Marina Papazyan Martyr- Bodies Martyr- Images Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Fine Arts 2018 Index Introduction 7 Images After the Coup: 11 A (non-)testimony The Martyr who Smiled 17 Vulnerable Bodies in Resistance: 23 Grief and Public Death Self-representation: 31 Acting, Imagining, Remembering Loukis the Mite: 39 The Witness and the Martyr The Bulgarian Martyresses: 45 Medium Specificity and Visual Pleasure Conclusion 59 List of Illustrations 64 Bibliography 66 4 5 Introduction I started writing this text due to a feeling of unease. In Turkey, the 2016 coup attempt had just hap- pened, and we were still contemplating its implications in regards to how it was devised, while entering a period of indefinite “aftermath”. At this time, the “martyr” resurged as a word, but also as image and body. It had never left our vocabulary, in fact it had been in frequent use throughout much of the discourse concerning the death of soldiers, police officers and public officials. Yet, after the attempted coup, the “martyr” officially became affiliated with civilian life, as those who were killed while protesting the coup were all proclaimed martyrs. 6 7 Initially, I felt disturbed, even though I could not understand martyrdom beyond its instrumentality in public discourse, and I had no language to analyze the ways in which I came in contact with martyrs. I knew no martyrs; I had not seen a martyr. What I was subjected to were images, of people who were now dead — who were either claimed martyrs, or were not, despite having died under similar circumstances. This is how I started to write, through images, since they seemed somewhat more tangi- ble. I antagonized the makers of such images at first, prioritizing the specific meaning they produced and the symbols they carried within this very particular context. It was not until I recognized my own interest in similar practices of commemoration and image-making that I could consider how they worked and what their consequences were. As such, the following chapters are an attempt at verbalizing these concerns and finding a vocab- ulary to work on this issue further, not only in relation to martyrs and martyrdom, but also in the wider context of representation that contains or concerns bodies — the body as site or surface that bears or reflects meaning, the polit- ical dimension of the body in relation to its vulnerability, vulnerability as a socio-psychological factor, the body in resistance, the body as spectacle, the body as screen, and so on. 8 9 1 On 15 July 2016, a coup d’état was attempted in Turkey against state institutions, including, but not limited to the government and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The attempt was supposedly carried out by a faction within the Turkish Armed Forces that organized themselves as the Peace at Home Council. Images after the Coup: A (non-)testimony I had first used the term “martyr-image” while trying to understand a particular sequence. This was a video produced by the Presidency of Turkey and was being broadcast on TV. It aimed at dramatizing the death of Erol Olçok and Abdullah Tayyip Olçok, a father and son who were killed by soldiers while protesting the coup attempt1 which had taken place a year ago. Erol Olçok had been the PR agent for AKP,2 his person and image therefore inher- ently in conflict, being denied agency over images once he was deceased. Olçok’s image was applied onto another promotional video, with a look-alike actor literally embod- ying him, becoming his image, confusing simulation with 2 AKP, or Ak Parti (English: Justice and Development Party). The Turkish political party led by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, currently holding the highest number of seats in the parliament (2018). 10 11 remembering. To make sense of this transition, from author tive concerning the coup and its alleged organizers, a scat- to martyr/image, I looked for the recording made with a tered discourse in-the-making, sealing and revealing the mobile phone which was not consulted in the making of remnants of the event to hide the complicity of numerable this promotional clip, yet an image existing somewhere state institutions and affiliated individuals at the expense on YouTube nonetheless. Without an indication of who its of witnesses’ testimonies. In doing so, it is not only the maker factually is, I witness the I see (or the I saw) of its courtroom that the non-testimony disrupts; public death as intended author. Within the pixelated and unspectacular a socio-psychological problem is repressed to allow for a stills of the recording there is a witness whose testimony culture of triumph, according to which death, or “self-sac- could not yet be delivered. There remains the agency of rifice”, are not only virtuous but necessary. Erol Olçok and Abdullah Tayyip Olçok too, even though we cannot identify them with our eyes. The video is not a reproduction nor a testimo- ny. A seemingly commemorative object with no commem- orative agenda; a non-testimony, not in being untrue but due to a lack, an underestimation of the witness and her function. Both the discursive potential of the testimony, in providing a poetics for the witness to claim her experience, and the status of the video-recording as evidence are sealed to make way for these images. The production of (non-) testimonies after the coup attempt rely on condensation, of different media and attitudes; large posters start to cover public spaces with slogans denouncing the coup, while the faces of “martyrs” are printed in large scale to become the temporary facades of both public and private buildings. TV channels of differing political inclination adopt the narra- 12 13 15 fig. 1 still from Moses und Aron (dir. by Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, 1974) fig. 3 still from the video produced by the Presidency of Turkey (released on the first anniversary of the 2016 coup attempt) fig. 2 still from The Battle of Algiers (dir. by Gillo Pontecorvo, 1966) 14 15 3 A hadith is an account of the words, actions, or habits of the prophet Muhammad. Unlike the Qur’an, which is recognized by all Muslims, the ahadith are not one single collection. The Martyr who Smiled The two men fall onto the ground upon be- ing shot by a group of soldiers. Fume leaves their bodies where the bullets would have hit them. The shooting takes places in black and white; any section of the frame in- volving the perpetrators is in grayscale, while the being shot is shown in color. Having fallen down, the two lay on their backs, closing their eyes after having looked at each other. Their faces bear a distinct smile; a recurring motif, a smiling martyr, or a martyr’s smile, embodying a peculiar poetics of self-sacrifice. This is partially attributable to the Quran, and more widely to the ahadith,3 where the notions of shaheed and istishhad 4 are first put in the context of 4 Shahid, or shaheed, originating from the Arabic word meaning “witness”; used also to denote a martyr. The act of martyrdom is istishhad. 16 17 Muslim religion in writing. The word shaheed denotes a 5 the images were to be observed closely enough? An eye Ariella Azou- witness, much similar to the meaning of martyr implied by lay, The Civil sensible to light, hands that operate a camera with calculat- Contract of its etymological lineage, originating from the Greek word Photography ed intentions, or a trembling arm trying to keep still as the (New York: μάρτυς (mártys), the ‘witness’. The premise of istishhad Zone Books, flash goes off. Somebody who is on their knees, bending is, at its core, a promise of Paradise, and to attain it, the 2008), p. 14 over, or zooming in from a distance. In The Civil Act of shaheed must be sincere in terms of his intentions, mar- Photography, Ariella Azoulay thinks of the photograph as tyrdom being therefore not necessarily determined by the a remnant, encapsulating an event which is not immedi- circumstances of one’s death. There seems to have been ately available to the eye.5 For the photographic act to be a growing interest in the work of hadith scholars whose unveiled, one must try and note those who partake in it; the citations of the assumed benefits of martyrdom resonate subject(s) and bodies photographed, the camera, the pho- with many individuals, pertaining to different intensities of tographer, their intended audience and anyone who simply religious belief, political mobility and radicalization. “The “sees” the image are all agents (or in Azoulay’s terms6 martyr sees Paradise at the moment of his death” is one of “citizens”) of photography. The photographs that concern the statements I have most frequently encountered online, “smiling martyrs” do not typically provide this informa- where it would be variably paraphrased and repurposed tion; neither the photographer nor the “martyr” are identi- as a caption for a photograph that would accompany the fiable, while their circulators target a particular set of eyes words. The portrait of a young man on the ground, eyes that are not put off by such ambiguities. Was I intended to half open; on his face an ambiguous expression, corners see them? Were the photographs found and repurposed, of his mouth turned slightly upwards. Eyes firmly closed, or purposefully shot and framed as they were? Were they 6 face heavily wounded, mouth open, teeth baring. Taking Azoulay’s staged, and if so to what extent? What is the implication of “citizenship the body of a “martyr” as its object, the “smiling martyr of pho- the photographer’s convictions regarding the image that is tography” photographs” claim to capture a moment of joyous death; concerns being made? Would such a conviction amount to honesty? a man whose eyes see Paradise while his body is in an itself with the photograph in-between state, photographed in the midst of dying.