The installation “History is not mine” features not only an eponymous video, but also a display of various objects, “props,” that appear within it: a type-writer, some hammers, typed sheets of paper, and a black book with a hole in the middle, attached to a piece of wood creating a kind of absurdist game of bilboquet… The video shows a man, whose face we never see, hitting a type-writer with two hammers. A bright red type-writer ribbon provides the only touch of color and underscores the essential conflict between “the beauty of the written word and the violence and difficulty of writing it.” The text produced by this performance is framed and presented on the wall as though it were archival material. With this installation mounir fatmi interrogates not only the role of those who witness history, but also that of those complicit in writing it – and both roles are made incarnate in the spectator.This installation piece can be understood as a direct response to the 2012 edition of the “Printemps de Septembre” art festival in Toulouse, France, titled “L”Histoire est à moi (History is mine).” During the festival, one of fatmi’s installations, “Technologia,” which mixes circular Coranic verses with elements inspired by Marcel Duchamp’s Rotoreliefs, was the subject of several incidents involving the public and was ultimately removed in a joint decision by the festival and the artist. The verses had been projected onto the side-walk of a bridge, allowing the public to literally walk through the installation. This provoked violent protests from several Muslim groups. Later the same year, another piece — the video “Sleep Al Naïm,” an homage to Salman Rushdie — was censured by the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris, where it was due to be part of an exhibition celebrating 25 years of creativity in the Arab World. These events had a profound effect on fatmi, eliciting at once deep disillusionment and a crisis of conscience.In the video, the simple and banal gesture of typing is transformed by the hammers into an unbearably weighty act. The crash of the hammers raining down on the keys creates a violent drone of sound, a kind of amplification of the characteristic gentle clicking of a type-writer. The sound is also redolent of the tick-tock of a clock or the crack of a machine gun volley, symbolizing at once that time is passing and that History is disappearing along with it. With this piece, fatmi reflects on the posture that each of us adopts vis à vis History. If the title of the piece betrays a feeling of powerlessness, the spectator is given a de-facto position of power due to the high angle shot used to film the video. In this way, the piece destroys the fictional fourth wall between the spectator and the performance, spectator becomes actor.