The Irreversible Line: Adornian Contribution and Communication Through the Use of Arabic Calligraphy in the Videos of Mona Hatoum and Kutlug Ataman

Abstract

This project analizes the use of the Arabic script in Mona Hatoum's Measures of Distance (1988) and Kutlu?? Ataman's Animated Words (2003) to understand the variety of interpretations made possible to audiences familiar and unfamiliar to Arabic. These artists' roles as Middle Eastern artists working/exhibiting in diaspora is a central issue that defines the variety and distinction between their potential audiences. Some interpretations of these works, in turn, are evaluated through the notions of contribution and over -intentional communication proposed by Theodor Adorno in his brief essay, "Questions on Intellectual Emigration." In effect, Hatoum and Ataman's works circumvent the expectations of the Western art market by creating different dimensions of "meaning" inside and outside of language, and, hence, dislocating both the "Eastern" and the "Western" audiences.