Common Assembly

 

Common Assembly, 2011

Site-specific Mixed-Media Installation; Staircase; 4 Interviews on monitors (duration variable, loop, headphones); Video Essay Projection (Dimensions variable, duration 14’23”, Loop, Sound)

Room 7

Common Assembly was conceived as an instrument to think about spaces of political participation, and action for exiled communities. Its centerpiece is a suspended life-sized section of the abandoned Palestinian Parliament in a suburb of Jerusalem – a parliament that has never been used. Its construction started during the 1996 Oslo Accord when peace seemed possible, and was then halted in 2003 after the Second Intifada (the Palestinian uprising), which marked the failure of the political process.

This project began with the discovery that – mistakenly or intentionally – the building was constructed on Israel’s unilaterally declared border within Jerusalem. The parliament is partly located within the Israeli territory and partly within Palestinian controlled land – a small strip, no wider than the border line, runs down the middle. The Parliament is in a legal limbo. Interviews on screens around the Parliament tell the still unfinished story and speculate about the reactivation of an extraterritorial parliament in exile.

Credits

DAAR – Alessandro Petti, Sandi Hilal, Eyal Weizman and Nicola Perugini with Yazeed Anani, Niswhat Awan, Ghassan Bannoura, Benoit Burquel, Suzy Harris-Brandts, Runa Johannssen, Cressida Kocienski, Lejla Odobasic, Carina Ottino, Elizabeth Paden, Sameena Sitabkhan, Amy Zion. Special thanks to Ghiath Nasser

Video: Cressida Kocienski

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