Den poetiske præcision

THE POETIC PRECISION


ENGLISH TRANSLATION IN ITALICS


Der findes ikke noget bedre end at blive modbevist.

There is nothing better than to be proved wrong.

Nadia Khiari, WillisfromTunis, 25. juli 2013.

Hvis blot anledningen havde været mindre blodig.

Men så meget desto stærkere, på dagen for mordet på den tunesiske oppositionsleder, Mahmoud Brahmi, myrdet på nationaldagen, den 25. juli, flagets dag, der i Nadia Khiaris streg blev den forblødende dag. Gjort endnu stærkere ved, at vi kan se det våde papir bule op, på alle måder en tegning om opløsning.

Min fordom gjaldt flagsymboler. Symboler i det hele taget, visuelt kedsommelige, lukkede formgentagelser, men flag synes de mest forslidte symbolflader af alle.

Indtil der kom en bladtegner forbi, naturligvis. Tegningen er en cadeau til den myrdede, hans oprejsning, men også sorg og bestyrtelse over, hvad den næste handling vil være. Fuldt så rig på netop denne situations mange lag, som Kianoush Ramezani viser nedenfor. Også den tegnet på dagen for mordet og med den rygende pistol, der selv har indgraveret navnet Al Nahda, eller Ennahda, det religiøse regeringsparti i Tunesien. Hånden er knyttet:

If only the occasion had been less bloody.

But the point made was all the more significant on the day of the murder of the Tunisian opposition leader, Mahmoud Brahmi. He was murdered on the Tunisian National Day, July 25, and Nadia Khiari let the flag dissolve into a pool of blood. Her drawing was made even stronger by the fact that we can see the swelling of the wet paper making this a drawing on dissolution in all meanings of the word.

My prejudice concerns symbols, flags in particular. Symbols make for boring imagery. They are repetitions of a visual construction that is already a given, a closed form. With flags as the most clichéd of all.

Until a cartoonist came along, of course. The drawing above is a tribute to the murdered opposition leader, a monument as well as the mourning and apprehension at what may happen next. Fully so rich on the many layers that constitutes this particular situation, as shown by Kianoush Ramezani below. This too was made on the very day of the murder and the smoking gun has engraved the name Al Nahda, or Ennahda. The victim's hand is clenched:

Kianoush Ramezani, Assassination of Mahmoud Brahmi, 25. juli 2013.

Der findes en lydstump af Margery Fry, søster til kunstformidleren Roger Fry og fængselsreformator i en tid, hvor kvinder kun lige akkurat havde fået stemmeret - selv en blændende intelligens, der måtte støde sammen med Virginia Woolf i Delfi, da de så gribbe cirkle længere nede og Virginia Woolf udbrød: Look at those eagles!

A remnant of the voice Margery Fry has been preserved, sister of the art educator Roger Fry and prison reformer in her own right at a time when women still barely had the right to vote – she was of a formidable intelligence that inevitably clashed with Virginia Woolf at Delphi when they saw vultures circling underneath and the latter exclaimed: - Look at those eagles!

Det blotlæggende intellekt kommer til kort over for det fortolkende intellekt. Vi andre kan skille ad, men ikke skabe liv, en forskel Margery Fry fnysende og beundrende på samme tid ikke kan komme overens med selv på henved 20-30 års afstand. Denne "sublime foragt" for menneskene, som hun oplever i Virginia Woolfs omskrivning af menneskene til hendes egne bogsider. "Hun var ingen god fotograf" 

- but what a rare artist she was!

Selv beskriver Virginia Woolf i øvrigt scenen som et møde med døden, fordi rejsen blev et gensyn med hendes eget selv som ung. Den energi efter livet, som havde været hendes, over for hendes midaldrende jeg på vejen ned.

Noteret i hendes dagbog uden erindring om bemærkninger om gribbe, fordi hun så en større sammenhæng. Så lad os tage udblik fra det tunesiske flag til dets aner i osmannerriget, der betyder, at de to flag deler halvmåne og stjerne. Det tyrkiske flag har haft egen lidelseshistorie i sommer, hvor Michel Kichka lader Erdogan lege amerikansk sejrherre ved Iwo Jima. Hans slips forener ham stadig med den flossede flagdug, men halvmåne og stjerne har måttet forbindes:

The logical intellect falls short when confronted with the interpretive intellect. The rest of us can analyse and dissect, but we cannot create life, a distinction Margery Fry, grumbling and admiring at the one and same time, cannot come to terms with it even at a distance of nearly 20-30 years. This "sublime contempt" for human beings that she sees in Virginia Woolf's rewriting of them onto her own pages. "She was not a good photographer"

- but what a rare artist she was!

Virginia Woolf herself described the scene as a meeting with death in that she had been in Greece as a young woman, this being she was suddenly confronted with once again. The energy for life that had been hers compared to her middle aged self on her way downwards in life.

Which was noted in her diary without any recollection of comments about vultures, because she saw a larger context. So let's take a comparative view of the Tunisian flag to its ancestors in the Ottoman Empire. The Turkish flag has had its own history of suffering in the summer where Michel Kichka let Erdogan play American victor at Iwo Jima. His tie still unites him with the frayed bunting, but the crescent and the star has had to be dressed:

"Un printemps, on sait quand ça commence, on ne sait jamais quand ça finit!"
(Et forår ved man, når det begynder, man ved aldrig, hvornår det slutter!
A spring, you know when it begins, you never know when it ends!  )
 Michel Kichka, Erdogan et le printemps turc, 8. juni 2013.

Og vi kan ikke tale flag uden at vise Kianoush' rasende salafist, Det aggressive Skæg, som førstestanden blev kaldt her på bloggen over de rettroendes angreb på egne landsmænd. Kianoush er grafiker og har nået motivets tredje stand, stadig mere snavset i blodpletternes voksende farvebund.

Motivet bryder ikke længere øvre kant, hvad der først øgede til bevægelsen. Til gengæld lægger bundens skraveringer og den røde farves modulering betydningslag til en situation, der nu har varet i flere år. Dette er den brugte tegning til en brugt situation:

And we cannot speak of flags without showing Kianoush' furious Salafist, the Aggressive Beard, as the first state was called on this blog, on the Righteous attacking their own countrymen. Kianoush is a graphic artist and has by now reached the third state of the motif, where the blood spots are increasingly soiling the background.

The motif no longer fractures the upper outline, which intensified the movement of the first state. Instead the pen lines of the bottom of the plane along with the red stained modulation create new layers of meaning to a situation that has now lasted for years. This is the worn out drawing of a worn out situation:

Kianoush Ramezani, 25. maj 2013.

TAK til alle tegnere for tegnermod og - kunst, der gør almindelige gribbe til ørne uden smålig skelen til fotografisk akkuratesse og derfor fanget med poetisk præcision.

Thank you to Nadia, Michel and Kianoush for their cartooning courage that transform ordinary vultures into eagles, neglecting the petty request for photographic accuracy and consequently grasped with poetic precision.