Hiwa K
THE BELL PROJECT
18 Jun - 24 Jul 2021
Hiwa K, The Bell, 2015, war metal waste, wood, 179 x 220 x 150 cm, installation view KOW 2021, photo: Ladislav Zajac
Bells to cannons! Hiwa K reverses the known mechanism: Cannons to Bells! But his project The Bell is also a narrative about the violent transformations of the Middle East in the recent past.
Often, in times of war, whatever metal could be found was melted down to be cast into implements of war. Also bells, whose high-quality bronze gave some artillery its tools for the attack. Hiwa K observed a reverse melting process and then took it to a symbolic extreme himself.
Nazhad, a Kurdish entrepreneur from a settlement south of Sulaimany in Kurdish Iraq - his story captured on film by Hiwa K - turned his passion for melting metal into a profession and a business. He specializes in recycling the battlefield waste left behind by the Iraq-Iran War (1980 to 1988) and the two Gulf Wars (1991 and 2003). Nazhad buys and collects old mines, bombs, bullets, parts of military planes and tanks, and other remnants of military operations and liquifies them, casting them into ingots, which he trades, or into other useful forms.
In the film, Nazhad takes us through the environment of his life and work. Along the way, he unfolds his practical expertise - a body of knowledge that has grown over the years - about the metals themselves, but also about the origins and cycle of the original weapons from which they are extracted, to a large part from the United States, Germany, Italy, China, Japan and Russia.
Elsewhere, the camera follows several men casting a large bell in Italy from material sourced from Nazhad's operation, following centuries of tradition in a mold made of sand, where the metal cools and then the finished 700-kilogram artifact is excavated. Motifs that decorate the outside of the bell also emerge from the sand in the process. As in archaeological excavations, historical ornaments and figure reliefs are uncovered that date back to the Mesopotamian era. These are motifs from objects dating back to the 3rd millennium BC that were destroyed by the Islamic State during the work on The Bell project. Hiwa K applied those symbols to the bell, in which they return as a memento mori.
And so there it is, the bell, at KOW on the first floor. An archaic sounding body, the war devices that have violently and fatally upheaved the Middle East in the interest of various nations, systems and regimes, and transforms them into a clear, old familiar vibrating sound that creates shiver.
Often, in times of war, whatever metal could be found was melted down to be cast into implements of war. Also bells, whose high-quality bronze gave some artillery its tools for the attack. Hiwa K observed a reverse melting process and then took it to a symbolic extreme himself.
Nazhad, a Kurdish entrepreneur from a settlement south of Sulaimany in Kurdish Iraq - his story captured on film by Hiwa K - turned his passion for melting metal into a profession and a business. He specializes in recycling the battlefield waste left behind by the Iraq-Iran War (1980 to 1988) and the two Gulf Wars (1991 and 2003). Nazhad buys and collects old mines, bombs, bullets, parts of military planes and tanks, and other remnants of military operations and liquifies them, casting them into ingots, which he trades, or into other useful forms.
In the film, Nazhad takes us through the environment of his life and work. Along the way, he unfolds his practical expertise - a body of knowledge that has grown over the years - about the metals themselves, but also about the origins and cycle of the original weapons from which they are extracted, to a large part from the United States, Germany, Italy, China, Japan and Russia.
Elsewhere, the camera follows several men casting a large bell in Italy from material sourced from Nazhad's operation, following centuries of tradition in a mold made of sand, where the metal cools and then the finished 700-kilogram artifact is excavated. Motifs that decorate the outside of the bell also emerge from the sand in the process. As in archaeological excavations, historical ornaments and figure reliefs are uncovered that date back to the Mesopotamian era. These are motifs from objects dating back to the 3rd millennium BC that were destroyed by the Islamic State during the work on The Bell project. Hiwa K applied those symbols to the bell, in which they return as a memento mori.
And so there it is, the bell, at KOW on the first floor. An archaic sounding body, the war devices that have violently and fatally upheaved the Middle East in the interest of various nations, systems and regimes, and transforms them into a clear, old familiar vibrating sound that creates shiver.