The Old City Suit

Creator: Desiree Palmen | 2006-2007

Working in direct relation to the security surveillance cameras tightly placed within the old city of Jerusalem. Desiree Palmen designed two suits to be worn and camouflaged into the old city stone walls. Palmen exhibited two photographs from this series as well as a 15 minute video that presents a documentation of her suit-modeling performance in the old city during her residency in 2006, capturing the public’s reaction to, and intervention with, her performance. The camera perspective of the video is borrowed from the street surveillance cameras operated by the Israeli police, while she also draws upon the perspectives of the cameras carried by tourists visiting Jerusalem. Her work was exhibited at the Nidal Centre for Community Development, Christian Quarter, Old City.”

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Untitled Transponders, Jerusalem

Creator: Nida Sinnokrot | 2006

“Positioned throughout the Old City over the course of the exhibition are 3mm LEDs which shine a brilliant blue for approximately 15 days. Recalling fireflies in both size and life span, these lights conjure the primitive wonder of first witnessing these mysterious insects. And much like the irresistible youthful compulsion to capture these glowing creatures, the lights once discovered invariablyshift location in the hands of children and adults alike, mapping a passage throughout the Old City, which is as such, in constant flux. A multifaceted project initiated in Egypt for the 2006 Nomadic Artists Symposium on the idea of Territories organized by Lara Baladi, this project continues to expand but constant in all it’s iterations in the simple pleasure a little light can bring.”

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I Love You American Dreams

Creator: Zeina El Khalil | 2006

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Ako 4

Creator: Amer Derbass | 2006

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Happy Days

Creator: Larissa Sansour | 2006   

“Happy Days exposes everyday Palestinian life under Israeli occupation. In the video, a collage of footage shot on location in the occupied territories is accompanied by the theme music from the 70s sitcom Happy Days. The idea is to subjugate international politics to a format normally associated with entertainment and thereby call attention to the blurry boundary between the two.”

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Kafr Qasem Memorial

Creator: Samia Halaby | 2006

“Fifty years ago, on October 29, 1956, 49 Palestinian residents of Kafr Qasem were murdered by Israeli border police who at that time were officially attached to the military. Countless more were wounded and left bleeding and unattended. Their families were unable to offer aid because of a 24 hour curfew lasting for some two days and three nights. Violation of the curfew was punishable by death. In the following two days (while the families were thus imprisoned in their homes) the Israelis unceremoniously buried the victims without permission, or the presence of witnesses. On the following morning, the unattended wounded who had helplessly lain in the streets were torn away from their deceased loved ones, thrown into trucks (not ambulances) and hauled off to hospitals. This deliberate massacre had been planned in advance to coincide with the Israeli and Anglo-French attack on the Suez canal. The Memorial was part of an exhibition titled Three Arab Painters in New York curated by writer and historian Maymanah Farhat. The exhibition took place in New York at The Bridge gallery during the month of June 2006.”

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At Home

Creator: Larissa Sansour | 2006   

“This series of Palestinian disruptions of classic Scandinavian comfort zones was originally commissioned by the Images of the Middle East festival in Copenhagen.”   

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Letters from Palestine

Creator: Kenneth Ring | 2006

“In 2003, a self-described ‘sedate and white-haired Italian economist’ decided to volunteer in a Palestinian refugee camp. What followed were repeated trips, documented in these letters, to Aida Camp in the West Bank to support and experience the lives of Palestinians young and old.”

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Fathers

Creator: Taysir Batniji | 2006

“This work, begun in 2005, is in the line of a series of recent works (photos and video in particular) made during recent years and that took shape during my round trips between Palestine and Europe. These are photographic portraits made in shops, coffee shops, factories and other places where people live and work in Gaza. Their subject is the framed portraits of the “man of the house”, generally the founding father of the shop, now departed, or, more seldom, the present boss. They are hanging behind a desk, placed on the shelves or concealed behind a heap of products and goods that change according the specialty of the shop… A series of “unconscious compositions”* laid out by the owners of the place.”

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Jaffa Oranges

Creator: Samah Hijawi | 2006-2008   

“Jaffa Oranges investigates the relationship between narrative and memory. Through a series of drawings, the work playfully attempts at illustrating items and settings in Jaffa in Palestine the city in which my grandmother, who is the narrator in the video, married and lived prior to her exodus in 1948. The drawings are based on my personal memory of Jaffa, which in reality is a place I have never visited, yet somehow, created mental visions and images of. The video and drawings play on the idea of reality and fiction in relation to trauma and exile.”       

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