Hors-Champs d’Oliviers

4 min, Jerusalem, 2015 ,Présenté à la Biennale de Venise d’architecture 2016

Portant son chevalet sur le dos, on suit un peintre palestinien qui déambule dans une vallée d’oliviers qui semble hors du temps, entre Jérusalem et Bethléhem. Chaque jour il observe, cadre, et archive in situ ses ruines comme un peintre avant l’invention de la photographie. Ces ruines sont prêtes à être détruites, son acte relève d’une forme de résistance par la mémoire.

We follow a Palestinian painter walking in a valley between Jerusalem and Bethlehem. He carries his easel, he observes, he frames, he archives the ruins,  working like a painter before the invention of photography. These ruins are about to be destroyed and his action is a kind of resistance through memory.

Meandering through Wadi el-Shami is like a journey in time in the midst of the complex and fragmented fabric of a 21st century ‘Mega Jerusalem’. The valley is an eroded fragment of traditional Palestinian landscape, a clash of historical stratas. The most noticeable remains in the valley date from the Ottoman period. The contemporary city is gradually encroaching what is left of the valley and other (post)-rural territories, fracturing the territory. The archive questions the notion of heritage, becomes a kind ironic act of preemptive archeology.