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EFFI & AMIR

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One of the heroines of one of the episodes making up the video film entitled "they were all my sons" writes the sentence "whoever is disciplined does not hear himself" on a piece of paper, rolls up the paper and stuffs it into the throat of the nodding dogs that she stole. Afterward, she puts the heads back in their place and sends all the dogs on a raft downstream as a symbolic act of freedom, liberation and perhaps even self-awareness.
This act of introducing enigmatic and vague text with magical powers (changing the order of nature) into an inanimate object in order to resuscitate it reminds us of the beliefs and legends surrounding the creation of a robot. This reviving force, which also grants the capacity for action, recognition and speech (according to one of the versions) does not exist in inanimate material or in simulated creation itself but rather in the text and in a more generalized fashion, in language and the endless flexibility it entails.
One of the most ancient sources of the creative process in general and - in the opinion of certain researchers and interpreters - even of the creation of the robot, is a most emblematic text called book of creation.
This book of creation, which was presumably composed in the first centuries AD (the writer is unknown) and is the foundation for the later Cabbalist developments of the middle ages, is in fact a text that proposes the most basic set of rules for the creative process, both divine and human. According to the book of creation, this set of rules is founded on 32 cornerstones, the 22 letters of the alphabet and 10 numbers, that is a set of rules with a known and finite number of cornerstones enabling, under certain circumstances and with the proper knowledge and handling, countless creative possibilities.
Needless to say, the reference to the robot and the book of creation in the context of the "they were all my sons" exhibit does not attempt to offer a mystical or metaphysical interpretation of the works of Effi and Amir, but rather refers to those universal principles which, in my opinion, are at the foundation of the world view of "they were all my sons" and, to a certain extent, also overlap with the book of creation proposal, namely a dialectic proposal for creation within the boundaries of restraint.
The rather enigmatic sentence "whoever is disciplined does not hear himself" entails that whoever wishes to hear himself must stop being disciplined. Is it still unclear to us why he must hear himself? And what must he hear? That discipline is a restraining force.
This sentence, which is also the only sentence written by one of the heroes making up the film "they were all my sons" can be interpreted in at least two different ways.
The empirical way, the "self" represents a type of individuality and inner truth which defines the individual identity whose potential for fulfillment hints at freedom of choice and the "self" relies on the "one who listens" in the physiological, physical sense, in the sense of a voice whereby in this way as well, the questions of which voice? and what is the voice for? remain esoteric for the time being.
I would like to propose to attempt to interpret the exhibit in a manner that unites the two options - a dialectic way of uniting opposites which the creative process proposes, which is also a proposal for a comprehensive and more extensive world view.
"They were all my sons" by Effi and Amir - and not the play by Arthur Miller - originates from two identical actions of adapting the simulated memory for identification purposes and crossbreeding them in order to create new identities. Effi reaches the police station and reconstructs Amir's features from memory. Amir as well arrives to the police station and reconstructs Effi's face. They merge the results and the pairing yields new facial features. "Effimir" (which in a totally random fashion, is phonetically close to Ephemere, which means temporary, ephemeral) only it appears as though Effi and Amir are not satisfied with the single offspring and they create more and more and more "Effimir" children, all of them genetic hybrids of the initial identikits, whereby - to their parents' joy or misfortune, there is an external uniqueness, a circus-like oddness, which dictates the offspring's life story in an almost fatalistic way. The merging of the identikits until new identities are obtained is the founding action of the "they were all my sons" exhibit. This action is illustrated in the documentary-like video film, which tells the life story of the "Effimirs" through a symmetrical birth picture. Effi and Amir are lying in a sort of delivery room. They are both in advanced stages of pregnancy and once their respective pregnancies come to fruition - namely birth - in a puzzling way, each pregnancy yields a single offspring each time - a boy and a girl, two pregnancies and one child. This mythical birth which, naturally, does not of course dictate to us an observation on another level of consciousness, one that can demonstrate the dialectic principle that was already mentioned - that of the unification of opposites whereby this principle is led by the means of expression, style (the morphological language ) and content.
In the 1960s in Paris, a group of about 10 authors, researchers and mathematicians assembled and formed the Oulipo - Ouvroir de Litterature Potentielle group (a workshop for potential literature). The Oulipo group liked to play with language. By formulating mathematical laws and morphological constraints, the group used the game theory and the absurd as tools to create a new literary form - a form which succumbs in advance to known and formulated rules and dictates in order to enable a higher level of creative freedom.
Oulipo is not the first to adopt these or other morphological constraints as conditions for creation. Throughout history and in various cultures, we occasionally encounter similar concepts which were even successfully implemented and in a given period of time were even considered as an ideal. However, within the context of time and place in which Oulipo reigned - meaning modernism - the use of the quasi anachronistic concept of the Oulipo group was actually an avant-garde action taken in order to reject two trends or schools of thought that were dominant thus far in French literature - the automatism on the one hand, which was considered by the members of Oulipo as lacking boundaries and too unruly and - in contrast - the "mobilized" literature (even without any dictate from "above") which the members of Oulipo perceived as oppressed, closed and constraining.
Raymond Queneau headed the Oulipo group and two of its more famous members were Italo Calvino and George Perec.
In his book "Style exercises" (Exercise de Stille), Quenaud tells the rather banal story of a journey on a city bus in Paris and a minor event that occurs during the course of the trip. Queneau tells this same story in 99 different ways: purely morphologically, prosaically, poetically, by imitating other styles, interpreted according to mathematical structure, in dry philosophical terms, in a technical scientific language and also a few "potentials" (what would happen if?).
Thus it happens that a short, simple and realistic story, with the help of a personal and specific set of rules which Queneau applied to his book, yields a multidimensional, rich and almost infinite potential. (Moreover, the decision to stop after 99 stories is arbitrary and part of the rules determining the rules of the game in the book). Legitimacy, play, stylistic divergence and variations on a theme - these are the principles according to which Queneau and his friends formed the Oulipo group. Legitimacy, play, linguistic plurality and variations on a theme - these are the principles according to which Effi and Amir created their exhibit.
The "they were all my sons" exhibit spreads across three exhibition halls.
In one hall, the visitor is offered the game option where a creative workshop of sorts was set up - two work tables, two monitors showing a child demonstrating how to prepare a simple origami game called "coo coo". The tables are covered with piles of sheets featuring eight "Effimir" portraits and every visitor is invited to learn the simple rules and build his own "coo coo".
The second exhibition hall offers the visitor the option to build and expand. There are a few computer posts connected to the Internet through which one can reach the exhibition's site displaying the option to build a new "Effimir" with the help of the same "genetic" building blocks which Effi and Amir used.
There is also the option to fill out a questionnaire on each of the existing "Effimirs" and to enrich his life by adding character traits, hobbies and other characteristics.
The third exhibition hall features the screening of a video film composed of six independent episodes which together create the extended family story. The six episodes tell the stories of eight "ephemeral" characters.
- A child who is not conceived by technological visual means and his documented existence is disappearing.
- Haurigmar, a child in whose expert hands every piece of paper becomes a sculpted object.
- The nodding dogs' thief.
- The Arab - a child who, in his babyhood, suddenly began to grow a mustache and speak Arabic and tells one of Joha's stories with a great deal of skill.
- The Rorshach twins - identical twins, like a Rorshach stain, who do wonders in a circus show.
- A child, who with the help of the magical hand movements he possesses, becomes a lucrative and sought after painter.
- A child who integrates within the other episodes because of his special attribute of spitting on everything.
All of the films are shot in a quasi-documentary fashion whereby only the "Effimir" character, the episodes' changing hero, is in a simpler and more basic animation form.
While watching the changing episodes and as we receive the common living space of the realistic and the animated - representations which were presumably liable to mutually cancel out each other - it becomes apparent that the "they were all my sons" exhibit is a sort of interactive workshop employing contemporary technological means and holding an amusing dialogue with the world of the classical, popular storytellers - allegorical stories, fables, metaphorical stories, legends, stories with a moral.
A miniature world is created, an open entropic system whose existence is dependent upon the good will of external factors - primarily thanks to the connectivity to the expanses of the virtual universe.
This world has rules of its own; the rules of this game simultaneously define its boundaries and enables the continuation of its changing existence - a legal and not quantitative boundary. This entropic world takes us back to the theories of the Oulipo group and to the principles guiding the set of rules, according to the book of creation. This is the creative process being curbed, a dual perception or a unification of opposites. Universal pairs, apparently synthesized and opposite, limitation and freedom, chaos and order, bad and good, fate and choice.
These principles, when they are implemented within the creative process which encompasses the creation itself, imply true, random freedom which is borne of limitation. This is a conciliatory approach which combines classical stringency with modernistic radicalism.
Like any good entropic system, the existence of the work entitled "they were all my sons" is dependent upon its cultural capacity, that is the pregnancy and birth of more and more "Effimirs" are not mere metaphoric characters but rather the beating heart justifying the exhibit's existence. Will there ever be a critical mass of "Effimirs"? And do androids dream about artificial sheep?

December 2001