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Reflections of Jad's exhibition at Weekend Gallery - Hatto Fischer
THE WILD BEASTS ARE HUNGRY
Exhibition in Weekend Gallery, Berlin
Opening was on 7th of September 2012
If anything, words are hungry for freedom.
It matters what destiny the Nile follows.
To cross over the Arabic countries not in a plane, but on foot like the Nomads used to, then it is crystall clear what follows once the Nomads are deprived of their land.
Gone is the wind over the desert when they pick only in the rubbish on the outskirts of Cairo, but this is not the story here.
First of all, Jad Salman comes from Palestine. He studies art at Saint Denis University in Paris. After completion of his Masters, he is now doing his Ph.D. about "street art in Palestine".
Secondly, the artistic response to what is happening in Middle East can be countered by a simple fact, namely that there are as well other things which happen around one. This is said by Jad Salman himself. He indicates with that statement as an artist he cannot close himself off from what is happening around him in Paris and throughout Europe.
He was, for instance, in Athens, Greece in December 2008, that is just when things happened there after the killing of a 15 year old boy on 6th of December. The revolt in the streets reminded Jad what he went through during the Intifada and reminded those riding this protest wave in Greece that their situation cannot be compared what happens in the occupied territority of Palestine.
Thirdly, it does mean that he comes from a land closed in. Everytime he leaves, he needs to go through Jordan. Palestine has no airport of its own. Hence he has to get up very early to make it through the check point which can take hours. It is a cumbersome journey until the airport is reached.
Occupation is not the exact word to describe this state of affairs. One has to listen to the ground to hear the rumbling of the tanks once again. They squash all hope. Already the poet Darwish said Israeli soldiers have been forced to make the tank into their permanent homes. Jad Salman wishes to depict this in a poetic sense when the Israeli Defense Forces demonstrate once again 'toughness' and thereby let a harsh reality stalk in. It can happen anytime, as these kinds of interventions have also to do whether or not the Israeli side feels secure enough; insecurity means not only being threatened by bombs or rockets, but by not having sufficient information being given voluntarily or through informers so that the Israeli side feels it controls still the situation.
These kinds of interventions can happen anytime. While the Israeli side tends to justify these actions as a Right to defend itself, these kinds of vicious attacks have also to do with whether or not the Israeli side feels secure enough. That needs some explanation, for insecurity means not only being threatened by bombs or rockets. Rather it has to do with having or not sufficient information. As any ruler knows, if the population goes silent, it is time to be worried that something is afoot. Hegel's 'Herr und Knecht' - master and slave - is a model copied in today's world by information systems. As in a prison once the prisoners do not give voluntarily sufficient information so that the controllers feel they are still masters of the situation, the police plans usually an unexpected raid to solicit both new information and new recruits as future informers. That system of control undergoes constant modificiations. The same reason is behind whenever Israel decides to attack and to enter with force the Palestinian territority. Certain things need to be done and in place so that the Israeli side feels it is still in control of the situation. So how should someone on the Palestinian side respond?
Jad Salman's answer is to stay human, even when fetched out of bed in the middle of the night, if only to find oneself once outside being surrounded by soldiers, the laser beams on their guns marking his body with red spots. If anything, it can mean on the other side that things are also ready to explode. Things can also be torn apart, become scattered pieces just like a human body may only be protected by all the fragmentations creating a new kind of mask. This then becomes the task of the artist, namely to find a human face in all of these shattered pieces and debris lying around on the ground.
If this reality is not stark enough, there is as well something autark within this surreal landscape in which constantly olive trees are replaced if not by roads and walls, then new settlements by those who claim the land as if it belongs to them since 4000 years. The autark reality is this military post within a landscape which has silenced the word 'peace' ever since the UNO resolution in 1948 has created the two states, and yet allowed on the ground to establish but one, namely the Jewish state. This has led to a land having become a 'minefield of misunderstanding'. Wherever one looks, there is an outpost or a control post, if not a check point since crossing the land means literally going through many check-points much harder than Check Point Charlie ever was during the era of the Cold War when Berlin was still divided until 1989.
It is unusual for Jad Salman to express himself so directly. Rather he prefers to respond to any sign of violence not as a Palestinian, but fore mostly as a 'human being'. If the poetess Merlie M. Alunun from the Philippine can write in one of her poems called Spiderwoman "touch me and I feel to be human", that consciousness has been thwarted for most Palestinians ever since the land their ancestors lived on has been divided and put under two very different rules. For whoever has the power to define the other, and that can include the label of being a 'terrorist', can use the world as a court filled with witnesses to justify every action as being a protection of the security of the own land. But how can security be attained by making the others, the Palestinians more insecure?
In reference to land and the olive trees, but also other plants and herbs, much knowledge has been passing through the hands. Only today, there runs most likely only sand through the hands. Almost nothing is left to give a reason for hope that peace would come to the Middle East. If an artist does not wish to fall victim to despair, he must do something. It begins by getting out of the situation as has done Jad Salman. This means he begins anew to search for those artistic impulses which tell him when instead of crossing the red line he can instead imagine a 'yellow line'. For that colour is akin to how taxis are painted in many cities or else the post office boxes. Yellow is explicit in one sense of a certain safety zone. Not everything goes, but also not everything is left out.
It has a purpose to do some things double. As if one sees double, and yet it is still the same, so that anyone crossing the line is amazed that nothing has changed...in hindsight, it is indeed a puzzle how many appeals and letters have been sent to the other side, and the reply was more often the answer through tanks coming again to crush the land underneath their caterpillar wheels.
One can imagine how things are torn apart and left bleeding - dried out sand, the sun catching broken glass of just another house having been shattered. These things cannot be compared to turmoils created at airports when a bomb goes off or when another suicide bomber has struck to put fear into the minds of the people of Tel Aviv. No, this is the other side too often not told in terms which would make the invisible pain become audible, but not like the whimpering sound of a boy left in the corner of a bombed out house. For the resistance under these kinds of circumstances is not to deprive oneself of the human consciousness which got one further in the first place. Moreover not to be forgotten are the fights for privileges leading on to corruption within the own ranks. It is hard to find a true representative of what would be a just cause of the Palestinian people.
The recent recognition at the United Nations as not full member but with observer status may not yet address this pain. However there is light at the end of the tunnel if grievances about unjust forms of occupation by the Israelis can be addressed in another forum and not on the ground. The latter means land is transformed into a permanent cemetry and this mainly due to this war being constantlyone sided fights. It means five Israelis killed to more than hundred on the Palestinian side as was just the most recent case when the Gaza strip was attacked and in return rockets send into Israel. For aside from body count, what does it do to the human psyche when under constant siege since 1948?
Somehow this pain and grievance must be translated into a different language so that each side can understand the other. It may only be possible if no longer translations are needed and misgivings are no longer obstacles for giving the other an imaginative sign of empathy. Indeed, it is a humane wink which Jad Salman tries to give through these highly imaginative colours.
Text: Hatto Fischer Athens 2.12.2012
Photos: Armin Gröpler
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