Courtesy of the artist and Alexander and BoninIn 1972, in response to the Munich massacre of Israeli Olympic athletes, Israeli Mossad agents assassinated the Palestinian intellectual Wael Zuaiter in Rome. They fired 13 shots. 12 hit Zuaiter and 1 hit a copy of “A Thousand and One Nights” that was in Zuaiter’s pocket. Zuaiter was in the midst of translating the book from Arabic into Italian.
To commemorate the event Jacir has created an ongoing documentary, “Material for a Film,” One element of the piece has Jacir shooting 1000 white books successively, “each with one bullet using the same gun the Mossad had used”
Here is an excerpt from an interview with Jacir that appears in the New York Times piece Border Crossings Between Art and Life by Michael Z. Wise.
Michael Z. Wise: Why did you want to symbolically re-enact Zuaiter’s shooting?
Emily Jacir: This piece is based on one element of Wael’s story that I discovered during my research, which was that he was killed by 12 bullets at close range to his body, but there was a 13th bullet which struck his copy of “A Thousand and One Nights.” Wael’s dream had been to translate “A Thousand and One Nights” directly from Arabic into Italian. He had been working on this project since his arrival in Italy. This alone inspired an entire performance in which I shot 1,000 books each with one bullet using the same gun the Mossad had used to kill Palestinians in Europe. The books were white, and they were blank and symbolized the thousands of stories that have not been written and will not be written.
MZW: How did you learn that he had been carrying that book?
EJ: The Rome police found Volume 2 of “A Thousand and One Nights” on Wael’s body in his pocket pierced with a 13th bullet. At 6 a.m. they came to [Zuaiter’s companion] Janet Venn-Brown’s apartment to inform her of the murder and take her in for questioning. It was then that they gave her the book, which she safeguarded for 30 years. She then donated the book to the Wael Zuaiter Center in Massa Carrara [a province in Tuscany], where you can go see it if you’d like.
“Material for a Film” was featured at the 2007 Venice Biennale and the 2008 Home Works Forum.
Jacir is the recipient of the Venetian Golden Lion Award, the first Palestinian to win the award, and the 2008 Hugo Boss Award, an award overseen by the Guggenheim Foundation, and given in recognition of “significant achievement” by a contemporary artist.
More..
Piece by Najwan Darwish on Jacir at This Week in Palestine
Story at electronic intifada
Piece by Kaelen Wilson-Goldie on Jacir at The National, Her Dark Materials
Also of note:
Untitled, Emily Jacir and Anton Sinkewich, 2003This suspended bookshelf features books on or about Palestine and books by Palestinian writers.
The piece was included in the 2003 exhibition Made in Palestine at the Station Museum