Series of digital prints, fine art paper mounted on Dibond, 50 x 50 cm (2016 – ongoing)
French title: Non-Lieu
Dismissed (Non-Lieu) is a series of images depicting bombings in Gaza and Syria, in which the part that would allow them to be located has been erased. The juxtaposition of these two elements – the blank surface of the screen and the truncated image – aims to question the invisibility to which this land and its reality are subjected in the media.
The term ‘dismissed’ refers, on the one hand, to the erasure of part of the image, the location of which is unknown to us; but also, in legal terminology, to the dismissal of legal proceedings due to the impossibility of establishing liability. These two aspects raise questions about what technology, in this instance, enables us to not see.
‘We set things aside without realising it; that is precisely where the danger lies. Or, worse still, we set things aside through an act of will, but an act of will that is concealed from ourselves. And then we no longer realise that we have set them aside. We do not want to know, and by dint of not wanting to know, we end up being unable to know. This capacity to set things aside makes all crimes possible.”
(Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace, 1947).
Images: © Borchee / iStock licence