LiminalSpaces

Ayreen Anastas and Renne Gabri
Searching for Our Destination
For a period of approximately 20 days, the length of our sojourn in
Ramallah, we engaged with a variety of individuals: shepherds, thinkers,
revolutionaries, street vendors, bus drivers, liars, shopkeepers, widows,
peasants, prisoners, farmers, strikers, activists and artists. Our goal was
to increase our knowledge of the Palestinian situation in a more immediate
way; we did so through learning about the everyday experience of the
people we encountered and about how Israeli measures, particularly in
the West Bank, but also in Israel, suffocate the Palestinians, hinder them
and attempt to destroy their lives.
Our initial proposal was to use our own research, as well as suggestions
from friends and colleagues, in order to outline various itineraries
through the West Bank and parts of Israel. The result was a series of trips
which we documented through a variety of means. The documentation of
each trip and of related discussions retains its own integrity and
autonomy, and reveals specific nuances as well as challenges to any
“settlement”project. This project resists containment, since the documents
we present are only a reference to the journeys we undertook and the
exchanges we participated in. Seen together, however, these documents
pose a highly specific set of questions and concerns that come directly
from the individuals whom we sought out, or who sought us out.

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Ayreen Anastas
Born in Bethlehem, Palestine. She relocated to Germany in 1989 for
a DAAD scholarship where she studied architecture at the Technical
University in Berlin until 1996. She is currently living in Brooklyn. She
has taught at Pratt Institute- School of Architecture in Brooklyn since
1999 and is one of the primary organizers of the 16 Beaver group, an
artist community that functions as a social and collaborative space on
16 Beaver street, where the group hosts panel discussions, film series,
artist talks, radio recordings, reading groups and more. Anastas recent
artistic projects and exhibitions include: Pasolini Pa* Palestine filmed
while at Al-Ma’mal residency in Jerusalem in 2003 (shown at Homeworks
III, Beirut 2005, and at Hebbel Theater, Berlin 2006) M* of Bethlehem
(shown at Argos festival in Brussels 2005 and at CCA Glasgow. In the
poem about love you don’t write the word love? 2005), The Library
of Useful Knowledge, an audiovisual archive at Inside Out Festival at
the Bunker in Berlin, and collaborations with artist Rene Gabri (Camp
Campaign, Artist talk, Radio Active, United We Stand). Her practice
engages with issues of public and political space, language, the everyday
and the question of Palestine. These concerns are articulated in various
forms including videos, audio works, books, architectural models, multi-
media presentations, social forms and drawings.
jobeuys@16beavergroup.org
www.16beavergroup.org

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Rene Gabri
Born in Tehran, moved to Athens, then Los Angeles, now based in New
York. His solo projects, are largely based around the mediums of film,
video, audio and text. He has been exploring a broad range of topics
including cities, memory, confession, popular culture, television, music
and issues related to in-between-ness and drifting in general. At the
conclusion of the Whitney Museum’s Independent Study Program in
1999, he was involved in setting up 16 Beaver. Since that time he has been
actively involved in maintaining an ongoing platform and space for
independent critical, cultural, political inquiry and friendship. His
projects with Ayreen Anastas have evolved a great deal through their
work at 16Beaver. Their Radioactive Discussion series was a physical
counterpart to their fictional Home land Security Cultural Bureau
(hscb.org) project. Together with Erin Mcgonigle and Heimo Laner, he
also works under the name e-Xplo, creating projects which involve
mapping and exploring, and developing a vocabulary for particular sites.
Most recently he has taught at the University of Architecture in Venice
and the City University of New York in Staten Island.
renegabri@16beavergroup.org
www.16beavergroup.org
www.e-xplo.org