Aziz+Cucher

Berlin Days, Berlin Nights

2009-11-05T06:04:00.000-08:00

Berlin days, Berlin nights

Hard to believe that we have only now 6 weeks left to our residency in Berlin. What started as a great unknown journey on May 31^st has become a fully lived experience filled with emotional and creative impact. Being in Berlin has proven to be extremely productive and conducive to work. Most of October we spent preparing for 2 major video shoots, one with dancers and the second with actors. On both occasions we were blessed to be able to work with extremely talented and generous performers – we will be eternally grateful to them for their time and involvement with our project and our ideas.

When not shooting, we have spent our time editing the material and also composing sounds to go with it. It is very rewarding to see how the various tracks in our work are starting to take concrete forms, how the narrative and the image impulses coalesce, how we are forging an audiovisual language that distills our ideas and experiences and turns them into distinct works of art. We have still a long way to go until the finished pieces can be shown, but the direction of each component of the whole is now very clear. We have overcome the difficult and confusing initial days of our arrival in Berlin, when it felt as if we were walking through thick, dark mud, and now the good ideas have sorted themselves out and the material itself is starting to take its own shape and expression.

Browsing through the shelves at the St. George English bookstore, we came across a copy of Lawrence Weschler's "Vermeer In Bosnia"(Vintage Books, 2005). We bought it, intrigued by the title, but never suspecting that it would prove to be a fascinating and inspiring read. The three main essays in the book deal with the atrocities of the Bosnian war, the subsequent trials at the Yugoslav War Tribunal at The Hague, and the momentous days that led to the fall of the Milosevic regime in Belgrade in 1997. What we found particularly moving and engaging in Weschler's writing was the broad humanistic frame in which he sets up a historical perspective to understand the then current events, building beautiful arguments in which works of art, theater, and philosophy serve as springboards for a broader analysis not only of the particular conflict at hand but also of general views about violence, ethnicity, historical memory, and political agency. One wonderful moment involves going to see the Vermeer paintings at the Mauritshuis in The Hague, to seek respite from the brutal testimonies at the tribunal, and engaging in a disquisition about Vermeer's time and how his paintings depicted an idealized serenity that belied the horrors of the 30 Years War (1618-1648) in which, as he puts it, all of Europe was Bosnia, mired in bloody religious and ethnic strife.

We have been taking advantage of Berlin’s extraordinary cultural offerings, going to concerts (both classical and experimental), dance performances (often very moving, sometimes pretentious), and tonight, an amazingly acute theater performance that uncannily parallels some aspects of our own work and in particular our emotional involvement with the conflict in the Middle East. The piece, “Third Generation”, is a co-production of the Schaubühne Theater in Berlin and the Habima of Tel Aviv. Directed by Yael Ronen, a young Israeli director, it brings together a cast of Israeli, Palestinian, and German actors to, in their own words, “analyze the Gordian Knot that characterizes these three nations”. They do this mostly in English, with an even-handedness, great humor, a daring honesty, and without ever falling into easy didacticism or the facile sentimentalism that might be expected from the subject matter. In a particular poignant scene, a trio of Israeli actors impersonate teenagers that have been through a recent educational trip to Auschwitz and other death camps. The scene is both funny and terrifying in its accurate portrayal of the convoluted relationship of Israeli society to the Holocaust. In another, an Israeli soldier is haunted by the ghost of a Palestinian he gunned down when he mistakenly thought the can of Coke he was holding in his hand was a grenade. It was very interesting for us to see this complex situation turned into a piece of experimental theater, with its own discursive logic and conventions. It is obvious that for those involved in this production, the work had to reflect a reality that is very much lived and experienced in the every day.

See: http://www.schaubuehne.de/spielplan/detailansicht.php?id_event_date=264768&id_event_cluster=69699&id_language=2

For us, we are addressing similar subject matter, but in a more general and abstract way: we come to it as mediated observers, touched by its many contradictions, but ultimately removed from it by geographical distance and the luxury of a more philosophical perspective.

Aziz goes to Lebanon

2009-10-07T04:34:00.000-07:00

For as long as I can remember, people have asked me: “Aziz—where is that name from? It is so exotic.” I would simply reply: Lebanon--my grandparents came from there.

This riddle of a name with all its acute angles and hairpin turns and rosey ssss’s and zzzz’s, has traveled with me every day of my life, quietly shaping me, steadily illuminating some part of my consciousness. Most days it remains veiled and invisible, -- other days it jumps up to announce itself like a djini on a flying carpet, usually when passing through JFKNWRLHRCDG or some other checkpoint or crossing.

Each time I read about yet another car bomb or assassination or attack in Lebanon, I feel a terrible jolt --as if some part of me were in that car, in that bunker, in the center of that endless cycle of brutality and madness. To understand this connection, however remote, I had to go and look, to be a witness, to see if I could detect some long lost kinship.

I always knew I would visit. But when?

In 2006, I was planning a trip when all of a sudden the country was under massive attack by Israeli aircraft pounding cities, villages, bridges and tunnels from south to north and back again. I then heard from cousins who had become prisoners in their own homes for six weeks without power, food, money or work, isolated from the world as they were essentially caught in the cross fire between the Israeli army and the Hizbollah militia. This, in a brief email exchange from cousins in Jounieh to my Uncle in Worcester, MA:

Dear .... I have received your E-mail from a long time but I can not answer you because I have not a line. we miss you very much our situation here is very bad no work no eat no calm no money no good ways only we receive a bomb from Israel we don't know when is our time for death. Till now we are alive. My mother send you a kisses for all and she is very depress. We hope to see yo one day when this war finish. Kisses for all

Needless to say, I was deeply moved by this situation, compounded by the fact that Sammy’s entire family were now living in Israel and his nephews were then and are now serving actively in the Israeli army. Watching the daily televised reports of these unrelenting and disproportionate attacks, we were both devastated by an overwhelming mix of helplessness and frustration, concern and bewilderment. Most of my father's family had emigrated from this land many years before and his entire family had just arrived. Such cruel ironies we had not fully embraced until this moment and we knew that we had to come to terms with the fact that the war had entered our living room and we had to deal with it.

So now, in 2009, after the Lebanese elections in May gave way to a period of relative stability and renewed hope for some kind of peace in the region, I finally make my way to Beirut to see where these stories and names and connections I carry with me originate.

Upon my arrival from uber-organized Germany, I realize now that I was in culture shock. I had heard about the glamour and glitz of this city for many years, and as a result I had brought certain expectations with me about what I would find here and I think in someway I was stunned to see the chaos and anarchy that reigns here and the overall dismal condition of many of its streets and buildings—broken tiles, electrical power lines strung haphazardly together this way and that, feral cats roaming the streets. And the cars, the cars, the cars everywhere… and the pollution, and few functioning traffic lights. I nearly got mowed down several times in the first hour of being on the streets. Pedestrians have no right-of-way here. And there are very few street signs with clearly marked names in English or French since people do not give directions based on street name and number but rather by landmarks and names of buildings...so that was extremely frustrating when trying to navigate using a traditional map approach. I felt lost and confused, irritated, and above all, saddened by the reality of finding much of the city still so shattered.

But then I got it.

The neighborhood I was staying in, Achrafiye, is the oldest Christian neighborhood and is located right along the former green line; hence, it suffered a significant amount of devastation during the civil war that ended only 20 years ago. The are still visual reminders from this period with many gorgeous old mansions sitting in ruins, their owners having abandoned not only their homes but their country as well. But slowly I started to see signs of recovery and I started to realize that most Beirutis are making the best of it and are proud and practical and they want to re-build to become the cosmopolitan destination that they once were –progressive, multicultural, tolerant, looking as much to the west as to the east. Just down the street in Gemayze, there are stylish condominiums and boutiques and romantic bars and trendy restaurants and spectacular nightclubs built into every nook and cranny. These people are partying with a vengeance and folks from all over the Gulf and the Arab World have helped to make Beirut become the #1 party destination in the entire world according to CNN. http://www.bestvideonet.com/watch.php?id=phjqVkmJx7Y&l=pt_br&dl=pt_br

Are they celebrating victory over past defeats or just partying as if there is no tomorrow? As one taxi driver made clear, Lebanese are just crazy because after what they have been through for the last 35 years they never know from one day to the next what will happen, who will attack them, who will get car-bombed, etc.

So how is it that people can be shooting each other one day and then living cheek by jowl the next? --Money. According to the owner of the B+B where I was staying, most Lebanese have learned to be very practical in order to move on and to build up their economy once again. They do not forgive, they do not forget, but they move on in order to find ways of working together for the common good of the country. This attitude of course does not account for the many Syrian-backed oppositional forces that exist who are anti-West and anti-American and militantly anti-Israeli. In fact, despite the outcome of the recent elections, there is still no new government formed due to a lack of agreement among members of parliament. So very little is getting accomplished…no new building projects, no new legislation, no real advancement presently because there are no ministers in place to make real change happen.

Which probably explains why driving in Beirut is, according to the photojournalist I met who had just come from covering the war in Afghanistan, more dangerous than being on a battlefield because at least in war there are certain rules that must prevail, a certain logic and predictability. Not so with the streets of Beirut.

But I did manage to get around and I saw most of the country in the span of a week. It is a small country and there are many areas not open to tourists with numerous checkpoints leading from one village to the next. Everywhere you turn there are men with guns and often tanks parked on the curb waiting to disperse any kind of unexpected eruption.

2009-10-07T04:25:00.001-07:00

My first day in Beirut was unusually long, lasting from 9am – 5am, beginning with a walk in the neighborhood, a 3 hour lunch at Chez Sami in Jounieh north of Beirut with Haitham and his sweet friends from Kuwait, a visit to see the Lady of Lebanon in Harissa --the shrine built to honor the Virgin Mary complete with an enormous statue towering over the city like an ancient deity, dinner at Centrale, drinks at Avant Garde—the newest and most explicitly gay club in the center of the city, then on to Skybar and then finally B0-18, which is listed at #13 on the list of the world’s top 100 clubs for its extraordinary location and design. (http://www.worldsbestbars.com/top-100.htm)

According to a profile on the club's architect Bernard Khoury, published in OUT OF BEIRUT, "the club is situated across from a location in Beirut that was the site of many horrendous tortures during the civil war and is redolent with a ghostly presence. Previously a refugee camp, first for Armenians in the 20's and then for Palestinians and Kurds, many of whom were massacred by the Christian Phalangist Militia in 1976, the site was a desolate vacant lot rumoured to contain mass graves for the many 'missing'. The club was conceived as a bunker-like structure, set deep into the ground so that no superstructure is visible. Cars arrive from the adjacent motorway and park around the site in a semicircular arrangement. The entrance down dark metal stairs brings to mind the entrance to a tomb. The interiors are furnished with chairs lined with purple velvet and open like coffins. A spectacular sliding roof opens the club to the night sky and further enhances the idea of some Dantesque underworld in which dancing bodies find escape in a delirious present."

from OUT OF BEIRUT, published in 2006 by the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, UK, and distributed by DAP, New York. It provides an excellent overview of the thriving intellectual, artistic and design community in Beirut during the post-war years.

Museum and Byblos

2009-10-07T04:16:00.000-07:00

But I did not travel all the way to Lebanon for the nightlife, as impressive as it is. The next day I spent as an ordinary tourist, visiting the National Gallery (http://www.beirutnationalmuseum.com/e-histoire.htm) for its stunning collection of Phoenician bronze and ivory statues found at Byblos where I visited later that afternoon. Byblos is today considered the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world and the word “bible” comes from Byblos since the papyrus used for writing was imported from here into Greece.

2009-10-07T04:14:00.000-07:00

Also, I visited one of the world’s most wonderful natural sites, the Jeita Grotto. I had never been inside of a cave as deep and spectacular as this –imagine Wagner’s fairytale Grotto of Venus for real. Truly magnificent, magical place. (http://www.jeitagrotto.com/) Thanks to my cousins Charbel, Joumana and Mario for taking me here.

Vote here for the Jeita Grotto to make it onto the list of the world's new seven natural wonders:

www.new7wonders.com/

A day with Eric

2009-10-07T04:06:00.000-07:00

The next day was spent on a walking tour of the city with Eric Bunge who, coincidentally, was visiting Beirut for only 2 days. We had breakfast at Chez Paul and then after visiting the newly constructed Downtown we went to the Corniche and had lunch at the Bay Rock Café overlooking the famous Pidgeon rocks. Stunning views, really. Eric had to go to a meeting so I took a taxi to visit the newly opened Beirut Art Center (http://www.beirutartcenter.org/), a much needed venue for progressive contemporary art in Lebanon. The space is generous and cool, with a serious vibe and currently showing some very politically charged work by well-known Lebanese artists Akram Zaatari and Bernard Khoury. The work was not so poetically charged as politically acute, and it was heartening to see a gallery willing to exhibit such tough, unsentimental work dealing with important current events and raw human emotions. That night Eric and his client Lamia took me to have the most delicious dinner at Al Mayass, a Lebanese-Armenian restaurant. WOW!!!! such delicacies one can usually only dream about.

From FOOD and WINE: “This family-owned Armenian-Lebanese restaurant excels at mezes; its Armenian specialties from Aleppo (like manti—dumplings stuffed with lamb in a yogurt sauce) are also a must. The wine list offers top Lebanese wines (Chateau Kefraya, Musar). In a kitschy but endearing touch, an aging troubadour often walks through the room with a guitar, singing songs from Lebanon’s legendary chanteuse Fairuz (as well as the half-Lebanese Shakira) in a beautiful falsetto.”

Jezzine

2009-10-07T03:54:00.000-07:00

So the next day, Jezzine, the village where my grandparents were born. Cousin Charbel was kind enough to drive me the 2 hours into the southern mountains to get there. I simply had to visit this tiny part of the world that I had heard so much about for so many years. And it did not disappoint. Seeing the house where my grandfather Gidou was born, even the humble little room in which he was born, was profound and meeting my father’s cousin Boutros who has lived in the house continuously for decades, working on the land and eking out a living was very moving as well. Especially when he told us about how when the Israeli army occupied southern Lebanon and Jezzine in particular, they forced him to register his sons with the Lebanese Christian Militia in order to fight with and for the Israeli cause and against the Palestinians. Boutros tried to resist this but was, he said, beaten until he complied. This was a harrowing thing to learn about while sitting together drinking Turkish coffee and looking out over the bucolic valley while watching the sun set over the nearby forest, the same view and the same forest that my grandparents knew intimately before they left to live out their American Dream.

Temple of Baalbek/St. Anthony

2009-10-07T03:45:00.000-07:00

Monday was devoted to an organized tour of the magnificent roman ruins at Baalbek and the last remaining cedar forest in the middle east. Fantastic trip through history – the Temple of Baalbek was one of the largest and most noble roman temples ever built in the Roman Empire outside of Rome. And much of its original detail and architecture still exists today. The Phoenicians settled in Baalbek as early as 2000 BC and built their first temple dedicated to the God Baal, the Sun God, from whom the city gets its name. With the arrival of Alexander the Great, the city became known as Heliopolis. With temples to both Venus and Bacchus dominating the site, there were doubtless many wild parties taking place amongst these columns, not to mention human and animal sacrifice as well as public prostitution between the citizens’s wives and daughters and the temple priests in order to please Astarte, the goddess of lust, fertility, sexuality and war. Under the Greeks, Astarte became known as Aphrodite and under the Romans, Venus.

At the end of the day the tour took us to the monastic caves of St. Anthony, my namesake. Unexpectedly, I had a kind of profound connection with this place, knowing that the monks who worship here are doing so to honor the original St. Anthony of Egypt –Christianity’s first hermit-- who went to live in the desert in order to pray for the salvation of the world while being tempted by desires of the flesh.

The Challenge of Seeing

2009-10-07T03:33:00.000-07:00

The final day of my visit was devoted to seeing the destruction that still exists along the former green line in Beirut, corpses of buildings that today stand as monuments to the madness that prevailed there during the civil war years. I also tried to visit a Hizbollah-dominated area of the city that was hardest hit by Israeli attacks in 2006 but with no luck—I could not find a taxi driver willing to take me there and I was warned repeatedly that it would be unsafe for me to shoot photos there. In fact, Lebanon is the first place I have ever been to where photography still poses some kind of real or imagined threat. Once while walking down the street, I came upon an abandoned bunker used by soldiers for policing the area. Attracted by its formal qualities and loaded symbolism, I casually snapped a few shots of it—a wooden structure big enough for 2 soldiers covered by stacks of sand bags and draped in camouflaged netting—but seconds later a couple of soldiers approached me from across the street and, in Arabic, demanded that I delete the photos from my memory card. Which I promptly and apologetically did like a naughty school boy and then rushed away. “The Lonely Planet Guide” had warned me about photography in Lebanon—sunsets, party people and mountain views are encouraged, but be careful of anything related to military sites or police. It was explained later that I could have been suspected of being a spy for Israel. Oy.

So instead, I visited the public beach in the south of the city which was quite sad really –such an ideal location right on the Mediterranean coast, but littered with trash, forlorn and forgotten. In its heyday, this was the Riviera of the Middle East; today it is abject and its waters polluted from poor sanitation practices and abuse. As I would learn later, rigid class divisions are alive and well along the coastal waters of the city. Wealthier middle class Beirutis all belong to private beach clubs such as the Riviera Hotel and Beach Club, a trendy restaurant/pool facility that could rival anything found in Miami or Mykonos or Fire Island. As in any developing country, the less privileged must settle for much less.

Conference

2009-10-07T03:29:00.000-07:00

My last evening was spent at the Lebanese University participating in a conference that was part of a cultural festival organized by UNESCO called “Francophone”. Ghada Waked, an art historian and curator based in Beirut, learned that I was visiting and, in the eleventh hour, arranged for me to present my work to a group of international students who were part of the event. Students from a number of French-speaking countries attended, including Mali, Belgium, Guinea and Haiti. Fortunately, they also understood English as my Quebecois-French is not so good. There were lots of questions and an interesting dialog ensued as many of the themes in my work seemed to resonate with the group as they are all grappling with issues related to technology in ways that are unique to their communities and cultures. Ideally, I would like to build on this relationship and develop more opportunities for cultural exchange with Lebanese cultural institutions.

At the Beirut Airport

2009-10-07T03:27:00.000-07:00

One of the most telling and uncanny moments of my trip occurred in the security line at the airport at 3am waiting to depart. I was tired from an emotionally and physically demanding trip and I was just becoming aware of the unusual amount of anxiety and fear and trepidation that I was carrying with me and I was eager to get away from this explosive land, so full of contradictions and uncertainties, checkpoints and divisions.

As I was standing there patiently waiting to pass through the metal detector, I realized that the line was being held up by a7-year old boy who was being frisked and having all his bags scrutinized because the scanner had detected guns and lots of plastic grenades. The mother and child were then thoroughly searched for more toy weapons which was absurd and frustrating and bewildering but by now, somehow not surprising. Meanwhile, a woman’s voice on the loudspeaker was declaring over and over in Arabic, French and English, “Welcome. We are pleased and honored to have your in our midst.”

Berlin, September 15th

2009-09-16T14:20:00.000-07:00

Berlin, a city with a complicated past but so relaxed today, a true artists’ paradise with the pace of life here allowing for endless reflection, experimentation, reading, thinking, talking, working, researching, testing limits.

Since arriving on August 1^st, we have spent the greater part of our time getting settled into a productive groove, addressing the inevitable tech issues that come up almost daily, meeting with dancers and actors and production assistants, identifying our resources, and now, finally, capturing and processing the footage that we shot during our intensive and very emotionally charged 2-month trip to Israel/Palestine, Bosnia and Serbia.

There are several significant strands or themes that are beginning to emerge as we begin work on a series of video, audio and animation sketches that will form the basis of the finished work we want to produce down the road. As part of this sketching process, we recently led a very productive improvisational workshop with 8 hugely talented dancers/performers in a dance studio in Kreuzberg (http://laborgras.com/phpwcms/). (Thanks to Pedro Osorio for putting us in touch with Vincent, Orlando and Manuel, all professionals and such nice guys.)It was a very challenging and revealing process that allowed us to get to know the dancers and to see what might be possible as we plan for other video shoots in various locations in Berlin during the coming weeks.

We have been renting an editing suite at the Medienwerkstatt BBK (http://www.bbk-berlin.de/cms/site/cat34.html) which is an artists’ dream. It is located in a building that was a hospital in the early 20^th century and is now entirely converted to artists studios, a printshop, a digital printing lab, a sculpture studio, a cinematheque and a media center with very very affordable rates for editing and shooting video in a green-screen studio. It is an artist-run facility subsidized by the city and its professional artists membership. Its longstanding success is a testament to the commitment that Berlin has to its artists and the importance it gives to contemporary cultural production.

Surprisingly, our work is becoming personal. For years, we have steered away from using ourselves and our own voices directly in our work but after being so deeply affected by the many moving stories we heard and the people we met while traveling, we realize that this can no longer be the case. Something has shifted dramatically in the way we perceive our own practice and what we need to accomplish as artists at this particular moment. This attempt at putting ourselves in the work, to be as honest as we can about what we are attempting to do, began this week in a very literal way by us taking turns interviewing each other for the camera. Somewhat awkwardly at first, we managed to draw stories and emotions and reflections out of each other that we hope can act as a framework or a kind of script for the narrative structure we ultimately want to develop into a multi-channel media landscape.

A late posting from Sarajevo

2009-08-07T12:51:00.000-07:00

The events described below occurred on the 8th of July, but we were asked not to publish them at the moment in order to protect some of those involved.

July 8^th

The day started in a most intense way as our guide Amir told us that he had spent the whole previous night taking care of a family of 10 Somali refugees that he and his girlfriend, Leila, had found wandering lost in the streets of the Old Town. After convincing them that they were not from the Police or meant them no harm, they brought all 10 of them to their apartment and offered them a home-cooked meal, probably the first one they had in many weeks and a place to spend the night. It turns out that this family – a father, mother, some children, and other relatives – had left Somalia, traveled hidden in a freighter via the Suez Canal to Alexandria, Egypt, and then somehow made their way across the Mediterranean to be dropped in the Croatian coast. They had made their way – BY FOOT – from the coast to Sarajevo, an exhausting journey that involves crossing arid rocky high mountains while evading the police – all in the hopes of contacting a Bosnian guy who for the amount of 5000 Euros was going to smuggle them into Germany. We were deeply moved by this story, and by being brought so close to the tragic reality that we often only know from the news, and to which, from our hectic New York lives can only pay scant attention. We couldn’t help but find it somehow fated that we should come across this event, as it was a poem about refugees by Wislawa Szymborska that in many ways sent us off on this journey, and we found ourselves in this particular moment in history where those who had been forced to become refugees only 15 years ago were now helping those who were fleeing from civil war and strife in their homeland. We were so awed by Amir and Leila’s generosity and openness of spirit, which they saw only as the natural and human thing to do, having known themselves what it means to be powerless and in need of help. We read in some travel guide that a visit to Sarajevo was a humbling experience, where one is reminded of how much we take for granted in our comfortable lives where we don’t encounter any privations. Little did we know that this lesson would come not only from the still-felt effects from the horrible experience of the recent war, but also from a close encounter with a distant but no less awful war in Africa that is still taking place and which is showing once again the utmost cruelty that man can bring upon man. After debating between ourselves whether or not it would be the right thing to do, we respectfully asked Amir if he would arrange for us to meet the Somalis and record their story on tape. The father of the clan, quite understandably, refused to do it for fear of being found out.

In an update from Amir that we received two weeks after this episode, he informed us that the family had reached the German border but had been turned away. We have for the moment no further news of their fate.

Historia Interrupta

2009-07-26T01:48:00.000-07:00

July 22 –

Arrived in Budapest on July 15th, and spent the first few days dedicated to bodily needs and pleasures: got a pass at a local gym, rented bikes to get around and get to know the city on the ground, and explored 2 of the fabled bathing facilities – the Palatinus and the baroque pleasure garden of the Szecheny. Immediately we realized that our eyes would be in for a treat with block after block of spectacular architecture of the XIX century, from the over the top bourgeois Neo-Baroque to the more avant-garde fin-de-siecle art nouveau and early modernism. A big part of the city has been now immaculately restored, and we got neck cramps from looking up at so many ornate cupolas, capitals, friezes, mosaics, and turreted roofs. Still, there are also areas that look no different than they did before the collapse of communism 1989, and it is in those gray stone facades that one can imagine more clearly the dour existence that emerged in this city after WWII.
Only then, after 3 days, and after our dear friend Neon joined us here, did we explore some of the sites with more historical significance. At the National Gallery, housed in a wing of the impressive, rambling former Royal Palace on Buda Hill, we were intrigued by a collection of Late-Gothic altar pieces from churches all around Hungary – all done in a peculiar style combining polychrome wood carvings and paintings. One particular scene of the Massacre of the Newborn was horrifically graphic and would find an echo hours later when we visited the House of Terror, a museum dedicated to the rememberance of the horrors of life under the rule of Fascism and Communism. The museum itself is overproduced and incoherent, with poor presentation of the context of its exhibits, aiming more at effect than at historical information, but a visit to the underground prison cells, and many of the recollections of now ageing victims of those regimes were chilling. More than anything we felt enormous sadness to see how a prosperous and vibrant city, at the heart of the cultural and scientific heart of Europe was not only physically destroyed, but also robbed of its soul by decades of war and brutal repression.
Late afternoon we drove to the Statue Park, a kind of open air museum-graveyard for all the monumental sculptures that were taken out of the city after the fall of communism. It was ironic to see such grandiose statues demoted to signify a footnote in history – albeit a very painful one. In a little exhibit area at the park, we watched a screening of a mesmerizing film made with archival footage from educational films created by the communist secret police to train spies and informers. The fascinating – and frightening - thing about these clips is that all the scenes in them are recreated by police officers who enact the “performance” of their under-cover activities. It would have been funny in a Maxwell Smart kind of way if we didn’t know that these people were actually committed to erasing even the smallest trace of dissent from their society. The level of perversity in devising how to spy on people, how to break into their homes, how to use informers, and above all, how to maintain a constant atmosphere of fear and paranoia was simply horrifying and it made us understand more completely what the people in this country have had to survive and how it must have affected their collective psyche.

The In Between City

2009-07-14T11:01:00.000-07:00

July 12, 13

We were not quite sure what to expect from Belgrade (pop. 1.6 million) before we arrived, we only knew that it was bombed by the US and NATO forces in 1999 for its aggression towards Kosovo and as a result, Americans are not exactly welcomed warmly.

Belgrade seems to lack a clear identity of its own and is trying to figure out who it is after the dissolution of Yugoslavia, the end of Communism and the collapse of the socialist state --as well as the trauma left by the last Balkan wars. It is still quite isolated from the rest of Europe as all Serbs need to apply for visas to travel anywhere, even to go to Italy or Greece which are so close by.

The city is very much in between the past and future, east and west.It seems to be on pause at the moment, but unfortunately, most of the people we have spoken to do not seem to have a lot of hope for its future. A curator we met today at the Museum for Contemporary Art, which has been closed for renovations for the past 2 years, told us that in Belgrade “we cannot expect anything”—because the level of corruption is so high and most of the politicians do not see the value in supporting contemporary art, only sporting events and pop concerts. According to our architect friend Ivan Kucina, the city lacks any real culture of its own, apart from the “the culture of greed,” referring to the monopolies and organized mafia groups controlling how business is done, often thoughtlessly and hastily without any real concern for the development of an economic/social infrastructure.

For a city that has been continuously inhabited since before Roman times, it is surprising to us that there is so little evidence of these various civilizations in the existing architecture that is left standing—each time the city was occupied the existing architecture and its monuments were demolished and built again. Apart from a core of turn-of-the century grand, neoclassical buildings, the city consists mostly of drab modernist developments from the 50’s and 60’s, a time when the city experienced its most rapid growth under Tito. The few modernist icons still standing (often in ruins) are now being retrofitted to suit the needs of the new neo-liberal entrepreneurs.

The best thing about being here for us has been the opportunity to spend time with Ivan and his partner Barbara (THANKS FOR THE GREAT DINNER), as well as with Biljana Djurdjevic, a hugely talented artist who paints powerful figurative canvases packed with psychological depth and unfliching human suffering.

See http://www.biljanadjurdjevic.com/

Thank you Biljana for our memorable lunch on the river in Zemun, perhaps the most charming part of Belgrade by far.

Border crossings

2009-07-13T03:05:00.000-07:00

July 11^th

Drove from Sarajevo to Belgrade, through the mountains of northern Bosnia, and passing by many villages, each populated by a different ethnic-religious community, which could be identified by the prominent minarets or bell-towers or steeples, as well as cemeteries.

The trip took longer than planned – we were on a narrow 2 lane road and there were 2 accidents which stopped traffic completely, at one point for almost 45 minutes. Then we got stuck behind two huge trucks trudging through the steep inclines and curves. Finally we got to the Croatian border and to the freeway, only to be detained for 3 hours waiting to get through the Serbian border ( So many borders in the Balkans!!).

As is turns out we were engulfed by a mass exodus of Turkish families from Western Europe, who were driving in caravans from Germany, Switzerland, France, and Belgium, with whole families packed in vans for their annual summer vacation in their ancestral villages in Turkey. They drive for several days straight on – passing through Croatia, Serbia, Macedonia, and Bulgaria before arriving in Turkey. It was fascinating to be caught in the middle of this huge ethnic mobilization that happens every year – at first we were frustrated, even irritated, to have to wait in such line to pass through the border, but then we realized that we were actually witnessing a cultural phenomenon which could be even romantically tied to tales of ancient caravans or migrations, even though we knew these were simply people taking their annual holiday.

We finally arrived in Belgrade after sunset to find ourselves driving in a city where all the street signs are in Cyrillic!! Somehow we managed to safely arrive in our hotel and settle in for the night.

Memorials in Sarajevo

2009-07-13T03:02:00.000-07:00

July 9^th=- 10^th

Visited today the “Tunnel Museum”, a small memorial to the only connection between the besieged Sarajevo and the outside world. The secret tunnel ran from the basement of one house to another for 800 yards, passing beneath the airport runway – which was controlled by the UN – and allowing for the transport of fuel, food, medicines, and arms to defend the city. It was also a way to get some of the seriously wounded and ill to get better treatment. Today this small private museum is run by the family that owns the house on the “safe” side and it is their continued mission to bring awareness to visitors by allowing them into their home and learning about the tunnel and its use. Because of a new airport runway, only about 20 yards of the tunnel can be visited today, but it is enough to give one an impression of what it was like to go through it during such a time of crisis.

Earlier that day we heard that there was a march passing through Sarajevo of about 2500 people, mostly women, who were going by foot to Srebrenica, on the eve of the commemoration of a horrible massacre in July of 1995. These cold-blooded killings were the only ones to be recognized as Genocide by the Hague Tribunal, even though many other slaughters like these happened in Bosnia during the war There was little information about this event, so we could not find the marchers, whom we wanted to join at least for part of their journey and pay our respects.

July 11 was declared a Memorial Day all over Europe, and the day before a solemn mood took over Sarajevo, with the television only playing classical music or showing some programs related to the massacre. We watched one quite disturbing film, probably made by English or American TV, which covered in great detail and with many interviews and graphic images of women and children fleeing or being chased out of the NATO base that was supposed to protect them. There were also harrowing images of Bosniak soldiers arriving to safe places after escaping through the forests the brutal shelling of the Serbs.

Being here for this commemoration added another layer of emotional complexity to our visit to this city and its tragic history.

Some People

2009-07-09T02:43:00.000-07:00

July 8^th

Today we visited the old Jewish cemetery on the edge of the city, a deeply moving experience –seeing the Hebrew script etched into a thousand mostly modest stones that bear the marks of time with graves dating back to the 16^th century and continuing right up to the middle of the 20^th century which is a testament to how integrated this community was here in Sarajevo. The cemetery is a jumble of weeds, broken paths and fallen monuments, but not due to the desecration that can be found in many other jewish cemeteries in Europe. Instead, we learned that it was on the front line of fighting between Bosniaks and Serbs in the last war and many soldiers were killed on the spot while others used the gravestones for protection. It was the jewish dead who helped to save their old city.

We drove next to the opposite side of the city to an idyllic spot on a hill overlooking the entire valley. It was in this spot that Amir’s father spent 2 1/2 years in the trenches which are still visible and which are surrounded by corpses of buildings still standing as horrific reminders of what happened there only 15 years ago. This spot used to be a forest but all the trees were cut down during the siege for fuel. Across the city sits another mountain that is off limits to visitors as it is still covered with thousands of land mines.

Globalization is just around the corner but it has not yet arrived here in Sarajevo, apart from the Coca Cola signs, awnings and umbrellas to be found in every tavern and cafe. It is refreshing not to find the same old chain stores and global brands on every corner. Even though there are perhaps 20 kebab restaurants on each block, each one has its own unique characteristic with something special to offer and most everything is still family-owned. We want to believe that the people of this country will find the balance between developing their economy and keeping their rich culture intact.

Some History

2009-07-09T02:32:00.000-07:00

July 7^th

We dedicate this day to visiting the many museums in the city, including the Jewish Museum, in the building of the old Sephardic Synagogue. Jews settled in Sarajevo after the expulsion from Spain in 1492, and up until the Nazis invaded Yugoslavia, flourished in the city under both Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian rule. The Nazis, in collaboration with the Ustasha, the right-wing Croatian paramilitary, rounded up and exterminated much of the Jewish population. Those who survived, were eventually air-lifted to Israel by the Israeli government during the siege in the 90’s. Our second stop was at the National Museum, which was gravely damaged during the last war and is now partially reopened. The main exhibits there are archaeological, showing the continuous inhabitation of this land by cultures from pre-historical times. In this museum, in a specially constructed vault, lays the Sarajevo Hagaddah, the oldest illuminated Jewish manuscript in existence in the world. The story of how the Hagaddah made it from Spain to Sarajevo, and then how it survived both the German occupation and the tragic shelling of the National Library of Bosnia during the siege is in itself fascinating. This story is told in a wonderful article that appeared in The New Yorker in 2007 http://archives.newyorker.com/?i=2007-12-03#folio=074.

Our last visit of the day was to the Historical Museum, formerly the Museum of the Revolution, which now houses the harrowing permanent exhibit “Sarajevo Under Siege”.

This unflinching show presents documentary material about the daily life in the surrounded city (3.5 years!!), where the residents had to brave sniper fire every time they left their homes, where all the supply lines of food and medicine were cut by the Serbian army, where people had to improvise everything in order to keep a semblance of normal life, and where the frontline was directly behind people’s homes in the hills. It was a sobering experience to see all the photos and objects in the exhibition, including home-made guns and stoves. It was also a testament to the human spirit in a time of great hardship and we were ashamed to acknowledge that we knew and cared so little about the plight of this city and its people at the time these events where happening, consumed by our own dramas thousands of miles away in California.

Titos’s trophies…We also ran into a very peculiar exhibition of communist-era trophies that were displayed as sculptural objects and imbued with a mysterious kind of magical aura. Communist kitsch to be sure, but something very new for us to see as artifacts of Tito’s time in power.

Arriving in Sarajevo

2009-07-09T02:26:00.000-07:00

July 6^th

Left Mostar for Sarajevo, where we arrived at the end of the day after many stops along the road. After checking-into our hotel we took a reconnaissance walk through the Bascarsija, the old Ottoman part of the town and the adjacent more modern area with many Austro-Hungarian buildings. Immediately we are captivated by the energy and mix of the city, where peaceful co-existence of Christians, Muslims, and Jews was a reality until World War II. Unlike Mostar, the city has come back to life from total destruction during the brutal siege of 1992-95, and Sarajevans wear proudly the badge of survival. The scars of war are less visible here but the memories are sharp and painful.

2009-07-05T15:55:00.000-07:00

July 5^th

We started the day by having a long coffee (3 hours---which seems the norm here) with Amir and Marija, and then drove to shoot some video in an abandoned quarry, where the stones used for the rebuilding of the Mostar Bridge were taken from.

Then it was on to Blagaj, to visit an ancient Sufi monastery, a very sacred place for Musilms, by an enormous cave from where the river Buna flows. An interesting item we saw at this site was a copy of the proclamation made by the Ottoman Sultan in 1463 granting total religious freedom to the citizens of Bosnia. Muslims here are very proud of their tolerant tradition, and their version of Islam is quite liberal and completely removed from any fundamentalism. Later that afternoon, while taking another drive and shooting some more video by the lonely mountain roads, we realized, by noticing the many minarets protruding here and there in the landscape, that we were actually in a Muslim European country, something that many people have a very hard time envisioning, much less accepting as a possibility.

We finished the day by having dinner by the Neretva river, on the banks of the old Ottoman city, which looks amazingly just as it must have looked 500 years ago. It was built in a lush spot by a rushing river and its tributary waterfalls, creating a small labyrinth of caves, bridges, and secret gardens right out a miniature painting, or even like oriental landscapes depicted in many European renaissance religious paintings.

Normality Effect

2009-07-05T15:50:00.000-07:00

The wounds are still raw and there is enormous corruption everywhere but there is a sustained peace, even normality – or rather what we have come to call “a Normality Effect”: this is something we experienced as well in Tel Aviv, and even in our short visit to Ramallah. In all these places there is an elaborate veneer of normality, despite the awareness of all the tensions and threats that could turn normal life into hellish war overnight. In Mostar, there are physical reminders of brutality everywhere, so the juxtaposition of a normal life with the memories of the war attain a particular surreal level. One building, for example, is completely pockmarked and half destroyed by shells, yet two of its floors have been renovated and are inhabited, while the middle floor remains a wreck, its Serbian owners having fled the city, and who will probably return someday, when the property values have risen again, and then sell the place.

We encountered the immediacy and intensity of all the feelings that are alive in the region as soon as we arrived in Mostar and met up with Amir Galijasevic, the guide recommended to us by the Sarajevo Center for Contemporary Art.

Amir’s life story in itself would merit a whole chapter in this blog – how he was sent away from Sarajevo as a teenager to Germany during the war, how he became a refugee and then a student in Switzerland, and finally how he decided to come back to Bosnia and make a life for himself in his homeland. Today he is a kind of jack-of-all-trades, working as a guide for foreign visitors, doing translations, and following his passion of producing Dub music and promoting live concerts. We hit it off right away and we knew that we would be in good hands in our stay here.

We took a brief walking tour of the city, with its charming Ottoman old town and the famous bridge that was brutally destroyed by Croatian forces during the war, and we learned that in fact Mostar is a divided town, with an invisible demarcation line between the Croatian Catholic side and the Bosnian Muslim side, and that very little is done in order to create more interaction between the two sides, who prefer to live side by side but ignoring each other as much as possible. Because of this division, the town has been without a Mayor for the past 8 months!

Amir took us to visit a cultural youth center, run by a group of enlightened creative people, including his friend Marija Kolobaric – a Croat who actually chooses to live in the Muslim side of town. This center is the only place where Croat and Bosniak youth can meet, and it is actually the only place where movies can be seen in the city, since the only proper movie theater was destroyed in the war and has not been rebuilt yet.

Speaking with Marija we understood the particular quandary of artists and intellectuals in BiH, who are committed to the rebirth of their countries cultural institutions and heritage after the total collapse brought about by the war. They are doing this with very little support of the government or of foreign organizations, since culture is deemed irrelevant in the face of all the other problems that the country has to deal with. Both Marija and Amir complained of how the country is mired in apathy and cynicism, and part of that attitude can be blamed on a lack of cultural pride or the sense that it is possible to build a better society from the ashes of the war.

Later on we were taken to a posh terrace lounge, where a crowd of hipsters where enthusiastically rocking to a live band from Belgrade –S.A.R.S. who has a song topping the charts in the region.. It was explained to us that this band was an example of a kind of Anarcho-Pop that was becoming quite popular, and at least in that sense it showed that there is room and a receptive audience for alternative culture.

Independence Day

2009-07-05T15:43:00.000-07:00

July 4^th,

After spending a couple of days driving through Slovenia and Coatia and stopping to visit 2 of the most magical cities in Europe—Split and Dubrovnik, we finally crossed the border into Bosnia and Herzegovina, a country that is home to a multitude of conflicting and overlapping histories, traditions, religions and ethnicities; a true cross-roads if there ever was one. This region was at the center of the 1992-95 Balkan War with many Bosnian towns and villages being pillaged and plundered by its neighbors, Serbia and Croatia, and thousands of innocent Bosnians were chased from their homes or killed on the spot. It was madness --medieval, brutal and unforgiving-- and there are many visible and not so visible scars to be found in the landscape and among the people we have met so far.

Being here on the 4^th of July seems momentous somehow since in the US we take Independence Day so much for granted. Only 15 years ago, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Serbia, and the other Balkan republics were fighting fiercely for their right to exist as sovereign states after the break up of Yugoslavia. Because they have been occupied by so many foreign powers for so long –Venetian, Ottoman, Austrian, Hungarian, Italian, German, and the battle for power between them—these people cherish their freedom and are staunchly nationalistic Despite a common language and shared histories, religion keeps them apart. It is an utterly complex social-political situation rooted in years of hatred and war.

more pics from Biennale

2009-07-01T11:44:00.001-07:00

Venice Biennale Part 2

2009-07-01T11:41:00.001-07:00

Our second day visiting the Biennale proved to be far more rewarding, starting in the morning with the Bruce Nauman’s “off-site” exhibition, especially his new sound piece “Giorni” which despite its austere simplicity did make us reflect on the passage of time in a deeply affecting way. After a jagged scramble through the Venetian labyrinth and two vaporettos later, we made it just in the nick of time for Peter Greenaway’s multi-media extravaganzic interpretation of Veronese’s “Wedding at Cana” – part of his series of digital interactions with various masterpieces of Western art. His use of digital media was stunning and clever, but the result is not really an artwork, more of a didactic deconstruction of the painting as a reflection of Venetian aristocratic and religious values in the XVI century. Still, the audiovisual impact is so spectacular that we stayed and watched it a second time.

The afternoon was spent at the Arsenale, where we found several very compelling pieces. The overall concept of the “Making Worlds” exhibition is very weak with no convincing curatorial point of view, almost as if the artists where arbitrarily chosen and thrown together at the last minute. Still, this doesn’t take away the sheer pleasure of walking through the magnificent space of the Arsenale, where everything was impeccably installed. Highlights there included a video by Keren Cyter (whose work was also liked very much at the “Younger than Jesus” show at the New Museum in NY), a movie by Ulla Von Brandenburg which was beautifully shot inside Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye; a Paul Chan projection piece based on de Sade; and clever paper constructions by Carlos Garaicoa from Cuba.

The highest marks, however, go to “The Feast of Trimalchio” an over-the-top 9 channel video installation by the Russian collective AES+F presented in an adjacent group show organized by the Moscow Museum of Modern Art. The piece makes reference to the famous feast of Roman decadence depicted in the Satyricon and updates it to the realities of today’s consumer culture via Russian extravagance, the hyper-real aesthetics of advertising in glossy fashion magazines, and 3-D animated landscapes. Mesmerizing and so vulgar we couldn’t stop watching because of its extraordinary production values and innate integrity as a cultural critique of our material desires.

Venice Biennale Part 1

2009-07-01T11:37:00.000-07:00

Next day Venice where we got an overdose of (not always the best) contemporary art from all over the world. The most satisfying aspect of seeing art in this city is the architecture that houses it. Some of the weakest, laziest pieces look stunning when installed in a 17-century factory, monastery or palazzo. Highlights for us so far include the Chapman Brothers FUCKING HELL, a tour de force that is part of the Pinault Collection, (the young Swedish artist) Nathalie Djurberg’s claymation masterpiece called EXPERIMENT, and K. Wodiczko’s installation in the Polish Pavillion called GUESTS which addresses the alienation and invisibility felt by guest workers and illegal immigrants in the EU. Very powerful, poetic, disturbing works, all of them in their own distinct way. These 3 made the whole day (8 hours of looking) worthwhile. Tomorrow the Arsenale…

A night in Valpolicella

2009-07-01T11:33:00.000-07:00

We spent the first night in Italy in the Valpolicella region, near Verona, surrounded by beautifully tended vineyards. The room in our B&B was on the top floor of a 15^th century tower that was once part of a fortress used for defending the land from invading Germanic tribes from the north.

Just by chance we found out that right next to the B&B is one of the best restaurants in the region, the Enoteca de La Valpolicella, where we enjoyed a fantastic meal that included one of the best pastas we ever tasted, and a great cheese plate that combined the freshest, just-made-that-morning goat cheese with other more mature cheeses full of subtle and complex flavors. All this accompanied, of course, by a local wine, in fact produced by the winery where we were staying– a Corteforte Valpolicella Classico Superiore of 2006. We slept like babies in the deep quiet of the countryside.

Zurich

2009-07-01T11:27:00.000-07:00

June 24-26

After 3 intensive weeks in Israel, we took a short break in Zurich before going on the road to the Balkans. Our dear friend Matthias and his partner Dani were there to greet us at the airport and took care of us in every possible way, including a surprise helicopter ride around the lakes in the region. It was thrilling and incredibly beautiful, also a little scary to fly over dense fog and clouds surrounded by high mountains. It was a treat to be able to see from above the gorgeous combination of lush pasture lands and pine forests, dotted here and there by charming villages and isolated farmhouses.

After picking up our car, a very futuristic Citroen C4, we started on our drive into Italy towards Venice, where we will spend 3 days absorbing the Biennale.

Sderot, close to Gaza

2009-06-22T13:54:00.000-07:00

June 22^nd

Up with the sun at 5:45 in order to savor the full glory of the early morning desert light. We drove many kilometers shooting video footage, taking advantage of our snazzy vacuum-pressure camera attachment that sticks anywhere onto the hood of the car.

The light was perfect, the land rugged and redolent of time and timelessness, and we were virtually alone on the roads. Bliss.

After a hearty Bedouin breakfast including homemade bread, we drove north to Sderot, the town that recently gained unwanted notoriety for being the target of thousands of missile attacks since October 2000. We had been invited by Michal Shamir, an artist and professor at the Sapir College Art School, to give a presentation to her students there. They seemed very grateful for our visit as they do not have a chance to meet international artists very often. This school was founded only 4 years ago and caters to recent immigrant families from North Africa, South America and other groups of students who have been traditionally excluded from educational opportunities in Israel. What was fascinating to us was the discussion that ensued after our talk, when we were asked about the purpose of our trip to Israel. In that little classroom was a whole cross-section of opinions and experiences that embody the complexity of the conflict that we were curious about. It was especially interesting to meet a young woman who lives in a settlement in the West Bank not out of any religious or ideological reason but simply because the government provided her family with incentives to move there and build a life there at a fraction of the cost that it would take in more established areas of the country. This is a fact easily forgotten when we tend to think of the settlers as messianic religious zealots.

Parked outside the art department are 2 concrete shelters in order to escape the barrage of rockets that have been fired by Hamas during the past 9 years. The Israeli military has established a rocket-warning system that gives 21 seconds to the citizens of the town to run for cover. Some people never make it and we learned that 3 students from the college had died in rocket attacks in recent years.

At the end of the day, Michal took us to have a solemn view of Gaza from the edge of the town, not much further away than Manhattan is from New Jersey with only a couple of sheep fields separating them.

Unlike in Tel Aviv with its beaches and bars and cafes, daily life in Sderot is filled with reminders that this is, in fact, a country at war. Here on the border with Hamas, there is no cafe where residents can congregate, no where to sit and hang out with friends. Everything happens with extreme caution.

Masada and the Negev

2009-06-22T13:50:00.000-07:00

June 21^st

The next day we took the cable car up to visit one of Israel’s most important historical sites, the Masada, an ancient palace and fortification on top of an isolated rocky plateau overlooking the Dead Sea.

After the First Jewish-Roman War (also known as the Great Jewish Revolt) a siege of the fortress by troops of the Roman Empire led to the mass suicide of Jewish rebels, who preferred death to surrender and slavery. Despite a lack of undeniable archeological evidence, this story has become one of the central myths of modern Zionism and it was repeated and glossed over and over by the many tourist guides that were leading groups through the site during our visit.

It was a hellish, hot hike around these vast ruins, but it was fascinating and illuminating to see what remains of this extraordinary site situated in such a glorious location overlooking the sea. Once again, we could get a real sense of what life might have been like during these early days and it boggles the mind to consider the vast human forces that were required to complete such feats of mass construction made entirely of carved stoned in a totally inhospitable spot.

We then drove onwards into the Negev Desert on way to visit Sammy’s niece Rivka who is just finishing a year-long volunteer and study program prior to her service in the army. She was based in Sde Boker at the College founded by Ben Gurion, Israel’s first Prime Minister and the architect of modern Israeli society. This was an opportunity for Rivka to learn about life in the desert and to interact with Bedouin women and children who live in nearby communities. It was fascinating to hear her describe the dualities that go along with such an existence. On the one hand, these families are part of Israeli society, attending school and sometimes college and serve in the military; on the other hand, they belong to tightly knit ancient tribes that have their own unique customs and traditions. For example, they still expect girls to marry by the age of 12 in order to start a family and to serve the men in the community. There is a clear disconnect between these two opposing sets of expectations –tradition and modernity-- and many Bedouin women, according to Rivka, have an enormously difficult time shuttling between the two.

At the end of the day, we arrived at Chan Ha Shayarot, a Caravan’s Inn in the desert that provides traditional Bedouin hospitality complete with tents, camels and a delicious meal served to us while sitting cross-legged on the ground. It was very relaxing and quiet and seemingly authentic.

A trip to Maresha Caves on the Way to the Dead Sea

2009-06-22T13:42:00.000-07:00

June 20

We drove South today to the Dead Sea stopping along the way to visit the caves of Maresha, about 50 miles south of Tel Aviv. A city from the 4^th century BC, its residents excavated caves to produce limestone for construction, and then created an intricate network of tunnels to connect the caves so they could be used as workshops, storage chambers and reservoirs. It is a truly fascinating labyrinth of underground spaces to explore where ancient times can be felt and experienced in a very direct way.

After the most delicious lunch of grilled meats an d salads at a nearby Moshav (a kind of Kibbutz) called Segula, we drove through the rocky desert dotted with Arab towns on the way to visit the Dead Sea which is the lowest point on earth, 400 meters below sea level. The Sea, as most people know, is so dense with salt and minerals and magnesium that it is impossible to drown in it. You float to the surface like you are sitting in an armchair reading the newspaper. Truly magical place but especially hot in the summer as the air gets caught in this crater below sea level and there is no breeze. There is a strange stillness and tranquility there and it is a geological phenomenon and an important destination for its natural springs healing properties. Definitely worth the visit.

2009-06-18T08:21:00.001-07:00

June 18^th

Recording voices.

Spent the morning recording the voices of two actor friends, Avi Pnini and Razia Yzreeli, who kindly lent us their time to read a few poems and biblical quotes that we hope to incorporate into the soundtrack of our project.

Here’s a fragment from Yehuda Amichai that beautifully summarizes the interesting paradoxes of Time experienced here:

“ Through the window that is no longer there, we see our children

searching the old ruin for toys they lost yesterday

and turning up broken clay jars from centuries ago.

The chasm between generations fills up with dust and sand,

human bones, animal bones, a multitude of broken vessels

A broken jar tells the truth. A new jar is the lie of beauty.”

A trip to the West Bank

2009-06-18T08:09:00.001-07:00

June 17^th

After several failed attempts at finding someone willing to show us around Ramallah, Diana Shoef put us in touch with Tsafrir Cohen, the director of the office of Medico International, an NGO that provides medical services in areas of conflict. He was happy to meet us there and even take us to lunch and point us in the right direction about seeing the town and learning from his perspective about the screwed up situation in Palestine. We embarked nervously on our journey to the other side, but we felt it was our duty to go, even if just for one afternoon, and peer into the eternal shadow of Israel.

We took the bus to Jerusalem and then boarded a mini-bus to Ramallah, the trip took about 40 minutes through various suburbs and where we could peek from time to time at the infamous separation wall. Entry into Ramallah was uneventful, the bus just passed over a couple of speed bumps by a checkpoint. The hard part, we were to learn, comes on the way back, especially for the Palestinians, who have to suffer the daily humiliation of not being able to travel freely in their own land.

Ramallah is a chaotic and lively place, rather shabby in some corners, but very much like any other small Arab town. The streets are bustling, and everyone seems to be going about their daily lives as if nothing else mattered. No one paid any attention to us, as they are used to foreigners coming in either as political tourists, journalists, or workers in the many relief agencies. Terrible as it sounds, we were somehow disappointed to find the goings on of everyday life so normal, without any visible signs of Israeli abuse or of Palestinian militancy.

Tsafrir met us in the Manara, the dilapidated central square that already looked familiar to us from seeing it on the news, sometimes under heavy artillery fire. Tsafrir’s story is in itself quite interesting and emblematic of the deep divisions that haunt the societies on both sides. He was born in Israel, managed to get kicked out of the army and then fled the country, finally adopted German citizenship, and now lives in the West Bank (with his German partner), trying to somehow help people get better access to health care. During lunch and then in his office, with the help of a chillingly clear interactive map, he showed us the Kafkaesque reality that the Israelis have managed to impose on the Palestinians, while at the same time grabbing more and more land from them. It was disheartening to walk through the hilly streets of Ramallah and see in the distance, always on the top of the neighboring hills, the red-tiled roofs of jewish settlement homes.

We cannot even begin to describe the perversity of the ways in which Israeli power has managed to subjugate and neutralize Palestinian society, and our short afternoon in their land made it crystal clear to us that the occupation of the West Bank and the construction and expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank cannot be tolerated and is the real obstacle to any peace agreement that should lead to these two peoples living side by side. Needless to say, we are revolted by the terrorist tactics of Palestinian militants, and also firmly support the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state in this itsy-bitsy plot of land that is so essential to their history, but it is immoral to do so at the expense of the Palestinians being able to live a normal productive life.

Later in the afternoon we visited Arafat’s tomb, not because we hold any particular affection for the man, but because it was the only noteworthy monument in the whole city.

After a cup of very strong muddy coffee and sticky sweet desserts, we boarded the mini-bus back to Jerusalem, and it was on the journey back that we experienced some of the strongest emotions of the day. The bus stops at the checkpoint where all the passengers must disembark, then walk on foot to the other side through a dehumanizing warren of cages, turnstiles, metal detectors, and Israeli guards behind bulletproof glass. We were lucky that we and everyone else on the bus got by quickly, but it is known that sometimes there are awful delays at the crossing for no other reason that the guards woke up in a bad mood that day.

It was only as we were driving away from Ramallah that we realized that we were leaving a prison as the exit road skirts closely to the security barrier, topped by several layers of razor wire and dotted here and there by tall observation towers.

It was painful to realize and impossible to comprehend how after Auschwitz could a Jewsish nation come to build such similar structures. Once again we were caught in the midst of an enormous moral dilemma.

**Note: a couple of days after reading this post, Tsafrir wrote an email to us with the following message:

Dear Anthony and Sammy,

I just read your blog. It's very good, though I have one question: "Israel as a Jewish state" - what does that mean for the 20-25% of the population living there who are not Jews? Does one have to accept Iran or Saudia Arabia as Muslim states? Germany as a German state? America as an American state or as a christian state or as a white, male, heterosexual state? What is the the point in stating that Israel must be a Jewish state, instead of saying "the right of Israel to exist"? What we see here is a shift in the discourse. Today, we must say things we didn't have to just 5 years ago. I believe this is part of a discourse forced by people, who aim atmarginalising the Palestinians (i.E. Israelis Arabs) living in Israel. Israel is what it is, no more, no less. It has - within the boarders pre 1967 - a Jewish majority and a large Palestinian minority as well as growing non-Jewish, non-Palestinian minorities, it has Hebrew as its main official language, and Arabic as its second. I believe, that we should not fall into this trap, just in order not to seem anti-Israeli and even-sided: We should all stick with what we say in other places as liberals and/or left-wingers: Any state is always the state of all its citizens (or if you want to be more radical: of all of its inhabitants). Point.

Best

Tsafrir

2009-06-18T08:05:00.000-07:00

Razia's show - Dinner & Politics

June 14

Diana Shoeff from the Center for Contemporary Art invited us to attend a rehearsal for a play written and performed by Razia Yzreeli, an old friend of Sammy’s from when he lived here 30 years ago! She is an accomplished actress and she has been performing a piece she wrote called THE DENTIST which is going to be presented at the Endinburgh Fesitval in August. After performing it in Hebrew for the past 3 years, she is now in the process of learning to do it in english which is not easy for her as she is the sole performer (75 minutes). The play tells the story of the psychological and emotional wounds of a family that suffered for years because of a horrifying secret….the father in the story was part of a special unit at Auschwitz that was given the task of extracting the gold fillings from the mouths of corpses after the jews were gassed and before they were burned. 16 months of this service, millions of corpses, tons of gold extracted. All this was done so he might actually survive The Holocaust. He did in fact survive physically, but he was so scarred and traumatized by the experience (of course) that he could never lead a normal life. It is a morally scandalous story here in Israel among so many survivors and it was wrenching to hear it told with such emotion by Razia, a gifted and passionate story-teller.

After the performance, we went to have an delicious dinner at a charming, very bohemian restaurant in Jaffa with Diana and Razia and some of their friends – including a couple who turned out to be neighbors of ours in Brooklyn! - and as is often the case in Israel, there was much heated debate about the political situation here. Diana has been involved with the far-left movement here since the late 60’s. She has many informed opinions about the Zionist mythology and the brainwashing that she resents deeply. It has been fascinating to have dinner one night with Sammy’s Right-leaning family (father, nephews) who all believe profoundly in the mission of Zionism and then the next night to sit with Diana and her friends from the art/activist community here who are passionate in their opposition to the established rhetoric. Last night she said that she believes that it is the secret dream of the Zionist establishment that the Palestinians will one day become exhausted from the on-going conflict and surrender and disappear, and it is the same not-so-secret dream that the Palestinian authorities have about the jews, that they will just go away one day. It is an awful game of willpower, to see who blinks first, with many innocent lives lost along the way.

2009-06-18T08:03:00.000-07:00

Gay Pride

June 12

The Gay Pride Parade/Festival in Tel Aviv is, like in many cities outside the US and Western Europe, still an important political event. Tel Aviv is an island of liberalism and tolerance but it is significant for the gay community to come out in full force to assert their visibility and civil rights. It was a festive affair, not as bawdy as those in Boston, SF, and NYC, etc., and was clearly designed as a gesture to remind Israeli society of its own diversity. With so many other pressing social and political issues pertaining to the rights of Palestinians the many problems caused by the extreme Religious Right, the gay community is free to live in peace. Even the all-night dance parties are uninhibited and un-policed. Nobody really cares what you do here in Tel Aviv as long as you are not carrying a pipe bomb with the intent to blow up a club, café or bus. Tel Aviv is a big party town in spite of and because of the fact that it is in the middle of an endless war with itself and its neighbors.

Slaughter of the Lamb

2009-06-12T03:27:00.000-07:00

June 11

After spending the night at the Colony Hotel in Haifa (highly recommended as it is a restored 19^th century building built by German pilgrims), we met up with Manal Mahamid, an Palestinian-Israeli installation artist who kindly offered to help us with one of our most challenging video shoots—the slaughtering of a lamb—which is an image we have been wanting to capture on video as it has symbolic resonance with many of the themes we are here to explore. Despite the raw violence of the killing, Sammy was unflinching as he kept a steady hand during the shooting of the video from start to finish. Meanwhile Anthony had to back off in horror after taking a few key stills with his camera.

Neither one of us had ever witnessed a death so up close like this before.

After the shoot, Hiel, the man who slaughtered the lamb for us, brought us to his family home in Yarka, a Druze village overlooking a beautiful valley filled with olive groves. It felt like a real honor to be invited into his parents’ home to experience their amazing hospitality as we were treated to a delicious lunch made from all the things that the family grows on their land including organic goat yogurt and sheep cheese.

Spending the day with Manal, we got a much clearer picture of the difficulties of what it means to be an Isreali-arab. According to her, they are looked down upon by both the Jewish Israeli establishment and by their fellow Palestinians in the West Bank because in 1948 they chose to stay in their homes and villages to live under Israeli rule.

Manal is a fearless, tough woman who was determined to stop at nothing so that we could get the shot that we imagined and we are forever grateful for her perseverance.

Bethsaida Excavation Site in Galilee

2009-06-10T13:11:00.000-07:00

June 9^th

Wake up at 4:30 a.m. to join the

excavation party and visit the site. The digging is done from 6 a.m. to noon, as it is way too hot to work any longer under the sun. It is dusty, back-breaking labor, tedious, repetitive, and to us, completely fascinating. We videotape and take many photographs, and get to meet some colorful characters among the volunteers and Biblical scholars working on the dig. One of them is Nick from Montana, a real cowboy who learned about the excavation in a Bible study group and got so excited about it that sold his horse and his shepherding dog to pay for his trip “to do the Lord’s work.”

The realities of time and history become apparent in this place not only for the obvious unearthing of an ancient city but because the process itself happens over such a long time-span: they have been digging for 17 years, and there are barely the contours of a few buildings visible amidst piles and piles of rock and dust. Reversing time takes time too!

2009-06-10T13:09:00.000-07:00

June 8^th

We leave early in the morning and start driving north. We stop in Cesarea to see themagnificent ruins by the sea of what was once the capital of Roman Judea. Despite a few Disneyfied cafes and trinket shops, the ruins are very beautiful, their location unsurpassable, and among some historical trivia, we learn that the city was used as a settlement camp for Bosnian Muslims during Ottoman rule.

One of our goals for this trip to the Galil is to visit the excavations at Beith Saida, a city on the northern shores of Lake Kinneret which dates to 3000 BC. We arrive by mid afternoon to kibbutz Ginossar, where the excavation team is lodged, just in time to hear the “pottery shard reading” session, where the archaeologists analyze ,classify, and catalogue the findings from the excavation.

The director of the dig is Prof. Rami Arav , and enormously erudite and affable

man, who welcomes us very warmly. Going through tray after tray of pottery, broken fragments of glass, and animal bones, he gives a most entertaining and informative reading of the significance of each piece. The excavation is done mostly by volunteer students from the US, in this case from the University of Omaha, Nebraska, who put in three weeks of really hard labor under the intense heat and sun for the greater good of unearthing the past and connecting to the birthplace of 3 of the Apostles of Jesus.

While visiting the site, we are staying in Tiberias, another ancient city, but a very ugly and creepy one. Our hotel sits smack on the lake, but between two semi-abandoned resort hotels that if we didn’t know better, we’d think they were bombed during a recent war.

Our hotel is filled with a motley crew of Orthodox Jews and Christian pilgrims following in the footsteps of Jesus, among them a loud group of Finnish teenagers.

One afternoon we find a peacock which escaped from an adjacent menagerie wandering lost and squawking among the decrepit abandoned buildings. Very strange and unexpected.

2009-06-10T13:07:00.000-07:00

June 7^th

Sammy’s parents invited us to the theater but we never quite expected to be treated to such an extraordinary experience. We went to see a performance by “Na Lagaat” (Please Touch) a troupe of deaf, blind, and deaf-blind actors. It was an example of supreme goodness embodied in awful art. We were moved to tears in spite of the show’s sentimentality and clumsy execution as we were witnesses to an enormous triumph of the human spirit.

We were completely uncomfortable throughout the performance, which was truly pathetic in the truest sense of the word. In it, though, the smallest human yearnings attained a gigantic dimension when seen from the “darkness and silence” of the actors’ lives. There was an uplifting dignity in giving these people a voice, even if their show was, to quote Joan Acocella, “beyond criticism.”

That evening we were also joined by Sammy’s nephew Shmulik, and having coffee before the show we heard some hair-raising stories about his service in the army in a first response team helping citizens during the bombings in the north during the 2006 war.

In Israel the authorities take great care of the psychological well being of the citizens: if your house is bombed, for example, a team comes immediately to assess the damage and order the necessary materials and labor for repairs, another team takes you to stay in a hotel for a few nights, where you get counseling and all your needs met. In two days your house is fixed and you are sent home as if nothing had happened!

First Days in Israel

2009-06-07T03:33:00.000-07:00

Arrived in Tel Aviv the 3^rd of June and greeted at the gate enthusiastically by Sammy’s sister and nephew who were waiting with open arms to welcome us. Always a nice way to arrive anywhere, especially here, in this place that is so full of contradictions on every level.

Spent the day unpacking and getting situated and fighting off stomach flu and jet lag.

June 4.

Our first full day and we were taken by car to Jerusalem to witness the induction ceremony of new soldiers in the Israeli Army. Sammy’s nephew, Nadav, is one of these patriotic young men who is 18 years old, just finished high school, and recently completed 3 months of basic boot camp , where he got his unit’s highest marks for marksmanship.All those years devoted video-games must have had an effect after all, and as usual with may things here, we were not sure whether to feel pride or despair

Yesterday, in front of the Wailing Wall and in front of family and friends, these young cadets swore their allegiance to the state of Israel and received each a gun and a bible.

It was a chaotic, very informal gathering that was punctuated by religious jews who aggressively continued their rocking and praying facing the holy wall , oblivious to the ceremony taking place all around them and the military marches and sappy patriotic hymns blaring from the speakers . There are many mysterious and irrational aspects to Israeli society, none more bizarre than the fact that religious far-right jews are given citizenship but do not have to serve in the army, and even more bizarre, some ultra-orthodox jews here do not even acknowledge that there is a state of Israel and the army is not necessary because in their view only the Messiah can return the jewish homeland and therefore, this one is invalid. These would be the ultra orthodox anti-Zionists as opposed to the ultra-orthodox ulta-zionists such as the most stubborn jews living in the settlements.

After the ceremony we all went to have dinner in Abu Ghosh, an Arab village that chose to remain part of Israel back in 1948. We had the best Hummus & grilled lamb at a restaurant called “The Lebanese”. One more irony to check on the list.

To top the day off, we arrived back in Tel Aviv to hear accolades –from Sammy’s father no less, who is an avowed nationalist – about Obama’s speech in Cairo. The right wing here are panicked about the US severing their special status relationship with Israel, but apparently the speech was masterful in giving both Arabs and Jews due acknowledgement for their respective suffering. Once again, we want to see this as a sign of real hope for better understanding between the two sides and not mere rhetoric . It is interesting for us to be here at this moment that seems to mark a kind of turning point in American policy towards the Middle East.

Meanwhile, life in Tel Aviv goes on around and through all this in the most normal way, with families playing on the beach and surfers riding the waves in the most carefree way.

There is such a strange and palpable tension between all these different sects and points of view that have been brought together in this one small area. This intersection is what we are interested in experiencing as we continue down this particular road.

June 5^th

After another frustrating day dealing with connectivity issues with the internet and email system, as well as Anthony’s ongoing bout of stomach flu, we spent the evening at the Cucher’s Friday night Shabat dinner with Sammy’s sisters, mother, father, nephews and nieces and brother in law. It was a rather momentous occasion since it was really the first time in 18 years of being partners that we shared such an intimate family gathering together. And Pepe rose to the occasion and made a warm welcoming toast with everyone around the table to say how happy he and Lily were that we were all together as a family and that he made a special point to welcome me in particular, all said in perfect English. He was making a very emphaatic gesture to Sammy and me and it did not go unnoticed. He is a very sweet, sincere man with a big heart.

We also talked a lot about politics, of course; it was very interesting to hear Sammy’s nephew Shmulik (23) provide us with a very clear, propagandistic view of how righteous Israel is in so many ways and how he is learning PR techniques as an official delegate who provides foreigners with an ‘accurate” picture of the real Israel. He is teaching the technique to other young Israelis (the party line) and he told us that he would demonstrate it for us before we leave. Shmulik is a smart, clever young man just out of the army and he is a product of a strong Zionist upbringing, the same one that Sammy grew up with but later became so skeptical of so many years ago.

June 6^th

Another almost perfect sunny Saturday in Tel Aviv in June, apart from Anthony’s ongoing stomach woes—we started the day at the gay beach surrounded by more pretty young things and packs of playful dogs and far too many children everywhere (the religious right encourages childrearing beyond all else).

We were then invited to have lunch at the home of Avi and Racheli Pnini, parents of Tom Pnini, a student at Parsons. It was a feast! But Anthony could not really eat more than the rice and potatoes. We have been promised another lunch in two weeks after we return from our upcoming trip to the north.

Tom’s father, Avi, is a very accomplished theatre actor and is quite famous here in Israel. They are both jolly, easy going, warm people, full of love and light. They were so happy to have us there and to meet their family and friends. One friend, Dani, is a professor of film studies and the curator of the Israelis section of the Jerusalem Film Festival and his mother in law, we were told, is the First Lady of Archeology in Israel, having made some crucial finds in various digs years ago. It was a day full of conversation about art, poetry, culture, travel, memories, and more. Not once did we discuss politics, as these folks clearly have a lot of other interests beyond the most obvious ones that preoccupy so many Israeli gatherings.

And finally, Diana Shoef took us to a protest march marking the 45^th anniversary of the Israeli Occupation of Gaza and the West Bank. The march went from the City Hall Plaza, past the Army/Air Force Command Center, and finished at the entrance to the Tel Aviv Museum. It was a gathering of the Far Left in Tel Aviv, groups gathering together around the common goal of providing a voice for those repressed in the Palestinian territories. There were perhaps 1000 people there, some arab Israelis, and many vocal opponents to the established party line. These protests have absolutely no effect on public policy, but they are vital in order to show the world that not all Israelis support the occupation blindly. The OCCUPATION MAGAZINE at www.kibush.co.il contains daily articles, reports and eyewitness accounts from inside the territories.

During the Gaza invasion in January , we were told, it was extremely difficult for the protestors to march without facing the wrath of many people on the street who were horrified that a group of Israeli citizens would criticize the invasion while innocent Israeli lives were lost in the south and soldiers were putting their lives at risk on the front lines. They were greeted as cowards and their voices were not heard in the Israeli press. They were harassed, and even worse, ignored by the media.

Welcome to Sammy and Anthony's Travel Blog

2009-05-17T14:48:00.000-07:00

We have decided to create this as a way of keeping track of our upcoming research project which will take us to many different places in the next 6 months, including Isreal/Palestine, Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, Lebanon, and parts of Western Europe. We will be based in Berlin.

We are very fortunate to be the recipients of a Travel and Research Grant from the C-Collection, a private foundation based in Liechtenstein dedicated to collecting and fostering the creation of contemporary art. Thanks to this grant, as well as a sabbatical leave that we are both taking from our teaching duties, we will be conducting an extensive ‘Travel Residency” between June 1st and December 15th.

We are grateful to Matthias Camenzind of the C-Collection, as well as to the Deans and Provost of the New School University, for making this possible.

Between June 1st and December 15th, we can best be reached at the following:

Email: studio@azizcucher.net or anthonyaziz3@gmail.com

Skype: azizcucher

Facebook: aziz cucher