Amir Yatziv’s Detroit consists of a map which the artist found in a military training area, a video piece, and photographs. The title of the installation was borrowed from the IDF’s training area near Ze’elim in the country’s southern region. Is it accidental that an IDF training area was named after the American city of Detroit, once a bustling metropolis, and now a ghost town of sorts? “Detroit” is a 1:1 simulation of a Palestinian city of identical area. The simulation generates an alternative reality (at times sterile) which conceals the true reality. The fictive reality becomes a source for rich, luring stimuli, that may often overshadow the actual experience of reality, as in the case of movie towns, Disneyland, or “war games” held at the highest echelons of the military system.
In the video work accompanying the installation, Yatziv presents the architectural plans of the Israeli “Detroit” to various urban planners, asking them to analyze the city for him. They all express varying measures of discontent with the city plan, but none realizes that it is a city constructed for the sole purpose of simulation. The mosque architect is baffled by the fact that such a tall mosque was erected for a city of such scale, whereas another urban planner wonders why, in this new city, no road was paved to facilitate vehicular traffic between the commercial center and the residential neighborhoods
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