After War Games,
What we saw upon awaking
Lida Abdul
Exhibition from 29th September to 16th December 2006
In collaboration with 49 Nord 6 Est, FRAC Lorraine, Metz
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After War Games,
What we saw upon awaking
A 16mm Film transferred to DVD (colour, sound).
Frac Lorraine Production, 2006.
Ravaged by successive wars and strewn with shattered architecture, the Afghani landscape, which was the scene of several of her earlier films (“The White House”, 2005, among others), provides the setting for Lida Abdul’s latest film, “After war games, what we saw upon awaking”, which was shot in the close suburb of Kabul in 2006. The title refers to the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001, to the post-war period, and to what remains of her country today – a country whose inhabitants are reduced to reconstructing infrastructures and buildings in a climate of insecurity and political instability.
The opposition between empty space and structure is characteristic of Abdul’s work. The subject matter of her films – empty spaces that are transitory and damaged, abandoned houses that are
no more than ruins – contrasts with the formal and aesthetic treatment of the image which is,
in general, highly composed.
The film starts with shots of a dozen or so Afghani men, dressed in black, who are pulling at ropes in an effort to tear down something that we do not see until we are well into the film,
and which turns out to be a ruined house.* The task seems arduous, impossible, futile – almost unreal. The use of slow motion and silence, occasionally interrupted by the sound of falling stones, reinforce the dream-like feeling. The men pulling on the ropes sometimes seem like prisoners chained to the ruined house, powerless to move forward. Lida Abdul uses alternating shots to show the men pulling and the ruined building resisting. Human presence and architectural space are disassociated and contrasted. The dichotomy between life, work and construction on the one hand, and death and destruction on the other, is always present, through to the last scene
in which the men bury a stone from the wreck of the house – wrapped in a black sheet – in a little hole that has been dug in the ground, as if for the planting of a tree. The burial of this stone, which is the last remaining trace of the devastated building, is an act of mourning and remembrance.
* ‘There is little help from the government, so when people want to build something new they get rid of the ruins. There is something tragic in this, because many of these buildings are hundreds of years old. There is no attempt to conserve what is old; everybody wants something new. People don’t want to be reminded of the past and they will do anything to obtain a bit of land on which to build, even if they have to use materials from old buildings.’ Lida Abdul
Lida Abdul’s previous films made in Afghanistan also raise these questions of obliteration, erasure and loss of roots. Reclaiming roots may involve uprooting. Thus, in “Tree” (2004),
a group of men uproot a tree that was used by the Taliban for hanging dissidents. Similarly,
in “Grave” (2004), Afghani men take turns throwing stones into a grave, as an action of remembrance in honour of the martyrs. In “Clapping with Stones” (2005), men knock together
stones that were produced by the Taliban’s destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas, making a sound that can evoke both destruction and construction.
Houses and stones are recurring themes in Lida Abdul’s work (as are carpets); architecture, for her, is about identity. Symbols of protection, buildings prove to be fragile and destructible.
In her performances, the house or shelter is often one with the body of the artist. Her video, “Things We Fail to Leave Behind” (Los Angeles, 2003), shows Abdul wandering through the streets of the city pulling behind her two ropes that are attached to the plaster model of a house; the model gets progressively more and more damaged and ends up smashed to pieces. In “Things we Leave Behind” (2003), a performance carried out at the ocean’s edge, the artist positions four people symmetrically to symbolise a house. They lean against wooden posts as if propped up against stakes; she rolls cling film around them, forming a cube, a piece. Like pillars, the four men and women seem to be embedded, locked in place; if they try to leave, the building will fall down.
Through her experience of displacement and exile, Lida Abdul has acquired a distanced gaze and an active engagement towards her country of origin that continue to inhabit her work.
Delphine Goutes
Also showing:
Now, here and over there
Tania Bruguera and Lida Abdul
FRAC Lorraine, Metz 16 September > 5 November 2006
The artist will reactivate her Venice 2005 performance,
Ice performance, on September 15 at 8 pm.
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