The Sixth Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

45 Vimukthi Jayasundara Sri Lanka b.1977 Production still from Sulanga Enu Pinisa (The Forsaken Land) 2005 / 35mm, colour, Dolby SR, 108 minutes, Sri Lanka/France, Sinhala (English subtitles) / Image courtesy: Unlimited Films, Paris Sarah Singh India b.1971 Production still from The Sky Below 2007 / Digital video, black and white and colour, stereo, 76 minutes, India/ Pakistan, Urdu/Hindi/English/Punjab/Sindhi/Kashmiri (English subtitles) / Image courtesy: The artist Pathiraja and Prasanna Vithanage, attempts to reconcile the history, religious myth and political rhetoric which have brought both Tamil and Sinhalese nationalist discourse into being. Artists and filmmakers in Lebanon, Israel and Palestine underline the imbrication of faith, nationalism and memory, as well as the relationship between political instability and resistance across the Middle East. Cinematic approaches to its social and political situation often combine personal observations with performative devices designed to question the situations presented and their inscription in collective memory. First shot as a documentary before being reconstructed as an animated film, Ari Folman’s Vals Im Bashir (Waltz with Bashir) 2008 explores the trauma — and its legacy of unresolved guilt — that he experienced as a young Israeli conscript during the 1982 Israel–Lebanon war. 3 The soldier’s haunting dreams awaken a powerful examination of personal memory and responsibility independent of media versions of the events. In contrast, Avi Mograbi’s Z32 2008 uses musical numbers and a Greek chorus-like ensemble to reflect the director’s ambivalence at reducing to artistic representation a soldier’s confession of complicity in the death of two innocent Palestinian policemen. Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige’s Baddi Chouf (I Want to See) 2008 underlines the importance of bearing witness to historical events. The directors stage a road trip for French actress Catherine Deneuve and celebrated Lebanese artist–actor Rabih Mroué to survey the devastated regions of southern Lebanon after the 2006 Israel–Hezbollah War. Explaining their motivation for the experiment and its significance for international audiences, the directors have written: There are many things to be seen, but what do we see? . . . Catherine never pretends she knows, she is not affirming anything . . . Catherine herself says: ‘I don’t know if I’ll understand anything, but I want to see’. In today’s world, it is important to be in a time of questioning. We are never finished with what there is to see, the important [thing] is the feeling. 4