Relation-Chute
an online At the Edge: Innovative Art in Chicago project
Asma Kazmi
beginning February 15, 2008
Relation-Chute is a platform for transdisciplinary action and the
accumulation of materials, people, and ideas.
Relation-Chute was instigated by images of qurbani (religious sacrifice)
of animals, and their resonance with images of death and destruction that
circulate commonly in the media. Through this project, the artist attempts
to change her relationship to pain and death by participating in the act of
slaughtering animals for consumption. The method used for slaughter is
Zabiha Halal practiced by Muslims.
Relation-Chute provides a stage to contemplate the difficulty in
understanding the complexities of visual images of death. This website
hopes to confront the viewer, alienated from the actual experience of
killing with fragmentary sensory knowledge of the act. Thus by implicating
the viewer as a distant onlooker the artist wants to invigorate dialogue
about spectatorship and the singularity of the experience of pain and
death.
Relation-Chute’s web form is an archive of photographs, videos, sound
and transcribed records of conversations. These materials are reflections
on the act of slaughter, religious observance, and consumption.
Relation-Chute’s public form is a manifold encounter, realized through
hosting performances, gatherings, screenings, and lectures. These public
events are grounded in the belief that the distance between a viewer and
an image can be reduced through generating an aesthetic of socially
shared meaning by facilitating complex and open-ended interactions
between people.