Saeed Gebaan
Transmission Interrupted
2022 Video Installation, CRT Television, Electrical Arc, Custom Electronics
Introduction
Transmission Interrupted begins where a familiar warning once appeared to end.
The installation revisits the opening narration from the animated series Future Boy Conan (Adnan & Lina in its Arabic adaptation), not as an act of nostalgia, but as an unfinished message that continues to resonate beyond its original narrative.
Within the work, the grandfather’s speech is allowed to continue beyond its final words. The original warning no longer belongs solely to a fictional future, but gradually shifts toward the present, questioning whether humanity has learned from the fears it once imagined or simply found new ways to repeat them.
CONCEPT
The installation centers on a vintage CRT television that refuses to remain silent.
Its power cable stretches toward a wall socket without ever fully connecting. Between the plug and the outlet, intermittent electrical arcs briefly generate enough energy for the television to awaken.
Each spark produces only a few seconds of unstable transmission.
The image appears through CRT distortion, VHS interference, horizontal scan lines, electrical noise, and repeated interruptions before collapsing back into darkness.
Rather than replaying an archive, the television struggles to keep a warning alive.
The interrupted transmission becomes both a physical condition and a metaphor for the fragile survival of collective memory.
The work proposes that some messages cannot disappear. Even when history attempts to silence them, they continue searching for another voice, another medium, another generation willing to listen.
Spatial Experience
Visitors enter a nearly empty room occupied only by an old television placed upon a simple wooden table.
The silence is suddenly interrupted by an electrical spark.
The screen flickers.
The grandfather begins speaking.
Images emerge only for a brief moment before interference consumes them again.
War.
Aircraft.
Collapsed cities.
Human ambition.
Silence.
Another spark.
The message returns.
The cycle repeats continuously.
The audience never experiences a complete broadcast.
Instead, they assemble the warning from fragments, waiting for each spark to restore another piece of the unfinished transmission.
Voice Narrative
The installation begins with the original opening narration spoken by Conan’s grandfather from the Arabic version of Adnan & Lina.
As the original narration reaches its conclusion, the speech continues seamlessly through a newly written extension that shifts the warning toward the present:
Years have passed…
We believed that war would teach humanity its final lesson.
Instead, humanity became more capable…
but not more compassionate.
We learned to command the earth…
the sea…
the sky…
and now even information itself.
Yet we still struggle to govern fear,
greed,
and the desire to stand above one another.
Every generation believes it has become wiser than the last.
Yet every generation discovers new ways to repeat the same mistakes.
Technology continues to evolve.
Human conscience does not always follow.
Perhaps that is why this transmission continues searching for its listener.
Not because the past wishes to return…
But because the future has not yet been decided.
If this message still reaches someone…
Then perhaps there is still time.
RESEARCH ARCHIVE
The research traces the cultural significance of the original broadcast alongside the development of the installation’s spatial, electrical, and cinematic language. Rather than reconstructing the animated series, the project investigates how fictional warnings become part of collective memory and how those memories can be reactivated through interruption, instability, and repetition.