Remembrance

This video merges text, imagery, and music to explore the role of memory in the experience of the defeated. It seeks to answer a profound question: What value does memory hold for those who have lost?

Inspired by the evolution of remembrance throughout the 20th century—particularly in communities that, due to historical and political circumstances or alliances with victorious nations, have used memory as a tool for justice and reparation—the video challenges this narrative. It asks: What good is memory to a land that has been conquered?

Western civilization has been shaped by illustrative literature, with poets often wielding the power of chronicles. Yet, as Clausewitz, the theorist of war, argued, geography ultimately dictates history. Mahmud Darwish identified himself as a Trojan poet, echoing the sentiment of the Greek writer Kavafis, who lamented the fate of the Trojans: “Memory and the passion of our days weep. Bitterly Priam and Hecuba weep for us.”

At the heart of the video is a female character representing Hecuba, the Trojan queen who, after witnessing the destruction of her city and the death of her children, is enslaved and transformed into a dog. In Ovid’s retelling, her suffering does not end with death—she is condemned to live on without family, without a home, and without sovereignty.

When children are sacrificed and the queen is reduced to captivity, what remains is a bark—a primal sound, a lament beyond language. The land, often depicted as a woman, is offered up, and no act of remembrance can undo the victor’s conquest. The video raises a final question: What happens to a diaspora that has no home to return to? If belonging to a defeated people means having no place, can their voices ever be more than a howl, a monument, a stone?

The project is part of the subtheme Remembrance. The memory in the aftermath of genocide. Diasporic people in foreign land.