LiminalSpaces

Oren Sagiv
Pisgat Ze’ev / Shuafat Panorama
The stretch of the separation wall that surrounds the Shuafat refugee camp,
and which is currently nearing completion, will impede the people living
in the camp from accessing the other, Jewish Jerusalem; yet it seems to me
that the degree of mental alienation overshadows the concrete walls.
For many years now, the crowded refugee camp (in which 10,000 people
live in a tiny area) is the view seen by the Jewish residents of Pisgat Ze’ev
East. This is the landscape they see before them when they stroll through
the garden at the top of the hill; the landscape they see from the windows
of their homes. Every so oen, people who may be residents of the
refugee camp appear in the neighborhood: a young man working in the
supermarket storage room; the elderly, sun-scorched man mowing the
lawns of the public gardens; from one’s car window, one can glimpse the
distant silhouettes of construction workers busy building the new bridge
over the highway.

When I visit Pisgat Ze’ev East, life there appears perfectly normal. The
neighborhood seems so utterly banal?a typical Israeli suburb offering its
residents “quality of life”. The view on the other side of the narrow valley
? the concrete wall that is transforming the mounds of garbage upon
which the crowded camp stands into a suffocating enclosure?seems not
to disturb the serene everyday existence of those inhabiting the lush, well
kept neighborhood.
As I wandered around the neighborhood, I photographed it while
pointing the lens in all directions. In these photographs, the selement
and the refugee camp extend out over the same plane. The banal and the
disturbing have come to populate the same image ? as the observer and
the observed landscape come together. Turning one’s head and one’s back
has thus become impossible.

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Oren Sagiv
Born 1969, Tel Aviv, Israel. Architect and artist. His work includes
collaboration on works for performance and theater and installation
work in the public domain. He is a member of “Artists Without Walls”,
a permanent forum for cultural collaboration between Palestinians and
Israelis.
orensagiv@012.net.il