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Mediatheque
Al Jaar Qabla Al Daar (The Neighbor Before the House) 屋前鄰居
2009–2011
CAMP, a multidisciplinary, evolving artist studio based in Mumbai, spent three years making Al Jaar Qabla Al Daar (The Neighbour before the House). The work presents audio commentary and CCTV footage recorded over the course of one month by eight Palestinian families in East Jerusalem. (CAMP edited the material.) As the families manipulate a joystick to pan across and zoom in on neighbouring structures, they narrate experiences of violence and displacement embedded in their surroundings. The camera captures both private homes and public sites, such as the Western Wall plaza, once a Moroccan district destroyed by Israel after the Six-Day War. These ‘probes’, as CAMP terms them, express the city’s intense, ongoing histories of occupation through immediate details. The families also use the CCTV in a more exploratory way, scanning for evidence of their experiences rather than only illustrating them.
The extended collaboration with a particular community and shared authorship that underlies the work are typical of CAMP’s approach. Here, equipping members of a marginalised group with full control of surveillance tools flips conventional power dynamics. At the same time, the camera’s hiddenness reinforces the sense of separation that pervades the Palestinians’ stories.
The extended collaboration with a particular community and shared authorship that underlies the work are typical of CAMP’s approach. Here, equipping members of a marginalised group with full control of surveillance tools flips conventional power dynamics. At the same time, the camera’s hiddenness reinforces the sense of separation that pervades the Palestinians’ stories.
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