An attempt to give shape in a very concrete way to what was imposed rather than chosen. We learn a language through love. But love was crushed by an overwhelming surge. Something harsh. Something that set like cement. Something ugly. Something that leaves a nauseating taste in the mouth when memory brushes against it. Something that also has to do with dissociation.

The sound of words that already existed. Words that once hovered at a distance, and then became mine.

Not abstract terms, but words I learned to use. Words that became an endless line, stretching between love and death, with the futile hope of erasing it through ordinary language.

Words that became as real as the reality they describe. Words that themselves turned concrete, like cement being poured, spreading, hardening inside one’s head.

Something quiet. Something invasive. Something insidious. 

إشي قابِض عم بتسلّل جوّا الراس 

Video installation composed of two complementary sequences. The first introduces the language that developed after October 7, 2023, and the lexicon of violence I learned while I was learning to speak Arabic with my partner, as a non-Arabic speaker. The second visualizes each term using freely available online archival material from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).

The title, “أن نكون شعبًا حرًّا في أرضنا,” which can be translated as “To be a free people in our land,” is a line from the anthem Hatikvah of Israel. A phrase that speaks of freedom and belonging, it is used here to expose its full iro

Concept, text and video editing by Margot Canzian, 2026.

Archival footage sourced from publicly available online materials of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).