READING INTO THE LANDSCAPE

Ein Kerem, Jerusalem 2009

Durational action

The location- the village of Ein Kerem, on the outskirts of Jerusalem. I sit in a wadi, from mid-day and into the night, at a table piled with books of the writings of early Zionists – their yearnings and their idealized texts on returning to nature, to the land.

I work into the books, incising, puncturing the pages, pressing into them natural materials from the immediate surroundings – in an attempt to forge a relationship betweeen the abstracted ideas of the texts and the complicated, conflictual actuality and material specificity of the place.
From time to time I stand  and address the landscape directly, reading to it from the books, in a frustrated attempt to persuade it to conform itself to the texts.

One can view the work from two vantage points- either from the balcony of the art center situated on the hill above, using binoculars, or by going down into the wadi to see and hear the work from closeup.

The work was created for the event ”What is Hidden Behind the Pastoral”, Mamuta Experimental Art and Media Center, Ein Kerem, Jerusalem
www.mamuta.org