ABOUT NOVIEMBRE 6 Y 7 (2002).

!
The Plaza Bolivar, and the Palace of Justice, before the siege.

The Art of Witness:

Memorial and Historical Trauma
Professor Rosalyn Deutsche
Felipe Arturo
fa2150@columbia.edu

December 7th, 2005

ABOUT NOVIEMBRE 6 Y 7 (2002).

On November 6th and 7th of 2002, the Colombian artist Doris Salcedo executed
a motion sculpture on the faade of the Supreme Court building in one of the
corners of Bogots central square. During these two days around 280 wooden
chairs, assembled in groups, were lowered over the exterior walls of the
building with no obvious human presence1. The piece was called Noviembre 6
y 7 (2002) and was a remembrance attempt through art of the tragic events
occurred in the same place on November 6 and 7 of 1985. On the former date,
a troop of the guerrilla movement M-19 seized the Palace of Justice and the
subsequent counter-offensive by government troops produced over 100
fatalities2.
November 6th and 7th, 1985.3
I was 6 years old when the events of the Siege of The Palace of Justice took
place in Bogots main square in 1985. I didnt understand what happened that
day; I just couldnt forget the images of the burning building from the news. The
Palace of Justice from 1985 became a ruin of ashes; I dont remember what
happened after, the next memory that I have of that location is the Bolivar
Square with the New Building, the New Palace of Justice that doesnt have any
clue about the events happened on 1985.
In my memory, there is a gap; there is an empty space between those images
that I saw in the TV and the New Building. Every time that Im in front of the new
Building, I always project in my head the images of the burning Building of 1985
over the New Palace of Justice. I know that something happened there, that
something is missing, and again there is that empty space in my memory that I
cant understand or fill or even grasp.
Most Colombians will remember those images of the burning building forever.
My friends, two or three years younger than me, those who where 4, 3, 2 or one
year old in 1985 or those born after that year, only recognize what we call the
New Palace of Justice. For them there is no other Palace of Justice, there is no
other Bolivar Square; the New Building is the common landscape.
Before November 6th and 7th, 1985.
It is very difficult to comprehend the circumstances in which the events of the
siege of the Palace of Justice took place. Colombia has a very complex and
intricate history in which the events of brutal violence overlap one another,
making a very dense spiral mesh of a terrible past. The events of 1985 cant be
isolated from the events of the distant and near past. The antecedents of the
terrible events of the siege of The Palace of Justice exist in different times and
spaces of Colombian history; nevertheless, I will present, arbitrarily, some of
those moments in order to give a summary background.
The M-19 group has its origins in the presidential elections of April 19, 1970. On
that date, Rojas Pinilla (a former dictador), the presidential candidate of a
populist party called ANAPO lost the elections in a suspicious way. At one point

of the night he was two million votes ahead but the next morning the candidate
of the traditional Conservative Party suddenly became the new president. 4
Some founders of the M-19 belonged to the ANAPO, others came from different
political groups. Ana Carrigan dates the formation of the guerrilla group to that
election day: That day led directly to the formation of the M-19: M for
Movement, 19 in commemoration of the date of the stolen election; the event
which finally slammed shut the door on any further hope of achieving change
through legal electoral politics 5
In 1984, after several years of a shameful urban and rural war between
guerrillas, the different kind of forces affiliated with the Government and
drug cartels, president Betancur signed a truce to open conversations with
M-19. The consequent failure of the trust and the legacy of bitterness,
sense of betrayal it left behind on both sides, led directly to the horror of
Palace of Justice.6

the
the
the
the
the

In June of 1985, following disappointment with the governments dialogue, the

M-19 leaders made the decision to return to the mountains and resume total
war. 7
Since its beginning, the M-19 enjoyed high popularity; when president Betancur
began his presidential period in 1982 the M-19 had eighty-five percent
approval rating. When they came back to the mountains, their popularity
decreased dramatically.8
Back again in the underground, this abrupt marginalization in the Colombian
power game made them desperate and they tried to dispel this public
perception of their responsibility for the collapse of the peace. They were
looking something to put them again in the center of the political scene. In
August 1985, the newest Supreme Commander of the M-19, Alvaro Fayad,
conceived the idea of seizing the Palace of Justice.9

Testimonies on the Holocaust of the Palace of Justice

The Siege of the Palace of Justice on November 6th and 7th, 1985, wasnt an
exception in the history of the Colombian conflict. In many ways this was not
different from the historical war that still occurring in marginal towns, villages
and peripheral neighborhoods; a civil war that still today coexists in Colombia
with democracy and normal life. The disappearances, its extra-judicial
executions, and its torture, the massacre and at the same time the siege of
civilians by the armed forces occurred in the very center of the Colombian
institutions. This event, because of its location and the nature of the victims,
interrupted what had become a normalized state of war. In the siege of the
Palace of Justice, not only members of the marginalized, underrepresented
population died, but also members of the Supreme Court. 10

The magnitude of the Holocaust of the Palace of Justice, the bottom, using
Primo Levis term, will remain unknown to us forever. The complete witness,
the submerged, have not returned to tell about it.11 Nevertheless, in order to
remember, it is necessary to give a voice to those testimonies that can provide
us a revelation which is not a knowledge as Emmanuel Levinas said. 12Those
testimonies came from those who by their prevarications or abilities or good
luck did not touch the bottom,13 or from secondary witnesses, by proxy, on
behalf of third parties, indeed of the drowned. For us, the destruction brought
to an end, the job completed, was not told by anyone, just as no one ever
returned to describe his own death. 14
In this sense I will leave some of those voices to transmit their traumatic
experiences:
Not even the guerrillas ever thought it would turn out the way it
did. They expected theyd have to hold out for six or eight hours, at
the very most, and then theyd sit down with the judges and work
things out. They wanted to negotiate. They thought it was going to
be like seizure of the Embassy.15 They said they knew the President
wouldnt allow anything to happen to us. Since the judges
represented the third branch of the government, they said that was
enough of a guarantee that there would have to be negotiations.
And we also believed that 16
It stays with you all of it. Many times when Im at home alone, or
at work, whole scenes of what went on there come back to haunt
me. And I try to imagine what might have been if they had agreed to
negotiate. Try to imagine some different solutionNot even the
guerrillas ever imagined that it would turn out the way it did. 17
We knew that they were protecting us-as they put it- because we
represented their only chance of getting out alive. We knew they
would never let us go because in the end we were their passport to
freedom.
He explained to us what Operacion Rastrillo18 meant. He said it
was the tactic the army used in the countryside, in the villages,
when they went looking for guerillas. It means, he said, that they
go from door to door, form house to house, shooting first and asking
whos there later. That was how he explained it to us. And he told
us we must start shouting again. We had to let them know who we
are and how many of us there are. 19
A Survivor of the entire 27 hours of the Siege of the Palace of
Justice.

Por favor que nos ayuden, que cese el fuego. La situacin es

dramtica, estamos rodeados de personal del M-19.
Por favor, que cese el fuego inmediatamente. Divulgue ante la
opinin pblica inmediatamentees de vida o muerte si me
oye?...

Estamos con varios magistrados, un buen nmero de magistrados

y personal subalterno. Pero es indispensable que cese el fuego
inmediatamentedivulgue a la opinin publica para que el
presidente de la orden.
Es que no podemos hablar con ellos si no cesa el fuego
inmediatamente
Que el presidente de la repblica de finalmente la orden de cese
del fuego. 20
Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Alfonso Reyes Echandia,
alive in national radio from his offices telephone just hours
before his death.

At dawn all was desolation and ruins. Amid the rubble lay the
incinerated remains of hostages and guerrillas, their weapons, also
calcified, beside them. Few of the bodies retained their human form.
The air exuded and unbearable, penetrating stench, record of the
destruction of human life. 21
From The Report of the Special Commission of Inquiry on the
Holocaust at the Palace of Justice.

There were mostly piled together, in heaps, though it was difficult

to make them out because they were totally incinerated. Most of the
corpses were huddled together, and were I saw must of the bodies
heaped up was on the section over the Carrera 7, in the middle of
the passageway. But I want to be clear about one thing: given the
circumstances it is totally difficult to establish betweencorrection
to establish the difference between certain wooden objects and the
corpses, because they were practically all melted down into one
solid black mass on the floor 22
Sub-Lt. Orlando Ramirez Cardona of the Presidential Guard.

in very direction, it was a war zone. The entire fourth floor had
been demolished. There was nothing left. Not a single dividing wall
was still standing, the floor was deep in ashes, rubble, broken glass,
and in places, the still glowing embers of the conflagration.
I will never forget the way in which those bodies were lying
there.
It was so strange. They seemed to have fallen one on top of each
other, in two straight lines. As through they had been standing
right beside each other, and when death came suddenly, to all of
them at the same moment, they had had no time to make a move.
So there they all lay, in a row, one beside the other, very, very
close to each other. 23
Amalia Mantilla

According to the subsequent testimony of several morgue workers,

when the body bags arrive at their destination some of the
immolated corpses identified as men turn out to be women; some
body bags contain the remains of two or more different bodies; in
others there are only parts of bodies; and in all cases, the personal
belongings of the dead a gold watch, a medal, a pen- small items
which could have helped the families to identify their own, have
been lost, stolen, or shipped in separate containers. 24
Ana Carrigan
There are no words to describe what it was like. When you are
looking for someone you love, and you carry their image with you,
youre looking for his face, for the color of his hair, for the way it
grewIn order to look for my husband, in the midst of complete
chaos, I had to begin by reviewing the long lines of corpsesOnly a
very few were even recognizable as human beings 25

Widow
I dont know if anything will happen to me for telling you now.
But I want to tell you what I saw on the fourth floor of the Palace
that morning anyway. It still needs to be told.
I saw it Im not exaggerating. The floor, along a line six or eight
feet long, burst into flames, which immediately engulfed the dead
body of the Chief Justice.26
Amalia Mantilla

...But the identities of these bodies are lost forever beneath the
acid poured on top of them in the mass grave. 27
Ana Carrigan
the palace of Justice in Bogot was occupied by guerilla forces.
The violence that ensued ended in a horrific tragedy. It was
something I witnessed for myself. It is not just a visual memory, but
a terrible recollection of the smell of the torched building with human
beings insideit left, its a mark on me. 28
Doris Salcedo

!
Noviembre 6 y 7 (2002)
Doris Salcedo

November 6th and 7th, 2002.

They are different processes working together with varying intensities in Doris
Salcedos work Noviembre 6 y 7, 2002. The first one is the de-contextualization
of wooden chairs to address the original event of 1985. In addition the groups of
assembled chairs were lowered for two days; giving not only movement to the
objects but a continuous reshaping of the work. On the other hand, this
symbolic repetition occurred during the same dates of the event addressed,
November 6th and 7th, investing with meaning not only the chairs but the dates
themselves. Finally, the work occurred on the facades of the new building that
replaced the original Palace of Justice; giving the new Palace of Justice an
unusual appearance for those days.

Assembled chairs
De-contextualization of common objects is one of the recurring procedures in
Salcedos work since its beginning. However, this process of object
displacement in her work differs from Duchamps ready-mades. Duchamp
claimed that the readymade has to be aesthetically neutral, while Salcedo uses
the memory invested in objects in order to give meaning to her sculptures. 29
In Salcedos work, objects are already charged with significance, with a
meaning they have acquired in the practice of everyday life. Thus, used
materials are profoundly human; they all bespeak the presence of human
being30. In this sense, what really intensifies this meaning in the work of art is
the absent content of previous events that each single object carries. 31
Some previous works of Salcedo illustrates this procedure of objects decontextualization or de-familiarization:
In Atrabiliarios used shoes, mostly female, are presented in wood-framed boxlike niches, which are inserted into windows cut directly into walls. The niches
fronts are sealed with translucent animal fiber, stretched taut and stitched flush
the plaster with surgical thread.32 The choosing of the shoes, in this case,
derives from the key element in the recognition of bodies of missing people
discovered in a common grave. On the other hand, the shoe also represented
traces of the trajectory that led the victim to such a tragic death.33 The shoes,
trapped in the niches in the wall, resembled the impossibility of burying loved
ones, of elaborated mourning.34
In other series of sculptures like La Casa Viuda (The widowed House), 1993-95,
Salcedo used household furnishings in combination of plates, clothing,
buttons, zippers, and bonesthat are grafted, compressed, and compacted

into the surfaces of pieces of furniture.35 In this case: the use of domestic
objects, furniture, and personal belongings as raw material brings to light the
site of violence. The furniture becomes a vestige of what remains behind in
villages and towns where the use of violence has forces entire populations to
flee. Bearing traces of violence, the objects are mute witnesses and testimony
to the past. 36
In Unland (1995-98) Salcedo used tables, dinning or kitchen wooden tables as
a primary source material. This time, she made three groups of assembled
tables; each group was a new table with an irregular surface product of the
jammed of a fragment of a former table into a part of another. Part of the
surface of the double-table bodies, and in one of the three the complete
surface, reveals itself to be a silk covering, the tunic, very thin natural silk that
covers the surface. The silk is so thin that the eye is drawn to the cracks visible
underneath, gaps between the five wooden boards that make up the tables
rather rough surface, and other smaller cracks and gouges attributable to the
tables former usage. Examining the surface of this table is like looking at the
palm of a hand with its lines and folds. 37looking even closer, one notices
the thousands of minuscule holes, many of them a quarter to an eighth of an
inch apart, with human hair threaded through them, going down into the wood,
resurfacing and going in again. If the silk is marked from below by the
unevenness and natural splits in the wood surface, it is marked from above by
hundreds of hairs which look like small pencil marks, but actually hold the silk
tunic close to the table. Now it is like looking at the back of a hand and noticing
the short fine hair growing out of the skin. 38
The ongoing body of work Untitled (1989-2002) has involved domestic
wooden furniture whose cavities- drawers, shelves, spaces for hanging clotheshave been filled with concrete that is smoothed with hand tools, leaving some
prominent wooden features exposed and others submerged. Like a
paradoxically lethal form of fortification or preservation, the crushing weight of
the concrete would probably destroy these already battered wooden objects if
they were not reinforced with threaded metal rods of the kind used in standard
concrete construction; fragments of these rods protrude in places, as from ruins,
or from an injured body indecorously (posthumously?) reveled to have
prosthetic internal pins and metal plates. 39
Tenebrae: Noviembre 7, 1985 (1999-2000), Noviembre 6 (2001) and Thou-less
(2001-2002) are part of a series of works made in stainless steel and lead. The
first two addressed the event directly by the date inscribed in the title. In these
works, Salcedo continued working with the displacement of a piece of furniture
from its natural environment, a wooden chair. But there is a very important
different in these series of work with Salcedos former work; this time, the three
works had in common the replacement of the wooden chair by several
reproductions in lead, stainless steel or both.40
In these series of works, there was no conflict between the fabricated object like
shoes, doors, tables or chairs and the organic materials such as hair, bones or
animal fiber. All the intensity of the relationship in between the different
materials of the former work was replaced by the different shapes, structures

and textures produced in the metal. All the intensity of these works was
produced but the variations over the cast, soldered and repaired metal. 41
Even by its absence, the wooden chair is still present in these series of works in
metal and by its massive presence in November 6th and 7th, 2002. To clarify the
role of the chair in these works I will quote Nancy Princenthal: it both stands for
the absence of the body, by so clearly indicating a place where it might be (but
isnt) and at the same time anthropomorphically represents that missing body,
particularly in the case of chairs (with their backs, seats and feet) and beds
(head and foot boards). 42
The idea of the absence of the human body in the denaturalized wooden chair
can be related also with the testimonies of the secondary witnesses of the
Palace of Justices event. The dead bodies are described as denaturalized
corpses and in some cases like substances melted with the furniture around:
Amid the rubble lay the incinerated remains of hostages and guerrillas, their
weapons, also calcified, beside them. Few of the bodies retained their human form
Only a very few were even recognizable as human beings
There were mostly piled together, in heaps, though it was difficult to make them out
because they were totally incinerated. Most of the corpses were huddled together it
is totally difficult to establish betweencorrectionto establish the difference between
certain wooden objects and the corpses, because they were practically all melted down
into one solid black mass on the floor

Unfortunately, it is not the first time that these descriptions of the human body
as a denaturalized material occurred. We can relate these testimonies from
Colombia with the descriptions made by the survivors of the Jew Holocaust:
The most horrible thing was when the doors of the gas chambers were opened-the
unbearable sight: people were packed together like basalt, like blocks of stone. They
fell out. People fell out like blocks of stone, like rocks falling out of a truck. 43

In Noviembre 6 y 7, 2002 the wooden chairs not only convey the loss of human
lives by their absence. They are in a very painful way the human bodies
themselves; in the same way the remains of the human bodies and the ashes
and rubbles cant be distinguished any more. In the same way a human body
became a solid black mass on the floor or rocks falling out of a truck. After an
imaginary reconstruction of the ashes, we can have either a cadaver or a chair.
The work of Doris Salcedo had been related several times with the images of
the Jewish Holocaust.44 The hanged chairs in the facades of the Palace of
Justice somehow can be associated to the last minutes of Alain Resnais Night
and Fog.
The Date to Come
A recurring operation in Salcedos earlier work was the conflictual relationship
between furniture and human remains such as bones, hair or cloth. In the work
dealing with the Palace of Justice event, the furniture remains but the organic

materials are replaced with another element: a date. In her words: When there
are no traces, only one thing remains: a date, or in this case, two: November 6th
and 7th. 45 The intimacy fostered in the earlier work by these private or human
belongings confronted the viewer in the public sphere of the gallery or the
museum with the personal act of mourning of the victim. This personal act of
mourning on November 6th and 7th is conveyed by the inscription of the date. A
date that has an enormous significance for the persons who lost someone in
the event, or for anyone willing to remember, was displayed on the facades of
the building, in a public act of mourning.
But the date returns year after year, it doesnt belong only, it is also a date to
come.46 The date repeats and repeats itself, and with it the memory of the
event. Salcedos act of remembrance encourages an act of future repetition.
In What Does Coming to Terms with Past Mean?, Adorno requests an
undiluted knowledge of Freudian theory47 as counteract for the aftermath of
Auschwitz. In a deep sense, the date that returns, over and over, encouraging
a continuous act of mourning, can be associated with the psychoanalytic
process described by Freud in his article from 1914 Remembering, Repeating
and Working-Through 48
The idea of expanding psychoanalytical theory from the clinical context to the
social and political sphere can lead us to a different discussion. We can just use
this applicability as analogical49 but being aware of the danger of fall in the
obscenity of understanding.50 Salcedo previously has stated her intention of
producing an art irreducible to psychological or sociological explanations.51 In
this sense, I will use Freuds ideas as a vocabulary more than as an
explanation:
Noviembre 6 y 7 (2002) is a symbolic repetition of the traumatic event in the
way that the work reproduces it not as a memory but as an action
Nevertheless, this compulsion to repeat; is a way of remembering.52 The
substitution of the remembrance by the repetition happens under the
conditions of resistance.53 For Freud working through implies discover the
repressedwhich are feeding the resistance.54 Workingthrough also
requiresthe attempt to acquire some perspective on experience without
denying its claims or indeed its compulsive force.55 Using LaCapras term,
Noviembre 6 y 7 (2002) tried to return what was historically repressed, but
without denying the compulsive force of repeating. In Salcedos own words:
I wanted to try to turn this intentional oblivion, this no longer presence into a
still here, into a presence.56
Summarizing: working through the traumatic event of the Palace of Justice
means: turning the intentional oblivion or the historically repressed, through
the compulsive force of repeating, into a remembrance or a presence. In
Salcedos own words, again: It was not an announced event, but an integral
part of the Plaza life, an event that made people stop and watch and listen and
perhaps remember.57

The idea of making an event to remember the traumatic event has its
implications. The artwork became a memento that allow those who didnt
witness the siege of the Palace of Justice became secondary witnesses of the
act of memory. The state of secondary witness implies the pre-existence of a
primary witness; and for the witness the pre-existence of a victim, of other. Thus
to bear witness through the work of art, through the triggered remembrance, is a
way of greeting the Other, but to greet the Other is already to answer for
him. 58
On the other hand, to bear witness of the anniversaries to come59 involve
to keep on bearing witness, is more to be faced with the imperative to replicate
the past and thus to replicate his own survival. 60

!
Noviembre 6 y 7 (2002)
Doris Salcedo

Notes
1

Salcedo, Doris, Traces of Memory. Art and Remembrance in Colombia. in Revista,

Harvard Review of Latin America. David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies,
Harvard University. Spring 2003, 28
2

Mengham, Rod. Failing Better: Salcedos Trajectory in Doris Salcedo Neither,

London, White Cube, 2004, 9-11.
The journalist Ana Carrigan described the event of the Siege as follows:
On a November morning of that year, thirty-five heavily armed guerrillas of the M-19
Revolutionary Movement invaded the Palace of Justice in the heart of Bogots historic
Plaza Bolivar, and the government of the day stood aside as the Colombian Army
responded with an all out military assault involving tanks, armored cars and over two
thousand troops. When the guerrillas attacked, there were over three hundred people
within the great building that was home of the Colombian Supreme Court and the
Council of State, including the hierarchy of the Colombian judiciary and their staff,
among whom the guerrillas seized over one hundred hostages. The combat between
the army and the guerrillas lasted, almost without a break, for twenty-seven straight
hours. When it ended, at 2:30 pm on the following afternoon, over one hundred people,
including eleven Supreme Court Justices, lay dead. One army lieutenant and eight
policemen-many killed by the armys own friendly fire-had also died. An unknown
number of people had disappeared. And the interior of the Palace of Justice had been
reduced to rubble by explosives and fire. When it ended, in time-honored fashion, the
official version of these events was hurriedly assembled and rushed to press.
Carrigan, Ana. The Palace of Justice. New York, Four Walls Eight Windows, 1993,
12-13
3

Ibid, 70-71

Ibid, 70-71

Ibid, 56

Ibid, 82-83

Ibid, 82-83

Ibid, 82-83

10

Ibid, 284-285

11

Levi, Primo. The Drowned and the Saved. New York, Random House, 1989, 83

12

Levinas, Emmanuel. Ethics and Infinity. Pittsburg, Duquesne University Press, 2003,
108
13

Levi, Primo. The Drowned and the Saved. New York, Random House, 1989, 83

14

Ibid, 84

15

1980 was also the year when the M-19 made their mark internationally with the
seizure of the Dominican Embassy in Bogot during a diplomatic receptionThe
attack on the Embassy, in which almost half the Bogot diplomatic corps-including the
Ambassador of the United States-were trapped and held hostage for over a month by
sixteen lightly armed guerrillasWhen it endedthe hostages walked out unhurt, the
M-19 was one million dollars richer and they had won an undreamed of public relations
triumph.
Ibid, 80-81
16Ibid,

105

17

Ibid, 174

18

Operacion Rastrillo literary means: Rake Operation.

19

Ibid, 195

20

A free translation of chief Justice Reyes radio address:

Please help us, cease fire. The situation is dramatic, we are surrounded by M-19
personnel
Please, cease fire immediately. Inform public opinion immediatelythis is about life or
deathcan you hear me?...
We are with several magistrates, a big number of magistrates and secondary
personnel. But it is indispensable that the fire cease immediatelyinform the public so
the president can give the order.
We cant talk with them if the fire doesnt cease immediately.
The president of the republic must give finally the order of ceasefire.
Behar, Olga. Noches de Humo. Bogota, Planeta, 1988, 172,173
21

Carrigan, Ana. The Palace of Justice. New York, Four Walls Eight Windows, 1993,
193
22

Ibid, 199

23

Ibid, 262-263

24

Ibid, 260

25

Ibid, 262

26

They took the body of the dead Chief Justice and they set it down a little apart from
the rest, in a place on its own. Then a man dressed in civilian clothes walked over
carrying a small jug in his hand. As Amalia watched, the man raised the jug and
poured its contents over the body of Judge Reyes. And in an instant his body was
engulfed in flames. There was an outcry. Amalia and others screamed at the officials
to put out the fire. They reluctantly did so. They smothered the flames in the
surrounding ashes.
The army makes one final attempt to prevent investigators from finding out the Chief
Justice had died. When his body finally reaches the city morgue, at around noon on
Friday, the chief pathologist gives instructions that there are to be no X-rays taken of
his remains. But the staff of the morgue revolts. If you dont allow us to do our work
correctly, they say, you can take over the morgue and do it yourself. So the X-rays of
what was left of the Chief Justices body are duly taken. And the discovery is made that
the bullet which tore Judge Reyes chest was not fired by any of the M-19 weapons
which the army had collected from the fourth floor.
Ibid, 262, 263,264
27

Ibid, 266-267

28

Carlos Basualdo in conversation with Doris Salcedo in Basualdo, Carlos; Huyssen,

Andreas; Princenthal, Nancy. Doris Salcedo, London, Phaidon Press, 2000, 14
29

Ibid, 17

30

Ibid, 21

31

Salcedo, Doris, Traces of Memory. Art and Remembrance in Colombia. in Revista,

Harvard Review of Latin America. David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies,
Harvard University. Spring 2003, 30
32

Princenthal, Nancy. Silence Seen in Basualdo, Carlos; Huyssen, Andreas;

Princenthal, Nancy. Doris Salcedo, London, Phaidon Press, 2000, 49
33

Carlos Basualdo in conversation with Doris Salcedo in Basualdo, Carlos; Huyssen,

Andreas; Princenthal, Nancy. Doris Salcedo, London, Phaidon Press, 2000, 17
Princenthal, Nancy. Silence Seen in Basualdo, Carlos; Huyssen, Andreas;
Princenthal, Nancy. Doris Salcedo, London, Phaidon Press, 2000, 49
34

35

Merewether, Charles. To bear Witness in Cameron, Dan; Merewether, Charles.

Doris Salcedo. The New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York/SITE Santa Fe, New
Mexico, 1998, 20,21
36

Ibid, 21

Huyssen, Andreas. Unland: the Orphans Tunic in Basualdo, Carlos; Huyssen,

Andreas; Princenthal, Nancy. Doris Salcedo, London, Phaidon Press, 2000, 93
37

38

Ibid, 100

39

Princenthal, Nancy. Silence Seen in Basualdo, Carlos; Huyssen, Andreas;

Princenthal, Nancy. Doris Salcedo, London, Phaidon Press, 2000, 70-72
In the first place, that real chair that had served as the model of work seems to have
been replaced early on in the making process by its model image. This model image,
stylized and subjected to distortions, made incarnate in a new and different materiality,
ends up acquiring an even greater singularity than that of the possible model. What is
affirmative in that singularity arises paradoxically out of a double denial. The signifier/
chair is exceeded by the particularity of an object with no other identity than that of not
representing anything but itself. Removed from the protection of a generic name the
absence of which it nonetheless evokes- that object becomes painfully specific. Its
significance is that of its own silent existence, urgent but unpronounceable.
Basualdo, Carlos. A Model of Pain in Doris Salcedo Neither, London, White Cube,
2004, 33.
40

41

Ibid, 31

42

Princenthal, Nancy. Silence Seen

in Basualdo, Carlos; Huyssen, Andreas;
Princenthal, Nancy. Doris Salcedo, London, Phaidon Press, 2000, 77
43

Lanzmann, Claude. Shoah, the Complete Text of the Film. New York, Pantheon
Books, 1985, 125

About Unland: Clearly the work plays on the contrast: the hair as fragile, thin,
vulnerable, with reminiscences of the famous piles of hair that know from Holocaust
photography, hair thus suggesting not life but death. (10, 100)
44

About Atraviliarios: Comparisons can be made, as art historian Charles Merewether

has done in one of his several astute analyses of Salcedos work, to the showing of
discarded shoes at museums of the Holocaust(8, p 49)
45Salcedo,

Doris, Traces of Memory. Art and Remembrance in Colombia. in Revista,

Harvard Review of Latin America. David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies,
Harvard University. Spring 2003, 28
46

Ibid, 28

because psychoanalysis consist precisely of a critical self-reflection that puts antiSemites into a seething rage. As unlike as it is that anything like a mass analysis could
be carried out-if only because of the time factor- it would be therapeutic if rigorous
psychoanalysis found its institutional place in
Adorno, Theodor. Commitment (1962), in The Essential Frankfurt School Reader,
NY, Continuum, 1982, 127
47

48

Freud, Sigmud, Remembering, Repeating and Working-Throug (1914), in The

Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmud Freud 12, trans.
James Strachey, London, Hogarth, 1958, 47
LaCapra, Dominick, The Return of the Historically Repressed, in Representing the
Holocaust: History, Theory, Trauma, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1996, 73
49

Lanzmann, Claude, The Obscenity of Understanding: An Evening with Claude

Lanzmann, in Cathy Caruth, ed., Trauma: Explorations in Memory, John Hopkins
University Press, 1995, 205
50

Im interested in the notion of the artist as a thinker attuned to every change in

society but at the same time producing art that is irreducible to psychological or
sociological explanations.
Carlos Basualdo in conversation with Doris Salcedo in Basualdo, Carlos; Huyssen,
Andreas; Princenthal, Nancy. Doris Salcedo, London, Phaidon Press, 2000, 24
51

52

Freud, Sigmud, Remembering, Repeating and Working-Throug (1914), in The

Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmud Freud 12, trans.
James Strachey, London, Hogarth, 1958, 150.
53

54

Ibid, 151

Ibid, 155

LaCapra, Dominick, The Return of the Historically Repressed, in Representing the

Holocaust: History, Theory, Trauma, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1996, 200
55

56

Salcedo, Doris, Traces of Memory. Art and Remembrance in Colombia. in Revista,

Harvard Review of Latin America. David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies,
Harvard University. Spring 2003, 28
57

Salcedo, Doris, Traces of Memory. Art and Remembrance in Colombia. in Revista,

Harvard Review of Latin America. David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies,
Harvard University. Spring 2003, 28
58

88

Levinas, Emmanuel. Ethics and Infinity. Pittsburg, Duquesne University Press, 2003,

Salcedo quotes Jaques Derrida: The date is the future anterior, a date is also the
anniversaries to come.
Salcedo, Doris, Traces of Memory. Art and Remembrance in Colombia. in Revista,
Harvard Review of Latin America. David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies,
Harvard University. Spring 2003, 28
59

60

Felman, Shoshana, The Return of the Voice: Claude Lanzmanns Shoah, in

Felman and Laub, eds., Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis,
and History, Routledge, 1992, 220.