“By the time you see this tape, I, comrade Jamâl
Sâtî, will have died” is believable,
but not: “I am the martyr comrade Jamâl
Sâtî.” While I can usually assume
in the present of videotaping my future state at the
time of broadcasting or screening, I cannot do so
in the case of death. I cannot believe Jamâl
Sâtî on TV telling me “I am the
martyr comrade Jamâl Sâtî…”
even if I am told that he had died in a martyring
operation by the time I saw him on TV (Jamâl
Sâtî, b. 1962, mortally blew up the explosives
hidden in two baskets on his donkey at the South Lebanon
Army checkpoint at Tallit Zaghla, Hâsbayya,
in the morning of 8/6/1985). And while I can categorically
assert “I will die,” I cannot deduce from
this that at one point in the future I can say, “I
am dead,” even if death is not a final disappearance.
Click on each of the four
posters to see enlarged versions
Magritte, Perspective II: Manet's "The
Balcony"
1950 - Oil on canvas, 81 x 60 cm
Museum Van Hedendaagse Kunst, Ghent, Belgium
The Tibetan Book of the Dead,
trans. Francesca Fremantle and Chögyam
Trungpa (Boston: Shambhala, 1975), p.49.
Friedrich Nietzsche, “Of
Redemption,” Thus Spoke Zarathustra,
trans. R.J. Hollingdale (London: Penguin Books,
1969), p. 160.
Was
one of Jamâl Sâtî’s
ears severed in the suicidal bombing he
carried out?
Exhibitions:
— Premiered at the 6th Sharjah International
Biennial, United Arab Emirates, 8 April -
8 May 2003.
