ART
In the In Between: a Conversation with Galit Eilat and Chen Tamir about the Mobile Archive
/ Thom Donovan
10.10.09
TD: The selection process is also mediated by the institutions with which you choose to work.
GE: Correct. I choose the institutions with whom I'd like to work and they become responsible for the process of selecting specific artists' videos.
CT: [to Galit] What institutions would you not want the archive in. The MoMA, for instance?
GE: The MoMA is not an institute, it's a mall.
CT: [laughs] Who would you say no to?
GE: For example, a Canadian institution that wanted to work with us has a problem with censorship. We told them "no thank you." If you look at the institutions with which we have worked in the past they all have a certain character. Not the same character, but we have common understandings, and a shared vision for the future of the work.
TD: Would you say you're choosing them based on their ethical character?
GE: Not ethical. Let's say it depends on the vision they have for the future and the responsibility they have towards the present.
TD: The geopolitical context for this work you are doing is obviously extremely important to the project. The other night at Parsons your co-presenter, the Ramallah-based art historian and curator Reem Fadda, spoke of Israel/Palestine as a "laboratory for situations of mobility." How does this relate to your Liminal Spaces project?
GE: The Liminal Spaces project is based on three main events that we call "traveling seminars." These seminars consist of three separate meetings, each for three to four days. The first was in Ramallah, the second in Germany, the third in Israel where we looked specifically at the occupation inside Israel. The last of these meetings took place between Jews and Arabs, but also between Muslims and Christians within the Palestinian community. So liminality is about crossing borders, but is also about all the different relations that are sometimes undefined by the law.
My specific approach coming from the Israeli Center for Digital Art is to create liminal spaces within the bureaucracy. How, for instance, to provide Palestinian citizens with permits to come to Ramallah? I would not say that we are working so much against the system, as we are trying to find holes in the system we can use for our own needs. Working in the three different areas of the Occupied Territories--areas A, B, and C--has been extremely educative for us.
Area A is a place where Palestinians are allowed to be; it is controlled by Palestinian authorities. Area B is a Palestinian Area controlled by Israeli authorities. Area C is a mixed area, but it is owned by Israel completely. What you must understand is you can never know where Area B is. Area B changes all the time. In the morning there can be a checkpoint, hours later there can be nothing there where the checkpoint was.
This is where we started the project from: by wanting to analyze how we can travel, what we can do, how we can demarcate Area B. You have a map, but the map is changing all the time. The areas have been in a constant state of transformation since Israel began to build the wall. It's constant transformation: building, destroying, building again. So the purpose of our project is not only to cross borders mentally, but also physically.
GE: Correct. I choose the institutions with whom I'd like to work and they become responsible for the process of selecting specific artists' videos.
CT: [to Galit] What institutions would you not want the archive in. The MoMA, for instance?
GE: The MoMA is not an institute, it's a mall.
CT: [laughs] Who would you say no to?
GE: For example, a Canadian institution that wanted to work with us has a problem with censorship. We told them "no thank you." If you look at the institutions with which we have worked in the past they all have a certain character. Not the same character, but we have common understandings, and a shared vision for the future of the work.
TD: Would you say you're choosing them based on their ethical character?
GE: Not ethical. Let's say it depends on the vision they have for the future and the responsibility they have towards the present.
TD: The geopolitical context for this work you are doing is obviously extremely important to the project. The other night at Parsons your co-presenter, the Ramallah-based art historian and curator Reem Fadda, spoke of Israel/Palestine as a "laboratory for situations of mobility." How does this relate to your Liminal Spaces project?
GE: The Liminal Spaces project is based on three main events that we call "traveling seminars." These seminars consist of three separate meetings, each for three to four days. The first was in Ramallah, the second in Germany, the third in Israel where we looked specifically at the occupation inside Israel. The last of these meetings took place between Jews and Arabs, but also between Muslims and Christians within the Palestinian community. So liminality is about crossing borders, but is also about all the different relations that are sometimes undefined by the law.
My specific approach coming from the Israeli Center for Digital Art is to create liminal spaces within the bureaucracy. How, for instance, to provide Palestinian citizens with permits to come to Ramallah? I would not say that we are working so much against the system, as we are trying to find holes in the system we can use for our own needs. Working in the three different areas of the Occupied Territories--areas A, B, and C--has been extremely educative for us.
Area A is a place where Palestinians are allowed to be; it is controlled by Palestinian authorities. Area B is a Palestinian Area controlled by Israeli authorities. Area C is a mixed area, but it is owned by Israel completely. What you must understand is you can never know where Area B is. Area B changes all the time. In the morning there can be a checkpoint, hours later there can be nothing there where the checkpoint was.
This is where we started the project from: by wanting to analyze how we can travel, what we can do, how we can demarcate Area B. You have a map, but the map is changing all the time. The areas have been in a constant state of transformation since Israel began to build the wall. It's constant transformation: building, destroying, building again. So the purpose of our project is not only to cross borders mentally, but also physically.
