Short texts from exhibition and more

Together, at last, at Twilight Time (2007)

Every Friday we visit my grandparents and silently watch Bonanza re-runs and Little House in the Prairie on the English language Jordanian channel. After that we would drive, even more silently, back.

We drive through the back road next to the football stadium and through the industrial zone, vacant for the rest of the weekend, grey and dusty. And every week, as the sun sets at the same traffic light, the Voice of Peace shuts down their broadcast for thirty seconds, in memory of the Victims of Violence in our region, and the whole world, followed by the Platters’ Twilight Time.


Screening Room (2006)
When I was very young I told my mother that my dreams take place on the wall, above my bed; if you were to walk into my room when the dream was ON you would see it too, I said to her. It was only much later that I learned that dreams come from within. However, I had my doubts about this; after all, I didn’t seem to have any control over the dream, nor could I predict how the dreams would develop – not to mention the ones that woke me up frightened. Try to think about something soothing, I was told. Like a field of flowers? I asked, knowing perfectly well there is a Tigris walking across that field, quiet but determined.

Erase-On (2006)
At first the broadcasts were in B&W, but by the mid-70s the broadcasting schedule had so many imported color programs so people got interested in buying color TV sets. The Government, that owned the only Channel, used the Erase-On device to make all programs Black and White again. It made things socio-economically more equal. However, someone invented the Anti Erase-On, which put the color back on the screen, although it did not distribute the colors evenly

The Wall (1998)
On Yirmiyahu St., at the corner of Dizengoff, there’s a long wall with small openings, like kites with a curved bottom that looks like a ballerina’s skirt, made of stained glass. Whenever I passed there, I knew for sure this was the place where Henri Cartier Bresson took one of his most famous photographs, in Madrid, 1933. The windows in his photo are little squares, randomly placed along a huge wall, in front of which, in the foreground, children are playing. Every time I would say to myself “that’s the wall from the photo in the book”.

The Mountain that opens in Two (1998)
When I was a kid, on every drive to Jerusalem my dad would point out the place where “the Mountain opens in Two”. It was a very specific place, and sometimes I tried to guess when we would get there. Sometimes I tried to suggest other places where “the Mountain opens in Two”. “No”, he would answer, because the place was A place, One place, where all the necessary and unique conditions occurred, without which the mountain would not open in Two. When I imagine it now, I think of the Mountain opens in Two like a sand castle, with a slice taken out of the center, like a cake, or the mountain is a dome, with a gap in its middle (like two half domes next to each other but not touching each other)

The Stainless Steel Man (1998)
At the time, when I was photographing illustrations from a guide to ballroom dances, the Stainless Steel man came to measure the kitchen. He told me that he was in the apartment once before. I asked if he came there with my father, or the contractor, and he said No, that was a long time ago. 40 years ago he was enrolled in a class for Ballroom and Social Dances, and he named the studio that published the guides. He stood in the room, perhaps reconstructing the space like the floor from the book. I watch the Stainless Steel man counting steps