NO COMMENT // BALA TAALEEK
Bala Taaleek ["no comment" in Arabic] is also a Lebanese pun for "do not steal electric power". In Lebanon, stealing power off the grid has been a recurrent problem resulting in accidental injuries or deaths, in addition to creating important financial losses in the national electric company.
I wanted to raise awareness about this problem through an installation on the electric cables of the neighborhood I grew up in. After simulating a neighbor's electrocution, I distributed a call for postmortem prayer. Then, I made tags that people would number and hang on their circuit breakers. I also circulated letters that the citizens would fill out with their circuit breakers' number and send out to the electric company asking it to fix the cable extensions.
