Temporary

The Judean desert was the last refuge of Jewish communities at the time of the Roman occupation, and the cradle of the new monastic currents, among them the Christians and the Essenes. After the destruction, it hosted communities of Jews, Arabs, Christians Monks, Bedouins. They settled, were swept away, resettled according to the wish of changing rulers. Geopolitically, due to stall in Israeli – Palestinian peace talks, the desert now mostly lies in “Area C”, an area whose state has been “temporary” for years, a no man’s land neither annexed to Israel nor relinquished. Jewish settlements sprouted over the years on hilltops, and Bedouin communities, that moved from the South while the area was under Jordanian occupation, struggle to maintain their ancestral way of life in the new circumstances. Building and demolishing is a character of the place, with piling construction materials dotting the landscape everywhere. My project, ongoing, focuses on how this new wave of construction and destruction is changing the landscape. It is also a reflection on the temporary nature of human settlement in general, by comparing the scale of the desert to the the (futile?) human effort of building some lasting refuge in the wilderness.