Wretched ghosts of history haunt the landscapes of the present. But often we choose not to see their appearances. How we remain blind to the traces they leave as warnings from the past, erasing their memory through the violence of organised forgetting, remaining silent to their screams and turning away from the violence of their demonic performances. Yet such APPARITIONS – the guilty and the damned - refuse to leave us in peace. Their subtle and brutal lines still find a way to cut through the material surfaces of the earth, through the pages of every political declaration, inducing ephemeral states which burden the ethical spirit. They call to us on deserted streets, they cry out each time a gun is fired or a bomb explodes, they walk like an army of the condemned down every corridor of justice and peace. And yet their memory often serves to add more recruits to their ranks. They refuse to vanish, even though more lives are mercilessly destroyed in their names. That is the lesson they give to us. The certainty that nothing will prevail, especially when everything is possible. Virgil. Hamlet. They only saw what was plain to see by those armed with wretched eyes.  

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Disappear. Where?
In the air
Be dust in the night
Be dust in the day
Be the pain and then rise
Surround us within
Observe
Be the smoke that permeates and blurs
Becoming the shadow, in your darkness
In the midst of that darkness
We are here
You are searching 
Who are you looking for?
Yes, air
Breathe
Who is it?
It's me
Wind, dance with the wind
Pour yourself into the mountains
Move the trees
Halt in there
Behold
Descend
Feel the ground I walk
Walk
Walk on my feet

 

 

 

Theatre of the Disappeared. Act Three

Apparitions

Brad Evans & Chantal Meza (2022)