Jessie Boylan

The Sound of Jets | 2009-10


“These are places of erasure and amnesia” – Adam Broomberg and Oliver Channarin

The Sound of Jets refers to landscapes of overt and hidden violence. Landscapes of war, horror, violence, trauma, erasure and alienation, in which the architecture of fear and control dominates the Israeli, Palestinian and observer’s psyche. It attempts to not focus on specific acts of violence, but rather on the landscapes which are used as the set to reinforce violence in more restrained ways.

Looking at images of war, horror and violence has become an almost empty act, one so common that we barely take notice, that our consciousness diverts its attention and glazes over, neutralising and oppressing our ability to understand trauma. These images are of modes of violence and control, which inhibit the citizen’s physical and mental environment in every day life.

Israeli writers and teachers Ariella Azoulay and Adi Ofir describe to two different modes of violence which are at play in the Israeli-Palestinian landscape: explosive and restrained – overt and tactile. Explosive violence “can be an outburst, a bomb or something, or it can be insinuated and harm traces somewhere”. “The most restrained form of violence doesn’t explode, it’s the violence of the checkpoint, the roads, [the settlements], it’s the daily violence of the presence, the display of forces throughout the territories that works through the organisation of space… And it’s this kind of violence which disturbs, destroys and interferes, that rules the life of the population, in different ways than the exploding violence.”

The Sound of Jets audio: 17:47mins