cover page detail middle segment of the triptych back page by me censored still from the video
www.hansovervliet.com
J'écrivais des silences, des nuits, je notais l'inexprimable I wrote down silences, nights, I wrote down the inexpressible
Rimbaud | Une saison en enfer | 1873
Colmar | Deir al-Balah
I thought the internalised journalist would protect me. Should that fail, there was always the artist in me to keep me from shock. After all, artists sublimate. Right? Then I watched the video. Neither of my protections kickt in. Of course, it happened before. In Colmar, standing in front of the retable of Isenheim. Three times we had driven hundreds of kilometers extra, coming from the Provence. Only to back off: too afraid to go inside. Too afraid of that magical place of suffering. The fourth time proved us right from the moment we finally entered. The retable would haunt me for years in nasty nightmares. Until I saw an image by Jasper Johns. He made an outline out of the soldier being brought down by the resurrection of the christ. Jasper Johns’ image apparently neutralized something in me.
The video I referred to captures the moments after an Israeli strike with AGM-114 Hellfire in Deir al Balah on Monday, October 14, 2024 at about one o’clock at night. An already wounded boy was sheltering there in a tent on the compound of al Aqsa Martyrs’ hospital with his parents and five siblings when the Israeli rocket hit.
Tha boy was Sha’ban al-Dalou. He was just days away from his 20th birthday. Because of the war in Gaza, he and his family had to leave their home in Gaza City. Shaban was being treated in a tent near al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital after surviving an Israeli attack on a mosque in Deir al-Balah that killed more than 20 people earlier this month. In the process, he suffered head injuries for which he was treated at the compound of the remains of the hospital. Hence the Intra-Venous drip in his arm.
alive before the world. May his death awaken us’.
On the day our Sha’ban gruesome died, October 14, 2024 at one o’clock in the morning, more than 42,200 people have been killed in Gaza, mostly women and children, and over 98,400 have been injured. In The Guardian, Zak Wittus wrote: ‘Let the memory of Sha’ban al-Dalou be the memory that brings us back to our common humanity and ends this war . . .’ Two weeks later ‘his’ Mr. Prime Minister, First Lord of the Treasury, Minister for the Civil Service, and Minister for the Union, The Right Honorable Sir Keir Starmer Knight Commander of the Bath, King’s Counsel and Member of Parliament, sold another muti-billion batch of wapenery to the apartheid state Israel. And the deeply concerned ‘White House’ which said that imagery of Gazans burning alive after Israeli strike is 'horrifying'? Well: “The images are very disturbing and we have conveyed our concerns to the Israeli government,” said a spokesman. “Israel must do more to prevent civilian deaths.” Only to ship a multi-billiondollar batch of AGM-114 Hellfire to the the terrorist state the very next day without any reservation and/or demand. As do the Dutch, the French, in short, everybody . . .
So in the end Sha’ban’s horrible death was just another human interest story for the Western media and the memory of his death is already replaced by 1,789 other gruesome events. If the corporate media remain owned by the billionaire class, we will continue to be stunned with events instead of being informed of the backgrounds of this class's business model:
Thanks to
O. for the IV
Willy van Houtum and Dani Ploeger for heir critique on the first draft
Rita who safely returned from Deir al-Balah
Martha Jager, curator Vleeshal in MiddelburgNL about the oeuvre (2023) after a studio visit: The dedication to art as a relational verb is central to Overvliet's work. On the one hand, the balance between poetry and criticism is special, in that the work never becomes bitter or pedantic, while at the same time the dialogue with the viewer is actively maintained. It is a tender form of activism that moves and urges action and also continuously questions the role of art.
