SLOW VIOLENCE
(TRACING THE INVISIBLE) 
  

   


To confront slow violence is to take up, in all its temporal complexity, the politics of the visible and the invisible. What happens when we are unsighted, when what extends before us, in the space and time that we most deeply inhabit, remains invisible? What are the ways to engage with a landscape that is constantly manipulated and controll

ed? And how can film capture the sediments of trauma, labour and suppressed violence that make up its composition? Through geographic journeys and encounters, the launching of this (online) space becomes a (temporary) form to engage with the present (for the future), and explores how film can bring the unseen out of the shadows.


*This website is a pinhole to a film in the making, launched by Inas Halabi during her stay at the Deltaworkers residency with support from the Mondriaan Fund. Scroll down for more.


       


CHAPTER I

Film in real time: a loosely scripted bike ride with stopping points in Holy Cross/ Lower 9th Ward (New Orleans).

MAY 17, 2020

4 PM (CDT New Orleans time)
11 PM (Amsterdam time)
12 PM (Palestine time)

* Join us on Deltaworkers Instagram Live (https://www.instagram.com/deltaworkers/) to watch







THERE ARE NO STRAIGHT LINES IN NATURE.
NOR ARE THERE ANY RIGHT ANGLES.

FROM THE EUROPEAN STANDPOINT,
HARD LINES AND ORTHOGONAL ANGLES
INTRODUCED ORDER TO DISORDER,
CIVILIZATION TO WILDERNESS,
GODLINES TO THE HEATHEN
AND THE POWERING OF THE CROWN
TO THE COWERING NATIVE.

ACROSS THE LINE THEY GOT EVERYTHING, HE SAID.
OVER HERE NOTHING.

LINES HAVE BEEN CARVED ONTO MAPS OF THIS SINKING ISLAND
ONLY LENGTH AND NO BREADTH
WITHOUT THEM, THE RIVER IS INVISIBLE

ALL THAT REMAINS IS ASH
CHARRED FRAGMENTS OF BONE
AND CHARRED METAL SHAVINGS
THE REMAINS OF THE BULLET(S) THAT HAD BEEN FIRED INTO HIS BACK
(HENRY GLOVER)

THESE ARE HEAVY WATERS FILLED WITH WAKES.
YOU SEE THAT SEAWALL AND THAT SLIME THERE
YOU GOT NO GRIP
JUST SUCK YOU UNDER.

TRACKS LEFT ON THE WATER’S SURFACE BY A SHIP
A DISTURBANCE CAUSED BY A BODY SWIMMING
OR ONE THAT IS MOVED IN WATER.
TRACKS LEFT ON THE WATER’S SURFACE BY A BARGE.
A REGION OF DISTURBED FLOW.