Jayce Salloum - Works on Palestine

JAYCE SALLOUM

Works on Palestine: it’s more than about time..

Muqaddimah Li-Nihayat Jidal (Introduction to the end of an argument)/ Speaking for oneself... Speaking for others…

Muqaddimah Li-Nihayat Jidal (Introduction to the end of an argument)/ Speaking for oneself... Speaking for others…
Jayce Salloum & Elia Suleiman, 1990, 41:41

It’s about time.. and beyond time.. (but the world does worse than nothing) this can’t go on, into the third week +
74th year of the Nakba (“it’s not an event but a structure”).

This is a pathetically still appropriate film made over 40 years ago. With a combination of Hollywood, European and Israeli film, documentary, news coverage and excerpts of 'live' footage shot in the West Bank and Gaza strip, Introduction to the end of an argument... critiques representation of the Middle East, Arab culture, and the Palestinian people produced by the West.

The videotape mimics the dominant media's forms of representation, subverting its methodology and construction. A process of displacement and deconstruction is enacted attempting to arrest the imagery and ideology, decolonizing and recontextualizing it to provide a space for a marginalized voice consistently denied expression in the media.

Introduction to the end of an argument (Muqaddimah Li-Nihayat Jidal)/ Speaking for oneself... Speaking for others... from Jayce Salloum on Vimeo.

untitled part 3b: (as if) beauty never ends..

untitled part 3b: (as if) beauty never ends..
Jayce Salloum, 11:22, 2000 (2002)

As Gaza & the West Bank of Palestine continue to be attacked brutally and regularly by Israeli forces it is important to remember that these attacks have taken place throughout the last 74 years. This film was made shortly after the January - February 2002 massacres when 497 Palestinians were killed, 1,447 wounded and 7,000 people were detained by Israel.

In those two months there was an estimated $361 million USD worth of damage caused to Palestinian homes, hospitals and other institutions. This film is a more ambient work of many things, including orchids blooming, and plants growing, superimposed over raw footage from post massacre filmings of the 1982 massacre at Sabra and Shatila Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon.

Cloud footage, Hubbell space imagery, the visible body crosscuts, and abstract shots of slow motion water, add to this reflection of the past, its present context and forbearance. With the voice over of Abdel Majid Fadl Ali Hassan (a 1948 refugee living in Bourg El Barajneh camp) recounting a story told by the rubble of his home in Palestine, and the collection of audio accompanying the clips, the tape permeates into an intense essay on dystopia in contemporary times. Working directly, viscerally, and metaphorically the videotape provides an elegiac response to the Palestinian dispossession.

untitled part 3b: (as if) beauty never ends.. from Jayce Salloum on Vimeo.

untitled part 3a: occupied territories

untitled part 3a: occupied territories
Jayce Salloum, 23:00, 2001 (2000)

Excerpts from two conversations, one with Abdel Majid Fadl Ali Hassan (in Bourg al Barajinah refugee camp, near Beirut), and the other with Nameh Hussein Suleiman (in Baddawi refugee camp, near Tripoli, Lebanon), two elder Palestinians that have been living in the camps in Lebanon since they were children, forced to flee from their homes in Palestine in 1948.

They discuss their displacement and the condition of their lives in a brutal permanent temporariness. Abdel Majid discusses issues of dispossession, and recites an eloquent poem told by the ruins of his house in Palestine where once he was allowed visit after his first 30 years of forced absence, and Nameh recounts her journey of exile and the present situation of her life.

untitled part 3a: occupied territories from Jayce Salloum on Vimeo.

re-engagements

re-engagements
16” x 20” Ektacolor photographs, 1988 (1991)

Original video footage for these images was shot during what is commonly referred to as the ‘first’ Intifada in Palestine-Israel (1987-1988) (but actually this was the 2nd Intifada (or the 10th+) as people never seem to remark about the 1936-1939 uprising where 2,000 Palestinians where killed when demanding their independence and the end of the policy of open-ended Jewish immigration and colonial settlement and British colonialism.)

Leaving the Occupied Territories at the end of the research and production trip, I also collected material in Beirut (during midst of their ‘civil’ war). Paralleling with a critique of how mainstream media constructs meaning.. overlaying text onto the photographed images (shot off the screen from the video footage)… attempting to decompress/deconstruct the media’s prevailing ideologies inherent in their work.. concerned with how these ideological contracts manifest themselves in popular culture/imagery and manipulate perceptions of ourselves and others..

LAND PLACE PROMISE, ~~(piece) of the pie)~~ object of consumption…consummation…consternation (desires forsaken..steward no more..), Mom pointing out where we live; reg. 8mm film to video #re_engagements

(ruin) desire as it were – your destiny, our finish not a predilection to endings nor piece de resistance.. driving by/once temples now tombs your bombs succeed, E. Beirut, ‘88 you cover distance well..

effect-affect.. pressure/blessure.. wound to the fact ~~against~~ still tell –speech wound to the fact…damage of history-crux of pain. deleterious ~~eff~~ affect…

(unnecessary illusions): figures faithful ~~l severed state)~~ state encases conformed tromp l’oeil structures systems of belief/roadside shrine to martyrs (camouflage) E. Beirut, ’88 shrine light evening

H O M E . . (blocked passages) yard and alleyways, concrete slabs stacked by soldiers to control movement and access, Jabalia Camp, Gaza, Occupied Territories of Palestine,-lobbying oof tear gas inside homes penetrated (lungs) bullets (fly) heads + shoulder level. .- - “ no, mistake here”.restrict constrict flying by disatance covered separate vehicles ~ a safe measure., July 1988 (91)

( . techniques - - of - - power - - and - - acquisition). . --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------______________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________

Lists: goiing through pictures of martyrs killed by soldiers..children collecting like ours collect ~~iing~~ baseball cards..pronouncements proper names known date ~~said~~ and times age camps villages and how. (Jabalia refugee ‘camp’, 1988)

or is only the beginning, END OF STORY, Lebanese Broadcasting Co., ‘88 #re_engagements #signsofthetimes #attheendofmodernity #againandalways

name my death. (some) ways to die in Gaza, , Jabalia ‘camp’ 88-91 at the hands of the occupying Israeli army..