During the World Cup, this yearning to belong becomes clearly evident. Every house in the village waves at least one – and in some cases four, five or as many as eight – national flags. Brazil, Italy, Germany, Argentina, Costa Rica and France are all represented by flags stretched high above the streets. Middle Eastern, North African or East Asian flags are noticeably absent… During the month of the World Cup, no marriages take place in Me’elia. A curfew-like status is imposed in the streets, especially whenever there is an important game taking place. The film attempts to document the last week of the Mondial in that village to expose this surreal reality, this new alien-like sense of belonging, within the complex political region it is set in.
* This work was made in the context of Liminal Spaces.
Liminal Spaces is an international art project which aims at refuting the realities of occupation and its dynamics by examining notions of urban spaces, borders, mental and physical segregation, cultural territories and the possibilities of art within political frameworks. In light of the ever-growing hardship endured by Palestinians under Israeli occupation; persistent loss of land, deprivation of freedom of mobility, as well as basic political and civil rights, this international cooperative project takes as its starting point the spatial borders that characterize Israel’s colonial project. Frontier cities like Jerusalem have become laboratories of an urbanism of radical ethnic segregation. Since the Second Intifada and Israel’s unilateral construction of the Wall, declared illegal by the International Court of Justice at the Hague, this situation has intensified to an alarming degree and the urban fabric has disintegrated into a spatial and mental archipelago. This radical separation affects Palestinians in diverse ways; they suffer the loss of basic freedoms, restrictions on travel and severe surveillance that endanger the future of their society.
Project curators, Galit Eilat, Eyal Danon, Reem Fadda, and Philipp Misselwitz, say, "During the course of this project, we have had to repeatedly reiterate and clarify its aim; we underscored the fact that it is not an attempt at normalisation, and that it is not meant to offer a model for peaceful coexistence between two equal partners. Rather, we reasserted that the main aim of the project was to serve as a platform of resistance and vocal opposition to the ongoing Israeli occupation, and to its direct effects on the lives of Palestinians in the West Bank. This project operates in a context in which the distinctions between art and politics are blurred. We wish to examine the possible role of art as a catalyst for political and social change and to trigger a more active form of political engagement within the art world. We feel that the clear political stance of the participants and the curators is the basis for the network that Liminal Spaces has generated."
To read more, visit the project’s website http://liminalspaces.org
Catalogue No. 684 (Arabic with English subtitles)
File: Liminal Spaces
Catalogue No. 1494 (Arabic with Hebrew subtitles)
File: Forbidden Junctions
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