Interview: Rima Najdi Walks Beirut As A Fake Suicide Bomber

I had the chance to have a talk with performance artist Rima Najdi who recently wore a fake suicide bomber costume and walked the streets of Beirut to see how people would react.

Rima Najdi, AKA Madame Bomba, is a Lebanese artist based in Berlin. Over the holidays, she returned to Beirut and had the chance to witness two horrific bomb attacks. The first in downtown Beirut and the second in the predominantly Shia area of Dahiyeh. Addressing her fear of “dying at any moment”, Najdi got inspired to wander Beirut’s streets dressed as a bomb, all in black, except for the red dynamite costume strapped to her designed by Rayya Kazoun.

Photograph: Maria Kassab

[Q]
How do you feel about all of the media attention your performance has been getting the last few days?

[A]
Everyone wants tho know why I did the performance but when this question is asked over and over again, then it becomes a strange experience. Everyone suddenly wants to know why I did it!

[Q]
Okay, then I won’t ask you that question! I see in your biography that you studied in New York. Has the theme of war always been present in your body of work?

[A]
Well before I went to New York, I studied theatre, or dramatic arts in Beirut, and I worked here for three years as part of a collective on a piece about war. It was conceptual physical theatre. After two years, I went and did my Masters in Performance Studies in New York, which has given me a lot of ideas. I learned how to conceptualize, how to theorize, how to write and how to talk about things, how to be critical. This experience helped me tremendously, being a person who is always traveling to be able to do work by myself. There, I became an independant person who works by myself in theatre and dance. Then recently I went back to Lebanon and witnessed two bombs that took place after Christmas and after new year.

[Q]
What was your experience of the bombings?

[A]
Actually some people are criticizing the fact that I don’t live here full time and saying that since I don’t live here my performance is not valid. That in a lot of ways I’m privileged, whereas there are people that are stuck here in Lebanon and experiencing a real struggle. They want to leave but cannot leave. In truth, I have been very active in Lebanon and did not get the chance to travel until the past four years. I know the social structure, the space, I grew up here.. the feeling of not knowing what will happen next, and honestly I’ve never seen this “not knowing of what’s happening next” and being so worried and being so threatened. This feeling of being threatened has become so normal here.

I am also very surprised about the intense negative reactions I am getting. You really start to feel that everyone is depressed, everyone is not happy. Very few people you meet are content with their lives. You feel that people are doing acts of going dancing, going drinking. It’s extreme to a certain extent that it’s kind of there for you to distance yourself from what is really going on around you. I think everyone has become really aggressive and not really civic in one way or another. You drive your car and if you are driving for five minutes you just get really nervous and stressed out. It is getting harder and harder to communicate.

When the second bomb happened I was going to visit someone across the Nabe3. We were sitting around and a friend of mine was saying they heard there was a bomb. Then we noticed that the connection on our cel phones was lost and at that point we were so sure that another bomb has taken place. For me the semiotics of it are absurd, where one thing signifies the other. No cel phone connection equals a bomb has taken place. It just made me think.

Then there was watching the news. Okay so there is this horrifying thing that happened and people were just standing around watching, looking, silent, numb, no reaction. Then I saw a guy with a rifle walking around trying to separate everyone. Then later on you see people walking around dressed in white investigating the site. I keep thinking, this is really absurd.

The next day I was driving and kept thinking to myself, where is the next bomb? Each red light you stop at, you look around thinking that there maybe a bomb here somewhere. You cannot go to certain areas because it is risky. And then, what is risky and what is not? So all of that and the intensity of looking for the bomb and talking to my friends who are having the same fears and questions.

You really start to question everything and you start to think why am I thinking like that? For example, if I am looking at an unusual car, why am I suspecting it. Then you realize that you have to face your internal fears everyday when you wake up. This is where the idea came from for me.

[Q]
Did you have any help in putting together your costume?

[A]
Yes, definitely. I have a tendency to want to work alone but things end up not working exactly how I want them, so I didn’t want to go through that, especially having to create an invention that I knew would not be an easy thing in Beirut. I have a good friend, Maria Kassab, who told me about Raya Kazoun who is a fashion designer. I had a Friday meeting with Raya and Maria who encouraged me tremendously to go for it. I was scheduled to travel the following Wednesday and if it wasn’t for that meeting I would have probably never done it. Saturday I met with a few people and then Sunday morning I called some friends and everyone was there for me and very supportive.

[Q]
How was the reaction of some of the people you came in contact with during your performance? Were some people afraid that you might be a real suicide bomber?

[A]
I think it was scary for some people because they thought that I may be giving other suicide bombers ideas to do this and in a way, encouraging them. That small nuance that this could be real, was terrifying for people.

Some people were very afraid and yelling at me. I actually found those people to more honest towards me and themselves than the people that were coming up to me and taking photos next to me. I think people have reached a certain extent of fear that anything could be valid as a bomb, that even a trash bag on the street has the potential to be a bomb. This is the violence that I am protesting against.

[Q]
What were some of the things that people were saying to you?

[A]
Some people were yelling and those people in particular were standing at a distance, they would not come near me.

One person started to applaud me. That was a real performance happening. There I was at the corniche and someone is standing there in front of me looking right at me just clapping, as if saying without words, we got the message, just leave.

[Q]
People act in strange ways when they are forced to face their fears.

[A]
Ya, even the people who were taking photos took them from far away. They were standing smiling from a distance and taking pictures from far far away. One parent sent their child to take a picture next to me. It was the weirdest thing because it was like you’re sending your kid? This is the amount of absurdity. Especially, I think this kind of performance works so well in Beirut because the amount of absurdity is interesting. People in the streets were behaving in such a strange way that it really opened a space of imagination for me.

So when that person sent their kid to take a photo, at that instant, people suddenly started rushing to come and taking photos all at once. After that was over, I started walking and people were coming up to me, starting conversations, asking questions. I had my internal monologue switched on which was to never really give a direct answer. Whoever asked me a question, I asked them back to get them to think about it. I am not there to just give answers.

Then I had these people that would come and take pictures and some were videotaping me. They would tell everyone to move out of the frame because they are taking video. These interactions and how people give themselves the authority to direct what is going on around them, is very interesting to me because it’s all a part of the performance. The process of people looking, then coming to take a picture, and their interaction where they are directing what is going on around them.

[Q]
How did you have the courage to do this performance from a legal standpoint?

[A]
I contacted my lawyer that morning and I asked her about it. My dad was super afraid for me of course and he suggested that I contact the police for permission first, which I didn’t want to do. I insisted that I only ask my lawyer and nobody else. That helped me a lot but I am definitely afraid until that actual moment. This is not the first time that I do a performance in Beirut. I did a previous one at Rafik Hariri Airport which is only archived in photos, I did this kind of walking through the airport with a costume.

Whenever I am preparing for these kind of situations, it is about facing these internal fears and internal questions. But as a performer, you cannot be afraid of people’s interactions and reactions. For me, until I am in the street and in the costume, I am really scared and very afraid. At the moment when I am in public, all these fears have to come down. So am I afraid of what will happen to me? Yes I am afraid. This is the same thing that people ask themselves everyday and then learning to deal with that fear.

[Q]
Do you feel that people understand you in some way, that you were able to shake people out of their coma?

[A]
I think that the performance did more than I ever imagined. I had planned these six hours, to record the interactions, and move on to something else. The buzz that my performance is getting on social media and in the press is really overwhelming and in many ways the performance is still going on because I am still recording and still talking about it. I am recording all the comments which are a lot of times even more interesting than what is written.

On social media I am getting some very strange comments, like, “Are you crazy?” “Why are you doing this?” “Do you want to get famous?”. I start to think, ok if I am doing this to get famous, why don’t you do the same? If I didn’t make you feel anything and my performance was so ineffective, then why are you responding to me and why are you making yourself visible on my comments?

Some people thought I was making some kind of a joke because my costume was “cartoony”. There is a difference between comical and cartoonish. I actually wanted a very kind of tele tubby costume but didn’t have enough time. My intention was never to make it look like a real bomb, I can assure you of that. I didn’t want people to believe that I am an actual bomb. That was part of the experiment – how do people react if they see a cartoonish bomb.

I like to do this kind of work… playing with costumes.

[Q]
In a way carrying a bomb around triggers fear but then the cartoonish costume creates discomfort which then gives you a genuine kind of reaction.

[A]
Just a few words to say thank you for being so polite with me. This has been one of the most relaxed interviews I have ever had. Really I am getting quite intense reactions where I am getting yelled at and called all kinds of names. It’s been a pleasure.