Laurie Anderson on Her Ambitious Guantanamo Meditation ‘Habeas Corpus’
Laurie Anderson, no stranger to storytelling or feats of artsy ambition, is preparing a momentous multimedia work about a subject as pointed and political as they come: the story of a long-suffering detainee from Guantanamo Bay. Under the title Habeas Corpus, the project involves the “telepresence” of an ex-prisoner, Mohammed el Gharani, whose image will be broadcast live from his current home in West Africa onto a large statue version of himself in the middle of the Park Avenue Armory in New York. The space is enormous: 55,000 square feet, with a soaring ceiling and a sense of expectancy built up by a line of ambitious arts programming there in recent years. The presentation, too, is expansive, with the main video presence of Mohammed abetted by a soundscape featuring ghostly feedback tones devised by Lou Reed and, at night, a rapturous concert with live performances by Anderson along with Merrill Garbus of Tune-Yards, downtown composer Shahzad Ismaily, guitarist Stewart Hurwood and scorching Syrian party-starter Omar Souleyman.
Habeas Corpus will be open for visitation in New York day and night from October 2nd through the 4th. Anderson talked to Rolling Stone about her ambitious work, the story of an innocent detainee and hopes they both share for making his story known.
What was it like when you first learned about Mohammed and his story?
It was shocking, learning about how he had been captured and what was happening in Guantanamo. I went over and met with him and it was very intense. Remember what it was like when you first read about Abu Ghraib and wondered, What is this combination of porn and violence and weirdness? He was there for seven years. He’s now 27 and lives in West Africa. Where I actually can’t say: He’s stateless, and his lawyer is careful because she wants to make sure they won’t have problems. It’s a struggle for detainees who are dumped somewhere and then don’t have citizenship. Nobody wants them, so it’s a struggle. I traveled there several times, and then I started finding out more about the stories of other people. He said he was interested in doing this, and when I asked why, he said, “I want to help my brothers” — his fellow detainees — “in Guantanamo.” I’ve been sick learning about this stuff. It literally makes me sick to sit across a table from someone whose back has been broken, whose head was broken, who was cut all over — and to realize: We did that?
[The work] was going to be silent, but Mohammed is so articulate that I realized he should tell the story. He learned English in prison. He’s a Chadian citizen, grew up in Saudi Arabia, and went to study computers at his uncle’s school in Pakistan when he was 14. He was in a mosque, and he was grabbed with a bunch of other people. Most of the people in Guantanamo were sold to us. In a lot of ways we were looking for the prisoners that we needed. We needed a lot of Saudis, so he got scooped up in that. Then they get shipped to Guantanamo and the interrogation begins. Most of these guys are taxi drivers, goat herders — you and I know more about Al Qaeda than they do. But he, Mohammed, was accused of being an Al Qaeda operative in London when he was 11 years old. It’s insane. A lot of the charges come from other detainees who have been tortured for years and will say anything: “Yeah, I think I saw him in Tora Bora.” Torture is horrible and, if you can say something that will stop it, most people will.