about november 6th and 7th (2002)

7/24/2019 About November 6th and 7th (2002)

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ABOUT NOVIEMBRE 6 Y 7 (2002).

The Plaza Bolivar, and the Palace of Justice, before the siege.

The Art of Witness:Memorial and Historical Trauma

Professor Rosalyn Deutsche

Felipe [email protected]
mailto:[email protected]


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December 7th, 2005


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ABOUT NOVIEMBRE 6 Y 7 (2002).

On November 6thand 7thof 2002, the Colombian artist Doris Salcedo executeda motion sculpture on the faade of the Supreme Court building in one of thecorners of Bogots central square. During these two days around 280 wooden

chairs, assembled in groups, were lowered over the exterior walls of thebuilding with no obvious human presence . The piece was called Noviembre 61

y 7 (2002) and was a remembrance attempt through art of the tragic eventsoccurred in the same place on November 6 and 7 of 1985. On the former date,a troop of the guerrilla movement M-19 seized the Palace of Justice and thesubsequent counter-offensive by government troops produced over 100fatalities .2

November 6thand 7th, 1985.3

I was 6 years old when the events of the Siege of The Palace of Justice tookplace in Bogots main square in 1985. I didnt understand what happened thatday; I just couldnt forget the images of the burning building from the news. ThePalace of Justice from 1985 became a ruin of ashes; I dont remember whathappened after, the next memory that I have of that location is the BolivarSquare with the New Building, the New Palace of Justice that doesnt have anyclue about the events happened on 1985.

In my memory, there is a gap; there is an empty space between those imagesthat I saw in the TV and the New Building. Every time that Im in front of the newBuilding, I always project in my head the images of the burning Building of 1985

over the New Palace of Justice. I know that something happened there, thatsomething is missing, and again there is that empty space in my memory that Icant understand or fill or even grasp.

Most Colombians will remember those images of the burning building forever.My friends, two or three years younger than me, those who where 4, 3, 2 or oneyear old in 1985 or those born after that year, only recognize what we call theNew Palace of Justice. For them there is no other Palace of Justice, there is noother Bolivar Square; the New Building is the common landscape.

Before November 6thand 7th, 1985.

It is very difficult to comprehend the circumstances in which the events of thesiege of the Palace of Justice took place. Colombia has a very complex andintricate history in which the events of brutal violence overlap one another,making a very dense spiral mesh of a terrible past. The events of 1985 cant beisolated from the events of the distant and near past. The antecedents of theterrible events of the siege of The Palace of Justice exist in different times andspaces of Colombian history; nevertheless, I will present, arbitrarily, some ofthose moments in order to give a summary background.

The M-19 group has its origins in the presidential elections of April 19, 1970. Onthat date, Rojas Pinilla (a former dictador), the presidential candidate of apopulist party called ANAPO lost the elections in a suspicious way. At one point


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of the night he was two million votes ahead but the next morning the candidateof the traditional Conservative Party suddenly became the new president. 4

Some founders of the M-19 belonged to the ANAPO, others came from differentpolitical groups. Ana Carrigan dates the formation of the guerrilla group to that

election day: That day led directly to the formation of the M-19: M forMovement, 19 in commemoration of the date of the stolen election; the eventwhich finally slammed shut the door on any further hope of achieving changethrough legal electoral politics 5

In 1984, after several years of a shameful urban and rural war between theguerrillas, the different kind of forces affiliated with the Government and thedrug cartels, president Betancur signed a truce to open conversations with theM-19.The consequent failure of the trust and the legacy of bitterness, thesense of betrayal it left behind on both sides, led directly to the horror of thePalace of Justice.6

In June of 1985, following disappointment with the governments dialogue, theM-19 leaders made the decision to return to the mountains and resume totalwar. 7

Since its beginning, the M-19 enjoyed high popularity; when president Betancurbegan his presidential period in 1982 the M-19 had eighty-five percentapproval rating. When they came back to the mountains, their popularitydecreased dramatically.8

Back again in the underground, this abrupt marginalization in the Colombianpower game made them desperate and they tried to dispel this publicperception of their responsibility for the collapse of the peace. They werelooking something to put them again in the center of the political scene. InAugust 1985, the newest Supreme Commander of the M-19, Alvaro Fayad,conceived the idea of seizing the Palace of Justice.9

Testimonies on the Holocaust of the Palace of Justice

The Siege of the Palace of Justice on November 6thand 7th, 1985, wasnt anexception in the history of the Colombian conflict. In many ways this was notdifferent from the historical war that still occurring in marginal towns, villagesand peripheral neighborhoods; a civil war that still today coexists in Colombiawith democracy and normal life. The disappearances, its extra-judicialexecutions, and its torture, the massacre and at the same time the siege ofcivilians by the armed forces occurred in the very center of the Colombianinstitutions. This event, because of its location and the nature of the victims,interrupted what had become a normalized state of war. In the siege of thePalace of Justice, not only members of the marginalized, underrepresentedpopulation died, but also members of the Supreme Court. 10


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The magnitude of the Holocaust of the Palace of Justice, the bottom, usingPrimo Levis term, will remain unknown to us forever. The complete witness,the submerged, have not returned to tell about it. Nevertheless, in order to11

remember, it is necessary to give a voice to those testimonies that can provideus a revelation which is not a knowledge as Emmanuel Levinas said. Those12

testimonies came from those who by their prevarications or abilities or goodluck did not touch the bottom, or from secondary witnesses, by proxy, on13

behalf of third parties, indeed of the drowned. For us, the destruction broughtto an end, the job completed, was not told by anyone, just as no one everreturned to describe his own death. 14

In this sense I will leave some of those voices to transmit their traumaticexperiences:

Not even the guerrillas ever thought it would turn out the way it

did. They expected theyd have to hold out for six or eight hours, atthe very most, and then theyd sit down with the judges and workthings out. They wanted to negotiate. They thought it was going tobe like seizure of the Embassy. They said they knew the President15

wouldnt allow anything to happen to us. Since the judgesrepresented the third branch of the government, they said that wasenough of a guarantee that there would have to be negotiations.And we also believed that 16

It stays with you all of it. Many times when Im at home alone, orat work, whole scenes of what went on there come back to hauntme. And I try to imagine what might have been if they had agreed to

negotiate. Try to imagine some different solutionNot even theguerrillas ever imagined that it would turn out the way it did. 17

We knew that they were protecting us-as they put it- because werepresented their only chance of getting out alive. We knew theywould never let us go because in the end we were their passport tofreedom.

He explained to us what Operacion Rastrillo meant. He said it18

was the tactic the army used in the countryside, in the villages,when they went looking for guerillas. It means, he said, that theygo from door to door, form house to house, shooting first and askingwhos there later. That was how he explained it to us. And he toldus we must start shouting again. We had to let them know who weare and how many of us there are. 19

A Survivor of the entire 27 hours of the Siege of the Palace of

Justice.

Por favor que nos ayuden, que cese el fuego. La situacin esdramtica, estamos rodeados de personal del M-19.

Por favor, que cese el fuego inmediatamente. Divulgue ante la

opinin pblica inmediatamentees de vida o muerte si meoye?...


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Estamos con varios magistrados, un buen nmero de magistradosy personal subalterno. Pero es indispensable que cese el fuegoinmediatamentedivulgue a la opinin publica para que elpresidente de la orden.

Es que no podemos hablar con ellos si no cesa el fuegoinmediatamente

Que el presidente de la repblica de finalmente la orden de cesedel fuego. 20

Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Alfonso Reyes Echandia,alive in national radio from his offices telephone just hoursbefore his death.

At dawn all was desolation and ruins. Amid the rubble lay theincinerated remains of hostages and guerrillas, their weapons, alsocalcified, beside them. Few of the bodies retained their human form.The air exuded and unbearable, penetrating stench, record of thedestruction of human life. 21

From The Report of the Special Commission of Inquiry on theHolocaust at the Palace of Justice.

There were mostly piled together, in heaps, though it was difficultto make them out because they were totally incinerated. Most of thecorpses were huddled together, and were I saw must of the bodiesheaped up was on the section over the Carrera 7, in the middle ofthe passageway. But I want to be clear about one thing: given thecircumstances it is totally difficult to establish betweencorrectionto establish the difference between certain wooden objects and thecorpses, because they were practically all melted down into onesolid black mass on the floor 22

Sub-Lt. Orlando Ramirez Cardona of the Presidential Guard.

in very direction, it was a war zone. The entire fourth floor hadbeen demolished. There was nothing left. Not a single dividing wallwas still standing, the floor was deep in ashes, rubble, broken glass,and in places, the still glowing embers of the conflagration.I will never forget the way in which those bodies were lyingthere.It was so strange. They seemed to have fallen one on top of eachother, in two straight lines. As through they had been standingright beside each other, and when death came suddenly, to all ofthem at the same moment, they had had no time to make a move.So there they all lay, in a row, one beside the other, very, very

close to each other.23

Amalia Mantilla


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According to the subsequent testimony of several morgue workers,when the body bags arrive at their destination some of theimmolated corpses identified as men turn out to be women; somebody bags contain the remains of two or more different bodies; inothers there are only parts of bodies; and in all cases, the personalbelongings of the dead a gold watch, a medal, a pen- small items

which could have helped the families to identify their own, havebeen lost, stolen, or shipped in separate containers. 24

Ana Carrigan

There are no words to describe what it was like. When you arelooking for someone you love, and you carry their image with you,youre looking for his face, for the color of his hair, for the way itgrewIn order to look for my husband, in the midst of completechaos, I had to begin by reviewing the long lines of corpsesOnly avery few were even recognizable as human beings 25

Widow

I dont know if anything will happen to me for telling you now.But I want to tell you what I saw on the fourth floor of the Palacethat morning anyway. It still needs to be told.

I saw it Im not exaggerating. The floor, along a line six or eightfeet long, burst into flames, which immediately engulfed the deadbody of the Chief Justice.26

Amalia Mantilla

...But the identities of these bodies are lost forever beneath theacid poured on top of them in the mass grave. 27

Ana Carrigan

the palace of Justice in Bogot was occupied by guerilla forces.The violence that ensued ended in a horrific tragedy. It was

something I witnessed for myself. It is not just a visual memory, buta terrible recollection of the smell of the torched building with humanbeings insideit left, its a mark on me. 28

Doris Salcedo


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Noviembre 6 y 7(2002)Doris Salcedo


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November 6thand 7th, 2002.

They are different processes working together with varying intensities in DorisSalcedos work Noviembre 6 y 7, 2002. The first one is the de-contextualizationof wooden chairs to address the original event of 1985. In addition the groups ofassembled chairs were lowered for two days; giving not only movement to theobjects but a continuous reshaping of the work. On the other hand, thissymbolic repetition occurred during the same dates of the event addressed,November 6thand 7th, investing with meaning not only the chairs but the datesthemselves. Finally, the work occurred on the facades of the new building thatreplaced the original Palace of Justice; giving the new Palace of Justice anunusual appearance for those days.

Assembled chairs

De-contextualization of common objects is one of the recurring procedures inSalcedos work since its beginning. However, this process of objectdisplacement in her work differs from Duchamps ready-mades. Duchampclaimed that the readymade has to be aesthetically neutral, while Salcedo usesthe memory invested in objects in order to give meaning to her sculptures. 29

In Salcedos work, objects are already charged with significance, with ameaning they have acquired in the practice of everyday life. Thus, usedmaterials are profoundly human; they all bespeak the presence of humanbeing . In this sense, what really intensifies this meaning in the work of art is30

the absent content of previous events that each single object carries. 31

Some previous works of Salcedo illustrates this procedure of objects de-contextualization or de-familiarization:

InAtrabiliariosused shoes, mostly female, are presented in wood-framed box-like niches, which are inserted into windows cut directly into walls. The nichesfronts are sealed with translucent animal fiber, stretched taut and stitched flushthe plaster with surgical thread. The choosing of the shoes, in this case,32

derives from the key element in the recognition of bodies of missing peoplediscovered in a common grave. On the other hand, the shoe also representedtraces of the trajectory that led the victim to such a tragic death. The shoes,33

trapped in the niches in the wall, resembled the impossibility of burying lovedones, of elaborated mourning.34

In other series of sculptures like La Casa Viuda(The widowed House), 1993-95,

Salcedo used household furnishings in combination of plates, clothing,buttons, zippers, and bonesthat are grafted, compressed, and compacted


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into the surfaces of pieces of furniture. In this case: the use of domestic35

objects, furniture, and personal belongings as raw material brings to light thesite of violence. The furniture becomes a vestige of what remains behind invillages and towns where the use of violence has forces entire populations toflee. Bearing traces of violence, the objects are mute witnesses and testimony

to the past. 36

In Unland (1995-98) Salcedo used tables, dinning or kitchen wooden tables asa primary source material. This time, she made three groups of assembledtables; each group was a new table with an irregular surface product of thejammed of a fragment of a former table into a part of another. Part of thesurface of the double-table bodies, and in one of the three the completesurface, reveals itself to be a silk covering, the tunic, very thin natural silk thatcovers the surface. The silk is so thin that the eye is drawn to the cracks visibleunderneath, gaps between the five wooden boards that make up the tablesrather rough surface, and other smaller cracks and gouges attributable to thetables former usage. Examining the surface of this table is like looking at thepalm of a hand with its lines and folds. looking even closer, one notices37

the thousands of minuscule holes, many of them a quarter to an eighth of aninch apart, with human hair threaded through them, going down into the wood,resurfacing and going in again. If the silk is marked from below by theunevenness and natural splits in the wood surface, it is marked from above byhundreds of hairs which look like small pencil marks, but actually hold the silktunic close to the table. Now it is like looking at the back of a hand and noticingthe short fine hair growing out of the skin. 38

The ongoing body of work Untitled (1989-2002) has involved domesticwooden furniture whose cavities- drawers, shelves, spaces for hanging clothes-have been filled with concrete that is smoothed with hand tools, leaving someprominent wooden features exposed and others submerged. Like aparadoxically lethal form of fortification or preservation, the crushing weight ofthe concrete would probably destroy these already battered wooden objects ifthey were not reinforced with threaded metal rods of the kind used in standardconcrete construction; fragments of these rods protrude in places, as from ruins,or from an injured body indecorously (posthumously?) reveled to haveprosthetic internal pins and metal plates. 39

Tenebrae: Noviembre 7, 1985(1999-2000), Noviembre 6(2001) and Thou-less(2001-2002) are part of a series of works made in stainless steel and lead. Thefirst two addressed the event directly by the date inscribed in the title. In theseworks, Salcedo continued working with the displacement of a piece of furniturefrom its natural environment, a wooden chair. But there is a very importantdifferent in these series of work with Salcedos former work; this time, the threeworks had in common the replacement of the wooden chair by severalreproductions in lead, stainless steel or both.40

In these series of works, there was no conflict between the fabricated object likeshoes, doors, tables or chairs and the organic materials such as hair, bones oranimal fiber. All the intensity of the relationship in between the differentmaterials of the former work was replaced by the different shapes, structures


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and textures produced in the metal. All the intensity of these works wasproduced but the variations over the cast, soldered and repaired metal. 41

Even by its absence, the wooden chair is still present in these series of works inmetal and by its massive presence in November 6th and 7th, 2002.To clarify the

role of the chair in these works I will quote Nancy Princenthal: it both stands forthe absence of the body, by so clearly indicating a place where it might be (butisnt) and at the same time anthropomorphically represents that missing body,particularly in the case of chairs (with their backs, seats and feet) and beds(head and foot boards). 42

The idea of the absence of the human body in the denaturalized wooden chaircan be related also with the testimonies of the secondary witnesses of thePalace of Justices event. The dead bodies are described as denaturalizedcorpses and in some cases like substances melted with the furniture around:

Amid the rubble lay the incinerated remains of hostages and guerrillas, theirweapons, also calcified, beside them. Few of the bodies retained their human form

Only a very few were even recognizable as human beings

There were mostly piled together, in heaps, though it was difficult to make them outbecause they were totally incinerated. Most of the corpses were huddled together itis totally difficult to establish betweencorrectionto establish the difference betweencertain wooden objects and the corpses, because they were practically all melted downinto one solid black mass on the floor

Unfortunately, it is not the first time that these descriptions of the human body

as a denaturalized material occurred. We can relate these testimonies fromColombia with the descriptions made by the survivors of the Jew Holocaust:

The most horrible thing was when the doors of the gas chambers were opened-theunbearable sight: people were packed together like basalt, like blocks of stone. Theyfell out. People fell out like blocks of stone, like rocks falling out of a truck. 43

In Noviembre 6 y 7, 2002 the wooden chairs not only convey the loss of humanlives by their absence. They are in a very painful way the human bodiesthemselves; in the same way the remains of the human bodies and the ashesand rubbles cant be distinguished any more. In the same way a human body

became a solid black mass on the floor or rocks falling out of a truck. After animaginary reconstruction of the ashes, we can have either a cadaver or a chair.

The work of Doris Salcedo had been related several times with the images ofthe Jewish Holocaust. The hanged chairs in the facades of the Palace of44

Justice somehow can be associated to the last minutes of Alain Resnais Nightand Fog.

The Date to Come

A recurring operation in Salcedos earlier work was the conflictual relationshipbetween furniture and human remains such as bones, hair or cloth. In the workdealing with the Palace of Justice event, the furniture remains but the organic


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materials are replaced with another element: a date. In her words: When thereare no traces, only one thing remains: a date, or in this case, two: November 6 thand 7th. The intimacy fostered in the earlier work by these private or human45

belongings confronted the viewer in the public sphere of the gallery or themuseum with the personal act of mourning of the victim. This personal act of

mourning on November 6thand 7this conveyed by the inscription of the date. Adate that has an enormous significance for the persons who lost someone inthe event, or for anyone willing to remember, was displayed on the facades ofthe building, in a public act of mourning.

But the date returns year after year, it doesnt belong only, it is also a date tocome. The date repeats and repeats itself, and with it the memory of the46

event. Salcedos act of remembrance encourages an act of future repetition.

In What Does Coming to Terms with Past Mean?, Adorno requests anundiluted knowledge of Freudian theory as counteract for the aftermath of47

Auschwitz. In a deep sense, the date that returns, over and over, encouraginga continuous act of mourning, can be associated with the psychoanalyticprocess described by Freud in his article from 1914 Remembering, Repeatingand Working-Through 48

The idea of expanding psychoanalytical theory from the clinical context to thesocial and political sphere can lead us to a different discussion. We can just usethis applicability as analogical but being aware of the danger of fall in the49

obscenity of understanding. Salcedo previously has stated her intention of50

producing an art irreducible to psychological or sociological explanations. In51

this sense, I will use Freuds ideas as a vocabulary more than as anexplanation:

Noviembre 6 y 7 (2002) is a symbolic repetition of the traumatic event in theway that the work reproduces it not as a memory but as an actionNevertheless, this compulsion to repeat; is a way of remembering. The52

substitution of the remembrance by the repetition happens under theconditions of resistance. For Freud working through implies discover the53

repressedwhich are feeding the resistance. Workingthrough also54

requiresthe attempt to acquire some perspective on experience withoutdenying its claims or indeed its compulsive force. Using LaCapras term,55

Noviembre 6 y 7 (2002) tried to return what was historically repressed, butwithout denying the compulsive force of repeating. In Salcedos own words:I wanted to try to turn this intentional oblivion, this no longer presence into astill here, into a presence.56

Summarizing: working through the traumatic event of the Palace of Justicemeans: turning the intentional oblivion or the historically repressed, throughthe compulsive force of repeating, into a remembrance or a presence. InSalcedos own words, again: It was not an announced event, but an integralpart of the Plaza life, an event that made people stop and watch and listen andperhaps remember.57


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The idea of making an event to remember the traumatic event has itsimplications. The artwork became a memento that allow those who didntwitness the siege of the Palace of Justice became secondary witnesses of theact of memory. The state of secondary witness implies the pre-existence of aprimary witness; and for the witness the pre-existence of a victim, of other. Thus

to bear witness through the work of art, through the triggered remembrance, is away of greeting the Other, but to greet the Other is already to answer forhim. 58

On the other hand, to bear witness of the anniversaries to come involve 59

to keep on bearing witness, is more to be faced with the imperative to replicatethe past and thus to replicate his own survival. 60


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Noviembre 6 y 7(2002)Doris Salcedo

Notes

Salcedo, Doris, Traces of Memory. Art and Remembrance in Colombia. in Revista,1

Harvard Review of Latin America. David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies,Harvard University. Spring 2003, 28

Mengham, Rod. Failing Better: Salcedos Trajectory in Doris Salcedo Neither,2

London, White Cube, 2004, 9-11.

The journalist Ana Carrigan described the event of the Siege as follows:3

On a November morning of that year, thirty-five heavily armed guerrillas of the M-19Revolutionary Movement invaded the Palace of Justice in the heart of Bogots historicPlaza Bolivar, and the government of the day stood aside as the Colombian Armyresponded with an all out military assault involving tanks, armored cars and over twothousand troops. When the guerrillas attacked, there were over three hundred peoplewithin the great building that was home of the Colombian Supreme Court and theCouncil of State, including the hierarchy of the Colombian judiciary and their staff,

among whom the guerrillas seized over one hundred hostages. The combat betweenthe army and the guerrillas lasted, almost without a break, for twenty-seven straighthours. When it ended, at 2:30 pm on the following afternoon, over one hundred people,including eleven Supreme Court Justices, lay dead. One army lieutenant and eightpolicemen-many killed by the armys own friendly fire-had also died. An unknownnumber of people had disappeared. And the interior of the Palace of Justice had beenreduced to rubble by explosives and fire. When it ended, in time-honored fashion, theofficial version of these events was hurriedly assembled and rushed to press.Carrigan, Ana. The Palace of Justice. New York, Four Walls Eight Windows, 1993,12-13

Ibid, 70-714


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Ibid, 70-715

Ibid, 566

Ibid, 82-837

Ibid, 82-838

Ibid, 82-839

Ibid, 284-28510

Levi, Primo. The Drowned and the Saved. New York, Random House, 1989, 8311

Levinas, Emmanuel. Ethics and Infinity. Pittsburg, Duquesne University Press, 2003,12

108

Levi, Primo. The Drowned and the Saved. New York, Random House, 1989, 8313

Ibid, 8414

1980 was also the year when the M-19 made their mark internationally with the15

seizure of the Dominican Embassy in Bogot during a diplomatic receptionTheattack on the Embassy, in which almost half the Bogot diplomatic corps-including theAmbassador of the United States-were trapped and held hostage for over a month bysixteen lightly armed guerrillasWhen it endedthe hostages walked out unhurt, theM-19 was one million dollars richer and they had won an undreamed of public relationstriumph.Ibid, 80-81

Ibid, 10516

Ibid, 17417

Operacion Rastrillo literary means: Rake Operation.18

Ibid, 19519


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A free translation of chief Justice Reyes radio address:20

Please help us, cease fire. The situation is dramatic, we are surrounded by M-19personnelPlease, cease fire immediately. Inform public opinion immediatelythis is about life ordeathcan you hear me?...We are with several magistrates, a big number of magistrates and secondary

personnel. But it is indispensable that the fire cease immediatelyinform the public sothe president can give the order.We cant talk with them if the fire doesnt cease immediately.The president of the republic must give finally the order of ceasefire.Behar, Olga. Noches de Humo. Bogota, Planeta, 1988, 172,173

Carrigan, Ana. The Palace of Justice. New York, Four Walls Eight Windows, 1993,21

193

Ibid, 19922

Ibid, 262-26323

Ibid, 26024

Ibid, 26225

They took the body of the dead Chief Justice and they set it down a little apart from26

the rest, in a place on its own. Then a man dressed in civilian clothes walked overcarrying a small jug in his hand. As Amalia watched, the man raised the jug and

poured its contents over the body of Judge Reyes. And in an instant his body wasengulfed in flames. There was an outcry. Amalia and others screamed at the officialsto put out the fire. They reluctantly did so. They smothered the flames in thesurrounding ashes.The army makes one final attempt to prevent investigators from finding out the ChiefJustice had died. When his body finally reaches the city morgue, at around noon onFriday, the chief pathologist gives instructions that there are to be no X-rays taken ofhis remains. But the staff of the morgue revolts. If you dont allow us to do our workcorrectly, they say, you can take over the morgue and do it yourself. So the X-rays ofwhat was left of the Chief Justices body are duly taken. And the discovery is made thatthe bullet which tore Judge Reyes chest was not fired by any of the M-19 weaponswhich the army had collected from the fourth floor.

Ibid, 262, 263,264

Ibid, 266-26727

Carlos Basualdo in conversation with Doris Salcedo in Basualdo, Carlos; Huyssen,28

Andreas; Princenthal, Nancy. Doris Salcedo, London, Phaidon Press, 2000, 14

Ibid, 1729

Ibid, 2130


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Princenthal, Nancy. Silence Seen in Basualdo, Carlos; Huyssen, Andreas;32

Princenthal, Nancy. Doris Salcedo, London, Phaidon Press, 2000, 49

Carlos Basualdo in conversation with Doris Salcedo in Basualdo, Carlos; Huyssen,33




Merewether, Charles. To bear Witness in Cameron, Dan; Merewether, Charles.35

Doris Salcedo. The New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York/SITE Santa Fe, NewMexico, 1998, 20,21

Ibid, 2136

Huyssen, Andreas. Unland: the Orphans Tunic in Basualdo, Carlos; Huyssen,37


Ibid, 10038


Princenthal, Nancy. Doris Salcedo, London, Phaidon Press, 2000, 70-72

In the first place, that real chair that had served as the model of work seems to have40

been replaced early on in the making process by its model image. This model image,stylized and subjected to distortions, made incarnate in a new and different materiality,ends up acquiring an even greater singularity than that of the possible model. What isaffirmative in that singularity arises paradoxically out of a double denial. The signifier/chair is exceeded by the particularity of an object with no other identity than that of notrepresenting anything but itself. Removed from the protection of a generic name theabsence of which it nonetheless evokes- that object becomes painfully specific. Its

significance is that of its own silent existence, urgent but unpronounceable.Basualdo, Carlos. A Model of Pain in Doris Salcedo Neither, London, White Cube,2004, 33.

Ibid, 3141



Lanzmann, Claude. Shoah, the Complete Text of the Film. New York, Pantheon43

Books, 1985, 125


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About Unland: Clearly the work plays on the contrast: the hair as fragile, thin,44

vulnerable, with reminiscences of the famous piles of hair that know from Holocaustphotography, hair thus suggesting not life but death. (10, 100)

AboutAtraviliarios: Comparisons can be made, as art historian Charles Merewetherhas done in one of his several astute analyses of Salcedos work, to the showing of

discarded shoes at museums of the Holocaust(8, p 49)



Ibid, 2846

because psychoanalysis consist precisely of a critical self-reflection that puts anti-47

Semites into a seething rage. As unlike as it is that anything like a mass analysis couldbe carried out-if only because of the time factor- it would be therapeutic if rigorouspsychoanalysis found its institutional place inAdorno, Theodor. Commitment (1962), in The Essential Frankfurt School Reader,NY, Continuum, 1982, 127

Freud, Sigmud, Remembering, Repeating and Working-Throug (1914), in The48

Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmud Freud 12, trans.James Strachey, London, Hogarth, 1958, 47

LaCapra, Dominick, The Return of the Historically Repressed, in Representing the49

Holocaust: History, Theory, Trauma, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1996, 73

Lanzmann, Claude, The Obscenity of Understanding: An Evening with Claude50

Lanzmann, in Cathy Caruth, ed., Trauma: Explorations in Memory, John HopkinsUniversity Press, 1995, 205

Im interested in the notion of the artist as a thinker attuned to every change in51

society but at the same time producing art that is irreducible to psychological orsociological explanations.Carlos Basualdo in conversation with Doris Salcedo in Basualdo, Carlos; Huyssen,Andreas; Princenthal, Nancy. Doris Salcedo, London, Phaidon Press, 2000, 24

Freud, Sigmud, Remembering, Repeating and Working-Throug (1914), in The52

Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmud Freud 12, trans.James Strachey, London, Hogarth, 1958, 150.

Ibid, 15153

Ibid, 15554


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LaCapra, Dominick, The Return of the Historically Repressed, in Representing the55

Holocaust: History, Theory, Trauma, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1996, 200


Harvard Review of Latin America. David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies,

Harvard University. Spring 2003, 28



Levinas, Emmanuel. Ethics and Infinity. Pittsburg, Duquesne University Press, 2003,58

88

Salcedo quotes Jaques Derrida: The date is the future anterior, a date is also the59

anniversaries to come.Salcedo, Doris, Traces of Memory. Art and Remembrance in Colombia. in Revista,Harvard Review of Latin America. David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies,Harvard University. Spring 2003, 28

Felman, Shoshana, The Return of the Voice: Claude Lanzmanns Shoah, in60

Felman and Laub, eds., Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis,and History, Routledge, 1992, 220.

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