Offing

“We have a rule of thumb here: So long as you can still hear, then you are alive.’ The Gaza-based artist Salman Nawati says these words in my film. Hearing is said to be the last sensation to endure at the threshold of mortality. The film explores how to project images onto others’ accounts of suffering, pondering the space where speech and imagination meet. I try to subvert, rather than represent, the horror alluded to, reaching instead to the tender and mundane, with close-up, somewhat lush footage that I have shot over the years. Time-based media becomes a magical tool for this subversion; the simple act of reversing or changing the speed of things past offers the possibility of rewriting horrific events. The word offing means the farthest, most distant part of the sea in view. Nawati alludes to an illusion of freedom when looking at the horizon of the Mediterranean Sea from the shores of Gaza, finding consolation when boundaries are not present in one’s field of view, despite being trapped under Israeli siege with nowhere to flee to in times of war.”

Oraib Toukan