Whitstable Biennale Installation Proposal

The proposed work will consist of a video piece set in the village of Bil'in in Palestine. Its aim will be to highlight the continuing struggle of the Palestinian people who face constant abuses to their basic human rights while the international community effectively turns a blind eye. Special emphasis will be placed on exposing the ridiculousness inherent in the current Israeli military policy toward the Palestinian population in its aim to control the status quo of occupation.

Although the village of Bil'in is 4km east of the 1967 armistice line and therefore well inside the state of Palestine, the controversial separation wall runs through its land preventing a population who is largely reliant on farming from accessing 60% of their agricultural resources. Although the wall's route has been judged to be illegal by the Israeli supreme court it continues to stand while Israeli settlements claim the captured land for current and future expansion plans.

Every Friday afternoon for the past three and a half years, the Palestinian villagers have invited both their Israeli supporters and visiting international activists to join them on the short walk from the village centre to the wall in committed non-violent protest against its existence. Each week the group are met with violent crowd dispersal techniques from a military presence intent on preventing the group from expressing their right to free expression on their own land. Military aggression against this group most commonly takes the form of attacks by CS gas and stun grenades although there have been numerous shootings leaving both Israeli and Palestinian demonstrators with permanent and serious disabilities.

The work will consist of a silent video documentary of these events. Shot from multiple angles and focal lengths, edited into a continually looping montage demonstrative of the atmosphere experienced on a Friday afternoon in Bil'in. During filming, two performers dressed in a pantomime horse costume will be introduced into the demonstration space. Trotting in and out of clouds of tear gas, galloping away from stun grenades and tripping over rocks, this comic counter-narrative will serve two purposes. It will juxtapose the gravity of the situation and the resolve of the demonstrators (thereby underscoring both) and provide a visceral demonstration of the farcical nature of Israel's treatment of the Palestinian people.

The work is to be displayed projected onto the far wall of an otherwise dark corridor-like space. A 40ft shipping container would be ideal for this. Preferably (depending on cost) the interior walls of the space would be soundproofed with a black anechoic material (neoprene sheeting?) to deaden sounds, vibrations and any reflections caused by viewers as well as blocking any outside stimuli. This will create a solemn and respectful atmosphere in which to view the work. The atmosphere of this environment will be analogous to the atmosphere created in the holocaust memorial museum in Jerusalem and therefore subtle parallels will be drawn between the past treatment of Jews by Nazis and the present treatment of Palestinians by Jews.

A rough budget follows:

Pantomime horse costume:    £200
Digital projector and DVD player:   £325
Soundproofing Material:     £400
Projection screen:     £100
Travel and Expenses:     £450
Artists Fees (to offset lost earnings)   £250
Donation to Active Stills media agency
(in return for their help in shooting the performance) £250

TOTAL:       £1975

Special thanks are due to Arthur Neslen for his role as co-creator of the horse concept.

Sara

I hope you know how much you have been an inspiration to my photography.

MIKE MARCUS - ARTIST INGREDIENTS

Aqua (60%), revolutionary neo-marxism, post-anarchic radical liberalism, relational photoconceptualism, anti-zionism.

Produced in an environment which handles nationalism and right wing ideologies.

Store in warm dry place with plenty of light.
Best before: 1:30am

Yesterdays adventure

Jesus saves (Lomo), originally uploaded by Knebworth Chap.

What did I get up to last Sunday?

 
Images courtesy of Ingrun Torrance

There's something magical about drunken daylight street art - particularly in London where everybody pretends to ignore what I'm doing.

Zionism Kills

plane1, originally uploaded by mikemarcus.

Branding

Gas Mask Nudes on Repeat, originally uploaded by bixentro.

I worked in advertising for long enough to know that placing a brand accurately within the marketplace is essential if you want to sell your product. In my case the product is an ideology and the proposed market is your head. If my street work is to be "bought" by the public, it needs branding and I have been playing with possible solutions for a while.

Many street artists approach this need by making use of a pseudonym or "tag" - a tool derived from the graffiti scene. Each public intervention is signed with an alias so that they can be identified as originating from a common source. This allows an artist to form a coherent body of work whilst retaining anonymity.

In my case, I want to distance my art as much as possible from graffiti. Apart from the fact that I cannot relate to the aesthetics, it is popularly considered as a selfish and antisocial act of vandalism. Meanwhile I would like my work to be seen as thought-provoking and engaging. I want my street art to assist people in strengthening their personal relationships with the urban spaces that surround their lives. The last thing that I want is to alienate my audience. For this reason, a tag is not for me.

I learnt some lessons about creating a street identity when I rebranded Israel with a new flag in 2006.

new israeli flag, originally uploaded by mikemarcus.

I concluded that iconic images work much better than texts.

With this in mind, welcome to my new brand: The Gasmask Girl. I took many of the concepts inherent in my work and mashed up them into one photographic image. The visual language developed around this will tie my work together and identify it as mine.

Keep your eyes down and you will spot them on the London streets. An army of watchers, keeping track of you as you make your way around the city.

Gas Mask Nude on Blue & Black, originally uploaded by bixentro.

Dead animals #2

My photography has often utilised dead animals as a metaphor for issues that we would rather avoid. I would like to talk today about a very significant 'dead animal' and one which has a critical impact on western foreign policy. The dead animal in question is the Holocaust.

A few days ago I received a phone call from a journalist who saw my work in Golders Green and traced me by googling my blog. He interviewed me and wrote an article about my work and its message. All good so far. One of my main reasons for using street art as a medium is to create a public forum for the sociopolitical issues that are important to me. I want what I have to say to be disseminated through the media. Therefore I welcome enquiries by journalists.

Unfortunately though, the story might never be published. The journalist phoned me a couple of days later to say that they could only run the article if my real name was used. This is risky for me because it could result in my prosecution for fly-posting and a resulting fine. I didn't understand why the editor was so intent on identifying me until i spoke to him directly. Then all became clear - he is petrified of the reaction from the Jewish community and would prefer the vitriol to be directed towards me rather than his paper.

This phenomenon of fear is the reason why the world stands by as Israel abuses the human rights of more than 4 million Palestinians, Bedouin and Druze. To speak out is to be labeled an antisemite. The Jewish community makes no distinction between the valid political position of anti-Zionism and the racist and deplorable doctrine of antisemitism. As a result, they bully anyone who so much as whispers a criticism of Israel.

This raises two questions: Why is this so and why are people so scared of being accused? In fact both questions have the same answer - the Holocaust.

I grew up in a fairly typical Jewish community. Almost everyone around me was Jewish including all my parents friends and most of the people in my street. It was never overtly stated but I knew that it wasn't particularly acceptable to bring home a non-Jewish school friend. All through my childhood one message in particular was hammered into my mind: I am Jewish and most people who don't share that privilege, hate (or at least dislike) me because of it. The fact that I never actually witnessed all this supposed antisemitism was inconsequential. There were the examples of the holocaust, the Jewish expulsion from Spain and a hundred other historical Persecutions to give me all the proof that I needed. The conclusion - everybody hates Jews.

The result of this paranoid superiority complex is that the Jewish community have set up a multitude of organisations to protect themselves from what they perceive as the overwhelming antisemitic threat. These range from huge letter writing networks which can be mobilised on command to far more sinister organisations who operate vigilante groups instructed by the Israeli security services in secret offshore training camps.

These organisations share a single objective. They silence criticism aimed at Israel and the occupation by leveraging holocaust guilt. Newspaper editors do not refuse to publish articles because they fear the accusation of being anti-French. It is shameful that the press can be viciously critical of Islam while a local paper cannot publish an interview with an activist who speaks out against the occupation of Palestine.

The holocaust was unimaginably tragic for the tens of millions of people who faced persecution and slaughter at the hands of the Nazis. Its such a shame that the Jewish community has to cheapen the memory by using it as a "get out of jail free" card.

Beautiful Children

Last month was the Jewish new year. Rosh Hashana as it is known in Hebrew lasts for two days and is followed 10 days later by the most holy day in the Jewish calendar - Yom Kippur, known in English as the day of atonement. You might say that as a people we have a lot to atone for but Tel Aviv being an almost entirely secular city uses the day to have fun.

Traditionally there are no cars on the road and all businesses including pubs and shops are shut. Kids and adults alike take to the streets on their bikes, rollerlades or just by foot and use the opportunity to explore their environment in a way thats only possible once a year. The whole city is completely quiet other than the sound of the occasional conversation and birds nervously calling to eachother. Its like a perfect combination of buy nothing day, reclaim the streets and critical mass and most importantly, everyone joins in. The only day of the year when you can breathe clean air and sunbathe on the main freeway running through Tel Aviv.

Last Yom Kipur, I used the opportunity to gather some like minded friends and embark on a street art marathon. Over the course of 25 hours we sprayed, pasted and painted around Tel Aviv. I acted as a human stencil so that an outline of my body could be painted on the highway, a lookout as a friend created a huge mural in Yehuda Halevy street and an insructor for a gang of girls on bicycles who wanted to learn how spray on walls. Most importantly I sprayed the message "create beautiful children, marry and arab" on walls all over the city.

Image courtesy of Nathalie Dbarth

This year I was due to fly to England a day before Yom Kipur. I was eager to start my new job and although missing the best day of the year was a huge sacrifice, I considered it worth the price. In hindsight, seeing as the contract was postponed and finally cancelled I should have flown a few days later but at the time I wasnt to know the way things would transpire.

My answer to missing Yom Kipur was to squeeze in as much street art as I could in my final week. During the days I was packing and running errands and at nights I was prowling the city with spraycans, posters and buckets of paste. On the last night before I was due to leave, I translated "create beautiful children, marry an Arab" into Hebrew and used what was left of my paint applying it to walls all around the city.

 
Images courtesy of Tal Bright

There seemed to me to be a poetry in spanning the Jewish year with this message. Beginning in English, ending in Hebrew. A symbol of my own transfrmation as an activist. Beginning with the desire to communicate a personal message in my mother tongue and ending with the need to challenge deeply held public beliefs. Over the course of a year, I have taken apon myself a responsibility to question the racism ingrained into my culture and my ultimate use of hebrew, the language of the Jews reflects this intent.

CS performance proposal

Background:

Tear gas is the common name for CS or 2-chlorobenzalmalononitrile, a mostly non-lethal weapon used throughout the world by police forces to control riots and disperse threatening crowds. Its effects include irritation to the eyes, nose and throat causing temporary gasping, coughing and excessive tearing. On exposure, it induces a sense of blind panic causing the victim to escape the area of contamination.

The use of CS by military forces is forbidden under the Geneva Conventions and the Chemical Weapons Convention of 1997. However during the first year of the Al-Aqsa intifada the IDF used 120,000 tear gas grenades against Palestinians. Since then the use of CS gas by Israel as a form of collective punishment has escalated. Soldiers are regularly observed throwing 25gram tear gas grenades into enclosed spaces such as hospitals, stores and civilian homes causing the trapped inhabitants to ingest many times the maximum ‘safe’ dosage of CS. This practice is specifically forbidden by the product’s manufacturer and has led to many deaths. CS gas is also used extensively to dissuade both Israeli and Palestinian civilians from exercising their right to non-violent protest against the building of the annexation wall.

Proposal:

The artist feels that the Israeli public has a right to partake in an open and honest discourse on the illegal use of chemical weapons against Palestinians in the occupied territories. However due to the teaching of a Zionist historical narrative in Israeli schools and exposure to a media source which is censored by the military, objective information on the subject is not easily accessible. This preempts a question: How can awareness of the situation be encouraged?

In answer to this question the artist proposes the following:

A photographic studio will be set up in a Tel Aviv gallery space consisting of a camera on a tripod, lighting and reflectors on stands, a background and a stool for the artist to sit on while he is being photographed. This will occupy approximately one third to half of the gallery space with the remaining area behind the camera being used to accommodate an audience.

At the beginning of the performance the artist will give a short talk on the nature of CS and the use of chemical weapons against the Palestinian people. After this the artist will go into a quiet area (possibly the gallery bathroom) and apply CS spray to his face. The artist will then walk over to the stool, sit on it and invite members of the audience to photograph him as he suffers the effects. There will be an assistant present to check focus and instruct participants on how to operate the camera. The application of CS may be repeated a number of times during the performance, possibly with breaks between each application.

At no time will anyone except the artist be in contact with tear gas. The CS is contained in a small spray canister that applies small droplets of the substance directly to the face. It is not released as a gas into the atmosphere. As additional precautions, the CS will be applied in a private area and the gallery will be well ventilated. This performance has already been rehearsed with real CS spray in the artist’s apartment with a number of participant observers (see image above).

The resulting series of portraits from this performance will be exhibited in the form of silk-screen or laser printed posters that will be pasted on the streets of major urban areas in Israel. The artist feels that it is important to communicate this not only to the residents of the “Tel Aviv bubble” but also to people in communities which are rarely reached by leftist cultural movements.

In addition to this performance being an act of solidarity by the artist with the Palestinian people and Israeli activists who are gassed regularly and an attempt to create awareness in the Israeli public consciousness, it serves another, more emotional purpose. Like many men, throughout his entire childhood the artist was discouraged from crying. In adult life he has developed a reflex reaction which inhibits his ability to cry. If he could cry about anything in his life it would be the tragic and pointless political violence that he has witnessed regularly in the seven years of Israeli citizenship. This is his opportunity to break the conditioning and cry openly. It is this public expression of emotion that lies at the heart of the performance.

Rebranding Israel

I sat in the mini-cab and tried to hide my sticky hands from the driver. The carrier bag at my feet was dripping wheat-paste over the floor of his car.

I commented that behaviour on the road seemed to have deteriorated since I had been away. He blamed "foreigners", he said London's full of them. Most of the antisocial behaviour that I witness comes from native Londoners but he said its because they are frustrated. I groaned to myself and prepared to spend the rest of the journey in silence. Another racist taxi driver - what a surprise.

Then he asked me where I have been. I told him Tel Aviv. It turns out he lived there for years. Not such a surprise seeing as I picked up the cab in Golders Green - center of London Jewish life and the Israeli ex-pat community.

He served in the IDF, an infantry unit. Thinks that "they" want to kill us. Drive us into the sea. Denies that he has been brainwashed to hate and rejects my theory that the biggest problem faced by Israeli society is militarisation. He spent the rest of the journey countering my examples and denying that we have to take responsibility rather than blaming everything on the Palestinians. All along I'm aware of how ironic it is that I just covered Golders Green with posters designed to discuss this very issue.

It started a year ago when I noticed that the Israeli state emblem is a candle stick surrounded by olive branches. Not just any candle stick but the Menorah - light of god and central focus of the ancient temple. Even though this symbol was everywhere - bank notes, passports, anything official, I never really bothered to examine it. When I finally did it seemed so out of place, so not in tune with the modern state that I felt obliged to say something.

Israel needed re-branding. No Menora burnt sacred oil night and day in the holy of holies, tended by priests and always alight (even if a miracle was required). Modern Israel was a military aggressor and its logo should reflect that fact.

I replaced the Menora with a soldier hiding behind his gun. This seemed to me to be a far more accurate symbol of what the modern state of Israel stands for and over the period of about a month I stuck, pasted and sprayed my new logo around Tel Aviv. I literally re-branded Israel.

Now I have exported my new state brand. Its presence in Golders Green spells out an important message to the Israeli community there:

You might have left Israel. You might have a better job, more money and less stress but you still have responsibility. There is a travesty being carried out in your name and if you don't stop it, nobody will.

Dead animals #1

When we see an animal carcass lying by the side of the street we cross the road to avoid it. We hold our breath. By refusing to inhale the air that might have been close to the rotting flesh, we symbolically avoid bringing the cold fact of death into our warm comfortable world. We know intuitively that the animal was probably hit by a car or ripped apart by one of our pets. An innocent victim of our ceaseless march to modify the natural world around us.

The collateral damage from human progress is something that we would prefer to ignore. Dead animals make us feel uncomfortable so we shut our eyes and move on.

We also refuse to consider the origins of our food. When we eat a burger we don't think of a dead cow. Hanging upside down, throat slit and eyes showing the fear that accompanied its last few breaths. We even call it by a different name. Its beef not cow - not animal but meat.

No images of feathers matted together with drying blood cross our minds as we pop a chicken nugget into our hungry mouths. We all ignore the source of our comfort. We have to. Otherwise we couldn't live with the guilt.

Similarly we learn not to question the origin of our national security. 3.6 Million oppressed Palestinians, nearly a million dead in Iraq. As long as we are safe and well fed, we let the butchers and the soldiers do whatever they need to do. As long as they hide the dirty truth and just deliver the goods, we live our lives and don't complain.

SHIT Update

Yay! I made it onto the shit list!

Those kind (but slightly scary) people over at masada2000.org even wrote a longish bio under my name. You can find my listing under M for Mike.

I wrote them the following courtesy email:

From: mike marcus
To: masada2000org@yahoo.com
Sent: Monday, October 1, 2007 8:51:38 PM
Subject: thankyou

Hey Guys

I am delighted that you saw fit to add me so promptly to your list. I feel very honored indeed that you considered my application worthy of inclusion.

I would like to particularly thank you for providing a hyperlink to my blog. Its always nice when somebody helps my work to achieve a greater public profile. I find that a little free marketing goes a long way.

Mike Marcus
Photographer/Digital Compositor
http://mikemarcus.blogspot.com

You can see the original letter that I sent here

SHIT

I just sent an email (below) to the guys that run the "SHIT list". SHIT in this case stands for 'Self Hating and Israel Threatening Jew'. I know that it should more accurately be called the "SHAITJ list" but it doesn't have the same sophisticated ring to it.

From: mike marcus
To: masada2000org@yahoo.com
Sent: Thursday, September 27, 2007 6:25:33 PM
Subject: How do I get listed?

Hello

I just came across your "shit list" on the Internet. I must say that I would love to be listed amongst so many esteemed names. What do I have to do to be considered for inclusion?

I have recently criticized the occupation on Israeli TV and in the Tel Aviv and national press. I also regularly paste left wing and anti-Zionist posters on the streets of Tel Aviv, visit Ramallah to integrate with its Palestinian residents and maintain a blog named "personal intifada". Is that enough to get me in or is there some sort of application process that I should be aware of?

Thanks for the great work, your list a great resource for getting in touch with other Jews who share an interest in human rights.

Mike Marcus
Photographer/Digital Compositor
http://mikemarcus.blogspot.com

I recommend that other Jews follow my lead and request inclusion in the list. It's time for the Jewish left invalidate the phrase "Self Hating Jew" by reclaiming it as their own.

Vandalism

Its easy to provoke a reaction in Israel. All you need to do is tell the truth and watch everyone flip out.

I made a poster from one of the images in my CS series. Black and white, teary eyes hardly able to stay open and mucus streaming out my nose. I gassed myself again, this time for display on the street.

I pasted 60 posters in my local neighbourhood with a short explanatory text underneath each one.

The reaction was violent - within a day most of the posters had been ripped off the wall (not an easy thing to do), sprayed over or otherwise deleted. My eyes were poked out, my throat cut and the words "homo" and "satan" scrawled on my image. Most importantly someone had gone around making sure that the text pasted under each poster was completely unreadable - that the message was totally removed from the public realm.

Presumably nobody doubted the assertion that Palestinians are tortured with CS gas as a policy of collective punishment otherwise they would have said so in their black drippy spray paint, marker pens and scratchy devices. Rather they all went nuts because I dared utter the unspeakable. I broke the code - lets all pretend that we are the victims in this war, not aggressors. The good citizens of Tel Aviv felt a civic duty to censor my heresy for the benefit of their venerable neighbours. Everyone put their hands over each-others ears and sang a chorus of "La la la, I'm not listening, I dont want to know".

I wish to thank all those who were so conscientious in silencing my voice. You did more to demonstrate the depth of the social problems here in Israel than I could have ever done on my own. Because of you my small street art project has attracted attention of the newspapers and TV. My message will be received by a wider audience as a result. I hope that we can continue our beneficial collaboration. I will be pasting more copies in the center of the city this weekend. I hope you can join me.

Holy Land

I dreamt about her last night.

I didn’t think that it was possible to feel the way I did back then. It came out of nowhere. I couldn’t explain it. I still cant. I lost all sense of self. By the time she left London I could only see one possibility. One option. I needed to be with her.

This was the love of the gods. A love so powerful, so divine, that I truly couldn’t conceive that that anyone had experienced it before. Imagined by Shakespeare, felt by Mike. A unique occurrence, only to happen once in the history of the universe and I was blessed that it happened to me.

We came together every time. After we would lie in each-others arms feeling perfect - like we had found the true and only path. Eyes shut. My mind clear of everything but her presence. A beating heart and twin soul. Lying as two bodies but united as one spirit. There were times when I was unable to distinguish the high from a strong dose of MDMA.

I followed her. To her home. A place I knew little about. I was dragged there as a child. Brought up on stories of the heroic Jews, able to make the desert bloom. Of evil Arabs, trying to throw us into the sea. Of Moses and Abraham, Moshe Dyan and Co. It always sounded like crap to me.

I didn’t care where she lived. I was going there.

Her home was beautiful. A village, trees and dust. A little patch of moist-green behind the house, hanging plants and ripe fruit. The sound of irrigation. Cool evenings in the hammock with wind chimes above the door. This is the Israel I fell in love with. Or was the love for her?

They almost got to me, the Zionists. When the bombs started ripping busses apart I only felt resolve. Nobody would force me off the land of my fathers. But I knew that I shared no heritage with this land. Jewish is a religion not a race and I don’t believe in a man in the sky. I have no more claim to this land than I do to Indonesia.

She was never able to accept what we had. I threw my heart at her and it hit too hard. She recoiled, living on the line between fear and passion. Wanting what I had to give but unable to take it. Incapable of letting me in but unwilling to keep me out. Years spent in a grey place. Did she not love with the same intensity as me? I still find that difficult to believe but it’s probably true.

When it ended I stayed. At first I was sure I wouldn’t heal. That I was enslaved - destined to wait until she was finally ready to take me in. Slowly that faded, I never thought it would.

Why am I still here? It’s the biggest question I have. In the 7 years since I landed at Ben Gurion international airport, since she took me to that beach and welcomed me home, I have grown to despise the Israeli archetype. Supremely arrogant yet completely lacking self-awareness. Ego so huge, yet testament to a small and narrow mind. Towering sexual confidence yet pitiful in bed. Hopelessly inadequate at their jobs.

Can you believe it took 7 years to fall down the rabbit hole? 7 years to realise the extent the despotism perpetrated here in the name of defence. I would defend Israel against allegations of racial apartheid, unaware that we were building two road systems, one for them and one for us. Segregation of the heroic Jew from Arab contamination.

Why do I stay? I can only find one answer: I love my friends.

The hug that Daniela gave me yesterday when we said goodbye. The call from Avital to say that she misses me. The conversation I had with Anat who I hardly know, intimate and caring, so comforting for both of us equally. Sharing a holiday joke with El’ad, only funny to him and me. Tal, sitting outside, so happy to see her. We mention Aya, we always do. Guy, Gabi and Amit. Nils walks past. I miss Igor. The night ends sitting on a stone wall with Amanda, looking at the sky and reflecting on life. I wonder if she knows how much she means to me.

Is this enough to justify staying in a place like this? How do I decide?

Ramallah

I climb onto the bus and check myself. I’m not in danger. Sure there was a minor problem but the remnants of my racist upbringing have amplified my justifiable concern into outright paranoia. As I choose a seat I believe that the other travellers want me dead.

I was having a great time. Flitting around Ramallah market responding to the wild gestures made by people who desperately wanted to be photographed. I couldn’t eat another thing. My stomach too full from the cakes and fruit given to me by shopkeepers.

On the way to the bus I stopped at the Mosque. As I took off my shoes, two teenagers sparked up a conversation with the minimal English that they possessed. One introduced the other as Mah’med, I repeated his name. Their attitude changed, they noticed that I had pronounced the word with a Hebrew “chet” rather than an English “h”. They asked a few questions in Hebrew. I said that I didn’t understand. They switched to English and asked if I spoke the language of the Jews. I said no.

Was I being followed to the bus station? Probably not. But after lifetime’s exposure to propaganda, it certainly felt like I was.

I was interrogated at the checkpoint. Treated like a Palestinian. I was happy for that. Happy to feel first hand the humiliation I had seen subjected on others. Today I wasn’t a Jew. I had left my Israeli ID at home. I held my British passport against the bullet-proof window while a child with a gun barked instructions at me. Today I’m not a member of the master race and these boys are more dangerous than the guys in the mosque.

The average Israeli would tell me that to go to Ramallah is to face certain death. This fear fuels the conflict and absolves us from guilt every time a young mother gets shot in the face. Few have travelled 10km from Jerusalem to test the theory. If they did, they would know that it is fiction. That’s not to say that there aren’t dangerous people here, it’s just a matter of perspective. In all the visits I have made to Palestine this is the only time I have felt remotely threatened.

In hindsight it wasn’t a good idea to go into the Mosque. Religion is the root of this evil and the one place I might find the Jew killers everyone warns me about. It’s no coincidence that Baruch Goldshtien and Igal Amir both wore a skullcap.

Walking between bus stations in Jerusalem I cross the racial border and see a gang of religious-zionist youth with M16’s and grenade launchers slung across their backs. I recognise them. They belong to a group known as “Benei Akiva”. My parents encouraged me to attend their meetings when I was a child.

Bedouin

The first time I saw a Bedouin was in early 2000. It was in Dahab, a small but developing diving resort on the east coast of the Sinai desert. He walked among the tourists and Egyptian workers with an air of dignity so strong that the rest of the crowd seemed grey and faded by comparison. The red and white checked kafiyah that topped his head swayed gently to punctuate a graceful gait and as my eyes followed his path, he seemed to float. In my minds eye, I see him towering above the throng that surrounded him.

As I lay in bed that night under a shabby orange mosquito net, the fragrance of coffee and cardamom floated through my open window and his image haunted my thoughts. Watching the stars pierce the blackness of the sky, his elegant white robe and dark skin danced across my mind leaving an indelible mark in its path.

Since my first trip to Sinai I have returned many times. Each time I felt a growing affinity for the inhabitants. Gradually I began to return regularly to the same location – my beautiful secret beach adjoining a small hamlet known as “Arab Hemden”. The 40 or so inhabitants are all members of the Muzeina tribe whose traditional land covers the tip of the Sinai peninsula between El-Tor, Nuweba and Ras Mohammed.

My skin is brown and I have sand in my ears. A pendant given to me by Saham - 14 years old and beautifully cynical – hangs round my neck. As I step out of the car into the humid air of Tel Aviv my heart aches for the dessert. It’s only been a few hours but I want to be close to the Muzeina once more.

Article

I was written about in the newspaper on friday.

English translation coming soon...

Digital Procreation and the New Origin of Species

My forthcoming exhibition of photography, "Exogamy" and its future sequels "Endogamy" and "Synthesis" started life with the working title "Digital Children". This image shows an example of a digital child; in this case the "parents" are my mother and father. It is a synthetic derivative of two portraits, one from each parent. Each facial feature is neither from one or the other but a digital "genetic" synthesis of the two.

Internet social networking expert Yaniv Golan has been witness to the project’s development over the past year and a half. He even sat in front of my camera for some of the early tests.

Here is what he has to say about digital children:

"The concept of digital children is intriguing to us social-network-web-folks. Here is a different, albeit somewhat technical way to look at it: In a world where a lot of our interactions are online, where new relationships are formed in online social networks, where people create avatars and spend their life online in Second Life - it makes a lot of sense to explore the concept of digital children as yet another way to express my online life. Will people living virtual life and making virtual friends want to deepen the relationship and have a digital child with one of their digital friends?

"In fact, I could even imagine a service that lets two folks who have an online (and possibly also an offline) relationship submit their photos and ask the service to create a digital child for them, which they will then post on their profile as one further proof of their relationship."

How did humanity get to the point where two intelligent people can possibly have such a conversation?

It started in 1859 when Darwin killed god. Since "Origin of Species" was first published, a huge body of evidence has been discovered to support Darwin’s predictions. Although science can never be 100% confident that a hypothesis is correct, its incredibly unlikely that we will ever find a better explanation of the observable facts than the theory of natural selection. However it leaves us with a problem. If all species came from other species, which in turn came from chemical elements created during the explosion of a second-generation star and its subsequent planetary nebula, there is no room for god - the creator of man.

This left a vacuum. Until then, there were two realms, earth and heaven. Man lived on earth while god inhabited the spiritual realm. As science had made a convincing argument for the absence of god, far more convincing than the theological counter-proposals, the domain of the divine was in all probability, empty.

Being an inquisitive species, it wasn’t long before the first people began to settle this newly vacant territory. In dribs and drabs the squatters came to claim their stake.

The first one in was Nietzsche who not only acknowledged that "god is dead" but went on to explain what we should do about it. He exclaimed, "humanity is something which ought to be overcome" and proposed a social evolution of Homo Sapiens into the Übermensch or superman - a being who possesses the "will to power", a certainty of her ability to change the world. Thus, Nietzsche predicts that the future individual will possess omnipotence of god.

Next to enter was Jung who mapped the geography of this new territory and explained how it differed from our more familiar corporeal environment. Jung distinguished between an "individual psychology" and a "collective psychology", labelling the latter as "a reservoir of the experiences of our species". This "objective psyche" as it was later known is common to everyone and has a better sense of the self's ideal than the ego or conscious self does. It thus directs the self, via archetypes, dreams, and intuition, toward self-actualisation.

The average individual didn’t have direct access to explore this divine realm of collective consciousness until the 1960’s. Yves Klein lead the way for an entire generation to “leap into the void” now that there were two newly available techniques for entry. The first was the practice of transcendental meditation which was imported from the east and popularised by the Beatles. People learnt the techniques necessary to experience "Nirvana" first hand. The second was lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) which had been discovered by Albert Hoffman 30 years previously and was rapidly gaining popularity as a recreational drug. Fuelled by the spirit of exploration encompassed by Huxleys book "The Doors of Perception" people en masse visited the infinite reality.

In the 1976 book “The Selfish Gene”, biologist Richard Dawkins noted that humanity was starting to leave the vector of biological evolution in favour of cultural modification. He created the concept of a meme, a unit of cultural evolution analogous to the gene as a unit of biological evolution. Whereas the gene was the basic unit of information defining the nature of a species, the meme served a similar role carrying cultural information in the collective psyche. Just like genes, memes occasionally mutated and only the ones useful to the evolution of the Übermensch were selected for replication.

By 1984 (an auspicious year for the world to change) we had a fully conceptualised collective reality existing apart from the corporeal with its own geography, biology and culture but no way to live in it long term. Any visits were either due to a spiritual ritual or by taking LSD or one of the many psychedelic drugs that had been discovered since by Alexander Shulgin. Both vehicles to the Olympian Universe were infuriatingly temporary. Then William Gibson then wrote a book called Neuromancer and proposed for the first time the concept of Cyberspace:

"A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation. A graphic representation of data abstracted from banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity."

Within 5 years Timothy John Berners-Lee had invented just this and named it the Word Wide Web. It is still today a little unwieldy, a fact illustrated by Douglas Adams when he said, "The World Wide Web is the only thing I know of whose shortened form takes three times longer to say than its long form". However a fuse has been ignited which will elevate humanity into the state of the Übermensch. After only a decade and a half of development we have already seen our lives change in unimaginable ways. We have instant access to the entire embodiment of human knowledge and are getting increasingly closer to an equal access to all minds. We communicate in ways that we never dreamed possible and a collective consciousness is beginning to form out of the haze of technology.

This is the world we now live in. A world where both the virtual and physical are becoming equally real. Where relationships between people do not depend on physical presence or even the ability to speak the same language. Where ideas and concepts exist outside of the brain of the individual in the collective mind of society where we call them memes. It is a world where a digital child is a serious prospect. If people can have cyber sex then why not cyber offspring?

Could it be that the digital child is really the result of natural selection? The artist rather than being the creator has simply been used by the “selfish meme” for its own survival? Maybe the Übermensch has no biological substance but consists purely of information. Emerging out of the “primordial soup” of zeros and ones “Homo Superior” is first glimpsed on the wall of an art gallery.

Doing Something

According to memetic theory, a meme (IPA: /me:me/, IPA: /me:m/ or IPA: /mi:m/) — a unit of cultural information, cultural evolution or diffusion — propagates from one mind to another analogously to the way in which a gene propagates from one organism to another as a unit of genetic information and of biological evolution. - Wikipedia

I have been thinking about the concept of a meme quite a lot recently. I'm actually in the process of writing something about how the left can use memetics to its advantage and then this came along...

I always had a gut feeling that history would remember me for something. Now I know what. It seems that during a lengthy and exhausting discussion under one of my photographs on Flickr, I accidentally created a new meme:

Reverse Zionism - The concept of accepting ones role in the collective liability that the Jewish people hold for the injustice committed by the Zionist movement. Whereas a Zionist might move to Israel for the purpose of strengthening the Jewish state, a reverse Zionist comes here with the intent of trying to repair the damage caused by his or her co-patriots.

When people ask with some incredulity why I am in Israel. I usually answer "I came for a woman, we broke up. I'm not sure why I'm still here". Maybe the answer is, at least in part, Reverse Zionism.

Now I just have to work out what to actually do!

Apollonia (three stories)

She sent an SMS that simply read "I need you". I got on a bus and left the city for the first time in weeks.

Her apartment had the atmosphere that comes after generations of habitation. Her father built it and it had always been her family home. It fit her like a pair of sneakers just before they fall apart.

On the kitchen table was the disorder of family life. A blue tablecloth under a box of small preserved cakes from a recent trip to the east and a scattering of take away-menus. Amongst the mess was the ammunition. Two boxes of squat round tipped bullets from the days of mandate Palestine, a small artillery shell and what looked like some sort of grenade. It seemed normal to her that they should be there. There have always been plenty of weapons in the Levant.

We drove to the beach. As I sat there, aiming my camera across the curve of her bare thigh to the seascape beyond, my mind wondered back to other times I had been to this place.

I remember feeling that my father had a sense of purpose as we strolled across the beach. Israel was strange and new. He can’t remember why he brought an 7-year-old child to this place. It wasnt close to where we were staying and it isn’t on the tourist map. He told me that the ruins were from a Roman glass factory that tumbled down the cliff into the sea. He was wrong. He can’t remember why. The truth about this middle-class suburb, where chunks of crusader castle lie scattered across the beach is a truth of a thousand years of war.

21 years later I stepped down from the plane onto the steaming ashphelt. The humidity hit me like a wall. My mouth was dry and my heart felt like it was having trouble keeping the beat. I was going to see her for the first time in months. She was standing there, outside the customs hall in a white linen dress. Face calm, mixed emotions etched into her eyes. We got in the car and drove straight to the coast. I was excited. I had never before lived by the beach. She led me down the cliff and lay a blanket over the sand and pebbles. Huge chunks of stone wall sat in the sea. I had the feeling of being here before. I hadn’t been to Israel since I was a child.

A pair of helicopters flew past loaded with guns and bombs. She leaned closer and whispered in my ear "welcome home".

Gas

Until I was in my twenties, I couldn’t burp. After drinking a can of Coke I could feel the gas raising up inside me and then some reflex mechanism would make me swallow it back down.

That reflex was installed in my young mind by my parents. Since early childhood they would shout at me every time I let out gas. I would be labelled vulgar and uncivilised. As a result I developed the unhealthy reflex to fit with the social values instilled in me.

At the age of twenty-two I spent a week in a remote country farmhouse with my then girlfriend. The nights were moonless and after sunset, impenetrable darkness would settle around our little island of light. The romance was palpable.

One of these nights we were lying in bed after a home cooked meal. I was feeling physically uncomfortable due to my inability to burp. This was nothing unusual. It was then that my girlfriend decided to teach me how to release the pressure. By the time the sun started to show itself in the dawn sky. I was able to let out tiny but significant burps. After a few weeks of stuffed crust pizza and Coke practice sessions, I was getting pretty good at it and today I burp with pride.

I never however, learnt to cry. My eyes can well up but the flood never comes. It is a more powerful social force than parental etiquette which stops me, even today from expressing my sadness with full-blown tears. It’s a shame because there is a lot to cry about.

I would like to cry about this:

Tear gas is the common name for CS or 2-chlorobenzalmalononitrile, a relatively non-lethal weapon used effectively throughout the world by police forces to control riots and disperse threatening crowds. Its effects include irritation to the eyes, nose and throat causing temporary gasping, coughing and excessive tearing. Its use by military forces is forbidden under the Geneva Convention and the Chemical Weapons Convention of 1997. However during the first year of the Al-Aqsa intifada the IDF used 120,000 tear gas grenades against Palestinians. Since then the use of CS gas by Israel as a form of collective punishment has increased. Soldiers are regularly observed throwing 25gram tear gas grenades into enclosed spaces such as hospitals, stores and civilian homes in spite of the manufacturers warnings that such practice can lead to lethal overdose. CS gas is also used extensively to dissuade both Israeli and Palestinian civilians from exercising their right to non-violent protest against the building of the security fence.

I did what I did as a symbolic gesture to acknowledge this reality. I did it in solidarity with the Palestinian people, ISM volenteers and Israeli avtivists who are gassed regularly as a punishment for opposing the occupation with words and thoughts. I did it becasue I had no other way to cry.

I sat down in front of my camera and exposed myself to a dose of CS.

Revenge

How many Arab lives does it take to avenge an American life?

Every 9.62 days, there is an equivalent amount of casualties in Iraq & Afghanistan as September 11th

Exogamy #1

From the exhibition literature:

The name “Exogamy” is a term used by Anthropologists to refer to the practice of intentionally breeding outside of one’s cultural or ethnic group. The artist chose to examine this concept with a body of work heavily influenced by the his own experiences growing up in a closed and xenophobic religious community and, more recently, as a witness to the violent tension between Jewish residents of Israel and Palestinians refugees in the Occupied Territories - largely the result of interracial segregation. The work's objective is to enable the artist to “exogamisze”, or metaphorically reach out to a wider community through the practice of digitally merging his own self-portrait with those of others.

The creative process in use (known as "morphing" in the visual-effects industry where the artist worked for many years) mirrors the genetic creation of a child, synthesized from both parents DNA. In this case however, the raw material of life is contained within pixels rather than chromosomes. The facial features of each “digital child” do not belong to either one parent or the other but possess an entirely new and unique form, derived from information contained in a pair of photographic "parents". Sexless and often without clear gender, the resultant beings appear real in all ways but in actuality have never existed outside of a single photographic expression.

Taken together, the work forms a distinct body, each tableaux resemble the artist in some way while retaining much of the donor parents look. Although the gene pool is selected from across racial and social economic groupings, the child images homogenize into a uniform collective that defies easy categorization.

Exogamy #1 was shot over two sessions in a London nightclub. The subjects were strangers to the photographer who agreed to sit for a portrait after a brief explanation of the project. Rather than use a private area to set up his photographic equipment, Mike chose a space next to the bar where the creative process could be witnessed by everybody present. By doing this, the cathartic creation process was enacted as public performance.

Images from the series: