Ángel de la Rubia

LEBANON [silence]

What can I show and what can’t I?

What I can show about Lebanon in the aftermath of another war:

A young girl emerging from the shadows with a scarf covering her head.
I don’t really show her poverty, just her beauty.
I show an empty ruined and aged house. I can’t show who fled from that place.
A Hezbollah flag amongst a torn village and a Virgin Mary sticker in a cab.
I do not see the past civil conflict (fifteen years and endless parties), nor can I show a possible future one.
I kind of show a technician who finds and disables cluster bombs.
I definitely do not show this bombs when they’re lurking, nor do I see the innocents that will eventually tread over one of them (you can’t really see them, and that’s actually their purpose and their effectiveness).

Not showing what is elided is the purpose and nature of the symbol: the unuttered said, the invisible as seen. And the unsaid. And the unseen. What remains hidden because of the media codes, the image codes and the flat distance becomes an absurd turn in the plot, background noise in a symphony of silence.