cover page detail middle segment of the triptych back page by me censored still from the video
www.hansovervliet.com
J'écrivais des silences, des nuits, je notais l'inexprimable I wrote down silences, nights, I wrote down the inexpressible
Rimbaud | Une saison en enfer | 1873
Colmar | Deir al-Balah
Work
Triptych November 2024 – January 2025
IV material
Folding mattress BASIC F15 | JYSK
Wooden tent/sand peg | 30 cm
three plexiglas cubes 35 x 35 x 35 cm
wooden console
35 x 35 x 105 x 17
painted matte white
artwork Brass plate in memoriam Sha’ban al-Dalou (19) burned alive on October 14, 2024 in a tent at al-Aqsa-hospital in Deir-al-Balah | Gaza due to an Israeli airstrike
Preface on the title i.d. of the death of the clinique
Michel Foucault was a French philosopher and one of the most important thinkers I encountered in my formative years. Of course, there remains a lifelong dualisme in my head, heart and the immediate knowing between him and people like Noam Chomsky. In my earliest years, after all, I was schooled and shaped by the Frankfurter Schule. People who follow my work, encounter the old masters from that School regularly also. Anyway, the work that opened up my thinking around deconstructivism was Naissance de la Clinique - Birth of the clinique (1963) which I read around 1982.
In this book, Foucault examines the halfcentury between about 1770 and 1825 in which the foundations of modern medicine were laid. Through the language of the modern clinic, the West was for the first time able to hold a rational man was
first time able to hold a rational discourse about him-/herself as an object of knowledge. Hence the birth of individualisme.
Another important part was his thesis that the language and architecture of hospitals were used to discipline the patient. The category discipline he would explore throughout his life in books ( on madness, prison, etc. ) and his (university) lectures.
I write this foreword to point out how the Israelis have left modernity behind - like e.g. the Russians – by disciplining people not with a ‘gentle’ hand, but with death oriented, racist and barbaric destruction of hospitals. Including killing the patients, nurses and docters. In this case in Gaza. Middelburg, January 9, 2025
I thought the internalised journalist would protect me. Should that fail, there was always the artist in me to keep me from shock. After all, artists sublimate. Right? Then I watched the video. Neither of my protections kickt in. Of course, it happened before. In Colmar, standing in front of the retable of Isenheim. Three times we had driven hundreds of kilometers extra, coming from the Provence. Only to back off: too afraid to go inside. Too afraid of that magical place of suffering. The fourth time proved us right from the moment we finally entered. The retable would haunt me for years in nasty nightmares. Until I saw an image by Jasper Johns. He made an outline out of the soldier being brought down by the resurrection of the christ. Jasper Johns’ image apparently neutralized something in me.
The video I referred to captures the moments after an Israeli strike with AGM-114 Hellfire in Deir al Balah on Monday, October 14, 2024 at about one o’clock at night. An already wounded boy was sheltering there in a tent on the compound of al Aqsa Martyrs’ hospital with his parents and five siblings when the Israeli rocket hit.
Tha boy was Sha’ban al-Dalou. He was just days away from his 20th birthday. Because of the war in Gaza, he and his family had to leave their home in Gaza City. Shaban was being treated in a tent near al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital after surviving an Israeli attack on a mosque in Deir al-Balah that killed more than 20 people earlier this month. In the process, he suffered head injuries for which he was treated at the compound of the remains of the hospital. Hence the IV drip on his arm . . .
I watched a person burning alive among tents on a hospital compound in Gaza. I still can't believe what I saw. To the extent that I can't forget it either: a flaring inferno, people screaming their lungs out, and there, amid the flames, a body in spasms; both arms raised, reaching for support, one arm still connected to an IV.
I wached the result of an Israeli airstrike at tents, near the grounds of the already largely destroyed hospital that killed at another four people, amongst them Sha’ban’s mother, and wounded 40.
This horrible video and pictures with the speed of light made headlines all over the world in all possible media: ‘White House says imagery of Gazans burning alive after Israeli strike is 'horrifying', ‘Displaced Palestinians ‘burned alive’ by Israeli airstrike on tent encampment’, ‘Shaban
On tent encampment’, ‘Sha’ban al-Dalou: The Palestinian teen burned to death in Israeli bombing’, ‘Familie slachtoffer Israëlisch bombardement: we konden hem niet redden’, ‘Teen recounts horror after his mom and brother were burned alive by Israeli strike on Gaza hospital’, ‘Heartbreaking story behind video of young man burnt to death after Israeli strike.’
It caused actions like ‘Sha’ban Al-Dalu’s horrific murder by Israel was projected onto the UK parliament buildings by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC)’ on October 18.
On national American TV, in this case MSNBC: ‘Chris Hayes honors (sic!) Palestinian teen who burned to death after Israeli strike’: a full 4:14. And of course there was the cri de cœur, this cited from The Guardian: ‘Sha’ban al-Da-lou burned alive before the world. May his s his death awaken us’.
alive before the world. May his death awaken us’.
On the day our Sha’ban gruesome died, October 14, 2024 at one o’clock in the morning, more than 42,200 people have been killed in Gaza, mostly women and children, and over 98,400 have been injured.
In The Guardian, Zak Wittus wrote: ‘Let the memory of Sha’ban al-Dalou be the memory that brings us back to our common humanity and ends this war . . .’
Two weeks later ‘his’ Mr. Prime Minister, First Lord of the Treasury, Minister for the Civil Service, and Minister for the Union, The Right Honorable Sir Keir Starmer Knight Commander of the Bath, King’s Counsel and Member of Parliament, sold another muti-billion batch of wapenery to
another muti-billion batch of wapenery to the apartheidstate Israel.
And the deeply concerned ‘White House’ which said that imagery of Gazans burning alive after Israeli strike is 'horrifying'? Well: “The images are very disturbing and we have conveyed our concerns to the Israeli government,” said a spokesman. “Israel must do more to prevent civilian deaths.”
Only to ship a multi-billiondollar batch of AGM-114 Hellfire to the the apartheid state the very next day without any reservation and/or demand. As do the Dutch, the French, in short, everybody . . .
So in the end Sha’ban’s horrible death was just another human interest story for the global Western media and the memory of his death is already replaced by 1789 other
gruesome events. If the corporate media remain owned by the billionaire class, we will continue to be stunned with events instead of being informed of the backgrounds of this class's business model: raking in as much money and power as possible by destroying or turning against us the institutions that protect us. A short while ago they installed the pathological liar Mark Rutte as head of their military NATO-club. Who, of course, within six months reported that war now is the new normal.
Speed and fear: Paul Verillio is smiling sadly from his cloud. We again might need the solace of Isenheim very soon; we might need writers to articulate the inexpressible again . . .
Thanks to
O. for the IV
Willy van Houtum for the critique on the first draft
Ingrid Rollema for the text corrections
Rita who safely returned from Deir al-Balah
Martha Jager, curator Vleeshal in MiddelburgNL about the oeuvre (2023) after a studio visit: The dedication to art as a relational verb is central to Overvliet's work. On the one hand, the balance between poetry and criticism is special, in that the work never becomes bitter or pedantic, while at the same time the dialogue with the viewer is actively maintained. It is a tender form of activism that moves and urges action and also continuously questions the role of art.
The oeuvre of Hans Overvliet (Leiden, 1952) moves between visual poetry and critical thinking. An important angle is the role of the media in their representation of (military) violence. Within the context of themes such as perception, memory and identity formation; since 2013, in the ongoing art series Distant Suffering. In this work in progress Overvliet uses various media, symbols and codes and brings together dichotomies such as beauty and violence, refinement and cruelty, the sublime and the vulgar.
Aspects of power, politics, exclusion, censorship and the connection between artist, artwork and viewer infiltrate this multifaceted conceptual oeuvre.
As a reporter, Overvliet was an eyewitness to events in the Middle East in the 1980s. Naturally, these experiences resonate in Distant Suffering.
Elements of Distant Suffering found their way throughout Europe, the United States, South America and the Middle East.
In 2023 his whole body of paper collages ( 1999 - 2012 ) joined the reputed collection of collages and assemblages the Verbeke Foundation in Belgium.
In 2024 - 2025, the entire oeuvre of Distant Suffering was exhibited in the museum section of the Verbeke Foundation. All works will then subsequently be included in the permanent collection.
As part of his art praxis Hans is, together with his wife Willy van Houtum, founder and daily manager of ruimteCAESUUR, the 30-year-old space for contemporary art in Middelburg in the province of Zeeland.
