Every Edge of the World: Morehshin Allahyari’s "The Laughing Snake" [by Katie Peyston Hoftstadter]

What I notice first: the carved wooden snake, glowing pink and gold in the darkened room. Her lips curl back to laugh, showing teeny-tiny fangs. In the corner, a hypertext narrative glitters quietly, ready to fork.

 

Laughter isn’t a common theme in art and technology, though maybe it should be. It is a powerful game-changer. It allows us to shift one mindset to another. According to George Carlin, laughter creates a space just large enough for a new idea to slip in.

 

Laughter can also be a purge, allowing us to process cruel and absurd truths that might otherwise drive us insane.

I’ve traveled to 205 Hudson Street to see the The Laughing Snake, by Brooklyn-based Iranian artist Morehshin Allahyari. See it in person, that is; I had previously experienced the hypertext narrative online, through the Whitney Museum’s Artport, a portal to Internet and new media art.

 

Morehshin Allahyari, She Who Sees the Unknown: The Laughing Snake, 2018. 3D-printed sculpture, touchscreen with hypertext narrative, mirrors, & sound. Installed in Refiguring the Future, Hunter College Art Galleries, 2019.

 

Allahyari's latest series, She Who Sees the Unknown, re-examines female monsters of Middle Eastern origin. The work slides smoothly between the past and present, drawing parallels between ancient legends and contemporary narratives and asking: How are the myths of the past shaping the technology of our future?

 

In this series, you’ll encounter dark goddesses, sinister prophecies, trickster jinn. Set at the intersection of real and virtual worlds, Allahyari explores the mysteries at the sharp edges of our culture, and in the cracks between our stories. She knows the best art often comes from these gaps. 

 

Screenshot: Moreshin Allahyari, The Laughing Snake, hypertext narrative on Artport.

 

The Laughing Snake

 

According to the Book of Felicity, an illuminated manuscript from the 16th century Ottoman Empire, the Laughing Snake was a female jinn who went on a murderous rampage. Day in and day out, she murdered humans and animals to the sound of her own hysterical laughter. Finally, a wise man came up with the brilliant plan: to hold a mirror to her face. The jinn laughed at her own reflection, until she died. 

 

Why would a woman go on a hysterical rampage? Allahyari holds up a mirror and describes a woman laughing at her own world:

 

This is a hypertext narrative: when you click bold words, they fork into new lines or stanzas. [... indicates what the hypertext changes to. Click here to interact with the full hypertext narrative. )

And please know that I am just

Existing:

Walking around in the streets of Tehran

(in pants, with a long Manto, covering all my body, and a scarf)

Taking the public taxi

Standing in some line

Taking the bus

Sitting down somewhere

And young boys, middle-aged fathers, old old grandpas

CASUALLY

[... CAUSING EVENTUAL MONSTROSITY

Catcall me — EVERY SINGLE DAY

To tell me “what a nice piece of pussy” I am

To tell me “I want to fuck you and your mother”

To tell me “I can put my dick inside your ass if you wanna stay a virgin"

And the young boys, middle-aged fathers, old old grandpas

CASUALLY

[... CAUSING HYSTERICAL PAROXYSM

 

A different excerpt recalls the familiar, epic shame of masturbation. 

I am six — in Tehran
My grandmother catches me
Rubbing my vagina
On the sofa arm

[... On the pillow

[... On the sole of my foot

[... On the edge of a bench in a public park

[... On the steepest part of a rock at the Caspian Sea

[... On my doll’s head on the plane (under the blanket) 

And she tells me if I do this

A snake will come out of my vagina

I do it more

and more

and more

and every time I do it

and there is no snake

I know this is yet

another victory over a world

I keep at a distance.

In a third branch of the poem, a grandmother advises her granddaughter to always carry a safety pin, to say safe from jinn. She imagines using it, on a public bus. When a man starts calmly rubbing his elbow against her breast, she imagines calmly pressing it into his leg.

 

In a mirror, monstrous frustration is a predictable reaction to normalized abuse. Each branch of the poem ends in the jinn's laughter, which is a purge but also an opening: perhaps, just large enough for a better ideas to slip in.

 

Screenshots: Moreshin Allahyari, The Laughing Snake, hypertext narrative on Artport

 

The Additivist Cookbook, created by Allahyari and Daniel Rourke, calls "not for passive, dead technologies but rather for a gradual awakening of matter.” New myths lead to new communities. The colonial and patriarchal messages of our past don't have to be recycled into the tech myths of our future. We deserve better stories, and they are out there. 

 

Here’s where you can see Morehshin Allahyari's work this week: 

1. Refiguring the Future (through March 31), curated by REFRESH collective members Heather Dewey-Hagborg and Dorothy R. Santos. 205 Hudson Gallery, NYC

2. Speculative Cultures: A Virtual Reality Exhibition (through April 15), curated by Tina Sauerlaender, Peggy Schoenegge, and Erandy Vergara. 2 West 13th Street, NYC

3. She Who Sees the Unknown: The Laughing Snake, online access

4. Additivist Cookbook, online access (free download)

5. The Art Happens Here: Net Art’s Archival Poetics (through May 26). New Museum, NYC ($)