Walid Sadek
Mourning in the Presence of the Corpse
2004-2006
| Rubber, milled out | 500 x 400 x 2 cm
Mourning in the Presence of the Corpse attempts to
articulate some of the conditions which govern quotidian living
in protracted civil-war. It posits that dialogue among survivors
must necessarily pass through the objects of unfinished violence,
namely through the corpses that linger in our midst.
An
artist and writer who lives in Beirut, Walid Sadek explores
the conditions of living in a closed environment of civil-war.
Dear Fernando,
When
un-inhumed a corpse conditions dialogue. Dialogue cannot happen
aside. It must pass through the corpse. Accordingly, a corpse is
not mere remains. Rather, it is an object in excess which
preoccupies every exchange with a demand: That we work at waking
it.
The questions you asked
having read Mourning in the Presence of the Corpse urge
me to write one side of an unequal dialogue; Write questions
that are answered with long unquiet silences. The questions are
mine to author while the silences are Kozo Okamoto’s. You may
not be familiar with this name but Okamoto is one of five
members of the Japanese Red Army arrested in Lebanon in February
1997. Okamato is known for having launched a bloody attack with
assault rifles and grenades along with three other Red Army
guerrillas on Lod Airport in Tel Aviv on May 30 1972. The only
survivor, he was imprisoned and tortured in Israeli prisons then
released in 1985 in an exchange of prisoners between the Israeli
government and the Popular Front for the Liberation of
Palestine. Okamoto had been living furtively in Lebanon since.
Apprehended in 1997, he spent another three
years in a Lebanese prison before being granted political asylum
by the Lebanese government in recognition of his role in the
struggle against Israel.
I do not know where Okamoto
currently resides. But judging from his physical and mental
condition during the trials of February and March 1997, it is
certain that he is indelibly wrecked by years of incarceration
and gravely debilitated by repeated bouts of torture.
Okamoto has
died twice, once at Lod Airport along with his three companions
and then again in Israeli prisons. He should have been buried
twice, a person lost and a name forgotten. When on the night of
March 17th 2000, it was announced that only he would
be granted political asylum and not his four companions, who
were hastily flown to Jordan and inevitably extradited to Japan,
a crowd of protesters, gathered close to the residence of Prime
Minister Selim El Hoss, wept. They wept not only for the four,
but for Okamoto as well who, alone, would now die for the third
time. Yet Okamoto is present and does more than remain. He is
finally a corpse, vividly not here and not fully lost. Finally,
Okamoto is now a matter of corpse and as such he confounds and
defers. In his presence, dialogue is set in the present tense,
from which we can neither point backward and remember nor
address a future and move forward. The present tense of the
corpse is the only available lull in wars. For as the work of
remembrance is blocked, so is a vengeful future deferred.
Un-inhumed, revenge can only start after burial.
I ought to dialogue with his
silence rather than seek an interview with his person. In the
presence of his silence he, an object in excess, can make a
demand on me. And it is my task to speak the questions that
defend the meaning of his silence. Questions I must ask which
overhear Okamoto’s silence as a silence of the corpse: Not
the remains of a past event, not a withered end but a demand
that I work at waking the corpse, at keeping it awake.
Walid Sadek
Café Casablanca, Beirut, 10 January 2008.
Al Turk
building on Tareek Al Jadeedah Street in Beirut where on
the 8th floor, members of the Japanese Red Army were
allegedly apprehended on the 18th of February 1997;
or how to retract the accusatory finger and learn to hear the
other’s demand. |
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