FNA Presence Documents

A chronicler who recites everything without distinguishing between major and minor ones acts in accordance with the following truth: nothing that has ever happened should e regarded as a lost for history. Theses on the Philosophy of History

Instant historicization does two things at a time, one is perpetuation of the present in the visual flow, and,  two the immortalization of the past as an eternal relic. These two historical concepts, move in two different directions, nevertheless present a singular image.  In the face of contemporary machinery of destruction, the location of history has shifted to the instant past and immediate future and as such it is collapsing on the present. While before one could look back at history from the vista point of the present, that vista point now looks at its visual echo, with the delay of broadcast time. The historicization of presence responds to an impulse to secure a spot outside of history. This is achieved by removing the self from the site of the event, but turning the event into the subject of visual investigation, by recounting it not as the affected subject, but as a narrator, and as a historian. The eternity that was assigned to the represented subject, now is conferred to the producer of the image; it is the absence from representation that is immortal. But the fate of image that is emptied from eternity remains obscure. To have no agency in determining one’s position vis-a-vis the view finder, is the position of the victim. A hero commands the representation of his annihilation, a victim who defines the conditions of representation.

Car Burning in Homs, youtube still frame