Ivan Verlatyi

«Yael Bartana’s «and Europe will be stunned» as an example of anti-political

artwork»

Plan of the paper:

• Introduction;

• Main part:

• «Nightmares»;

• «Wall and tower»;

• «Assassination»;

• «Politization of Anti-Politics»;

• Conclusion;

• Bibliography.
Introduction

For the final paper our task is to provide an analysis of a text (in a broad meaning of this
concept), which articulates a vision of peace. For this purpose I’ve chosen a video installation «And
Europe will be stunned» by contemporary Jewish artist Yael Bartana. It might seem that analysis of
a philosophical text that examines the concept of peace would be a more fruitful and accurate way
to handle this assignment; I tend to disagree with that. Written philosophical text can engage with
the discussion of concept of peace more explicitly, and by that provide a more firm and specific
ground for a discussion; but, being more vague and distant from precise, video-text can give us a
larger picture and wider range of possible interpretation. I suppose that Bartana’s work is a perfect
example of such video-text.
«And Europe will be stunned» constructs a fictional historic narrative of the return of Jewish
people into Poland and establishment of the «Jewish renaissance movement». Further in my essay I
will examine the body of the work, but in introduction I want to outline the main purposes of such
approach. Fictional approach in Bartana’s work inverts reality, distances a viewer from it, but
simultaneously attracts him, because it engages with a very important part of his identity — history.
History as an institution is always political — we remember certain events and that they happened
in a certain way, leading to certain results. But if context of a historical event is changed, the event
itself can not be perceived dogmatically. Bartana’s approach, which sometimes referred to as
«parafiction»1, makes a historical event «lose» its place in memory, and a viewer can not approach
it automatically. That allows him to be more objective (although it is fair to say that a lot of people
ignore such opportunity), to take a step back to see a bigger picture.
For these reasons I believe that «And Europe will be stunned» is a perfect text for analysis.
It not only discusses peace within the plot of the video, but by its own structure raises an issue of
«politics», dogmatization of our judgements, which is central for vision of both peace of the
artwork and prophetic peace. Moreover, I believe that such approach becomes especially powerful
in the context of the Middle East (for example, one of the most famous «parafictive» projects was
conducted in 1989-2004 by Lebanese artist Walid Raad)2, as history remains underlying factor in
the process of any conversation between parties.

1 «In parafiction, real and / or imagined characters and stories are intertwined with the world we live in» — from
«Make-Believe : Parafiction and Plausibility» by C. Lambert-Beatty in «October», vol. 129, MIT press, 2009.
2 https://www.theatlasgroup1989.org
«Mary Koszmary/Nightmares»

The first film of the trilogy is called «Mary Koszmary» in Polish, the «original» language of
the series. What is interesting about this title is that it contains not only the word «nightmares»,
which is used as an English translation of the title, but also the word «Mary». «Mara» in Polish has
a meaning of a dream, and I think that juxtaposition of something scary and something hopeful in
the title is deliberate. In some way, the title serves as a metaphor for the whole movie, that feels like
one long audio-visual counterpoint. I tend to believe that the first part of Bartana’s work is a unity
of 2 opposite messages, located in 2 different levels of perception.
The cinematic language, that Bartana uses to present the hero of her first movie, sets the
tone of the whole trilogy. We see the antagonist, Polish politician portrayed by real activist
Sławomir Sierakowski, entering an abandoned stadium in Warsaw through the tunnel and then
giving a speech. The location itself brings up many associations for any viewer. Stadium is a place
of mass gatherings, where people are captivated by an action, where their subjectivity is replaced by
a collective mind. Such state of mind, sometimes also referred to as a «mind of crowd» is also
usually used to describe people, who blindly follow political slogans — so, the opening shots of the
film instantly provoke an eerie feeling of being manipulated or, at least, being lead blindly.
Moreover, explicit references to Leni Riefenstahl’s artistic techniques (for example, camera shot
from upwards of a politician against the sky) intensifies these feelings. Such visual style is
exploited throughout the whole film series, and I believe that Bartana is very conscious in her
choice.
In his speech, Sierakowski addresses his Polish citizens and the descendants of Polish Jews,
who left the country in the XX century:

Jews, Fellow countrymen, People! Peeeooople! You think that the old woman that
sleeps under Rivke’s quilt doesn’t want to see you? Has forgotten about you? You’re
wrong. She dreams about you every night. Dreams and trembles with fear. Since the
night you were gone and her mother reached for your quilt, she has nightmares. Bad
dreams. Only you can chase them away. Let the three million Jews that Poland has
missed stand by her bed and finally chase away the demons. Return to Poland, to your/
our country!
The speech paints a picture of re-unification, of peace. In this sense it resonates a lot with the idea
of prophetic peace, as in contains the unity of opposites (return of something foreign into very
homogeneous Poland):

«This is a call, not to the dead but to the living. We want three million Jews to return to
Poland, we want you to live with us again.»3

Sounding ridiculous at first — how can one imagine a return of nearly 3 million people to a
country? — Sierakowski’s message suggests two different, but equally important visions of peace:
the first of one people with the other, and the second of people with themselves, with their past.
The former idea is perceived ambiguously in the almost totalitarian visual framing of the
movie; the Leader invites the Jews to return, to «remake» the present national structure of the
county.

«Who will pull Poland out of the mire so that it does not sink? Let us not wait for the
global market to make us all similar, let us not wait for a new outbreak of nationalisms
—these tumours on the body of the free market—to pit us against each other or against
others. Instead of identical let us become one.»

Anti-nationalistic voice of Bartana’s character welcomes the unity of opposites, without

which there will be no balance; without the one, he claims, there can not truly be another. But return
of the Jews would not only be important for the present and future, but would also unveil a very
important past.
The perception of the Shoah as not only temporal, but spatial idea is not uncommon in the
post-Shoah culture. For example, in his essay «Prisms» Theodor Adorno refers to the Auschwitz as
to the point not only on the map, but also on the time-line: «to write poetry after Auschwitz is
barbaric»4. In people’s minds the Holocaust has a certain embodiment, and the return of Jews to
Poland would mean not only the re-unity of people, but also the process of facing a very traumatic
shared past. I believe that the film actually addresses a much wider picture, in which huge part of

3 ‘Mary Koszmary (Nightmares)’, speech by Sławomir Sierakowski.

4 Theodor Adorno, ‘Kulturkritik und Gesellschaft’, in Gesammelte Schriften, vol 10, no 1, p 30; in English as ‘Cultural
Criticism and Society’, in Prisms, trans Samuel and Shierry Weber, MIT Press, Cambridge, 1981, p 34.
the canvas is dedicated to Israel and Palestine. Bartana is speaking about 2 nations sharing
important — almost nation-building — memories and the land, to which the memories are bound.
Both relationship of Israel-Poland and Israel-Palestine are fitting into this pattern, and I suppose that
the Bartana has chosen the only form, in which that could have been possible. Fictional narrative
distances a viewer from the film, yet allowing him to perceive and analyze it. I suppose that Bartana
uses this artistic technique to deconstruct painful ongoing conversations, which are very hard to
engage with outside of some political narrative. But, in order to do that, one has to overcome numb
comprehension of the past, not to go along with traditional perception. And this is exactly what
Bartana does in the second movie of her trilogy.

«Mur i Wiez ̇ a/Wall and Tower»

Second movie of the trilogy is a visual documentation of the return. Jewish settlers, dressed
in a clothing, reminding one of the early Zionists from the 30-s, are building a wooden settlement in
the center of the city, in the park near the remains of the Warsaw ghetto. Visually, movie is very
similar to the works of social realism — cinematic movement, born in the early USSR and actively
embraced by the Zionists in the beginning of the XX century.

What for me personally is stunning in the second movie is the purity of its narrative. It does
not look like a parody, quite the opposite, using the visual techniques of an ideological political
narrative, Bartana creates a very compelling image of a victory over the tragedy of past. Proud
Jewish people have reclaimed their land, have built a city near the ruins. Yet, the Jewish return to
Poland is perceived in very eerie way. Settlers are building, as hinted in the title, a frontier like the
one built in Palestine in 1930-s. Overnight, a solid wooden settlement is erected, and the presence is
established — «We are here to stay». The notion of return is very important here: Jewish people are
coming back to Warsaw and, thus, come back to Shoah (Warsaw ghetto). They come closer to the
trauma of their past, but have no other means to face it but to try to conquer it — I believe that is the
reason why erection of the settlement looks so intimidating and monumental. Bartana’s heroes are
trying to deal with the past by re-enacting other past, consolidate their nationality in a symbol, but
 doing that they fail not only to nd peace within, but to make it with someone else. There is no
place for a victory in peace.

Again, the visual language of the artwork combines opposite images, that seem impossible
to be combined. Walls, a watchtower, barbed wire in the middle of Warsaw — a place for Jews to
live, segmented from the outside world. Yet, I believe that obvious similarities between the Jewish
settlement and a ghetto do not suggest that Jews are just «like the Nazis». The purpose of such
image is not to compare one with another, but to bring up an emotion, which is provoked by both of
these narratives. «Purity», nationality, even though they give power, do not give peace, quite the
opposite, they always segregate one from the other, divide people into «us» and «them». This idea
is most explicitly expressed in a movie, when the new settlers are painting their new ag on the
wall. Merged star of David and Polish eagle are painted in red — color, which directly associates
with many historical political powers, including the Nazi Germany. «Flags formulate an implicit
call to arms; they convoke people belonging to a nation, political party or team. Their objective is
to signal and conquer, establishing a dichotomy of inclusion and exclusion.»5

It is dif cult to call «The Wall and Tower» an exaggeration or a parody. Bartana simply uses
visual narrative, which is very politicized, but the notion of ctiveness of the plot makes it look
strange and totalitarian. I believe that that is another important characteristic of the work:
para ction itself is a unity of opposites and ani-politics. This allows us to look at the work in a
much «reactive» way, engage with it more freely.

By coming back to their national history (the «Wall and Tower» strategy of early Zionists),
settlers are only repeating the past, re-act the tragedy, but this time trying to conquer it. The
settlement seems odd, out-of-place, and even if the intentions of making peace are mutual (at the
end, it were the Polish who invited Jews to return), they are doomed to failure, if realized
automatically, «politically». The peace, which is based on the compromise — or, in other words,
one in which both sides are doing only what’s good exclusively for them — will not last, and in
«Assassination» we see the consequences.

«Zamach/Assassination»

5 «Loudspeaker and Flag: Yael Bartana, from Documentation to Conjuration» by Volker Pantenburg in Afterall: A
Journal of Art, Context and Enquiry , Issue 30 (Summer 2012), p 52.
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 The last film of the triptych explores the aftermath of the Jewish return to Poland. Leader of
the JRMiP, Sławomir Sierakowski, is assassinated, and Bartana shows his funeral ceremony,
attended by the members of the movement. Concentrating a lot on Polish context (for example,
shots of JRMiP rallies were shot in Warsaw in front of by-passers, «bonding» the plot with an issue
of Jewish-Polish relations), Bartana continues to hint the larger picture, that she aims to paint in her
work. I believe that «assassination» is the most explicit movie of the trilogy from this point of view,
as allusions on the figure of Yitzhak Rabin here inevitably bring up Israel and Palestine.
During the video we hear speeches of different characters, marking the death of a leader.
Movie begins with a 1-minute long siren, that «accompanies» the ceremony (again, reminding the
Remembrance Day ceremony in Israel). The ceremony ends with a speech of 2 children, members
of the movement:

Sławomir! Your heritage, which combines Judaism and universality, commands us to

have ever-lasting faith. Poles and Jews together, we shall advance, shoulder to shoulder,
in the name of the noble ideal of co-existence. Together we shall prevent the surges of
nationalism and racism from flooding Europe.

It might seem that the death of Sławomir has served as a redemption for the people, that it
has brought them together for the sake of the future. Yet, the visual language of the work suggests
something different: «Through the device of the evocation of grand communist state funerals with
the displayed body of the leader lying in state, a condolence book, formal speeches and mourning
crowds, the film evokes the excesses of the personality cult that became part of Eastern Europe’s
Communist era, complete with a gigantic statue of the bespectacled Sławomir.»6 Again, Bartana
presents us a vision of peace, but it is unreachable because of the form, the language, with which it
is articulated.

The artwork seems to examine a clash between left and right wings — different approaches
inside modern western political structure. Even though Bartana may seem to present the left-winged
JRMiP as the one a viewer should emphasize with, I think that her idea is quite the opposite.
Throughout the whole trilogy movement, which stands for inclusivity and liberality has a

6 «Dreams or Nightmares» by Griselda Pollock in "Series Preface: New Encounters: Arts, Cultures, Concepts."
Visioning Israel-Palestine: Encounters at the Cultural Boundaries of Conflict. Ed. Gil Pasternak. London: Bloomsbury
Visual Arts, 2020. p 133.
significant number of «right-wing» details: aggressive marches, people with masks and
transporants, eventual cult of a leader. I suppose that a lot of people would share my impression and
agree, that JRMiP does not seem like a representation of some kind of ideology; rather it looks like
collective image of a political movement in general.

Yet, I would not say that the third part of the trilogy simply underlines the similarities
between different political thoughts. It seems to me that it rather highlights, that a dogmatic,
political expression of any goal can not serve a road to peace, because it eventually will divide
people into groups, who chase their own goals. This idea is very accurately embodied in the
manifesto of JRMiP, which states:

We want to return! [...] We want to see the squares in Warsaw, Łódz ́ and Kraków filled
with new settlements. [...]We are revivifying the Zionist phantasmagoria. We reach back
to the past — to the imagined world of migration, political and geographical
displacements to the disintegration of reality as we knew it. [...] Join us!

The movement is calling for the re-evaluation of political values, but at the end of the day this
approach consists not a change, but a substitution. In the same way as erection of a Wall and Tower
near the Warsaw ghetto would mean not the «conquest» of a national trauma, but the performative
act of change, that would not lead to inner peace.

Conclusion

I believe that «And Europe will be stunned» is one of the most important works by a Middle
Eastern author that addresses peace and the way people understand it. It is possible to find the
characteristics of Prophetic peace in Bartana’s work, but they would not appear to be very explicit;
rather, they are hidden in the structure of the artwork and in the way the artist presents the plot.
Bartana concentrates on idea of peace between Jewish people and their past, but
simultaneously is addressing other similar situationы, for example one of Polish people and, I
suppose, also Palestinians. The Shoah in collective memory is not only «when», it also is «where».
The topic of post-Holocaust has been addressed very dogmatically due to significance of the trauma
(again, Adorno’s words can be mentioned)7; nation-wide mourning rituals can serve as example of
such dogmatization of collective memory. An individual is not important during such events, it is
the nation that mourns together to commemorate a tragic event. So, any individual not participating
in this commemoration is always stigmatized and condemned. I am not trying to give any
evaluation to this situation, my only goal is to underline the fact that such action of «outsiding»
someone happens as an instant reaction, because lack of mourning is regarded as an offense. Any
different approach to the topic within this act of mourning is regarded at least strange and
unwelcomed. Simultaneously, the performative part of such ceremonies is more important, because
its goal is recreation and repetition, and not the process if re-living a tragedy or coming to terms
with it. A conversation, search for solution on such topic becomes a mathematical problem that
needs to fitted to a known answer, because the topic itself is too painful to look at. Thus, in order to
escape such idealised narrative we need a «deconstruction of the aesthetically compelling dreams
(or nightmares?) of the past that still imaginatively line and even mask the reality of this new
present.»8
Neither I, nor Bartana are trying to say that the Naqba and Holocaust are similar to each
other. I suppose that the artwork is trying to underline the fact that there is a similarity relationships
of a people to their collective trauma, and that art is (or at least has capacity to be) capable of de-
politisizing these traumas, helping them to engage into conversation with each other and, possibly,
with the others. I believe that this is the most important vision of peace that can be found in the
trilogy, which itself in its structure serves as a metaphor for peace. Only by deconstructing «numb»
narrative, by de-politicizing the language we use to talk about our past and by bringing others into
this conversation it is possible to reach peace. Re-presentation, re-understanding of traumatically
shared past might lead to contemplation, from investment into the burdens of the past (which
always are historical and, thus, political) to possibility of conversation in the future.

Bibliography:

7 Theodor Adorno, ‘Kulturkritik und Gesellschaft’, in Gesammelte Schriften, vol 10, no 1, p 30; in English as ‘Cultural
Criticism and Society’, in Prisms, trans Samuel and Shierry Weber, MIT Press, Cambridge, 1981, p 34.
8 «Dreams or Nightmares» by Griselda Pollock in "Series Preface: New Encounters: Arts, Cultures, Concepts."
Visioning Israel-Palestine: Encounters at the Cultural Boundaries of Conflict. Ed. Gil Pasternak. London: Bloomsbury
Visual Arts, 2020. — p 124.
• «In parafiction, real and / or imagined characters and stories are intertwined with the world we
live in» — from «Make-Believe : Parafiction and Plausibility» by C. Lambert-Beatty in
«October», vol. 129, MIT press, 2009.
• "Kulturkritik und Gesellschaft», in Gesammelte Schriften, vol 10, no 1, p 30; in English as
«Cultural Criticism and Society» by Theodor Adorno, in Prisms, trans Samuel and Shierry
Weber, MIT Press, Cambridge, 1981.
• «Loudspeaker and Flag: Yael Bartana, from Documentation to Conjuration» by Volker
Pantenburg in Afterall: A Journal of Art, Context and Enquiry , Issue 30 (Summer 2012).
• «Dreams or Nightmares» by Griselda Pollock in "Series Preface: New Encounters: Arts,
Cultures, Concepts." Visioning Israel-Palestine: Encounters at the Cultural Boundaries of
Conflict. Ed. Gil Pasternak. London: Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2020.

Other resources:
• Video installation «And Europe will be stunned» by Y. Bartana
• Part 1: https://vimeo.com/95032378
• Part 2: https://vimeo.com/95094875
• Part 3: https://vimeo.com/149646326
• «The Atlas group» project by Walid Raad: https://www.theatlasgroup1989.org