Jerusalem’s Museum of Tolerance, photo courtesy of Simon Wiesenthal Center
The Israeli interior ministry recently authorized construction to begin on Jerusalem’s Simon Wiesenthal Museum of Tolerance despite protestations that its siting will violate the historic Ma’man Allah, or the Mamilla Cemetery. Palestinian families whose ancestors are buried there have joined with archaeologists, academics, and artists, including Jewish allies, to voice opposition to the plan. These more recent objections illuminate an ongoing struggle to protect the cemetery, as well as the museum’s troubled past.
Ma’man Allah (Mamilla Cemetery) is a centuries-old site that, until its expropriation in 1948, was in regular use, interring the remains of some of the region’s longest Muslim family lineages. Islamic saints and scholars are buried there, including Edward Said‘s relatives, and so when the plans for the museum were first announced in 2002, the opposition’s rejoinder came swiftly. Those who mobilized against breaking ground turned up the public pressure, staging press conferences to gain international attention, and ultimately bringing the issue to the United Nations. A concurrent legal strategy was brought in Israeli courts, which succeeded in getting the excavation suspended in 2006, but two years later the Supreme Court sided with the government and resumed the project, after which remains from the graveyard were moved to the perimeter of the site.
Following this political turmoil, in early 2010 the first architect commissioned to design the building, Frank Gehry, left the project. The official reason given was that he was committed to too many projects at the time and needed to scale back. However, at the time of his withdrawal, it came to light that the Wiesenthal Center was far from its $200 million fundraising goal, and a more plausible explanation is that the star architect worried the project wouldn’t come to fruition. More, his proposal was met with mixed reviews, and its ambivalent reception no doubt factored with the negative press against his continued involvement.
Without Gehry, the project pressed on, commissioning a new design by Chyutin Architects for $150 million less than the original plan. In June of 2011, the new building was approved, and after an accelerated permitting process, construction was approved the following month. The Chyutin building will be a drastic departure from Gehry’s proposal, and, as the Jerusalem Post reports, will include an amphitheater, exhibit halls, classrooms, a stone plaza and a parking lot. Artinfo reports the far more conservative design prompted the interior ministry to comment that:
the project presents architecture that is modest and thoughtful, and contributes to the creation of a public space that is fitting for the area on a local and urban level.
Of course, it’s what is beneath the building that is at issue, and the ministry’s fanfare only adds insult to injury to those whose ancestors are being relocated. Democracy NOW! interviewed one such descendant, Columbia University professor and author Rashid Khalidi, who recounts the Wiesenthal Center’s official line – that no graves were being disturbed – in the video below.
Ma’man Allah has already once been built over in the past, to accommodate a municipal parking lot during the 1960s, and this figured into the interior ministry’s decision to rubber stamp the museum’s second proposal. Khalidi’s account of that time period conflicts with that of the Wiesenthal Center’s founder, who has claimed that the parking lot construction met with no resistance. Then, as now, Khalidi claims, the difference in protections offered to Arab and Jewish heritage sites could not be more pronounced, a view that is substantiated by his co-interviewee Michael Ratner, the current president of the Center for Constitutional Rights. Ratner notes that of Israel’s 136 protected cultural sites, not one was Muslim or Christian until at least 2008.
Khalidi and Ratner speak of the erasure of Arab and Palestinian histories from West Jerusalem in their interview, and they express regret that the Wiesenthal Center is implicated in achieving such a goal. The U.S.-based organization has established other sites in Los Angeles and New York. That an institution with as laudable a mission as the Wiesenthal Center has met with such conflict is a deep irony matched only by the notion that a museum of tolerance could be built on top of the graves of the displaced and dispossessed.
Update: We’ve got copies of Issue 01 of Scapegoat Journal in our store.
The current economic crisis has turned attention toward volunteerism – as resources dry up, or are prevented from being distributed, companies turn would-be paid jobs into volunteer internships, and art/design firms increasingly offer their services to organizations trying valiantly to remedy the more dramatic symptoms of capitalism. These troubling and ambivalent dynamics are familiar to cultural producers, especially those whose work (like Groundswell’s) has been a labor of love.
Frank Chimero’s Design Won’t Save the World
Sacrificial labor is a seeming requirement of the cultural economy as currently configured. We’re required to work for free, or, as is sometimes worse, for ourselves, which requires all the more dedication, time, and labor, especially when workers collectively self-manage. Too often do radical democratic projects suffer from making this sacrifice. Can this kind of work be maintained, especially where it’s an act of solidarity?
Groundswell was recently invited to contribute an exhibition essay for Sean Martindale’s Love the Future / Free Ai Weiwei, a sculptural installation at Whippersnapper Gallery through the end of this month. On the eve of the opening reception, the world-renown artist Ai Weiwei was conditionally released from detention in Beijing, making the event much more joyous than we could have anticipated. His condition and whereabouts were still unknown, as were the conditions of his release. What’s more, the world had yet to hear any news of his compatriots, but the promise that China had freed Ai was cause for celebration.
Love the Future / Free Ai Weiwei, is a cardboard sculpture of the Chinese artist, located on the border of Toronto’s central Chinatown, Alexandra Park (one of the cities oldest housing projects), and the eclectic Kensington Market. With all of these geographical considerations in mind, Martindale hopes to explore what it means for a North American artist to express solidarity with a Chinese dissident and fellow artist. The sunflower seeds at the base of the sculpture are a reference to Ai’s recent work at London’s Tate Gallery, the popularity of which has made the seeds an icon of his struggle. Throughout, the gallery has been transformed into an information center, sharing Ai Weiwei’s story and updates about his condition. Martindale’s creative response pushed artists and activists alike to consider further options for pressing for Ai’s release, and still functions as a criticism of the crackdown on dissenting artists and activists within China and elsewhere.
Courtesy Whippersnapper Gallery
The cardboard used in the sculpture was sourced from nearby streets, following Martindale’s commitment to using local and reclaimed materials, and during this show, he will return to those streets to create site-specific works using the materials he finds there.
Below is the full exhibition essay, which can also be downloaded here. Please note that the text was written prior to Ai’s release, and has not been updated.
(Jules Rochielle curates the Social Practices Art Network newsfeed, and shares works and artist opportunities with Groundswell.)
Invisible-5 (2006) investigates the stories of people and communities fighting for environmental justice along the I-5 corridor, in California’s San Fernando Valley, through oral histories, field recordings, found sound, recorded music, and archival audio documents. The project also traces natural, social, and economic histories along the route.
LANDSAT Image of the San Fernando Valley, facing north towards Pacoima, showing the perimeter of the North Hollywood (Area 1) groundwater contamination Superfund zone. North Hollywood is one of four areas of groundwater contamination within the San Fernando Valley Basin, and consists of two parts, the North Hollywood Operable Unit (OU) and the Burbank OU.
I-5 is an important pathway for residents, migrants, shippers, and more, as well as the nonhuman life that copes with its impact. The high speed artery connects Los Angeles with San Francisco, and is an Intermodal Corridor of Economic Significance, to use the state’s term, codified under California law as a vital resource for national and international trade. Given the high traffic along the route, and the industries that call it home, the lenght of I-5 is highly contaminated with pollutants.
Often, there is little to see, smell, or taste of the mostly invisible pollutants: benzene and perchlorate in the water, dioxin and PM2.5 in the air. For residents along the I-5 corridor, often these manifest as just a hazy sky, a faint odor, or the sense that something tastes different about the water. . . And the movement of traffic along the I-5 itself creates a river of moving air, where sprayed pesticides mix with diesel emissions, creating a moving stream dense with small particulate matter.
The work takes the form of four CDs, downloadable as MP3s, to guide the listener along the highway landscape as though they were on a museum audio tour. Mixing elements of critical tourism, sonic experiment, audio documentary, and investigative journalism, Invisible-5 is a collaboration between three artists and two organizations. The collaborators on Invisible-5 are artists Amy Balkin and Kim Stringfellow, audio lead Tim Halbur, and organizations Greenaction for Health and Environmental Justice, and Pond: Art, activism, and ideas.
Invisible-5 was included in the exhibition JUST SPACE(S) at LACE, Los Angeles in fall 2007, organized by Ava Bromberg and Nicholas Brown, and in Citizen Artists Making Emphatic Arguments at Casa de Tunel, Tijuana, in 2008.
Joe Bigley is touring Afghanistan, creating what may be the largest ever social sculpture. This Afghanistan is not the territory that comes to mind, that geopolitical entity bordering China, Pakistan, Iran, and the others, but only its outline, traced within the United States, with a 3,435.5 mile bicycle ride beginning and ending at Ground Zero.
Bigley’s undertaking, Travsersing a Foreign Border Domestically, began on May 12, 2011, and this date is significant for a number of reasons. Joseph Beuys was born on that day 90 years prior, Operation Enduring Freedom (America’s post-9/11 war on Afghanistan) will turn 10 soon after the project is completed, and ten days prior to its commencement, Osama bin Laden was assassinated in Pakistan. As he describes:
The timing of this project is crucial to its impact and execution. . . July, 2011 is the proposed time for the scale down to the troop surge that was announced in November 2009. The complexity and emotional resonance that this conflict has established in the world psyche and the anticipated media focus on the scale down can very well assist in a public willingness to share ideas regarding this topic.
Bigley hand built his bike trailer out of bamboo, steel and sheet aluminum
Similar to Jeremy Deller’s It Is What It Is: Conversations About Iraq (2009), T.F.B.D. makes no pretense to offer a solution to the conflict, preferring instead to make the focus public engagement, to have a conversation with participants along the way about the war and its effects. The artist claims a neutral stance, no doubt hoping not to skew the temperament of those who would engage with the project, but within this weighty context, and with the assistance of geographers, curators, and others, Bigley will engage in what he considers to be an act of solidarity, of temporary displacement and physical exertion that he admits is a voluntary, but nonetheless an empathetic gesture.
Via Jules Rochielle
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