Place beyond borders by Cittadellarte-Fondazione Pistoletto

Tal Adler (Israel), Emad Ahmad - IdiomsFilm (Palestine), Ziad Antar (Lebanon), Yael Bar On & Ahmad Malki (Israel/Palestine) and Sakiko Sugawa (Japan), Michael Blum (Israel/Austria), Yael Davids (Israel/Netherlands), Ayreen Anastas & Rene Gabri, (Palestine/Iran/Armenia/Usa), Majd Abdel Hamid (Palestine), Eytan Heller (Israel), Mazen Kerbaj (Lebanon), Walid Maw’ed (Palestine), Sandi Hilal & Alessandro Petti (Palestine/Italy), Rasha Salti (Lebanon), Layan Shawabkeh (Palestine), Mohamad Soueid (Lebanon), Oraib Toukan (Jordan), Wafaa Yasin (Palestine)

Majd Abdel Hamid, ‘Untitled’ , 2008

Tal Adler

Exhibition - Project by Cittadellarte - Fondazione Pistoletto www.cittadellarte.it opening: 3 july 2009 - 6 pm workshop: 2 - 3 July 2009 2 July 2009: 10:30 am - 12:30 am 3 July 2009: 10:30 am - 12:30 am / 2:30 pm - 5:30 pm by Ayreen Anastas, Rene Gabri and Alessandro Petti for Unideeo09 - International residency program

EXCERPT FROM CABARET SOUAD BY MOHAMAD SOUEID Dar al-Adab, Beirut. Published in 2004. Translation by Rasha Salti. I will not pull down the curtain on my life and relieve the reader from listening to my story. I want to go back to the beginning, and its cursed number, nine. According to my aunt Rabiha, I came to join the hordes of God’s children in 1959, born to the world at the caring hands of a midwife, who fended for her living preying on her callers’ passionate avowal for revered leader Gamal AbdelNasser. She claimed to have studied medicine in Cairo, graduated from the Ain Shams University, and that she had practiced her meritorious profession at the Qasr el-Ainy Hospital. At the behest of Abdel-Nasser and her faith in him, she had pulled from the bellies of the Free Officers’ wives newborn sons for the nation. Her name was Almaz Karnib. With her coarse fingers, she pulled me from my mother’s womb. When she saw my thin, limp genitals dangling, she lept with joy ‘a willy! A willy!’, she screamed. She kissed my willy, oh yeah that’s Iyyad, the king of sex and cornflakes. In her thunderous voice, she announced, ‘a boy, praise the Lord, a boy’. She pinched my arm, slapped my buttocks, (ouch!), flipped me, lifted me in the air, and ululated. I was born a groom. Congratulations. Like every new born, my eyes opened to the world

EXCERPT FROM BEIRUT BEREFT THE ARCHITECTURE OF THE FORSAKEN AND MAP OF THE DERELICT by Rasha Salti

I am no longer sure how the war ended. Sure, there is a chronology, no doubt as well archives, diplomacy tracks, treaties. Chroniclers will no doubt propose several versions for the ending. There were battles that seemed definitive -if not conclusive -, negotiations kept secret in a remote town in Saudi Arabia, an agreement to end the war, hurried parliamentary sessions, a new president, new cabinet, violent popular protests and burnt tires fronting news headlines as the national currency spiraled to oblivion and finally, the tragic assassination of the new president. All in one year, even less. A false start, perhaps, it was not entirely uncommon to our experience of the civil war. Conspiracy? Always a valid answer in Lebanon. It was remarkable the second attempt at a fresh start was not befuddled by the outbreak of another round of civil conflict. It seemed like a fire extinguished from asphyxiation. So we had ourselves another new president, another cabinet and hurried parliamentary elections. In this second round, the national currency was rescued and stabilized almost suddenly. Some said that was the marker for the end of the war, reclaiming a stealth control over the national economy, the other theory of the state holding monopoly over the administration of violence could not apply. That was handed over to the regime next door in Syria. And some twelve percent of the territory, the southern tip defined by Israel as the ‘security buffer zone’ was under their occupation. Military resistance

place beyond borders is an image and text project developed by Cittadellarte-Fondazione Pistoletto, featuring a space where socially engaged practices of art in places of conflict in the Middle East may be viewed and analyzed. Cittadellarte selects and presents works by artists in a way that will both document and recontextualize the works. place beyond borders will thereby pose a series of open questions, all the while stimulating inquiry and opening up unexpected perspectives. It will be a heterotopic place imagined and created beyond the real boundaries of a complex territorial and political conflict and at the same time a place of participation and discussion: an ‘agonistic public sphere’ (C.Mouffe). Artists selected for their demonstrated capacity for creative critical analysis in and of the Middle Eastern context show video and/or poster works with interviews, statements and images that address the theme of the boundary, understood not only as a geographic and

political division, but above all as a mental barrier to dialogue and to the acknowledgment of others. In place beyond borders it’s possible to deepen the themes dealt with through a selection of books suggested by the artists involved in the project. During the summer months place beyond borders will become a learning laboratory, a visual and textual ‘living library’, in conjunction with the educational programs of UnideeUniversity of Ideas, international artist’s residency. The projects and the courses of action they propose will be closely investigated, sparking a debate on the role of the artist as activator of processes capable of transforming reality. Cittadellarte by means of its intense activity in different geographic and cultural contexts, will be able to offer place beyond borders ample possibilities for growth and in-depth development.

as I wailed. I saw my first light at the hands of Almaz in a private clinic on Omar el-Khattab street in the Ras el-Nabeh neighborhood, that became in the 1960s and 1970s, a youth club, known as ‘The Pioneers Club’ and a cheap hostel for lone tourists. Its clientèle was mostly European and American hippies, and Arab students on seasonal vacation. My parents had been in Beirut for a few years by then. After the outbreak of the war on April 13th 1975, a band of fighters from the Communist party took over the club and turned into a base for their al-Ansar armed brigade. After the Israelis had their way with their siege of Beirut, and left the city to its sorrows at the beginning of the autumn in 1982, the popularity of Hezbollah and the Amal Movement widened, clashes with the Communists escalated to armed confrontations and targeted assassinations. In the fury of battle, the Pioneers Club was raided and the Communists expelled. With the bitter passage of time, it became an empty abandoned shell of an apartment, its doors were broken, darkness dwelled even in the middle of the day. My digression into the story of the club is not meant to imply that I endured childhood and puberty and the war in Ras el-Nabeh. Actually, I was born in a place and grew up elsewhere. Ras elNabeh does not mean much to me except for my experience as a fighter. Yes, I was implicated in the war. I have been through the down and out, armed with a nom de guerre, ‘the Pole’. For now I will leave the story of the war, Ras elNabeh and Poland to the side. I have to start from

the beginning of the everything. My father rented a house in Khandaq al-Ghameeq, a spacious home in a three-storey brick-colored building, made with stone, lined with lemon trees and a small garden that was always left to neglect. We lived in the third storey, soon similar buildings were propping up all around us, and by age ten I came to the reckoning that their residents were not strangers to us. In fact they were, and in this chronological order, my paternal uncle, paternal aunt, maternal aunts and their husbands, the wives of my father’s cousins, their sons and daughters. Thank God for his Almightiness. They had left their native villages in the south gradually, and re-settled in Khandaq al-Ghameeq. I loved to run. I raced and it was not satiated until my head hit a wall. My blood spilled profusely. I was deflowered. Contrary to females, male virginity is in the head. (May it never be forgotten lest it should happen again.) The incident left an indelible imprint on me. I stopped to race as a result. I discovered another pleasure, television. Then I learned to remain in the place I am supposed to be in. The recollection is still vibrant in my memory. On a summer night, my father carried home a happy surprise, a Phillips television set. He belabored hastily with the electrical wiring, fixed the set outside my bedroom window and hailed our neighbors to partake in our celebration. For mysterious technical reasons, the broadcast was not clear. The screen was lit in black and white but it was unfocused and the sounds were muffled. For months we were resigned to watching an image that did not resemble images at all.

My father was proud of his magical set. We grew weary of his tireless recanting, with or without occasion, of how the set was Dutch-made and that Holland was the birthplace of civilization. His yearning to travel and visit the homeland of brother Philips was burning, and he did not part with that dream until his last breath. As for me, in spite of the hour being past nine this morning, and my soon turning forty-nine years old, I still don’t believe that a Dutch-made box can transmit a luminous image merely by virtue of being plugged to electricity. I don’t want my words to be misunderstood beyond the point that I was born with the advent of television in Lebanon. In my collection of personal papers, certificates, legal documents, returned love letters, there is an advertisement from local papers that dates back to the end the 1950s that reads:

remained active there until the Israeli state pulled out its army and dismantled its outposts and local proxy apparatus of control in the year 2000. There was no date assigned to the end of the war, nothing we celebrate every year or have anthems for. I just can’t determine the instance when we shifted from living in a state of war to a state of non-war. It was a process and no doubt it was gradual, perhaps a matter of step by step. But there must have been a morning, one defining morning that marked the first day of the first chapter of the post-war. All fictions have a first chapter, a moment to anchor the ark of their dramatic narrative. No matter, maybe the morning is just a detail, the point is that we changed, as if we were impelled and compelled at once. We put on new roles. The victims of the war became the citizen of the (improved) republic, the innocent bystanders became the citizen of the republic, so too became the fighters, militias, heroes and anti-heroes. We were all born anew, citizen of this post-war republic. The warlords became members of parliament and ministers in the cabinet. We voted for them, once, twice, even thrice around. Communities and the social network of sectarianism, the fabric of fear and loathing, became the republic’s civil society. The transformation was overwhelming, it included people, neighborhoods, streets and buildings. Those who had left for good returned to visit in the summer occasionally. Those who died vanished. My fear of abandon transformed to bereavement. I experienced the full meaning of death, in the post-war, for the first time. The cruel chill of the irreversible end of death. The inconsolable longing for what will never be again. The guidelines for the conversion for us, everyday folk, were at best, vague. The political agreement that defined how the war ended, detailing rules for the republic’s transition to peace, and the constitutional safeguards to prevent another war

from erupting, was very explicit. It was graft onto the republic’s constitution by writ, yet leaving the national covenant (the diseased marrow of this state so to speak) untouched. Regardless, a decade and the half later and its wisdom has yet to be fully implemented. For lack of a vision of what the recovering republic was supposed to be, the default cue was an uncritical return to where the country had been before the war started. A prewar idyllic moment was constructed and we were all ushered to fly back there, only in fast-forward motion to the present. In other words, there was no plan, there was a public relations bonanza to raise monies to rebuild the country, mostly Beirut. Some intellectuals protested in newspapers that the government was keener on rehabilitating stones than people, and the ‘stones before people’ became an adage. Taxi drivers, shopkeepers, ambitious politicians and activists recanted it, tirelessly. Over the seventeen long years, traces of shells, bullets, fire and sniping had spared only a few buildings. Beside basic public amenities like highways (a euphemism), bridges, thoroughfares, underpasses and overpasses, the airport, seaport and a few other such landmarks, the government had no intention to undertake or participate in the repair of anything else, not a stone. The scheme was to instigate a momentum by underwriting a plan for the rehabilitation and reconstruction of the city’s old pre-war center, Beirut’s downtown. A private real-estate company, exempt from taxes and scrutiny, impervious to public debate, was mandated to up haul the infrastructure of Beirut’s charred and ravaged downtown and lease it in turn to other private developers to transform anew. I remember distinctly when I first noticed a traditional building get patched up and repainted. Located on an intersection of what was known during the war as the ‘green line’, or the snaky thoroughfare that had divided the city into two

bellicose halves. The repainting was neither deft nor spiffy, there was nonetheless something remarkable about it, like a proud herald of doing right. We had grown accustomed to the sight of maimed façades and collapsed buildings, walls and roofs agape. It did not seem so crucial to hurry up and fix whatever could be fixed, for long now, these markers of destruction -and hurt were not soring to the eyes anymore. They were our lot, they cohered with everything else the civil war had left us with. They articulated their own kind of aesthetic; much ink was spilled on their being ‘modern ruins’ or ‘ruins of modernity’, and much bromide diluted to capture their poetry -‘poetics’ in fancier art talk-, or some other deeper meaning locked within. Temerarious tourists and visitors who came to visit in the early years of the postwar would get all hot and bothered about photographing and documenting them. As we guided them, we told stories about everyday survival for entertainment, and, no doubt, to unburden ourselves from the dead weight of grief. The other sightseeing the country had to offer was of ancient ruins, the kind Mediterranean cities with a fetching history claim as far back as the Roman and Phoenician eras. Those ruins, all archeological, were in contrast, evidence of past glories, not tragedies. Glory does not make for a fertile field to extract or inspire metaphor and allegory, except for virile nationalism off course, but that’s a whole other story. The ruins of our war, reeking of modernity and its disenchanting thereafter, were by far more potent signifiers. Some deemed them monuments, totemic reminders of what we had done to ourselves and this country, and some, of what others had done unto us. It was argued at least a few had to be conserved in their state of devastation to prevent the people of Lebanon, and those who malign their senses, from surrendering to

Television will soon come to Lebanon Reserve your sets from now Krtaz, the world-famous German brand General Sales Representatives: Khashdor Shahin Stores Telephone: 32168

Cabaret Souad is Mohamad Soueid’s first literary fiction, where the elements and motifs that articulate his cinema find a transliteration in literature. His fascination with the silver screen, his interweaving of autobiographical invention and official history (the important and mundane) are cast in a story set to have been written by a character, Wahid Sadeq, and narrated by a second character, Iyyad Ayyoub, in the first person. While the identity of two men is often blurred, Wahid is described as a writer of certain standing who pub-

lishes under the pen name Maytham Hosni, who has handed over a script by his trusting friend, Iyyad, titled Malek Es-Sex, Arabic for The King of Sex, that details acts of war-crimes and high-treason during the Lebanese civil war (1975-1990). ‘Malek Es-Sex’, The King of Sex is a sarcastic twist on the image of virility, male power and heroism, commonplace to Lebanese slang; it is usually followed with ‘wel cornflex’ (and cornflakes) to close the rhyme with ‘Es-Sex’. It refers, endearingly, to a man’s failed or dismal amorous exploits. In four long chapters, with jump cuts, movements forward and flights into the past, the reader is presented with a chronicle of a man who was a combatant during the civil war, his childhood in a working class neighborhood of west Beirut, a portrait of his father and to a lesser extent his family, vignettes into the social history of Beirut before and during the war. Whether Iyyad, Maytham, Wahid or Soueid himself, the narrative of the civil war is that of men broken from violence, living in a city that comes undone before their eyes as the cruelty of war grabs hold. Broken too was Souad Hosni, the darling ‘Cinderella’ of Egyptian cinema who died mysteriously and miserably in London, her body thrust from a highstorey balcony. She is at once, incarnate and an incarnation, the mainstream media narratives - projections and speculations - recounting her tragic passing are interlaced with local Beiruti stories and lore. In ‘Cabaret Souad’ seemingly unrelated realities and stories, from the recent past and fragmented present of Beirut and its non-descript neighborhoods, as well as the recent past of Egyptian cinema and its evocative impact on the popular imaginary, are staged into a cogent being in the world, effortlessly. At the end of the novel, the epilogue reveals that Maytham Hosni is a sleazy opportunist, plagiarizer, war criminal, money-launderer and pimp, who has left Beirut under shady circumstances and opened a nightclub in post-Saddam Baghdad he calls Cabaret Souad, in homage to the Egyptian silver screen darling. His parting act with Beirut was to placard the city with an image of the Cinderella with the enigmatic promise: ‘See you on the banks of the Tigris.

the demons of belligerence. In 1992, the republic was nearly fifty years old, it had endured three conflicts in the vein of civil war (two near-misses and a really long one), the notion that internecine fighting was endemic to its destiny gained notable currency in the postwar. It resurrected a specter of doom and cast it in the horizon, far, invisible yet tangible, sometimes drawing ominously nearer and suddenly by felicitous intervention from Higher powers pushed to safe distance again. Beirut Bereft, Architecture of the Forsaken and Map of the Derelict is a collaboration between photographer Ziad Antar and writer Rasha Salti at Sharjah Biennial ‘09, that includes the production and publication of a book, as well as an exhibition of photographs. To the image of its political, social and cultural scapes, Beirut’s urban landscape still bears markers, scars and vestiges of its seventeen-year long civil war, more than fifteen years after the cessation of violence. Peppered through the city’s fabric are buildings, unfinished, often in their bare concrete shell. Tucked between ‘functional’ buildings they are cast out from attention and have slipped from visibility. Built in the 1970s,1980s, and 1990s, throughout the interrupted chapters of the war, they were used during the war by militia fighters as temporary ‘encampments’, rooms were furnished with basic materiel to accommodate for sleep and meals, higher floors and rooftops were used for sniping, facades and windows of lower floors were buttressed with sandbags. These unfinished buildings morphed into encampments and became strategic landmarks in the battles between militia groups seeking to expand their control. When the violence was halted and negotiations for the post-war accord negotiated, the fighters packed up and emptied the buildings. Their status as ‘landmarks’ was suddenly arrested, and they once again became the failed, unresolved projects imbricated within a bustling urban fabric. Today, these bare-faced concrete edifices, sometimes guarded by rusted fences, stand bereft, at once encasing sorrow, destitution and abandonment, surly evidence of failures, nagging reminders of what is systematically cast away from sight, representation and narrative.

(posters, 2000-2001) The two posters are from a series of 9 posters done during 2000 - 2001 in Israel. They were always designed in black and white and printed in A3 size, hacking copy machines in institution-offices like the city’s municipality or the art academy, without money and often without permission. The posters were created either as a reaction to a political event or to accompany a political, social and/or cultural action/demonstration. ‘stop unrooting trees’ accompanied an action initiated by the Israeli human rights organization B’tselem, planting young olive trees by Israeli activists in Palestinian land as a reaction to the uprooting olive trees by the state in preparation of the separation wall. ‘Our independence, their Nakba’ (Nakba is disaster in Arabic, used as the Palestinian term for the loss of Palestine in 1948). The poster was created for the 53rd Israeli Independence Day, to reflect about the other side of the celebrations: the Palestinian day of mourning.

Ziad Antar Marche Turque (video, 2007) The frame focuses on the hands of a pianist playing Mozart’s La Marche Turque, but the piano’s hammers are buffered so that only the dull, wooden sound of the keys being pressed and released in time to the music can be heard. Mosque, Saida June 2005 c-print (poster) Cote d’Azur Hotel, Jnah, built in 1973 c-print (poster) from Beirut Bereft, architecture of the forsaken and map of the derelict Volcano, Mont Asso Japan 2004 c-print (poster)

Yael Bar-On, Ahmad Malki, Sakiko Sugawa in forty years (posters and video installation, 2008-2009) In forty years consists of two art projects that focus on issues connected to the IsraeliPalestinian conflict. ‘MIX IT UP’, by Sakiko Sugawa, is dedicated to Israeli and Palestinian singles, offering an online meeting place and micro-scale conflict resolution. Using the concept of marriage as a tactic for creating a new dimension in the relationship between Israelis and Palestinians, the website provides an online space for individuals from the two societies to meet in a friendly and potentially romantic context. [...] While maintaining the conventional functionality of the dating service website, ‘MIX IT UP’ also offers ‘Frequently Asked Questions’ and ‘Helpful Tips’ to give advice to the website members. It provides a list of organizations working on the issues of marriage in Palestine and Israel, while highlighting the fact the current marriage related laws of Israel are designed to prevent people, based on their country of citizenship, from exercising a basic right, getting married, forming a family, raising children with spouses they choose. ’Alii bella gerunt, tu felix Austria nube.’* Nam quae Mars aliis, dat tibi regna Venus.’ ‘Let other people wage war. You, happy Austria, marry instead. For the goddess of Love gives lands to you that others must win by battle.’ *Since the 15th century, this saying has been used to describe the political practice of Habsburg family.

‘Alii bella gerunt, tu felix Austria nube’, by Yael Bar-On and Ahmad Malki, is a work in process, that explores the idea of marriage between two people from Israel and Pales-

tine. It references the reality where a love story between the two sides seems impossible. Eventually leading the artists to find the concept of marriage, a union that requires two parties to negotiate constantly and equally as an individual strategy to intervene into political issues, even simply as a symbolic act. The project consists of a performance, video installation, and publication. The first stage of the project took place during the ‘University of Ideas 2008,’ in Biella Italy. Close Up (video installation, 2009) Ahmad- in Ramallah Yael - in Jerusalem Looking at each other from distance during the Gaza war 2009.

Michael Blum Ciao Ghatoul (video, 2007) produced in collaboration with the Israeli Center for Digital Art, Holon/IL - Tel Aviv, 2007. A man is so annoyed by a cat’s on-going meows, that he decides to abduct the cat and deport it to the West Bank. He thus embarks on a long and complicated journey with the sole purpose of ridding himself of this unpleasant neighbour.

situations and places including: Jerusalem, Naqab, Hebron, Lydd , Bethlehem, Ramallah, Nablus, Shuafat and more... What Everybody Knows, is a play on what everybody ignores possibly. It is an attempt to really think about the question of Palestine and reformulate it through an experience that these individuals offer in each case. It unfolds in a series of questions that call for more questions. Together all 16 of these situations create a diagram or a map and may provoke thought / discussion about the social, psychological, and political dimensions of contemporary life for Palestinians in occupied Palestine and in Israel.

Majd Abdel Hamid ‘Untitled’ (poster, 2008) ‘Human languages are defined by the sounds, word, and grammatical constructions that slowly accumulate in a given community over centuries. These cultural materials do not accumulate randomly but rather enter into systematic relationships with one another, as well as with the human beings who serve as their organic support’ from ‘A thousand years of nonlinear history’, Manuel De Landa.

A line, a sentence, a word (slideshow of a performance and poster, 2007) ‘A line, a wall, a frontier, a human shield, a demonstration, etc. The work attempts to construct a language arrived at by seemingly arbitrary motions, a paradox of visual speech within a locus of silence. The other factor is the actual physicality of the works situation - all of the individuals in the group will experience a very limited visual field, (the wall itself), this will also apply to their now restricted verbal field. There is a magnitude that surrounds my urge to protest. To react is equal to the volume of the question - What to do? How to protest? How to react? To express the question within the protest. I believe it is a notion, which is significant for our time. I am collecting journalist’s photographs related to demonstrations that had an impact, small or large on history. I follow the wider events of history by chronologically linking the history of demonstrations, such as; the suffragettes picket lines - 1924, South Africa - Sharpsville, protest against the rule for non-whites to carry identity cards - 1960, Washington D.C., civil rights marches - 1963, and so on. I am struck by how essential and effective these spectacles are. It is a very particular spectacle that harbours a curious borderline - between frustration and hope. I wonder what is the moment when one stimulates the other. Do I perceive choreography in the rules and the aesthetics of a protest? What happens to the existential energy of expression, of protest in a situation when one cannot protest and cannot express one’s self?’ Excerpt from A line, a sentence, a word, by Yael Davids for the Memorial to the Iraq War, ICA London, 2007.

Ayreen Anastas & Rene Gabri What Everybody Knows (video, 2006-2008) 7 days from 16 trips, DV, 1 hr 58 mins and photographs of wall encircling Bethlehem and Beit jala (posters) In the spring of 2006, Ayreen Anastas and Rene Gabri, travelled together to Palestine and Israel, searching, researching and witnessing the situation. From their trips, they created a series of videos that document their encounters with people struggling, resisting, surviving, living, and thinking through their everyday lives. Some of those include a geographer, a professor, an activist, a former detainee, an architect, a bedouin... Each video corresponds to one trip, a particular journey from the 16 days, relying on the material captured only that day, from different

Love Sum Game (video, 2006) ‘Love Sum Game’ was recorded in Abu Dis (East Jerusalem) and stages a tennis match using the wall as the net dividing the Israeli and Palestinian occupied territories. As opposed to a transparent tennis net, the wall obstructs any possibility of visual contact between the players. Its monumental presence acts as a physical and psychological barrier preventing any possibility of dialogue. It makes it difficult to even guess what’s happening on the other side of the road. The game reflects the absurdity of this condition of inclusion and exclusion that the Palestinian people live in on a day-to-day basis. The video was made thanks to the constant and long-standing cooperation and dialogue between local Palestinian activists and the Artists Without Walls association. ‘Love Sum Game’ is the first of a trilogy the artist is currently making.

Emad Ahmad - IdiomsFilm Once Upon Time IN Qalqeliah (documentary film) The Camera observes 4 sides, it follows a Palestinian Security officer Abu Abdallah, Sheran, the Guard at the main gate of the wall, Abu Azzam, the Palestinian farmer and Qalqeliah at night. The scenes show plenty of contradictions in this area.

Mazen Kerbaj (posters, 2008)

Walid Maw’ed Waiting for water (poster, 2006) The street is mostly invisible to us, a space of passage that both allows for and determines the movement of people, as the shape of a riverbed guides the flow of water. Placing a temporary barrier through a passage into urban space, a black sheet that blocks vision and in doing so makes the street itself newly visible as a hard enclosure. It directs attention. It creates a question mark for the public. But it also allows for choices; the flexible cloth receives, softens and spreads signals from wind, from the touch of people, from their action against its backdrop and the redirection of their movements. It thus calls attention to our relationship to nature and to one another, and the potential conflict and responsibility such a relation necessarily involves. It also proposes an alternative kind of public space. This project is an open and collective work, in the sense that its ultimate form is determined first by a loose-knit group, ‘watercollection-net’, second, by the response by the

tine takes, the possibility of further partial-or complete -evacuation of Israeli colonies and military bases must be considered. Zones of Palestine that have or will be liberated from direct Israeli presence provide a crucial laboratory to study the multiple ways in which we could imagine the reuse, re-inhabitation or recycling of the architecture of Israel’s occupation at the moment this architecture is unplugged from the military/political power that charged it. www.decolonizing.ps

Layan Shawabkeh Sandi Hilal & Alessandro Petti

Eytan Heller Yael Davids

public, and further even by natural forces and the qualities of the material, here a metaphor for the fundamental and precious source of life, water. Our intervention is the product of a free and expanding network, and part of a series of artistic acts in public spaces that aim to draw attention to the qualities of water, its centrality in contemporary political conflict and its centrality in any solution to such issues. Water should remain free, as our own potential freedom is reflected in its rippling surfaces.

Decolonizing Architecture (slideshow and poster, 2008) Our project uses architecture to articulate the spatial dimension of a process of decolonization. Recognizing that Israeli colonies and military bases are amongst the most excruciating instruments of domination, the project assumes that a viable approach to the issue of their appropriation is to be found not only in the professional language of architecture and planning but rather in inaugurating an ‘arena of speculation’ that incorporates varied cultural and political perspectives through the participation of a multiplicity of individuals and organizations. The project engages a less than ideal world. It does not articulate a utopia of ultimate satisfaction. Its starting point is not a resolution of the conflict and the just fulfilment of all Palestinian claims; also, the project is not, and should not be thought of, in terms of a solution. Rather it is mobilizing architecture as a tactical tool within the unfolding struggle for Palestine. It seeks to employ tactical physical interventions to open a possible horizon for further transformations. We suggest revisiting the term of “decolonization” in order to maintain a distance from the current political terms of a “solution” to the Palestinian conflict and its respective borders. The one-, two-, and now threestate solutions seem equally entrapped in a “top-down” perspective, each with its own self-referential logic. Decolonization implies the dismantling of the existing dominant structure - financial, military, and legal - conceived for the benefit of a single nationalethnic group, and engaging a struggle for justice and equality. Decolonization does not necessarily imply the forced transfer of populations. Under the term decolonization, for example, Jewish communities could go and live in the Palestinian areas. Whatever trajectory the conflict over Pales-

The Ladder (poster, 2008) ‘An attempt to re-define the local space by writing myself in its public visual language.’ (L.S.)

Oraib Toukan Can u see me: Monologues in Air (A4 prints, 2007) An intervention on rooftops at the peripheral overlap of three hills in downtown Amman. The work is a series of seven very large orange arrows running in conflicting directions, and made of the same material that is both used for insulating/building rooftops and for marking truce targets in time of war. The Middle East Auction (screensaver, 2008) A project leading out from working with an economist to calculate a real market value for a 99- year leasehold for the purchase of whole territories in the Middle East. The nations under auction use Ralf Peters’ definition of the Middle East in his book ‘The New Middle East’. Auction catalogues were produced as well as well as advertising inserts and public billboards.

Wafaa Yasin Stomach Pain V (video 46 min. and poster) ‘The inside, the outside The hidden, the shown The protection from publicity… Settled deeply in my memories, my behavior and my self portrait… I see it in any father and daughter walking down the street… I have stomach pain… mom I worked in a shelter for girls who suffered from domestic violence. The girls age range between 12-18 years old.’ (W.Y.)

BIOGRAPHIES AT WWW.CITTADELLARTE.IT BOOKS SUGGESTED BY THE ARTISTS Giorgio Agamben, HOMO SACER. IL POTERE SOVRANO E LA NUDA VITA, Torino, Einaudi, 1995. Giorgio Agamben, STATO DI ECCEZIONE. HOMO SACER, Vol 2/1, Torino, Bollati Boringhieri, 2003. Yehuda Amichai, LOVE POEMS: A BILINGUAL EDITION. New York: Harper & Row, 1981. James Baldwin, NOBODY KNOWS MY NAME, Dell Publishing Co, Inc., 1961. Mahmoud Darwish, TUESDAY AND THE WEATHER IS CLEAR, Poem. Mahmoud Darwish, The Butterfly’s Burden, Actes Sud, 2007. Rene Gabri, TREBISONDA OR BALASSANIAN IN THE TIME OF THE FOXES, Quodlibet, 2007. David Grossman, UNTIL THE END 0F THE LAND, Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 2008. Yehoshafat Harkabi, ISRAEL’S FATEFUL HOUR. HarperCollins 1989. Samir Kassir CONSIDERATIONS SUR LE MALHEUR ARABE, Actes Sud 2004. Ilan Pappe, THE ETHNIC CLEANSING OF PALESTINE, London and New York: Oneworld, 2009. Alessandro Petti, ARCIPELAGHI E ENCLAVE. ARCHITETTURA DELL’ORDINAMENTO SPAZIALE CONTEMPORANEO, Mondadori Bruno, 2007. Munif, Abdul Rahman, CITIES OF SALT (CITIES OF SALT TRILOGY, VOL 1), New York: Vintage Books. 1987. Joe Sacco, PALESTINE, Fantagrafics books, 2001. Edward Said, ORIENTALISM, New York, Pantheon Books, 1978. Edward Said, THE QUESTION OF PALESTINE, New York, Vintage Books Editions, 1992. Edward Said, CULTURE AND RESISTANCE: CONVERSATIONS WITH EDWARD W. SAID (2003) [entrevistes realitzades per David Barsamian]. Ziad Antar and Rasha Salti, BEIRUT BEREFT, ARCHITECTURE OF THE FORSAKEN AND MAP OF THE DERELICT, Sharjah Biennial, March 2009. Mohamed Soueid CABARET SOUAD, Dar Al-Adab 2004.

In occasion of the exhibition, the radio programme Flash Out from Radio Flash 97.6 fm Torino, carries out a series of spontanous interviews with people belonging to the cultural background in the Middle East. Directed and narrated by Roberto Vaio, with Dan Solo playing the bass and with the participation of Daniel A. Urrea Peña (UNIDEE 08) and Filippo Fabbrica in collaboration with RAM - radio arte mobile. You can listen to the programme on lovedifference.org or through the audio intervention Parole sciolte by Daniel A. Urrea Peña at the exhibition. Thanks to all the artist. Special thanks to: Mahmoud Abu Hashhash and Costantino D’Orazio, Jason Waite

Exhibition - Project curated by Judith Wielander and Love Difference - Artistic Movement for an InterMediterranean Politic (Filippo Fabbrica and Sonja Linke). Set-up exhibition: Art Office of Cittadellarte - Fondazione Pistoletto.

VIDEO AND POSTERS IN THE EXHIBITION