Souvenir of Lebanon, 1983 – 2006

video (color, sound)
6 min.

Souvenir of Lebanon is the video component for the kinetic sculpture War Mop; a flailing motorized mop rises on plexiglass cams and is dropped, slapping the video monitor every eight seconds. The sound on the video recorded layers of reverberation as the mop hit the monitor. Writes Schneemann: “Souvenir of Lebanon follows a long video pan through destroyed Palestinian and Lebanese villages. In 1982-83, Israeli ceaseless bombardments destroyed bridges, farms, roads, hospitals, schools, libraries, apartments, and historic sites and towns dating back 2000 years. The live color footage was received unexpectedly from an anonymous news photographer. It is intercut with black and white disaster stills I re-shot from daily newspapers, edited in juxtaposition with color slides of bucolic Lebanon given to me on the day the Lebanese tourist bureau in New York city closed.”

close up of a face with arms rasied and mouth open; the subject is wearing a red shirt with a white pattern and a white scarf wrapped around their head
close up of two black and white faces with an overlay of abstract pink, yellow, and red stretching across the image