CrosswordNewsletters
DAILY BEAST
ALL
  • Cheat Sheet
  • Obsessed
  • Politics
  • Crime
  • Entertainment
  • Media
  • Innovation
  • Opinion
  • World
  • U.S. News
  • Scouted
CHEAT SHEET
    POLITICS
    • Fever Dreams
    • Biden World
    • Elections
    • Opinion
    • National Security
    • Congress
    • Pay Dirt
    • The New Abnormal
    • Right Richter
    • Trumpland
    MEDIA
    • Confider
    • Daytime Talk
    • Late-Night
    • Fox News
    U.S. NEWS
    • Identities
    • Crime
    • Race
    • LGBT
    • Extremism
    • Coronavirus
    WORLD
    • Russia
    • Europe
    • China
    • Middle East
    INNOVATION
    • Science
    TRAVEL
      ENTERTAINMENT
      • TV
      • Movies
      • Music
      • Comedy
      • Sports
      • Sex
      • TDB's Obsessed
      • Awards Shows
      • The Last Laugh
      CULTURE
      • Power Trip
      • Fashion
      • Books
      • Royalist
      TECH
      • Disinformation
      SCOUTED
      • Clothing
      • Technology
      • Beauty
      • Home
      • Pets
      • Kitchen
      • Fitness
      • I'm Looking For
      BEST PICKS
      • Best VPNs
      • Best Gaming PCs
      • Best Air Fryers
      COUPONS
      • Vistaprint Coupons
      • Ulta Coupons
      • Office Depot Coupons
      • Adidas Promo Codes
      • Walmart Promo Codes
      • H&M Coupons
      • Spanx Promo Codes
      • StubHub Promo Codes
      Products
      NewslettersPodcastsCrosswordsSubscription
      FOLLOW US
      GOT A TIP?

      SEARCH

      HOMEPAGE
      0

      Runa Islam at Art Basel is the Daily Pic by Blake Gopnik

      Blake Gopnik

      Updated Jul. 13, 2017 7:33PM ET / Published Jun. 15, 2012 5:40PM ET 

      Runa Islam's "Emergence", on view at Art Basel (Photo by Lucy Hogg)

      “Emergence”, Runa Islam’s film installation in the Art Unlimited section of the Basel art fair, is big, bright ­– and more subtle than you expect at a fair. (It was at MoMA in 2011.) A huge 35mm film projector, click-clacking in our midst, shines a red rectangle onto a screen. At first it seems blank, but soon a faint image starts to appear in the scarlet, and then comes clear: Wild dogs are eating the corpse of a horse, on an empty square in front of some kind of archaic public building. The image continues to sharpen and gain detail, and a bubble drifts across its surface, revealing the installation’s premise: We are looking at a black-and-white print submerged in a developing tray in a darkroom, and all that red is cast by a safelight. We see that the original negative must have been a glass plate, because cracks run across its image; that plate seems to be of about the same vintage as the building it is revealing, so there’s a sense that we are watching a fractured past get recovered. And then we see it get lost again, because the image, so faint at first, gets continually darker, until it goes completely black.

      Islam uses the archaic technology of projected film to document the archaic technology of the darkroom as it revives the archaic content of the glass-plate negative – and then loses it again. Reading Islam’s handout, we discover that all this is at the service of a lost moment of hope in the Middle East. Between 1905 and 1911, there was a constitutional revolution in Iran that ended mostly in failure, and Islam’s image shows us one grim moment from it. History has never seemed as fragile as in this work of art: Democracy is never guaranteed, and even recovering its traces turns out to be an unlikely and delicate business.

      For a full visual survey of past Daily Pics visit blakegopnik.com/archive.

      READ THIS LIST

      DAILY BEAST
      • Cheat Sheet
      • Politics
      • Entertainment
      • Media
      • World
      • Innovation
      • U.S. News
      • Scouted
      • Travel
      • Subscription
      • Crossword
      • Newsletters
      • Podcasts
      • About
      • Contact
      • Tips
      • Jobs
      • Advertise
      • Help
      • Privacy
      • Code of Ethics & Standards
      • Diversity
      • Terms & Conditions
      • Copyright & Trademark
      • Sitemap
      • Best Picks
      • Coupons
      • Coupons:
      • Dick's Sporting Goods Coupons
      • HP Coupon Codes
      • Chewy Promo Codes
      • Nordstrom Rack Coupons
      • NordVPN Coupons
      • JCPenny Coupons
      • Nordstrom Coupons
      • Samsung Promo Coupons
      • Home Depot Coupons
      • Hotwire Promo Codes
      • eBay Coupons
      • Ashley Furniture Promo Codes
      © 2023 The Daily Beast Company LLC