LiminalSpaces

Yael bartana
Summer Work Camp

Between July 15 and July 30, the Israeli Committee Against House
Demolitions (ICAHD) held its fourth summer camp in Anata, a Palestinian
village included within the municipal bounds of Jerusalem and in areas A
and B.
In the course of the camp, Palestinians, Israelis and citizens from various
other countries began rebuilding the house of the Hamdan family. The
house, which is located within the municipal bounds of Jerusalem, was
demolished in December 2005. On the second day of construction work,
the building was stopped by representatives of the Jerusalem municipality
and by the army, since the workers had no building permit (the Jerusalem
municipality does not issue building permits to Palestinians).
Summer camp participants continued to transfer construction materials
to the other side of Anata, (located in area B, under the rule of Israel?s Civil
Administration) in order to rebuild the home of 53-year-old Abu Ahmad
Al Hadad, who is originally from Hebron. His house was demolished in
June 2004; it had served as the home of 24 people ? including Al Hadad
and his two wives, his children, his mother and his brother-in-law. Abu
Ahmad knows that his new home may not survive for long, and that it
may be demolished again by the Jerusalem municipality.
During the period of construction, violent confrontations occurred
between village youths and Border Patrol policemen. The presence of the
policemen in the village provoked the youths, who threw stones at them;
the policemen reacted by spraying tear gas. This repeated itself several
times, like a ritual in which participants on both sides are aware of the
role they are playing and know how the confrontation will end.

The ICAHD is a group dedicated to direct and nonviolent action; it was
originally founded to resist the Israeli demolition of Palestinian houses in
the occupied territories. The dedication to rebuilding demolished houses
as a form of resistance or opposition to the Israeli regime raises several
questions concerning acts of resistance, which are usually thought of as
acts of demolition rather than of construction. These questions are
especially poignant in Israel, in which construction is generally related to
the revival of the Jewish people and its rebuilding in the land of Israel. In
the context of the ICAHD’s activity, the Israeli ethos of refraining from
uprooting trees and “building and being rebuilt” is transformed into a
shared form of resistance employed by Israelis and Palestinians against
the State’s of Israel’s occupation regime.
I undertook the photographic documentation of the summer camp in
order to study the dynamic that engenders this act of resistance and
opposition performed by Israeli, Palestinian and international volunteers
working together against the Israeli occupation. I focused on the ideology
that motivates them as a group, as well as on the manner in which they
respond as individuals within this group.

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Yael Bartana
Born 1970, Israel. Currently lives and works in Israel and the Netherlands.
Received a BFA from the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem
and participated in Rijks akademie van Beelden de Kunsten in Amsterdam.
Works primarily with video and has focused on Israel and the Israeli
situation in her works. The point of departure for her video films is
everyday living and its rituals related to the actions of the state and the
constant presence of war and insecurity. Bartana?s films are often centered
on a personal poetic expression, achieved through the manipulation of
sound, movement and images. They are both visually and intellectually
intriguing, sparking off responses from the political to questions of
machismo, gender and human relationships. Bartana has had solo
exhibitions at the Van Abbe Museum in Eindhoven; Modern Art in Oxford;
B?roFriedrich in Berlin; P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center in New York, and
many other venues. Her work has also been exhibited in such venues as
the Tate Modern, De Appel Foundation, the 2004 Liverpool Biennial,
Kunstwerke-Berlin, the 2002 Manifesta 4 European Biennial, and the MIT
List Visual Arts Center. She has also participated in numerous film/video
festivals, including RoerdamFilmFestival (2002, 2004), Viper Basel -
International festival for film video and new media 2002, and Transmediale
2003, an international media art festival in Berlin.
bartana@my-i.com
www.my-i.com