Letter to a Refusing Pilot: Akram Zaatari at the Venice Biennale

Lebanese Pavilion, Arsenale

Last week I traveled to Venice, Italy for the 55th Biennale with Sotheby’s. Everyone in my program had to present on either an artist or national pavilion and I presented on the Lebanese Pavilion at the Arsenale. The artist chosen to represent Lebanon is Akram Zaatari, 47, an archival artist, historian, film-maker, photographer and curator. The message behind his piece, “Letter to a Refusing Pilot” is simply beautiful. The work is a 35 minute film and video installation. Zaatari, who was born in Sidon, Lebanon and is currently based in Beirut, explores issues pertinent to the post-war Lebanon condition. Lebanon was present in the Venice Biennale for the first time in 2007 and returns this year after being absent in 2009 and 2011.

The story told in “Letter to a Refusing Pilot” is non-linear and uses over 5 decades of the artist’s personal materials. When Zaatari, was 16 years old in 1982, a rumor circulated around his small town in Southern Lebanon, which was then occupied by Israeli forces. The rumor stated that an Israeli fighter pilot had received orders to bomb a target on the outskirts of Saida, but the pilot, knowing that the target was a school, refused to carry out the mission, went against orders, swerved off-course and dropped his bomb into the sea. The rumor maintained that the pilot knew the target was a school because he was a former student there and that his family had lived in the city for generations because he was born into the Saida-Jewish community before it disappeared.

A little bit about Lebanon’s geographic makeup and history:

The country is bordered by Syria to the north and east and Israel to the south. The Lebanese Civil War (1975-1990) was a complex civil war resulting in over 100,000 fatalities. When Israel established itself in 1948 after World War II, about 100,000 Palestinian refugees were displaced to Lebanon shifting the demographic background in favor of the Muslim population. The government was previously dominated by Maronite Christians since the state was created as a safe haven for them by French colonial powers. During the Cold War, the Christians sided with the West, while the Left-wing and Muslim groups sided with the Soviet aligned Arab countries. Fighting between the Maronite and Palestinian forces began in 1975 abd Left-wing and Muslim Lebanese groups later aligned themselves with the Palestinians. Foreign powers intervened and entered the war and Syria occupied most of Lebanon, while Israel occupied Southern Lebanon.

Back to the story: Zaatari’s father had been the founder and director of that exact school that was supposed to be bombed for twenty years. The school was eventually bombed by another pilot and severely damaged. Decades later, it was revealed that the pilot was real and was born and raised on a kibbutz (a collective community in Israel, traditionally based on agriculture with a structure loosely based on Communism). The pilot’s name was Hagai Tamir and he had never been to Southern Lebanon like the rumor alleged, but like Zaatari, he studied architecture and could positively identify a school house when he saw one from his aerial view. His choice to disobey orders was a his refusal to bomb the school was a secret known only in tight circles for twenty years, until ten years ago when he finally spoke of the act in Israel.

This piece captures the essence of refusal as a conscious decision and generative act. It doesn’t only express adulation, it’s not simply an ode to the pilot and it’s more complex that a mere thank-you letter. Zaatari is continuing an impossible dialogue that the pilot started with the initial act of refusal. The piece’s title is a nod to Albert Camus’ “Letter to a German Friend,” which enforces Zaatari’s interest in excavated narratives and the distribution of images in times of war. Camus, who was a French writer and proponent of existentialism who wrote during his own struggle against violence in the Paris occupation, said “I should like to be able to love my country, and still love justice.” The importance in the story is that is gives a face to the school he’s about to bomb and a face to the pilot and reverberates the message that even in times of war during heightened nationalism, everyone is still a human being. The conflict between ethics and orders is highlighted as a moral dilemma.

The film was shot in the neighborhood around the school, which has since been rebuilt and incorporates aerial photographs, photos from Zaatari’s own life and childhood, drawings, computer imaging and some of the artist’s personal effects (including a copy of Le Petit Prince) to tell the narrative from the perspective of a teenage boy . One of the opening scenes was shot with a standard HD camera attached to a drone–something that questions technology during modern warfare.

The entire installation includes a film reel projector, a single movie theater chair under a spotlight with its back toward the screen and a number of cylindrical stools. The movie chair may be read in one of two possible ways–as a throne for the pilot or as a seat for a viewer–a representative figure who is unaware of the immediate circumstances in war-riddled territories. The visual display and literary representation unpack a critical dialogue in the context of post-war Lebanon.

Zaatari investigates the way television and media sources mediate territorial conflicts/wars and is particularly interested in the logic of religious and national resistance movements and the shifting natures of boarders and the circulation and production of images in the context of today’s geographic division in the Middle East. His videos and photo installations look into technologies of image production and communication and the notions of surveillance. His work has also explored male representations of sexuality. Zaarari is interested in salvaging and preserving the past in challenging the perceived norms of history. He is also interested in the intersection of truth and legend.

“Different subjects, characters and figures that I have dealt with in my work in the past never leave me. They often reappear in my life and find their way to reemerge in other later works. They totally inhabit my imagination and make me realize they turn my work into a theater of limitless possibilities. It’s a theater where strangers from different worlds find themselves on a stage face-to-face.” -Akram Zaatari