Published in The Times Of Israël on 16 January 2025.

The world, the screens, are invaded by images, post-humanist images, that is, those that came after the Mohammed Al-Dura affair (2000); they show children in Gaza in desperate situations. Do we have a healthy, serene relationship with these images? Obviously not, as they raise far too many questions. So how is childhood trapped in our image economy and information systems?
The first observation that seems essential to me today would be to say: Can we allow Iran and its proxies to use images of children for their propaganda when they are committing infanticide, i.e. not only failing to protect their children from the dangers of war, but also subjecting them to sacrifice? Aren’t image rights and the right to life being violated here? This drift towards idolatry, which threatens so many of us in every part of the world, should be a cause for concern, as it will lead to collective suicide for generations to come. The argument is as follows, and it resonates in many publications and speeches.
Iran and its proxies will not cease their military offensives until the Palestinians win some victories on the 8th front of the media war they call “the war of legitimacy”. Here’s a quote from Mousa Abu Marzouk in an interview published in Chronique de Palestine on October 28, 2024; he places his struggle in a perspective dating back almost a century, and is a member of the political bureau of the Hamas Movement.
“After the revolution of 1927 came the revolution of 1936. Thirty-six years later came the 1947 war, followed by fedayeen operations, then the formation of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the Palestine Liberation Army.
After 1984 and the PLO’s departure from Lebanon, the first Intifada began in 1987, then the second in 2000, followed by the wars of 2008, 2012, 2014 and 2021. The Palestinian people are ready to pay whatever price is necessary, even sacrificing their children to defend their religion and homeland”.
Images of children amidst the destruction in Gaza, images of wounded children or coffins only reinforce this infernal cycle, as they enjoin opinion, and thus the fundamentalists continue their multiple attacks. This is unprecedented in history, for these leaders are not taking responsibility for protecting their populations but are offering them nothing but jihad as a future.
The civilian populations of Gaza have become sacrificial and eternal victims, as Hamas not only diverts food aid, sells it at high prices and feeds off it, but also builds its communication around the figure of the child caught in an endless, infernal circle. In spite of themselves, humanitarian organizations are doing tremendous work around the world, but as soon as it comes to the Middle East, they reach a dead end: the situation opens up to question. Humanitarian photography, akin to post-humanist photography, forms the basis of donation campaigns, and images of children are the preferred medium for these. This is a critical point, as the image of the Other is never placed in its historical context; modalities of despair then, ad infinitum, it never stops; always a new crisis, a new catastrophe. The public is then invited to make a gift, that is, to give of itself by proxy, without dialogue, without encounter, without truth.
Post-humanism and humanitarianism have reached their limits, because the theatricality of infanticide with its apocalyptic modalities, added to the theatricality of victimization, which has been expressed since the first hours of the conflict, and which has turned victims into sacrificial and eternal victims, represents an existential impasse for our societies. Eternal victims, too, as the Palestinian struggle is passed down from generation to generation, except that Israel faces up to it. This meeting, this proximity between two dogmas, produces the same aesthetic, even though they do not have the same end in view: the first means, in the long term, the continuation of the war, the second means a chance of survival. But the followers of post-humanism also benefit from the excessive media coverage of humanitarian organizations, both from a media and a financial point of view. This support is providential, and also enables pro-Iranism to maintain itself, despite its destructive, dictatorial and, above all, sacrificial ideology.
Children’s right to their own image is never respected, even when their gaze meets ours as if we were their only savior. Their dignity is not respected, because they are part of a logic that goes beyond them, and sometimes they are even its plaything, as in the current conflict. If children’s rights were respected, these images of children would disappear from the media. And I’m appealing for a real awakening on this subject: let’s spare them, let’s spare ourselves. We no longer need these images to become aware of the world’s misery, but we do need courage, intelligence and responsibility.
My third observation may seem a little off-topic, but let’s ask ourselves the question all the same. Assisted dying, and the forthcoming laws expected to appear on the agenda of the French Parliament, affect our children’s conscience. How can we hope in life, when the laws propose aid in dying, if the psychological strengths of our sons and daughters are weakened as a result of an inappropriate environment? Even if the legislator will set limits, the very idea of this possibility being accepted by the Assembly, and then by part of public opinion, is, in my opinion, highly problematic. What’s more, doesn’t this fact, by a perverse shift, also legitimize the possibility of suicide for the sake of jihad? A suicide that also becomes, for part of our population, a religious suicide. Sometimes, the forbidden can be good, even if we don’t always see all the positive resources they contain.
To conclude, shouldn’t we be creating new laws in International Law to judge infanticide on the scale of a people? To tackle this issue, to reflect on it, to propose a debate seems to me to be, beyond any cleavage, an absolute urgency, and shouldn’t we also bring together a quorum of jurists to develop these questions? This situation is unprecedented in history, and it appears that International Law must adapt, because our humanism is also being taken hostage here.

(a): Despite the fact that Charles Enderlin has written a book entitled Un Enfant est mort (A Child is Dead), published by Don Quichotte, Paris, 2010, after a careful re-reading of the images, this cannot be said; on the contrary, the child is alive at the end of the video.

(1) : “Au yeux du monde, les Palestiniens ont gagné la bataille de la légitimité”, article de Ramzy Baroud, La chronique de Palestine, 28 octobre 2024.

www.chroniquepalestine.com/aux-yeux-du-monde-les-palestiniens-ont-gagne-la-bataille-de-la-legitimite/

www.chroniquepalestine.com/notre-unique-exigence-est-la-justice-et-la-liberte/

 

 

 

 

The dew is like the sun
Every day it trickles down
In little drops
On our earth

 

19 November 2024

 

Waking nightmares
Our nights are our days
Our days are our nights
To infinity, or maybe not?

 

19 November 2024

 

Dawn
Forever
Will remember
That morning

 

20th November 2024

 

No, we’ll never forget
All the crimes committed
In the name of hate

We look forward
The day you are freed
To find you
Free at last

We pray
For better days
So that by your side
We can sing again

We do not despair
We fight
We cry
We cry

For you to return to your homes

 

21 November 2024

 

In the tunnel
Without the sky
Under this grey
We hope that
That you hear us

In the night
Your screams, your cries
Haunt us
You are there
At the edge of our souls

May this day come soon
That day
When we will rejoice
Your cherished presence

When a great table
Will be laid for you
Reunited at last
Amen

 

22 November 2024

 

We Will Dance Again
I’ve been faithful to you
Since October 12th
We have danced
We cried
It was my daughter Tal’s wedding.

The lion in the savannah runs
The giraffe in the savannah walks
The elephant in the savannah walks

I think of you
Locked up in the greatest distress
Take my place
Be free

Blind
They are blind
Their court does not see
That this is infanticide.

Open your eyes
Tell them
Humanity is waiting for your responsibility
Your desire for truth

May my soul join you
Tonight
May it take your suffering
To infinity
And give you back
Our dear freedom

Their weapons are pointed
Against you
Against us
Be strong and disarm them
Forever and ever

Everything is mixed up
Everything is mixed up
Our souls are in turmoil
And find no rest

They waver
And fall back into our bodies
Bruised
Which they try to soothe

May peace illuminate us
And may our children
May once again
To imagine
A better world

 

26 November 2024

 

Tonight
I’ll fall asleep
Thinking of them
And tomorrow the theatre
The real thing, on stage
Where souls twirl
In a new breath
Posing for the future

27th November 2024

Your shadows flicker
Our hearts support them
Thinking of you gives us
The courage to fight

For your freedom
At our tables

If the world has become a graveyard
You will not be buried there
For your actions
Your memory
Your future joys
Will radiate
Infinitely, infinitely

The flame wavers
And sometimes goes out
But men have
The power to rekindle it

Soon we’ll be celebrating Hanukkah
May the miracle happen
That together we’ll light
One by one each candle
We’ll light each life

 

On 30 November 2024

 

Your eyes on these chairs
Yellow
For we are your word
Our forefathers paved the way

To be with you
Fighting for you
To respect you
To win your freedom

Your families and friends
Are many in the world
But the enemy imprisons you
We won’t give up

Your fight is our fight
Even if today
You are suffering from the depths
May your pain destroy them

Your tears flow
Your cries can be heard
In the night
In the day

Dawn and dawn are alike
Without you
We are devastated
Hoping from the depths of our
Souls
To hold you again
Against our hearts
In our embracing arms

The rain falls
And sometimes the sun shines on us
But the gloom lingers
Inside us
For your sake
We will unleash the skies
We will watch by night
And watch by day

No respite
No lull in our fight
To support you
And shout loud and clear

Bring Them Home Now!

 

10 December 2024

 

Hope must be there
It must help us to continue
The road ahead
We await the release of the
Hostages
Our hope is there
Burning
To find them alive

Every day every hour every
minute
Tells us of your suffering
Our hearts ache
Our bellies are twisted on
Our sleepless nights
Teach us resilience
May it be yours
As you return to your homes
Let’s rebuild

Your families, your loved ones, your brothers
Your sisters your children your parents
And all our world have prayed
For your return
May our prayers be answered from
From the depths of our souls
Who twirled in the night
Have met

My solo dances are yours
Dedicated to you
So that each note, each gesture
Bring you breath
A breath
That will return to us
Carried by your emaciated bodies

May the earth nourish you
May our cries set you free
May our rage reach our
Enemies
May they be defeated forever

Our voices mingled with yours
Your voices mingled with ours
Will become songs
Perhaps tomorrow
Before long
Now
At dawn
From D.

The days are long
There’s no sunrise
They are confined
Far from home
We wait for them
The miracle of Hanukkah
That we may free them
From their cruel captors

Negotiations
Talks
Shuttle meetings
Are we making any progress towards their release?

 

13th January 2025

 

Words cannot express
Shouting won’t do
Tears cannot express
Our pent-up anger
Our infinite distress
Every day we remember
Every hour every minute
Every moment

The dawn of D
Will it dawn?
Any news
News?
An agreement?

 

15th January 2025

 

An agreement has been reached
First hostages freed on Sunday
A glimmer of hope
A ray of light
Dawn breaks over dusk

But we remain bitter
Too many lives snuffed out
Too many lives wounded
For evermore

May they be reborn to joy
Regain their footing
Rebuild their dreams
And emerge from the tunnels
With breath in their mouths
And in their hearts

Jubilant scenes in Gaza
What have they won?

 

27 January 2025

 

A glimmer of hope
Some hostages freed
Joy for the family and loved ones
And for the whole of Israel
But the road is long
And winding
Each life
Every hostage
Must be free
Now

 

8th February 2025

 

Grotesque staging
Hate on every screen in the world
In its purest form,
Fragile and weak but standing their ground
In their ordeal.
And you remain silent.
What are you protecting by your silence?
Your naive and blind humanism?

Our children will remember
Of these macabre dances
Of those chilling words
Destined to end up in the tombs of cemeteries.

They will revolt
Against those you silenced
Against those you have embraced with your kind words
Hollow words,
Tolerance,
And I say
Zero tolerance.

The Dawn of D.
Will
A calmer Twilight?

 

Monday 3rd February 2025

 

The stigma of the city, of Tel Aviv,
For the battle is for the hostages to be freed and for Israel to survive,
Witnessing, actively witnessing these faces,
Of these stolen or suspended lives.
A few releases, what a joy to see
To see these families reunited,
May the day come when all the captives
Will be in their own land, surrounded by affection and love,
To heal the wounds of so many days of hell and chaos.

There will come a day,
when the crime of infanticide will punish all those who took part in this murderous madness,
Our enemies kill their own children, eternal and sacrificial victims,
To murder Israel, every second for how many years now?
Eternal victims, but also guilty.

 

13 February 2025

 

The world trembles
A new world is coming into being
But without you
We will remain
Frozen in our positions
Each of our seconds
Will be for your fight
Fighting for hope and
Freedom
Your freedom
Now.

 

16 February 2025

 

Surviving this?
Where do we find the strength?
Where did they find the strength
The strength to hope
Out of these cursed gaols
The dawn of G.
That wakes us every morning
May
Like the aman in its time
Nourish
Our spirituality
Our confidence
Is renewed each day

 

18 February 2025

 

They announced it
What everyone feared
These little bodies
Will return lifeless
Like their mother
And infinite sadness
And why?

Why
Dawn did not break
Over the children
The orange tears our hearts
Our chests
Their blood has spilled
Everything has turned red

Obviously
We no longer have the words
Will the dawn finally break?

A glimmer of hope
On my last journeys to Israel
In Eretz
But today
Their souls have joined
The thousands of others
Who we miss so much
Without knowing them
They are in my heart
In our hearts
A whole people will rise up

They kill their children
They kill our children
And claim victory
When will you wake up?

Accomplices, sympathisers
You are all guilty
Of these crimes
Childhood is on the brink of the abyss
And you rejoice
And you continue to finance
Your personal interests
Have made you blind
And ignorant

I will not forgive
Time is running out
And you take refuge
In useless
Useless
That only lead
To more chaos
To more desolation

You are the barbarians
Of modern times
With a glass of champagne
In your hand

 

19 February 2025

 

Tomorrow
It will be a long night
For those families
Still waiting
To know the fate
Of their loved ones
A whole people is waiting
A whole people is crying

These faces
These smiles
Deep within ourselves
Through the bark of our trees
Our roots sink
On our earth

 

20th February 2025

 

Our people vibrate
To the sound of music
Music from the Nova festival
Today
The music will have
A macabre tone
Whatever the names

Your names will echo forever
Your souls
In the heavens
And in our hearts
In unison

 

20 February 12:33

 

She was reading Mein Kampf
I was reading Al-Banna
Monsters that take us back to
Monsters of today
Fateful heirs
What have you done?
Twisting the lives
Of these little ones
Of a mother and a father
And an entire people
No forgetting
Nor forgiveness

We will stand
Despite our tears
We will stand
Despite the blood in our hearts
Our chests explode

 

22 February 2025

 

They killed the children with their bare hands
By strangulation
Shiri has just been identified
She too has been identified
May their memory be blessed
We will remember

 

23 February 2025

 

May your ancestors
Soothe you
Bound to ourselves.

Article by Jennifer Mercier, published in Loft & Décoration magazine, February 2024.

 

Danielle Aspis has always been passionate about photography, and her academic background is extensive. With degrees in Aesthetics and Suicidology, and a doctorate in History and Civilisation, Danielle Aspis uses the wide-ranging culture she has accumulated through her various courses, as well as her taste and natural attraction for Art, to embellish the world.

 

 

If, for her, humanist photography, which places the human being at the centre of its concerns, is one of the most important creations of the 20th century, she wonders about the importance of seeing and materialising everything through images. In recent times, our world has seen cataclysms caused by its own hand, wars and even large-scale attacks. With the speed of social networks and the absolute quest for ‘buzz’, for exclusivity, for the most shocking image that will put us in the limelight, human beings are creating traumas for themselves, sometimes interacting very negatively, sometimes positively. Through her photographic works, as well as her theses and written research, the artist endeavours not only to share her theory, but also to apply it to herself. Refusing to indulge in over-consumption of the screen, avoiding television and its by-products since she was a teenager, Danielle develops her thinking and her culture through reading, cinema, theatre, visiting exhibitions and taking part in symposia and conferences. These activities, which encourage her to research history, theory and art, are all too often forgotten in her opinion, yet they enable her to ‘see’ further than the received or preconceived and often ultra and hyper-violent images that our society imposes on itself. So, after the attacks, she went out of her way to help the survivors rather than feed her mind on absolute evil.

 

 

 

Inspired by her many questions, her research and her artistic curiosity, which led her from primary school onwards to take part in a programme of weekly visits to museums, or to follow theatrical performances in her teens, and to photograph them a little later, she chose to document life and transform the spaces of production, creation and reception into places of aesthetic research, delimited by digital modalities. The world is her creative space, and she chooses to embellish it by playing with her digital images, destructuring materials by adding colour, shaping chromatic saturations or varying shapes. But she also knows how to return to the initial photograph.

 

Her aim is to move beyond the immediacy of life. For her, it’s no more and no less than a question of survival, to re-approach life with optimism and perseverance. Reality is too violent. Like a painter with paint, she uses brushes and digital tools to poetise space and rediscover a sense of time.

 

While the advent of social networks has brought many improvements in terms of the circulation of information and communication, it has also done away with historical temporality by making everything transformable and transportable. Danielle, through her writings and her works, offers us a journey towards calm and the appeasement of our senses, in order to make present a spatiality that has become virtual, held towards an ideal, where joy and serenity would be renewed.

 

 

 

Article de Jennifer Mercier, publié dans le magazine Loft & Décoration, février 2024.

Danielle Aspis, a living, contemporary digital artist, has chosen to document life through theatricality, transforming the spaces of production, creation and reception into places of aesthetic research, delimited by digital modalities. Her production space is life, and everything can be a pretext for innovative thinking that materialises either in the form of writing or in the form of original artistic works. Her creative space is her mental space, influenced by her theoretical and artistic culture. Her reception space is the gallery, social networks and her website.

 

 Her influences are rich and varied; from primary school she took part in a programme that offered pupils a visit to a museum once a week. Then, as a teenager, she attended theatre performances directed by Ariane Mnouchkine, and on her return from a study trip to Jerusalem, she became a stage photographer, photographing the productions of Daniel Mesguish (among others). She also took an interest in Peter Brook, attending his performances and reading his writings. Her research into colour stems from her encounter with abstract art; she is particularly fond of the works of Karel Appel and Jackson Pollock. She also considers humanist photography to be one of the most important productions of the twentieth century, while analysing its historical and theoretical aspects, and going beyond, in her personal work, the problematic and paradigm of the ‘it has been’.

 

 There is a paradox here: this is not to say that she completely refutes the photographic technique that produces the ‘ça a été’, but she goes beyond this approach with a series of experimental and exploratory works on the formal and chromatic variations made possible by digital software. The result is dematerialised, abstract or fictional images that run counter to the usual commercial practices, in order to bring to life an imagination shaped by her rich background in research and experience around Photographic Art and Contemporary Art.

 

During his confinement, his work turned towards digital art, which opened up new, unsuspected and almost magical territories where classical discourses could be reconsidered from new angles. Theatricality, in fact, where space becomes more important than historical temporality, as if, with digital technology, we had moved from a logic of historical temporality to a logic of spatiality. Spatiality that is often virtual, where modalities define limits that generate productions. With digital technology, and Photoshop in particular, we can move towards a poeticisation of space, offering an embellishment that goes hand in hand with a dialogue about the challenges facing art today. This also raises the question of survival through an art that aims to be singular, to offer an optimistic vision of perseverance and altruism.

 

 

 

Art is a playground that either embellishes the world or deconstructs it: Danielle Aspis has chosen embellishment. As a digital artist, she composes with the abstract and the fictional, using the extensive functionalities of Photoshop software. Her research opens up unsuspected territories through which she documents life through theatricality.

 

 Danielle Aspis has also been a photographer for over 30 years. She began her career reporting on the theatre, before moving into studio work (portraits and objects) and event photography. At the same time, she pursued her plastic and artistic research by exhibiting her personal work (Paris, Ile de France, Vichy) and broadened her theoretical and historical knowledge through university studies. It was in this way that she developed her Théorie du Caméléon, a theatrical approach to the image in which the performance space is divided into three areas: the production space, the creation space and the exhibition space. These become places for aesthetic research, defined by artistic modalities.

With a Master’s degree in Science and Technology (1995) and a DEA in Aesthetics (1998) from Paris VIII, a PhD in History and Civilisation from EHESS (2014) and a DU in Suicidology from Université Paris Descartes (2019), Danielle Aspis has studied all aspects of photographic practice ; from artistic practices to commercial practices, via scientific photography for her thesis. Armed with this academic and field experience, she is concentrating during confinement on new stages in her work by creating Digital Art, and at the same time putting her thoughts and theories down in writing.

 

 Her father was a photographer and her sister a journalist, both of whom were suicidal, and it’s also in the affect that she has drawn her resources, like a constantly renewed tribute, where action takes precedence over melancholy. Her research in Suicidology, which has led to three documented articles, has opened her up to a social public health issue, and she and her brother Simon Aspis co-founded the Esther-Lumière association (https://esther-lumiere.com). She is now investing in a new way in her relationship with others, advocating an art therapy approach for people suffering from suicidal thoughts or pathologies.

 

Aware of the challenges facing art today, Danielle Aspis seeks to renew thought and creation through engaged works that raise the question of survival through art. Survival in the face of the crises that aggravate our distress, but which can only be overcome by dynamic action combining optimism and perseverance, in an assertive dialogue.