Date: 10 - 12 March, 2006
Location: Qalandiya / Jerusalem / Ramallah
Context
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The Israeli project of territorial and demographic control has been
deeply inscribed into the physical and social fabric of the intersecting
regions of Israel and Palestine. Urban frontier zones like Jerusalem
have become laboratories of an urbanism of colonial expansion and
ethnic segregation that are unique in their extremes: a spatial matrix
of ethnically-homogeneous insular realities, contained within spatial
and mental frontiers. Everyday contact zones between the Israeli and
Palestinian city and also between Palestinians on either side of the Wall,
have eroded to the bare minimum. Physical frontiers are reinforced by the
generic architectural vocabulary of aggressive seclusion, mirroring global
trends of socioeconomic, ethnic and political segregation. Domestic and
public spaces in the Israeli city have become increasingly militarized as
preventative measures are adopted against the omnipresent fear of real,
constructed terror and internal threats. Security, control and ambient fear
transform everyday urban spaces into frontier zones, suburbs into gated
enclaves, suburban shopping centers into fortresses. An equally strong
impact is exercised by mass communication tools and media technologies
that foreground radicalized images and condition the everyday
perception of the other. For Palestinians, Jerusalem has become a closed
and ever-shrinking city; open only to those holding an Israeli ID card
and able to afford living in the city’s ever more congested neighborhoods.
Israeli walls and settlements (illegal under international law), bypass
routes and checkpoints have become synonymous with a routine reality
that integrates vocabularies such as “closure” and “curfew”. In the context of
increasing political and economic hardship, Palestinians are preoccupied
with their mere everyday survival.
The site
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Road 60 is the historic traffic artery and connecting spine between
Jerusalem, Ramallah and beyond. Its present condition could be
considered prototypical of the alienation, segregation, and fragmentation
that characterize the Israeli method of occupation. The once fluid space
of connection and urban growth has dissolved into a complex array of
buffer zones, security or containment zones, border areas,walls or sites of
involuntary proximity and collision such as checkpoints (both permanent
and temporary).
Before the erection of the Wall and the checkpoint, the road was a
monument to the colonial relation between Israel and the Palestinian
areas; urban growth was severely curtailed from 1967 onwards by a
plethora of laws and zoning regulations. Today, the road has taken on
more horrific dimensions as a result of the checkpoint and the related
regime of control and surveillance. In its most central section within
Jerusalem the road was relocated and widened in the 1980s to follow the
no-mans-land that had divided the city between 1948 and 1967. Planned
as a “boulevard for the united city”, in reality, it led to a further deepening
of the fragmentation of the Jerusalem’s urban fabric by forming a wide
buffer zone in the shape of an urban highway: an invisible wall and mental
barrier. As the road advances north, it cuts through the suburban terrain
of East Jerusalem where Israeli settlements face Palestinian enclaves and
villages, passing the refugee camp of Shu’afat. Here, the road becomes a
bypass road whose exits and entrances access the ethnically segregated
satellites of Greater Jerusalem. Shortly before the Palestinian town of Ar-
Ram, the new Wall swings into the road space dividing it along its central
line with the aim of cutting off Ar-Ram (to the East) from the urban fabric
of annexed municipal Jerusalem and the industrial area to the West. A
new border regime was established, reducing points of crossing to official
and increasingly sanitized checkpoints such as Qalandiya, one of the
largest checkpoints in the West Bank. The checkpoint is characterized by
a massive hub of Palestinian public transport and an informal market,
as people arriving from the southern West Bank are forced to cross the
checkpoint by foot before continuing their journey on a different bus into
Al Bireh and Ramallah. Frequent incursions by the Israeli army have le
the road in a state of ill-repair. The road passes several abandoned army
checkpoints and Qalandiya and Al Amari refugee camps before entering
the dense urban centers of the twin cities of Ramallah and Al Bireh.
Process
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Curators, cultural figures and artists developed this project through a
series of meetings and discussions that sought to generate active
participation of the art sector in developing modes of expression against
the political status quo of occupation, dehumanization and oppression.
The curators have invited an array of local and international artists to
participate in this project. Additionally, it is hoped that through
participation in the project, new possibilities of contact and exchange will
emerge on an individual basis and beyond.
The project will be launched with a conference from 10-12 March, 2006,
including all project participants and local and international experts
and curators. Through three days of guided walks, presentations and
discussions, the conference will provide a forum for debating the possibilities
and limitations of artistic strategies and research tools in providing a
beer understanding of the ambivalent nature of physical, mental and
cultural frontiers. The conference will also mark the inauguration of a new
space for contemporary art situated on Road 60 in the area of Qalandiya
checkpoint. This space will serve as a resource and support infrastructure
for the duration of the project, and a dynamic entity which provides in its
physicality a direct response to the very notions being examined.
After the conference, eight months of research and development will
begin, generating new art projects conceived by the participating artists
and architects, through art residencies. Artists are free to further explore
individually and on-site the examined area and produce site-specific work
that explores the constitution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict’s everyday
urban frontiers, and aspires to generate political, mental and social
change. Over a process of six months, participating artists will be asked
to develop specific tactics and strategies for addressing the physiognomy
of specific sites and their every day operations. Individuals or teams will
research new methodologies that question the perception of the frontiers
and challenge their accessibility, permeability and potential as contact
and communication zones. Artists or collaborative teams of artists will
be asked to develop strategies that explore, make visible, comment on,
obscure, confront or interact with physical and mental frontier spaces. The
program will encourage an emphasis on new forms of creative practice
which adopts, investigates and subverts contemporary technology and
systems of media communication, underlining the central role played
taken by technology in the shaping of the physical and mental borders.
After completion, works will be made accessible to the public. An internet
site will accompany the process, which can be used by the participating
artists for exchange of ideas and materials and serve as an interface for
the public. The final stage of the project will be a major exhibition at the
Gallery for Contemporary Arts Leipzig, Germany, in Ramallah Palestine
and in Holon, Israel. In addition, the working process will be documented
in an extensive catalogue.
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Schedule
FRIDAY, 10 March : DAY 1
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9.30 am
ROAD 60 (PART 1), meeting point: Jerusalem Hotel, Nablus Road, 500
metres north of Damascus Gate, Jerusalem, Tel +972 2 6283282: Guided
walk along former UN-administered no-man?s land towards French Hill,
followed by bus tour towards Shu?fat Refugee Camp, Pisgat Zeev and
Hizma, ending north of Ar-Ram/Qalandiya. Guided by Jeff Halper and
Terry Boullata.
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1.00 pm
LUNCH
Free lunch for the conference participants provided at Qalandiya
Conference Space.
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2.30 pm
Introduction by the curators.
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FORUM 1: Occupation, Segregation, Ethnicity, Places, Cultural Territories
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3.00 pm
Introduction to Forum 1
Moderator Salim Tamari
3.15 pm
Khalil Nijem
Title: Eight Decades of Urban Conflict: Introduction to the spatial
transformation of the Jerusalem and Ramallah regions.
Listen to audio file
4.00 pm
Khaled Horani
Title: The Road to Gaza: Universal Rituals in a Local Context
Listen to audio file
4.45 pm
Ilan Pappe
Title: Israel as a gated society
Listen to audio file
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5.30 pm
COFFEE BREAK
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6.00 pm
Screening
Avi Mograbi (Details ,2,3,4), Sharif Waked (Chic Point),
Anan Tzuckerman (Anxious Escapism), Sandi Hilal and Alessandro
Petti (StatelessNation)
7.30 pm
Open Session
Moderated By the curators
Listen to audio file:
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8.00 pm
BUFFET DINNER
Free dinner for the conference participants provided at Qalandiya
Conference Space.
SATURDAY, 11 March : DAY 2
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9.30 am
ROAD 60 (PART 2), meeting point: Opposite the western gate of Al-
Muqata (Palestinian Presidential Headquarters), Birzeit Street - Guided
walk through the city centre towards Al-Amari refugee camp, followed
by bus tour to Qalandiya. The tour will be guided by Khaldun Bshara and
Dr. Adel Yahya.
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1.00 pm
BUFFET LUNCH
Free lunch for the conference participants provided at Qalandiya
Conference Space
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FORUM 2: Occupation, Segregation, Ethnicity, Places, Cultural
Territories?In Relation to Other Geographies
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2.30 pm
Introduction to Forum 2
Moderator Salwa Mikdadi
2.45 pm
Erden Kosova
Title: Stumbling in Faith: Impossibility of Escaping the Context. The story, the troubles and the problematics of an exhibition in the divided city of Nicosia.
Listen to audio file
3.30 pm
Azra Aksamija
Title: Where Religions Meet: Spatial Mediation of Religious Conflicts. Presentation of current research on new sacral architecture in Bosnia and the United States.
Listen to audio file
4.15 pm
Simona Nastac
Title: The Dictatorship is Dead and so is Aesthetics: Romanian Art afterCommunism. New practices mediating between the ethic and the aesthetic emerge.
Listen to audio file
5.00 pm
Francis McKee
Title: Shot By Both Sides: The Pressures on Artists and Intellectuals
during Times of Conflict
Listen to audio file:
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5.00 pm
COFFEE BREAK
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5.30 pm
Artist Presentation:
Peter Friedl: “No photography” - Presentation of research on the island
of Cyprus.
Listen to audio file:
Superflex/Mikael Rasmus Nilsen: Tools.
Listen to audio file:
Sean Snyder: Some Consistent Inconsistencies - on Recent Media
Reporting from Iraq
Listen to audio file:
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8.00 pm
BUFFET DINNER
Free dinner for the conference participants provided at Qalandiya
Conference Space.
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9.00 pm
Screening
Film by Annemarie Jacir: Quelques mieespourlesoiseaux
(Some Crumbs for the Birds) France/ Jordan 2005.
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10.00 pm
Party
SUNDAY, 12th March : DAY 3
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FORUM 3: Possibilities of Art. Can Art Subvert Political Realities and
Provoke Change?
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10.00 am
Introduction to Forum 3
Moderator Galit Eilat
10.15 am
David Garcia
Title: Strategies for Tactical Media
Listen to audio file:
11.00 am
Reem Fadda
Title: Contentious Areas: Politics and Arts within the Parameters of the
Palestinian Place
Listen to audio file:
11.45 am
Charles Esche
Title: Thinking Things Otherwise: the Possibilities for Contemporary Art
Listen to audio file:
12:30 pm
Open session
Moderator: Galit Eilat
Listen to audio file:
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1.30 pm
BUFFET LUNCH