MITRA AZAR / BELEIN AND WESTBANK / 2013 Audio curated by Mitra Azar, Redrum Murder and Rani Mapanisana. Live # 1 is a short film on two channels that evokes the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and contextualizes the performative work titled "Wailing wall" carried out at the Kalandia checkpoint between Jerusalem and Ramallah. Live # 1 was shot in different places of the Westbank. The clashes between soldiers and Palestinian youth were filmed at Belein, one of the Palestinian villages that for years has enacted forms of active resistance against the Israeli occupation. Every Friday peaceful demonstrations are held in the vicinity of the wall and are regularly repressed by the Israeli army with tear gas and rubber bullets fired at head height. The images of the clashes show a surreal space-time component. The images seem to fit in an impossible simultaneity, before, during and after the fighting. Both the Israeli army and the Palestinian youth seem to be fighting an invisible enemy, while the open fields of olive trees amplifies the senselessness of the conflict and gives an almost lyrical and abstract consistency to the harshness of the images. The audio emphasizes the alienating component of the image and of the action, and it is built from recordings of Orthodox Jewish prayers at the Wailing wall in Jerusalem.
