement with a motion sensor. The security lights posses a mechanized constancy in contrast to Motallebi’s organic irregularity. But his human brain is able to exploit its limitations: for it to recognize movement - an object, person, fox - movement across its field must occur at a particular speed – anything less and there is no recognition of presence.

When Motallebi has slipped beneath the sensor’s threshold of perception. It goes dark. But just as ‘presence’ is revealed to be relative, dependent on the machine’s perception. When it goes dark and Motallebi ‘disappears’ the darkness takes us to the threshold of our visual perception. Yet we know there are creatures that would be able to see Motallebi, if they were passing him on the night he was making this video. The Snowy Owl for example, has eyes that are tubular rather than round, giving a relatively large cornea in proportion to the overall size of the eye and enabling more light to enter the eye. The pupil can be opened so wide that no iris is visible, this is large and convex, causing the image to be focused nearer to the lens hence retaining maximum brightness, the light gathering properties are enhanced by a reflective layer behind the retina, which reflects back onto the rods any light that may have passed through the retina without hitting it the first time. Specialists say the eyes of the Snowy Owl is are least 100 times more sensitive than ours in low light levels. Significantly though the sensor cannot recognise Motallebi when he moves slowly enough, Motallebi if he had the mind to could creep right up to the wire powering the light and cut it, kill it, with the light never having recognised his presence at all. That ‘something’ or ‘someone’ is beyond the threshold of our perception offers no safeguard against being affected by its presence.