Larissa Sansour: Archaeology Projects
Narrative resistance and a history yet to come
Larissa Sansour, In the Future They Ate from the Finest Porcelain 2 (2016), Archival pigment print. Courtesy of the artist.
With text by Søren Lind, author, visual artist and film director.
In her most recent body of works, Palestinian artist Larissa Sansour merges science fiction, archaeology and Middle Eastern politics to examine the impact of myth and fiction on fact, history and national identity. Spanning across film, sculpture, performance and installation, these works are all inspired by the instrumentalized archaeology taking place in Israel/Palestine. In the absence of a real peace process, archaeology has become a method for settling land disputes, and the discipline has lost its innocence as a sub-branch of historical studies. Unearthed artifacts are used in support of nationalist narratives establishing the idea of historical entitlement.
In the Future They Ate from the Finest Porcelain
The centerpiece is a 29-minute science fiction short entitled In the Future They Ate from the Finest Porcelain. Combining live motion and CGI, the film takes the form of a fictional video essay. A voice-over based on an interview between a psychiatrist and the female leader of a group that resists through their narratives reveals her philosophy. As long as myth is established, implemented and widely disseminated, it will never be hampered by its truth value. The longer a myth persists, the more likely it is to assume the form of fact and documentary.
The narrative resistance group makes underground deposits of porcelain - for future archaeologists to excavate. Their aim is to influence history and support future claims to their vanishing lands. Once unearthed, this tableware will interfere with current versions of history. By implementing a myth of its own, the group's work becomes a historical intervention - de facto creating a nation.
As the film progresses, the narrative and visuals alternate between the theoretical and the personal. The resistance leader's deceased twin sister makes a crucial appearance as the story takes the viewer deeper and deeper into the resistance leader's subconscious.
Archaeology in Absentia
In the Future They Ate from the Finest Porcelain started as an idea for a performance. The intention was to carry out multiple deposits across Israel/Palestine and to facilitate a historical revision at some point in the future when the artifacts were unearthed. The sculpture and performance piece Archaeology in Absentia revisits the original idea, thus turning the fiction of the film into fact.
In real-life performance, 15 deposits of porcelain carrying the iconic keffiyeh pattern were buried across Israel/Palestine - in places such as Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Ramallah, Acre, Haifa, Jericho, Jaffa, Nazareth and the Dead Sea. A series of black and white photos document the locations. The coordinates of each deposit, longitude and latitude, are engraved on 15 discs, each fitted inside a 20 cm bronze mutation replica modeled on a Cold War Russian nuclear bomb. With the porcelain itself absent from the installation, the Fabergé-like bomb shells and the references they hold represent the archaeological artifacts in absentia.
The installation lends a familiar, yet destructive shape to the idea of instrumentalized archaeology as a new form of warfare - while referencing the form of a Fabergé egg and hence discretely alluding to the notion of contemporary political artworks as suspended between the reality they are influenced by and their own status as luxury commodities.
The installation also reverses the natural relation between archaeological artifacts and museum. Instead of showcasing archaeological artifacts belonging to the past, the museums will be showing artifacts yet to be unearthed and hence display references to a history yet to come.
Revisionist Production Line
The final piece in Sansour's archaeology series is a large rubber, steel porcelain installation entitled Revisionist Production Line. The installation takes the idea of a narrative supported by archaeological evidence one stepfather. Instead of relying on artifacts already in the ground, Sansour suggests that manufacturing and planting archaeological evidence for future unearthing might be the most reliable approach to establishing a favorable counter-narrative. Revisionist Production Line embodies this idea by portraying a mass-production unit manufacturing porcelain for future entombment in the Palestinian underground.