- Could you please describe the video that was released by the end of 2007 and distributed over media all over the world, which is the main reason for this conversation?
The video shows a woman sitting on a wooden bench facing -- although never looking at -- the camera in a 3/4 angle. She has very long hair, is extremely thin, and her hands are held together softly yet tied by a chain. She is wearing beige linen clothing and tall rain boots. To her back is a lush, green jungle, overwhelmingly alive, wet, green, spilling sounds of insects, animals and wind. The cameraperson holds the camera steadily though it slightly shakes. He consistently zooms in and out to show her eyes. Although there are no words, he seems to be forcing the woman to stare at us, onlookers of an intimate scene of muted pain and transgression that lasts 55 seconds. He fails as she silently denies her gaze.
- What is so strange about it? Who is the woman? Could you put it into a context that explains it better?
The woman is Ingrid Betancourt, a former presidential candidate from Colombia held captive by the FARC guerrillas. The video is part of recent proofs of the survival of several kidnapped persons seized from the abductors by Colombian authorities during a recent failed humanitarian exchange plan.
- What was actually the most striking point for you in that gesture of “recognition”?
This video has had a profound impact on me. I will try to briefly explain why. Ms. Betancourt currently stands as an emblematic figure of kidnapping in Colombia. She has been kidnapped for 5+ years and given her political background and double nationality (half French), her case has been consistently reported. Although the specifics of her case and kidnapping in Colombia deserve ample reflection I want to concentrate here on what this recent video represents to me, which is an image of “the victim’s dignity”.
- What do you mean by “the victim’s dignity”? Is it a kind of public invigilation of private emotion, or...?
The purpose of such a proof of survival is to prove that the victim is alive and thus encourage continuing the negotiations. It is made to be public, to be distributed by the media and commented upon. It is an image of pain, an inherently political game meant to show off power. It instrumentalises the victim’s lack of freedom doubly since it exposes his/her most vulnerable state without shame or respect. These proofs however are a way of communication – the only one- between the victims and their families and also they might be ways of temporal escape.
- Could you be more precise in terms of reflecting on the actual status of such a victim? How do you see it (between life and death, she says "we have been living like the dead")…. Who is the victim here?
Ms. Betancourt’s video is devastating in all aspects I can think of. It primarily confronts us with her suffering, the impact of time on her seemingly ill body, the inhumane conditions in which her days go by. At the same time it showed me the jungle in its rawness, that impenetrable space of the Colombian south which I don’t dare to enter, not even in my dreams. That super-natural landscape of lawless piranhas and pink dolphins; home to the disappeared, the dead, the victims of the 50-year-old civil war.
- That is an interesting point, as you try to reflect through your artwork about political conditions in Latin America from an aesthetic perspective?
Something that struck me about this video is it made me think of representation, of the indexical and symbolic nature of images, of composition and framing. Along these lines I can’t escape to view this document from an aesthetic perspective, perhaps as a work of art. I recognize in the video a bit of Caravaggio’s "Saint Thomas Putting his Finger on Christ's Wound," or Robert Capa’s "Death of a Loyalist Soldier." These are iconic and aesthetic representations of pain. The cameraman carefully insisted in framing with “correct” camera angles and consistently presented Ms. Betancourt’s dead-center on the frame. The cameraman victimized her again. as if her kidnapping wasn't enough, he to attack her with his gaze, to show us her grief... But Ms. Betancourt remained still. Although she sees us looking at her, although she sees the world reproducing her image in posters and banners, although she embodies her experiential and our empathic pain, she chose to remain still, silent, to deny us her gaze. By doing so she reclaimed her dignity, she demanded respect, she freed herself from the chains, she claimed her autonomy. She pronounced her freedom.
Watch the video
More information on Colombia's conflict:
Carlos Motta is a Colombian born artist working on a variety of socio-political themes.
Before the official start of the Victims' symptom, planned for early 2008, a serial of interviews will be published on this blog. Besides commenting, you can send your proposals with questions or full interviews that would shape the upcoming discussion.
Upcoming interview with Peter Fuchs
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