Elle

Unmarked graves for vicitims of HIV/AIDS outside the town KwaZulu Natal, South Africa.

"Every year in the United States, approximately 200 babies are born with HIV. Every day in South Africa, approximately 200 babies are born with HIV"

Nada Sehnaoui, Fractions of Memory, 2003

"The public installation which took place in Beirut during July and August 2003. The location was what used to be Martyrs’ Square in downtown Beirut. Martyrs’ Square was destroyed twice, first by the war, then by the reconstruction project. Nada Sehnaoui appealed to the public to participate in the making of the installation by publishing the following question in the press and on the internet: “Do you have a memory of daily life in downtown Beirut before the start of the war in 1975? If you wish to share this memory with the public, please: write a text recalling this memory, on one white page or more, in the language of your choice, handwritten or typed, signed or anonymous, and send this text to the following address…”. 360 structures were constructed using 20 tons of newspaper. Many structures carried the public's responses to the appeal while other structures carried blank pages for missing texts and lost memories"

Susan Hiller, J. Street Project, 2002 - 2005

"In 2002, Susan Hiller was invited to Berlin for an artist’s residency. Walking around the city, she was startled to encounter a street sign bearing the name Judenstrasse (Jews’ Street). She found the sign strangely ambiguous. It was meant to commemorate the Jewish community that once inhabited the area, but for Hiller it marked instead a history of discrimination and violence. She subsequently embarked on a three-year journey throughout Germany to discover, photograph, and film every street with the prefix Juden in its name. Her resulting work takes the form of a wall installation of 303 photographs, a corresponding map of Germany and list of street locations, a book, and a 67-minute video edited from hundreds of hours of footage."

Shumon Basar, Eyal Weizman, Jane and Louise Wilson, Face Scripting: What Did the Building See?, 2011. Single screen projection, surround sound, gauze box, 2 mirrors, HD projector, CCTV monitor showing footage from YouTube. 

"...a theorist, a writer and two video artists—who combined their various skills to tell the story of the killing of a prominent figure of the Hamas, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, perpetrated by members of the Mossad in Dubai a year ago. Over the course of a few days the turn of events was reconstructed by the police services in minute detail, the protagonists identified thanks to the most up-to-date surveillance and identifications systems in existence, all diffused via a spectacular press conference and put into circulation via the Internet. The artists responded to the video by putting it with another video based on the idea of the threshold and the non-place, featuring elements such as turnstiles and sliding doors, airport lounges, hotels and long corridors; while Mahmoud al-Mabhouh is about to be killed, a narrating voice poses vital questions. It is a video of great form and high emotional intensity, that speaks of themes of control and espionage in the age of technology and show-business"

Bouchra Khalili, The Mapping Journey Project, 2008 - 2011, 8 videos and printed map mounted on the wall. 

"[Khalili] asked a number of illegal immigrants to trace on a map the journey from their native country to the one they reached and to describe it in their own language... What emerges is a unique and original cartography... With barely concealed clandestineness they cross geo-political borders that are paradoxically increasingly flexible and increasingly reinforced, more open to goods that circulate frenetically, than to people who move with a kind of monitored freedom"

Zorka Saglova, Laying Napkins Near Sudomer, 1970.

"For 'Laying Napkins Near Sudomer', the artist laid out approximately 700 napkins to form a triangle in a grass field near Sudomer, the site of a famous Hussite battle in 1420. The action referred to local folklore relating how Hussite women would spread pieces of cloth on a marshy field to snag the spurs of the Roman Catholic cavalrymen as they dismounted, making them easy targets for the Hussite warriors"

Zorka Saglova, Homage to Gustav Obermann, 1970

"For 'Homage to Gustav Obermann', Saglova arranged twenty-one plastic bags filled with jute and gasoline in Bransoudov (near Humpolec) in a circle during a snowstorm. The bags were set on fire at nightfall. This event was held in memory of a shoe-maker from the town who was said to have protested the German occupation during World War II by walking in the surrounding hills while spitting fire"

Douglas Huebler, Site Sculpture Project, Windham College Pentagon, Putney, Vermont, 1968. 

" Drawing a hexagon on a map of Putney, Vermont, the artist traveled to the locations marked by the shape’s points. In addition to the map, the work comprises photographs and dirt samples from each of the five locations" 

Nasan Tur, Arms, 2006

Nasan Tur, Hands, 2003

Magdalena Jetelova, SONGLINE 75°03`52“, 1998-99, Melbourne, Australia. 

"The interconnection of two places in the space in various ways can be realized in various ways. We can accurately pinpoint any place on the Earth’s surface with the help of geographic coordinates: the entire Earth had been measured and described. In other cultures, however, there are other methods to describe the world, intuitive and mental, which consider human mind as its center and not an abstractly defined vanishing-point." 

Mark Lombardi, Drawing (referred to as a Narrative Structure) from the series Global Networks, Date Unknown

"I call them "narrative structures" because each consists of a network of lines and notations which are meant to convey a story...My purpose throughout is to interpret the material by juxtaposing and assembling the notations into a unified, coherent whole." - Mark Lombardi