Deterritorialized Parliament

Our project began with the discovery that—mistakenly or intentionally—the building was not built beside the border, but rather, that the border runs right through the building. Following DAAR’s methodology, which attempts to exploit opportunities found within colonial separations, our project seeks both to de-territorialize and re-activate this legal anomaly. Upon discovering that the Israeli imposed Jerusalem border passes through the Parliament, it became clear that the building is sitting, paradoxically, within three different spaces: part within Israeli territory, part within Palestinian controlled territory, and a small strip, no larger than the line’s thickness, exists in a legal and sovereign limbo—potentially an extraterritorial zone. Thus we seek to re-imagine the building, and its politically and legally suspended status, as an assembly that is able to represent all Palestinians: those living in Israel, under its occupation, and in exile. The activation of an assembly in a legal and political void constitutes a way of thinking and rethinking a space of relations, horizontality and shared liberation on which colonial reason and the expropriators of the common have built their fortunes.

Photo Carina Ottimo

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