In her video, Amir depicts intimate situations, desperate attempts at an impossible separation, where the text is at times articulated with irony and pathos, at others – with frozen laconicism. It is a highly tragic, intimate confession with which the listener must identify, but what if your listener is yourself? Amir creates a unilateral breakup, a dialogue which is a monologue. She converses with an other who is absent from the discourse, and at the same time – it is the self. Each of the figures desperately attempts, in vain, to preserve the “safe borders,” basic rights, human dignity. Notions such as “self-defense”, “retrenchment”, “struggle for one’s home” reflect both a general “national state” and a private “existential state”. The exhausting relationship and breakup negotiations are permeated with the “national” speech patterns, all about separation: “They’re there and we’re here”, “pullback”, “disengagement”. Disgraceful Retreat under Pressure crosses a private breakup with a national one. Amir introduces a state-of-affairs where not only the personal is political, but the political is personal as well.

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