In this walk, Alÿs strolled through what he referred to as the typical city of conflict. His route somehow followed the village in Jerusalem of the ceasefire demarcation line1 separating Palestinian and Israeli communities since the end of the 1948 Israel War of Independence.
Alÿs used 58 liters of green paint and traced the line of nearly 24 kilometers, passing through Jerusalem, as filmmaker Julien Devaux filmed. He walked past security control pasts and barriers that limit the movement of city dwellers depending on where you are from, but mostly those of Palestinians. Alÿs topped at various intervals to refill his can with green vinyl paint. What is extraordinary about the footage is that a few onlookers engaged with the artist, including security officers, at various checkpoints.
Related
Political topography
“Political Topography” calls to mind expressions such as “political landscape”, ;“political climate”, and “the lay of the land”. It suggests the way in which the language of nature is used metaphorically to characterize or analyze a current cultural or political state of affairs. Join us for a discussion with curator and activist Nina Felshin exploring this fascinating topic.
• The Green Line
In the summer of 1995 I performed a walk with a leaking can of blue paint in the city of São Paulo. The walk was then read as a poetic gesture of sorts. In June 2004, I re-enacted that same performance with a leaking can of green paint by tracing a line following the portion of the ‘Green Line’ that runs through the municipality of Jerusalem.
You must be logged in to post a comment.