Hiwa K

This Lemon Tastes of Apple

Hiwa K

Hiwa K, Daroon Othman

Lemons are being passed around. Their juice relieves the burning in the mouth and nose. It is April 17, 2011, the last day of public revolt before the suppression of the Iraqi Spring. Amid the protesting crowd, breathing the air laced with tear gas, are two musicians: Hiwa K with his harmonica, Daroon Othman on the guitar. They play the movie score from "Once Upon a Time in the West", that alarming melody of two dissonant notes, immediately recognizable to everyone in the streets of Sulaimany, Kurdistan. As Hiwa K plays the harmonica, the tear gas invades his airways; music and the political situation coincide in the performer’s body. He subsequently compiled video footage shot by others in the documentary This Lemon Tastes of Apple. The title ties the events of 2011 back to Saddam Hussein’s genocidal campaign against the Kurds in 1988. The gas that was used back then smelled of apples.

View From Above

Hiwa K

In the last four decades, many people have come from Iraq as refugees. In 1991, a division was created between northern Iraq (Kurdistan) and the rest of Iraq. The UN considers Kurdistan a safe zone. As a refugee you have to come from the unsafe zone, or at least prove that you do, in order to qualify to be granted asylum. During the interview for refugee status, an official checks to see whether you really come from the unsafe zone. They ask about small details of the city you claim to come from, and compare your answers to a map to confirm that your answers correspond to it. If you cannot prove that you come from the unsafe zone, you are sent back to your country. This is a story about someone who we can call M. M tried to apply for asylum in one of the Schengen countries. He was not aware that the city he came from was in the safe zone, according to the UN. He was rejected, and was set to be deported back to his country. Then he meets J, a man from the unsafe zone.

Pre-Image (Blind as the Mother Tongue)

Hiwa K

‘To remember, sometimes you need other archaeological tools,’ says the voice over in Hiwa K’s Pre-Image (Blind as the Mother Tongue). The video depicts the artist walking across fields, wastelands, estates, going from Turkey to Athens and then to Rome, a path that mirrors his own journey as a child, when he fled Iraqi Kurdistan and reached Europe by foot. His “Pre-images” are fragments of a path whose final destination is uncertain. Commissioned by Documenta 14.

Do You Remember?

Hiwa K

The video documents an intervention undertaken by Hiwa K and group of local activists on April 25th 2011 in Sarai Azadi Square- Slemani/ Nother Iraq, after two months of the civil protest. The international media have never properly covered the protest, which was finally brutally smashed by actual armed force and numerous threats by the local government.