Date: May, June, 2007.
Location: Memorial for Iraq, ICA, London
Also shown: STUK, Leuven 2008

Title:
A line, a sentence, a word

“Choosing one’s heritage” 1

I begin my journey with The Sumerians, the Akkadians, the Amorites, the Hittites, the Kassites, the Assyrians, the Chaldeans, and last the Persians who introduced the concept of dualism within religious doctrine. This new religion was called Zarathustra, constituted by two contrary gods -the god of light and the god of darkness

MESOPOTEMIA - “In between the two rivers”, the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.

I have lived in Amsterdam for many years. I often feel inferiority towards the knowledge that my European friends have regarding their own history. In Israel, we studied the second world war- the holocaust and a limited Roman/Greek history. I received your letter about Iraq and what immediately came to mind were the richness and the history of the area. A feeling of wonder ensues as I read the history of Mesopotamia, and I step into my own history. It is a history I learned in school, the names echoing in my head. The Assyrian conquerors invented a new policy - in order to prevent nationalist revolt they would force the people they conquered to migrate in large numbers to other areas of the empire. These mass deportations of the populations in the Middle East, Mesopotamia and Armenia transformed the region into a melting pot of diverse cultures, religion and languages. It also marks the first Exile of the Jewish, the Diaspora to New Babylon. As children we used to sing: “on the river of Babylon we were sitting and crying, while remembering Jerusalem”.

Now the Jews have their state and they cause others to Exile, others to cry.

On Saturday afternoon, I finished reading the book Austerlitz 2. Towards the end of the book Therezienstad is mentioned, Therezienstad – the city that Hitler announced to the world: he had built for the Jews to protect them from the changes and the stresses of the war. For the preparations of a visit by the Red Cross, Therezienstad was cosmetically altered by the Germans to resemble a beautiful city, - theatres, cinemas, cafés, small workshops, kindergarten and bakery windows filled with bread. The Red Cross subsequently approved the place. A film was made to show this mythic, idyllic city. What struck me the most was the name of the film: The Fuhrer Gives the Jewish a City. It made me think of the idea of "gift" and "giving", it implies a rhetoric, the hypocritical face of western society - the colonies, which wanted to Give something back to the natives, not unlike the English who wished to indoctrinate their culture around the world. Iraq’s long history has always been one where prosperity and violent upheaval brought about successions of changing empires, which brings me to reflect on how unfortunate Iraq became.

Rajiv Chandrasekaran talks in his book 3about how the Americans in Iraq were busy for weeks imposing new traffic laws in cities, where the American army has a continued presence. Rules such as ‘the steering wheel should be always held by two hands and that a rest of 5 minutes should be taken after 1 hour of driving’. Chandrasekaran tells us about his driver in Bagdad who apparently didn’t ‘give a shit about the rules’. Chandrasekaran asked him if it was the same in the times of Saddam, the answer is hilarious “Mister Rajiv, democracy is wonderful, now we can do what we want.”

A Chaos

Family Chafshosh emigrated from Yemen to Palestine, no one can say exactly when probably around 1910. They lived in Jaffa, where in 1917 a command to exile the Jewish community of Jaffe-Tel Aviv was published, and signed by the Ottoman governor of Palestine, Jamal Pacha. The Ottoman Empire feared that the Jewish community on the coastline would collaborate with the soon-to-be arriving enemy, the British army. The Jewish community of Jaffa-Tel Aviv (around 10,000 people) had to be deported within 24 hours to other areas of Palestine. Out of them around 3,000 people walked by foot to the Galilee, in north Palestine, my family included. Shlomo Chafshosh, my great grandfather died from typhus due to the terrible conditions. Esther my grandmother grew up in an orphan’s house in Tiberius.

History would call it The Jaffa Exiled.

The Nadaf family- my grandfather’s family, disapproved of the marriage between Shalom, my grandfather with Esther, my grandmother. The Nadaf family came from Aden (a city in south Yemen), the Chavshosh family (my grandmothers family) came from Yemen. The people of Aden consider themselves enlightened and genuinely better than the Yemenis as a result of the British mandate in 1838- 1939. The British mandate of Aden thus enabled the natives to read, write and speak English. My grandfather Shalom did go ahead and marry my grandmother Esther, but his family ostracised and mistreated her throughout the whole time.

Sociology would call it a ‘class’ problem.

"The best way to be faithful to a heritage is to be unfaithful, that is, not to accept it literally, as a totality but rather take it as default”4

I want to choose my heritage. I want to avoid the dogma, the “acting out of duty”. I want to be in the moment. I want to expose and not to impose.

I see a market. A colourful market, the Iraqis’ cuisine is famous for its richness. I see a market, an article in the newspaper announces that in Iraq, the best strategic places for placing a bomb, are the local street markets. I see an empty market an empty generosity. What has become of this generosity? A terrifying conflation of consciousness; hospitality reverses paranoia, generosity reverses claustrophobia, prosperity reverses destruction.

Alfred Hitchcock in an interview once spoke about the central fact of how to construct a real suspense, “You must let the audience have information… Let’s take the old-fashioned bomb theory. You and I can sit talking, lets say about basketball, we’re talking for 5 minutes, suddenly a bomb goes off, the audience has a 10 second terrible shock…. Let’s take the same situation and we tell the audience in the beginning that under the table there is a bomb, which is going to go off in five minutes. Now we talk about basketball but the audience are shouting “Don’t talk about basketball there is a bomb under there, get rid of it!” But they are helpless, they can not jump out of their seats, enter the screen and get hold of the bomb...”5

In his fiction Hitchcock chooses a long suspension over a quick terrible shock. In reality a continually long suspension interweaves with continually terrible shocks.

Merav Mehager - my best girlfriend from my childhood was originally from Iraq, to be precise -her mother’s family is Iraqi, her fathers family is Kurdish Iraqi. Her parents were divorced. Merav was astonishingly beautiful. I grew up in a kibbutz and here she was adopted as an “outsider child”. Children from the city with social problems were occasionally adopted in the kibbutz. Merav’s family lived in Jerusalem. Through her I got to know Jerusalem, Jerusalem at night, the scent of jasmine in the gardens, the lights of the synagogues, the sounds of spoken/chanted prayers, the smiles of flirting men, the taste of Kubba, climbing on a fence to see a free concert. She opened my heart. We used to read poetry to each other, while smoking cigarettes, hidden in the toilet of her mothers’ home. She was sitting on the toilet, I sat next to her knees on the floor listening to her, full of adoration. Later I left for Holland, Merav’s mother died from cancer, Merav converted to Jewish orthodoxy. We tried to keep in contact - it was too difficult to separate, but impossible to stay in contact, too big a gap stood between us. I could not accept that she could not accept that my boyfriend is a Goy (not Jewish). It took me many long years to understand why the family of her father (Kurds Iraqis) so hated deeply her mother’s family (Iraqis), only later could I understand that it was matter of politics that interrupted the private life.

It took me many long years to disavow what became of Jerusalem - the sight of the fanatics, the sight of hatred, a clench fist.

Description:

- An empty space. - A group of 8-10 people of differing ages and physical appearance. - 4-5 foam boards each approximately 1.50 x 3.00 meters.

The participant’s are requested to place their mouths into pre-cut holes at varying positions on the foams boards. The foam boards are held vertically by the mouths/hands of the participants. The participant’s task is to keep the foam boards suspended in space forming a makeshift wall. The aim is to hold the position. Due to the difficulty of keeping this position, small movements will become noticeable.

This work has two sides that the audience can freely move around.

Side A is where the scattered lips can be seen in the pre-cut holes. In between the performer’s lips, the white foam board will effectively mute any intelligible speech, enforcing an utterance that becomes cut-off in mid release.

Side B is where the participants are visible. They stand forming a line.

This sketch comprises elements that will later disclose their full potential in the gallery space; a line, a wall, a frontier, a human shield, a demonstration, etc. The work attempts to construct a language arrived at by seemingly arbitrary motions, a paradox of visual speech within a locus of silence. The other factor is the actual physicality of the works situation - all of the individuals in the group will experience a very limited visual field, (the wall itself), this will also apply to their now restricted verbal field

There is a magnitude that surrounds my urge to protest. To react is equal to the volume of the question - What to do? How to protest? How to react? I am longing to express the question within the protest. I believe it is a notion, which is significant for our time.

I am collecting journalist photographs related to demonstrations that had an impact, small or large on history. I follow the wider events of history by chronologically linking the history of demonstrations, such as; the suffragettes picket lines – 1924, South Africa - Sharpsville, protest against the rule for non-whites to carry identity cards – 1960, Washington D.C., civil rights marches – 1963, and so on.

I am struck by how essential and effective these spectacles are. It is a very particular spectacle that harbours on a curious borderline - between frustration and hope. I wonder what is the moment when one stimulates the other.

Do I perceive choreography in the rules and the aesthetics of a protest? What happens to the existential energy of expression, of protest in a situation when one cannot protest and cannot express?

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