Post-Orientalist Aesthetics: 
Experimental Film and Video in Lebanon

Abstract

In Mona Hatoum's experimental video, Measures of Distance (1981), she densely layers fragmented clips of audio recording, written correspondence, and intimate images in a way that accentuates the distance of exile. Nude photos of Hatoum's mother appear in close-up, rendering them initially undecipherable. A second visual layer of hand-written letters from Hatoum's mother further obscures the images on screen, the letters themselves only revealing fragmented Arabic script that prevents the viewer from reading more than a few discontinuous phrases. Meanwhile, we hear a conversation in Arabic between two women that competes with the louder voice-over translations in English. While these communiqués between Hatoum in London and her mother in Beirut are themselves markers of separation, the way the layers compete and obscure each other speaks directly to the infrastructural ruptures of phone lines and postal services during the Lebanese civil wars. Furthermore, the way the narrative reveals familial tension offers another dimension of distance inflected but not caused by Hatoum's exile. While ostensibly about family relations and the experience of exile, Measures of Distance demonstrates a vexed relationship between modes of communication and technologies of documentation.