Image by Aurélien Mole

 

Excerpt from Permanent Trespass (Beirut of the Balkans and the American Century):

[Speaker 1]
It took me years to be interested enough to so much as read a historical fact.

My friends and I, we practiced a kind of anti-historical punk: live in the moment so as to remain convinced that you are smarter than those who came before.

[Speaker 2]
And now it seems like you have the opposite symptom, a noticeable belief, or even a hang-up, about the absolute necessity of organized groups, their power in connecting an individual’s idiosyncrasies to a shared memory.

[Speaker 1]
What did you call it the last time, was it “handmaiden of truth” or “midwife of truth”? Both so lyrical at any rate, both metaphors of feminine service.


Handmaiden or midwife?
(2023) is a site-specific text work installed on the glass facade of the Panorama space of Triangle-Asterides, as part of the artist’s solo exhibition.

The installation echoes lenticular Untitled n°3 (2023) which faces the facade, by recalling the memory of the last person to be guillotined in Europe, executed at the Baumettes prison in Marseille in 1977. The arrow diagram points in the direction of the prison, like an abolitionist compass.