Well, there was only one exhibit in the show, but it was really interesting. It was a video, that began with a shot of the desert. Just the desert and a person breathing behind the camera. Then, the breathing got harder and harder, like this person behind the camera is very afraid of something, and then the camera just started to run, showing random shots of the dessert - mountains, sky, sand - and the breathing getting heavier and heavier as if this person was having a very bad nightmare. Actually, it felt like being in a nightmare. And then there was a cut in the film, and the breathing person was in Beit-Lechem, still breathing heavily. As you may or may not know, Beit-Lechem is the place where Jesus was born, but now it is in the occupied territories and looks like a real big mess! (I guess it looked a mess when Jesus was born too, and it was also occupied - by the Romans, but anyway, it hasn’t gotten any better). So the camera shows a street the middle of Beit Lechem, and the guy (person) in the background is still having a very bad nightmare and breathing very hard. I guess Beit Lechem IS his nightmare - it is full of construction work that sends up clouds of sand into the air, and the Muslim women under the veils are kind of suffocating. The breathing goes on until there is another cut and the camera is in a church, in Beit Lechem. The breathing stops and changes to middle-ages church music.
Well, the exhibit goes on, but this nightmare piece was definitely the most "unsettling". I can still hear the breathing as I type this. To offer my very simplifying thoughts about it - If someone told me I would have to spend a week in Beit-Lechem, with all that dust and sand, I think I would start breathing real hard too. But then, what’s so great about Tel-Aviv? Art shows under crummy parking lots? If I really could see my life, maybe I would think I was having a nightmare….
After we finished watching the video, we went to congratulate the artists (as usual, we had nothing to say but "great show". They said "thanks". Celery tried to talk to the unrelated artist, but she was too busy trying to impress the owner of the gallery and maybe get her own art shown there. The owner of the gallery also ignored us the minute she found out we weren’t artists (Oh, you’re the AUDIENCE? Well, who invited you? What do we need YOU for?). But she suddenly started being nice to us when she understood that everyone had gone home, and she needed us to escort her through "parking lot hell" so she wouldn’t get raped. (I’m so glad I’m not part of the Israeli art world).
Celery asked her how come there were no reporters or critics there, and she said the Palestinian artists didn’t want them there, so no one would get the false impression that there was some "dialogue" going on. She explained that the artists thought that if people in Europe or US would hear that an exhibit from Beit-Lechem was shown in Tel-Aviv, they would be sure that the peace process was working, and everything was okay. And then, pronto, they would be on to the next catastrophe and forgetting the Palestinians behind. Well, I guess they have a certain point about that, but the truth is that there WAS an art show in Tel-Aviv, and us "audience" really were shaking the hands of the Palestinian artists, who were smiling back at us. So there is some kind of dialogue going on. And to intentionally hide this from the World (I bet the whole WORLD would come rushing to that gallery to take pictures and eat the baklava…) would just not be truthful, right?….
Well, any of you going to Beith Lechem for the Millenium celebrations, please tell me what it really looks like
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