As part of the project “Making Aliyah” V and I have been researching other homelands and promised lands; people with an ancestral claim to a land or a religious notion that there is a land that is theirs.
I started some drawings that are outlines of the borders of non-existant homelands, or homelands without autonomy, partial autonomy, or separatist movements. Starting at one place I was following the outlines, by the time I was back to where I started, where I started had changed. Seemed like a nice reflection on the shifting nature of claims to land and definitions of borders.
In a separate project, V and I have been working on a Frankfurt school activity book, with coloring and connect the dots and mazes. Seemed interesting to apply these activities to border making as well. We thought about connect the dots for the homeland drawings, and thought about the defining act that drawing takes on in this gesture. Connecting dots with a line, bringing into definition and committing a border. What is the role of the participant then? the drawer who is connecting dots? are they rendering the imagined land real, or are they forcing it into a specificity?
(an early version of Adorno connect the dots, feel free to download and try it!)
“A LAND WITHOUT A PEOPLE FOR A PEOPLE WITHOUT A LAND” The expression often attributed to the early Zionist movement in relation to Palestine. Recent scholarship argues that it actually came into being from christian restorationists “A LAND WITHOUT PEOPLE FOR A PEOPLE WITHOUT A LAND”The interpretation of the phrase by Palestinian academic Edward Said. In the leaving out of the indefinite article A, the sentence is no longer an abstract reflexive statement about the state of the Jews, but rather a powerful argument against the early Zionist ideologies. Said writes about it in The Question of Palestine, which I don’t have a link to, but here is another relevant essay by him. “A LAND WITHOUT PEOPLE FOR PEOPLE WITHOUT A LAND”When Stalin created the Jewish Autonomous Region, he chose a part of Russia that apparently really was devoid of people (Though of course these things are always subjectively stated… ). This served two purposes: the active population of the entire Soviet empire, especially in a strategic area bordering China, and moving the Jews away from the areas of the Pale where the local populations were resentful. “LAND WITHOUT PEOPLE FOR PEOPLE WITHOUT LAND” Now this sounds like a rallying cry for the Landless movement in Brazil!
V says that in Italian to say a bearded history is to refer to the official history.
Or maybe she just made it up…
My search for an alternative ideology for an alternative promised land led me to early zionist thought which led further back to pre-nationalist, pre-zionist central and eastern european jewish intellectuals. All these bearded men of study, were involved in the production of a history, either lost or non-existant, and by default in the construction of an ideology. These narratives were perhaps at first not entirely fixed on one location or even on a specific location for nationhood. Many of these thinkers came out of the mid 19th century explosion of central european nationalism, and countered with a jewish response. They were either advocating for a rightful place in the newly defined national identities (Jost), or were carving out a place for potential autonomy (Dubnow).
All of these bearded narratives were later used to construct the dominant ideology we recognize as zionism. And through their bearded histories there are other potentials, other stories, other ideologies and perhaps other promised lands. And so as a first stage to my aliyah to the Jewish Autonomous Region in Russia, I am in search of the construction of an ideology. And this is taking place through a long bearded narrative. First attempt is a re-enactment of Herzl’s definitive Jewish State, sporting my very own Herzl’n beard.
Before action there must be desire.
V and I were getting a bit frustrated with our attempts to realize some 1 hour art projects. Sure, we had one really nice experience with Enrico Bressan. But after that it seemed that all of these proposals to democratize and make available an art experience were actually completely impractical and unavailable to just about anyone with an interest. Regardless of the amount of effort that the curator was putting into the project, the many participating artists were just not available when there was an interest. We even had the absurd situation where we had scheduled a project with a particular artist, Rebecca Agnes, whose proposal was “Reading a tale in the host’s house in a sunday afternoon. Rebecca Agnes project consists in transforming the narration code, the word, into an improper one, drawing. During the lecture of a book chosen by the host, the artist will extrapolate words which can be drawn. So people who will take part to the art hour (it may be individual or collective) will have a drawing pen to draw on two walls of the house.”
We got in touch with her a week before the appointment to let her know that since we are moving out of this apartment in two months we will stretch paper on the walls for the drawing. She replied that unfortunately due to this circumstance she could no longer realize the project even though she thought hard about an alternative, instead she suggested that if we were really interested we could repaint our walls after her visit… Now I am all about artistic integrity and respecting the wishes of the artist when it comes to realizing a work, but the complete inflexibility in realizing a project that is meant to occur in another person’s home just re-enforced to v and i the remoteness of any of these projects or artists from an appreciation of participation or interaction.
And then, Stefano Lupatini came along. Stefano is working in a variety of media and approaches on the subject of media control and manipulation with an emphasis on the concept of white noise. The project he proposed for 1 hour art is meant to provide information for his larger research. The proposal is:
“_Whitenoise chocolates_is a part of _Whitenoiseprojekt_, a project dealing with the word Information and that means to develop in an interdisciplinary way in the public and in the private sphere. 1 h art provides the artist the chance to know how people react in front of an artwork that call into question the usability of information. Whitenoise chocolates_ make the artist go to the host house with a chocolate candies and his camcorder. The idea is to gather the family around the chocolate candies, making them discuss about what the chocs raise and recording everything happens. Chocs are made of press clippings, and, focusing attention, you can see that there are some hidden messages. The artist is pushed by the desire to survey and document different reactions and discussions, thus filing new stuff to be used for other occasions. This operation is also a way to try to understand if it exists or not a direct relationship between art and information and to reflect on what is the art’s role in the topical debate on the expression freedom.”
So Sunday night Stefano arrived at our apartment with his partner Daniela and a big box of chocolates. After setting up his camera, V and I sat at our dining room table and unwrapped the box of chocolates to find meticulously created newspaper covered styrofoam chocolates. The styrofoam chocolates contained just a little bit of actual text and so was quite difficult to approach the actual content, but V and I spent the next hour or so engaging with the chocolates and practicing our abilities to build conversation, content and meaning from something that wasn’t giving very much. We looked for meaning in the text, noticed the over abundance of mentions of Berlusconi and started to separate the chocolates by “good” and “bad”. We then composed some dada poems from the chocolates with the larger text from headlines, where there were just a couple of letters of each word legible. We approached the chocolates with a discussion of current events, applied a formal critique to the objects, tasted (and chewed on) the styrofoam pieces to test their similarity to chocolate, we used them as madelines to instigate memory. We played for a while, and at the end Stefano seemed genuinely surprised, and happy, at how much we were able to generate from his little newspaper chocolates.
After the recording we spent some time conversing with Stefano and Daniela and hearing about his experience in Milan. He told us that his only valuable conversations about art come from meeting with curators, that we were the first artists in Milan that he has actually had a conversation about art with (!!!)
Before they left we agreed to meet again, and continue a conversation.
v and i visiting kunst-stoffe in berlin, a recycle art center where we applied for and didn’t get a residency. corrina the director told us she really enjoyed our proposal but that they opted to award their residencies to artists from developing countries. fair. she showed us around and invited us to utilize the materials while in berlin this summer, possible in exchange for leading a workshop on reggio-emilia style remida art.
looks like a busy august in berlin!
sibylle took us to visit dada post where she invited us to collaborate on a project this summer.
dada post is an old fish smoking factory turned art space two years ago by an american sculptor howard mccalebb.
had a two month run of making yogurt using the previous yogurt as the starter culture.
it’s been getting cold and valnentine and i haven’t been much in the mood for yogurt in the morning.
and so the streak ends.
the bicycle film festival stopped in milano this weekend. unfortunately i didn’t make it to any of the screenings, but valentine and i managed to bicycle our way to the dance party saturday night. YACHT was headlining, and they’ve been a favorite of ours for at home dance parties, especially this song
so we needed to check them out live.
the party was more milano fashionista (it was at the european institute for fashion) than it was bicycle crowd. but the energy was super and YACHT were excellent; the music, costuming and performance, mixing sacred and profane symbology with super dance music.
found this clip on youtube from the show. you can see me dancin’ in my cycling cap around 4:18, just before some dude tried to make out with the singer. and then again with my fist dance around 4:54. i was rocking my HUB jersey from providence, rhode island, represent.
after the show, we rode our bicycles back from the south of the city all the way to the northern part where we live. it was 3 am and the center was almost completely desolate. we rode up to the duomo and cycled around the piazza a few times enjoying the emptiness and quiet.
