The screening program Emergency Routine deals with war not as a spectacle, but as an everyday facet of Israeli and Palestinian life. We see how the mentality of war touches all aspects of the public domain, including city centres, neighbourhoods, playgrounds, and the roads that bind them. And more telling than the outward and physical representations of war and occupation is the internalization of this reality by the citizens. Their varied positions are revealed by the videos and short documentaries in the program.
Works in the program include:
Yossi Atia & Itamar Rose
Memorial Day
In “Memorial Day” Yossi Atia and Itamar Rose asked people in the street to film their own future televised eulogy to be broadcast in case they will be hit by a suicide bomb attack. The work deals with bereavement as it is experienced on the national level, through the state owned TV channel that broadcasts a 24 hour long series of captions, listing the names of the fallen during Memorial Day. They asked people to speculate their future deaths, to imagine themselves as victims of a terrorist attack and shape the way they will be remembered by the public. The idea that memory is shaped by the media comprises the basis of the work but pre-enacting it allows for the interference of the victim in the process of the production of myth and memory.
Yossi Atia & Itamar Rose
Missiles in Ramat Gan
In “Missiles in Ramat-Gan”, which was shot in the summer of 2006 during the Second Lebanon War, Atia and Rose present themselves as reporters from a TV channel with little financial means. On the premise that missiles will no doubt fall in Ramat Gan one day, they interview the public as if they have just fallen, capturing mock-reactions versed in the language of war unique to the Israeli psyche. Participants from the streets of Ramat-Gan were asked to create footage for the TV station that will be used in the future case of missiles falling on the city. In order to do so they had to re-enact images they have seen hundreds of times before in Israeli media – images of citizens a few minutes after a violent act happened, fear, casualties, survivors calling their families etc. They re-enact a terror attack according to the way it has been shaped by the media so that Yossi and Itamar’s fabricated television station can use it. They pre-enact their own deaths in a familiar way so that it can fit into the familiar framework of media coverage.
Nurit Sharett
Videoletter to Jacqueline
In a video letter to Jacqueline, the artist’s Swiss friend in Zurich, Nurit Sharett confesses her mixed feelings about living in Israel and the fear that things will never be good in the country.
HEB2 & D’ana Family
Demolition I / II
HEB2 & Sharbati Family
Sharbati Family Intro Tape
HEB2 is an ongoing documentary project in the form of a community television channel based in Hebron, West Bank. Broadcasting over the internet, HEB2 depicts daily life in the militarized, Israeli-controlled sector of the city, known as ‘H2’.
Occupied since 1967, Hebron is the only Palestinian city with Israeli settlements at its heart, amidst Palestinian homes. To protect the 600 settlers living within, the Israeli army has placed crippling restrictions on the Arab population of H2 – closing their shops; forbidding them from using the main streets; and subjecting them to frequent checkpoints and house searches. These policies, along with ongoing settler violence, have brought about a mass departure of Palestinians from H2. What was once city’s bustling commercial center has turned into a ghost town. The abandoned Arab property, left unattended, is being taken over by Jewish neighbors. Palestinian families who remain live a life ‘under siege’, confined to their homes, their every coming and going monitor by the army and open to physical abuse by the settlers.
Malki Tesler
Playground
In "Playground", Malki Tesler conquers a slide in a children’s playground. She sits on it and refuses to move. The film evolves mainly around the reactions of the parents whose children’s play has been interrupted. The reactions develop into near-violence, exposing the absurd gravity and speed by which the situation deteriorates the moment a blockage is entered into even the most playful of Israeli landscapes.
Effi & Amir
Check It
"Check It" takes the very stressful and sometimes grave situation of airport security and turns it into a humorous reflection of the routine and rhythm of such procedures. The video is shot from the perspective of a hidden camera which peeps back at guards during a security check.
Avi Mograbi
Details 11-13
In the newly edited "Details 11-13" in Avi Mograbi’s Details series, we are in a vehicle with a few men driving in the Palestinian Occupied Territories. The recognised voices belong to Avi Mograbi, Miki Karzman and Gideon Levy. Gideon Levy is a journalist for Haaretz newspaper. He is a prominent left-wing commentator and publishes the weekly column “Twilight Zone”, together with the artist and photographer Miki Kartzman. Inside the vehicle, the team of journalists and artists are discussing with each other and their driver how far to enter the territories. As journalists, unlike other Israelis, they can enter the Palestinian Territories’ Zone 1, yet even with the permission of the IDF, they are still weary of advancing. They advance slowly and cautiously, not afraid of the Palestinian police but from their own army.
Ruti Sela
Pride Parade
In "Pride Parade" we only see a Shaming Parade, as the religious community in Jerusalem protests the gay pride parade. While they try to shame the gay community, they are the ones who look shameful in the video.
The CDA's archives are operating with the support of the Ostrovsky Family Fund and Artis
