essays 11|24 – 01|25 for Black.Light revisited
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Black.Light – both original and revisited – speaks to exceptional encounters. Here’s a vast gallery of mostly anonymous people of whose existence we would not have any prior idea until we stumbled upon them and their extraordinary lives in Nimba, Pujehun, Kailahun, Bombuna. “I was only in the wrong place at the wrong time”, the Senator Aloysus Dolo declared to the Truth and Recollection Commision of Liberia after the war, rejecting accusations that he recruited and commanded child soldiers. Maybe that’s how Black.Light unfolded – certainly when Wolf and I fell into Dolo’s checkpoint in Nimba towards the end of the war, when he was still known by his nom de guerre, General Peanut Butter.
Dolo’s remarkable reflection on war as state-unbuilding, edited from a recording I made when he retained us as “guests” in his commanding post, is one of the strongest voices in BLP, bridging the narrative to Dasia, Prince, Etwina and many others. Dolo, loyal to Taylor till the end of the war, is an eloquent voice of evil, inasmuch evilness is defined by loyalties gone wrong (that’s the legal reasoning essentially followed by the Special Court for Sierra Leone on prosecuting Taylor himself). Did it make a difference to publish this and other stories in European newspapers, within the short cycle of frontline reporting? I guess, back then, we thought it did, at a certain level – our contribution to shape a certain segment of enlightened public opinion, as defined (then) by the readership of “reference” publications in Berlin, Paris, Zurich, Lisbon…
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Operation No Living News
Pedro Rosa Mendes
11|24
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Ohne eine Ahnung von dem, was ich finden werde, ist die Art meines Tuns ein blindes Vorwärtskommen in die Vergangenheit hinein. Oder umgekehrt, meine Vergangenheit ist ein Sichhineingraben in das Innere dieses Stollens, in dem ich gezwungen werde, nach seltenen Erden zu suchen. Dass diesem Suchen auch ein Zwingen vorausgeht, ist, so sagte man mir, folgerichtig für ein System, in dem ich der Schwächere bin. Darum hüte ich mich davor, meine Erinnerungen nach drau.en zu tragen, wo die Aufseher sie mit ihren schweren Stiefeln treten. Ich lasse sie lieber an jener Stelle zurück, an der ich meine Arbeit für den heutigen Tag beenden werde, um Feierabend zu machen.
Aber ich werde meine Arbeit nicht beenden!
Ich grabe so lange weiter, bis aus dem Schwarz ein Stein sich löst, bis aus der Behauptung ein Widerspruch wird und ich doch an den Anfang gelange, an den Anfang dieses Weges, der gleichsam eine Rettung birgt, solange ich den Glauben an meinen Gott nicht verliere.
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Ein Minenarbeiter
Marko Dinić
1|25
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At home, as I look at images of victims and perpetrators, of silent women and fearless girls, of old men who’ve seen too much war for too long and boys who have fought the hardest imaginary battles – images of strangers, reporters and photographers insist in bringing close to us – the problem is not the feeling that I don’t know them at all but the feeling that I know them too well. I imagine too easily what moves them. There’s no longer need to ask the question, hear the answer.
The dream of a house with a garden
The dream of quiet love in a house with a garden
The dream of money to buy things to give to loved ones
The dream of things that will finally make one look like one feels
The dream of remembrance; that is, not to be forgotten once no more stories can be told
The dream of importance, that something would have been less beautiful, less interesting, less useful if it weren’t for one person
The dream of children, so similar to their parents and yet, different, the dream children will be so much better as they grow up
The dream of moving, being recognised somewhere else
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Hidden in plain sight,
a list of common dreams
Susana Moreira Marques
12|24
