The Nurse and the Hijakers (Part I), 1977
In The Nurse and the Hijackers, Eleanor Antin uses cutout paper dolls once again to continue the adventures of Nurse Eleanor that were initiated with The Adventures of a Nurse (1976). This time, her heroine finds herself aboard a plane that has been diverted from its original destination by hijackers.
The setting in which the characters evolve is the model of an airplane cabin made by the artist. Eleanor Antin controls the paper dolls and lends her voice to the female and male characters. She also uses her voice to simulate the sound effects that punctuate her narrative, in which four members of an Arab liberation movement fiercely opposed to capitalist technologies hijack a plane. The plane is forcibly directed towards Algeria, Libya and Cairo, but the passengers are saved in the end, through the intervention of Israeli soldiers. Aboard the plane, Nurse Eleanor uses her skills to save the life of a man wounded by a bullet, using a pair of scissors and a sewing kit. The other passengers are eccentric and archetypal characters (a movie star writing her memoirs, an ambitious sports reporter, an air hostess etc.).
In this video Eleanor Antin combines clichés relating to the wealth of the Western world, but also clichés relating to the Middle East, terrorism and an amalgam of the two. Eleanor Antin's means of production are those belonging to little girls everywhere: paper dolls and imagination. The staging is reminiscent of well-equipped dolls' houses in which the children tell the stories of their imaginary characters. In the same way, the airplane cabin is minutely reconstructed, becoming the artist's playground.
With this work, the nurse enters the geopolitical sphere of international terrorism and the Arab-Israeli conflict. She abandons melodrama for much harsher political realities, such as when Nurse Eleanor finds herself negotiating with terrorists and striving to understand their political commitment.
Priscilia Marques