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A war that isn‘t a war Jaśmina Wójcik in conversation with Bogna Świątkowska
Going to Palestine, were you prepared for what you‘d see there in terms of the political, social, or economic situation? No. With a year‘s hindsight, I think it was a borderline experience in my life. Definitely. Most powerful, but also most beautiful, in a way. If you can speak about beauty here at all. That experience was full of contradictions. There was a sense of despair caused by seeing what‘s happening there, how the Palestinians are treated by the Israeli authorities and military, and how little the outside world is aware about it, despite all that has been said and written about the conflict in the Middle East. I saw a war that isn‘t a war. It‘s a constantly encroaching occupation. It‘s a bit like slipping into madness. Before my grandmother got ill, I thought illness was something that just happened. In fact it creeps up on you with tiny steps. And here war does that, with tiny steps that are terribly radical, that stop at nothing. I still don‘t understand it. I used to live in Kazimierz, and the history of Jews or Israelis was important for me, dramatic, horrible. Jan Tomasz Gross‘s books made me feel bad as a Pole. I wanted to do something about the fact that we as Poles didn‘t behave towards the Jews as we should have. And there I saw that they‘d become an aggressor themselves. I started digging in that to understand how the victim becomes the oppressor. Before entering Palestinian territory, at Israeli military checkpoints, the visitor sees large signs warning that you enter at your own risk, which may
potentially be fatal. A message in three languages that you are entering an area where people will be trying to kill you. After crossing the border, you realise you are in community of people facing immense challenges of daily life caused by the occupation, limited by a political situation that you can hardly compass, can hardly grasp all the paradoxes and historical feuds. The Qalandiya Biennale 2018, which you participated in, was dedicated to contesting prejudices and stereotypes, amongst other goals. The Biennale was an incredible experience because I was able to be inside. I didn‘t feel like a tourist. I‘m always interested in people, in how they live, how they talk about them selves and the ways of preserving their heritage. I‘m interested in small yet powerful saving gestures that open our eyes. You begin to notice buildings, people, their self-organisa tion. If you‘re on a tourist orbit, you don‘t see that at all. In Ramallah you were supposed to do a project that would be inspired by the city. Besides that, it could be any theme. How did the process look like? You encountered a whole lot of things that could be inspiring for you as an artist and as a human being. How did you decide to team up with Mohammad Saleh? I work in tandem with cameraman Jakub “Kuba” Wróblewski, and we were meeting all kinds of people and groups. Doing research not only in Ramallah, but also in Jerusalem. But up until that point it was, well, not that it didn‘t touch me, but it didn‘t click in the special way, when I‘d have said, oh, this makes sense for me, this is what I want to focus on. Meeting Mohammad in Bethlehem, after running away from the crowds for a couple of hours, after visiting a museum fashioned by Banksy, was something that clicked.
