’Summer Camp’ shows the activities of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD); their actions consist, among others, of rebuilding Palestinian houses in the occupied territories.
In the summer of 2006 Bartana filmed a group of ICAHD volunteers consisting of Palestinians, Israeli and various other nationalities, assisted by Palestinian construction workers, who were trying to rebuild the former house of Abu Ahmed Al Hadad in the village of Anata (east of Jerusalem), at exactly the same location where it was demolished by the Israeli authorities in late 2005. The result is a meticulously edited 12-minute image and sound composition in which Bartana uses the same stylistic devices as the Zionist propaganda films from the first half of the twentieth century.
For Summer Camp, Bartana was inspired, among others, by Helmar Lerski’s film ’Awodah’ (Palestine 1935), which just like other propaganda films from these days portrays the realisation of the Zionist dream to found a nation state under the motto “We came to Israel to build and to be built”. By quoting the old propaganda films, Bartana’s Summer Camp shows the resemblance between the ideological and visual relation of building by the ICAHD as a form of resistance against occupation, and the building of the state of Israel by the Zionist movement.
Also found on the collection of the Netherlands Media Art Institute.
Made in the framework of the Liminal Spaces project.
Catalogue no. 934
File:Bartana, Yael
Catalogue no. 1178
File: Montevideo
Catalogue no. 1301
File: Compilations
ארכיוני המרכז הוקמו בתמיכת קרן אוסטרובסקי וארטיס
