Langlands and Bell's war

Art in America, Jan, 2005 by Ben Langlands, Nikki Bell, Eleanor Heartney

To the Editors:

It has come to our attention that a review of an exhibition of our work at Henry Urbach Architecture, New York, was published early last year by Eleanor Heartney [A.i.A., Jan. '04]. While we are very pleased to have our work reviewed in your publication, the piece contains factual inaccuracies that we feel ought to be corrected.

Heartney states that the house once occupied by Osama bin Laden at Daruntah was an "already abandoned site" when it was strafed during the war. In fact, the house was in use as part of a training camp (which is why it was attacked), and it remains occupied today by members of the Hizb-i-Islami militia, commanded by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.

Next, Heartney says that the work BO LA SA, which involves projection, is an ever-changing grid of acronyms for the various NGOs (nongovernmental organizations) that appeared on the scene in postwar Afghanistan. As the title of this work indicates, this is clearly not the case. BO, LA and SA in fact stand for Banned Organizations, Liberation Armies and Security Agencies.

Heartney then proceeds to describe a work she nominates as BO LA SA by specifying some details from the work NGO, which was not in the exhibition. We imagine she must have read about or seen this piece somewhere else.

Although Heartney makes a number of interesting observations in the course of her review, we feel obliged to draw attention to a final inaccuracy. She asserts that the film Zardad's Dog, dealing with a trial in Kabul, lacks translation for non-Arabic speakers. On the contrary, the film has regular summaries and translations of the proceedings into English throughout. Significantly, though, the language being spoken is not Arabic but Dari--one of the two main languages of Afghanistan, the other being Pashto. Arabic is not widely spoken or understood in Afghanistan.

Ben Langlands and Nikki Bell

London

Eleanor Heartney replies:

I apologize for any factual errors in the review. Regrettably, given the amount of time that has elapsed since publication, I am unable to respond more fully on specifics. This kind of artwork is deeply dependent on external information, and I drew on press materials provided by the gallery for my factual presentation. My recollection is that some of them were ambiguous in wording. I notice also that several other reviews of Zardad's Dog mention that the film lacked English translations, so it would seem that I was not the only one to miss this element.