This video essay is part of a trilogy centred on defeat, loss, and mourning, incorporating two earlier works: one that reconstructs Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser’s 1967 resignation speech using film and television footage, and another that isolates his mouth mid-speech and replaces his words with pauses and silence.
A recurring focus of this research is the moment of that resignation broadcast – rather than returning to the historical event alone, the project is interested in its mediated afterlife: how this moment has been transmitted, remembered, and re-encountered over time.
As images of destruction and political violence circulate in real time, they often arrive faster than grief can settle, producing a condition in which mourning is suspended. The video essay does not seek to resolve this tension but to hold it open, returning to images not to consume them, but to slow, fracture, and reassemble them, resisting their disappearance into an endless stream.
Essa Grayeb is a Palestinian visual artist working across analogue photography, moving image, and installation.
