At the end of September 2016, I performed Exodus, a performance of work in progress, in two places at the same time: live in Akademie Schloss Solitude and by Skype in Mamuta Art and Media Center in Jerusalem. The performance also marked the end of my six month residency in Solitude and the return to my hometown Jerusalem. Now, in October 2016, I enter another period of development of Exodus – a lecture performance for split audiences.
Encompassing several journeys of migrants and refugees, the work reflects upon the position of being away from one’s homeland and mother-tongue. It also examines the historical and political connections between different mobility statuses – from Jewish refugees fleeing Europe during World War II, to the 1948 Palestinian exodus and Nakba, to Syrian-born Palestinians making attempts to find shelter in Europe today – being second-time refugees, through the artist’s point of view as a Jewish-Israeli based in Jerusalem, temporarily located in Germany – woven into the story of the Israelites from the Book of Exodus and the Palestinian narrative of the right of return.
This post is not a documentation of the work, but rather another tool for placing its ideas and references one next to the other.
»If I forget thee, O Jerusalem/ Let my right hand forget her cunning/ Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth/ If I remember thee not/ If I set not Jerusalem above my chiefest joy//« Psalms
»Do not oppress a foreigner; You yourselves know how it feels to be foreigners, because you were foreigners in Egypt« Book of Exodus