Santiago Sierra begins non-stop reading of Palestinian names in London
A continuous reading of the names of Palestinians killed since 1948 began in London on 22 September. The Spanish artist Santiago Sierra is behind the work. It will run 24 hours a day until the list is finished.
The piece is titled “Israeli State Crimes in Palestine Since 14 May 1948”. It is organised by A/POLITICAL, a London-based arts organisation. The reading started at 6pm UK time, with Arabic speakers taking turns at the microphone without pause, according to The Art Newspaper.
According to A/POLITICAL, the list covers Palestinians killed “by the Israeli state, its forces and settlers since the establishment of the State of Israel on 14 May 1948”. The span is 78 years. The names follow one after another, with no interval built into the format.
People can attend in person at A/POLITICAL’s headquarters in Kennington in southeast London. The space is open from 6pm to midnight on 22 September, then from 10am to 6pm each day while the reading continues. A livestream carries the sound and image around the clock for viewers who cannot be in the room.
The organisers say the names were gathered from several published sources. They include data from the Gaza Ministry of Health via Iraq Body Count, the Israel-based human rights group B’Tselem, and The Jerusalem Legal Aid and Human Rights Centre, alongside historical archives and other published records. The project was developed in partnership with a Palestine-based research institution that asked to remain anonymous.
Where no name is recorded, readers say majhul. The Arabic word means “unknown”. It marks a place in the sequence for a person who died without identification.
Other cultural spaces are carrying the livestream as it happens. They include Club Saw in Ottawa, Rua Red in Dublin and Dar Jacir in Bethlehem. Each venue presents the same continuous feed from London.
For viewers, this means two ways in. A visit to Kennington offers a fixed daily window. The online stream stays open through the night.
The London reading coincides with Sierra’s exhibition Death & Money at Brutus Art Space in Rotterdam. That show runs until 20 December. Sierra works often in durational performance, a form in which an action is sustained over many hours or days, and this latest piece follows that method of repetition over time.
