"A Civilian Occupation: The Politics of Israeli Architecture" at Storefront for Art and Architecture - New York - Exhibition - Review

Art in America, July, 2003 by Jessica Ostrower

Since 1948, the Israeli program has largely remained the same--to establish a Jewish state in a predominantly non-Jewish area. Architecture and urban planning, fundamental to the Zionist project, were endowed with both practical and symbolic roles. The Tel Aviv-based architects Rafi Segal and Eyal Weizman criticize settlement architecture in the occupied West Bank, concentrating on the immense expansion there after the 1977 rise to power of the Likud party, for its infringement on the Palestinians' territory and human rights. "A Civilian Occupation: The Politics of Israeli Architecture" is an exhibition and eponymous catalogue developed by the team for the 2002 World Congress of Architecture in Berlin. Censored on the eve of the presentation by the Israel Association of United Architects--they deemed it "too political"--Segal and Weizman recently presented a modified version of their project in New York. The show included a range of photos, maps, data, explanatory wall texts and a video, as well as several of their provocatively designed and controversial catalogues.

For Segal and Weizman, the key to understanding the erection of settlements throughout the West Bank is the geography of the land and its politicization during the building process. In a color-coded map of the West Bank, displayed on an 81-by-51-inch lightbox, produced by Weizman in coordination with B'Tselem (the Jerusalem-based human rights group), one can see the dense accumulations of settlements surrounding preexisting Arab villages.

Central to the architects' argument is the trope of the mountain-top. Symbolic of spiritual uplift, the peaks and fertile slopes of the biblical lands of Judea and Samaria are also strategically and militarily valuable. Occupying the mountaintops--what Segal and Weizman term "vertical colonization"--gives settlers optimum surveillance over the Palestinian villages below, while also affording them spectacular vistas of the picturesque landscape covered by Palestinian-owned olive orchards and orange groves in the far more fertile valleys below.

Along a wall was a timeline presenting dozens of schematic renderings of settlement plans arranged horizontally according to chronology and vertically according to their topographical height. The wall text nearby (one of several throughout the show that provided vital, and often biting, commentary) described this "Battle for the Hilltops" in which settlers illegally seized the land and established facilities. On a facing wall were 21 aerial photos taken by Peace Now, an Israeli activist group, of various settlements. The settlements, serpentine arrangements of identical buildings often enclosed by roads or walls, loom ominously over the Palestinian villages peppering the slopes below.

The narrow gallery interior culminated in a wall-size panoramic photo of Beit Sahur, an Arab town in East Jerusalem, taken from atop Har Homa, an outlying hill. The photo is breathtakingly beautiful: the light is diffused, the scene tranquil. But then, as we exit the gallery, walking past the cityscape, we encounter a crisp black-and-white video on a monitor placed on the floor. An untitled and anonymous contribution (2002, 4 1/2 minutes), it portrays a seemingly random bulldozing of a paved Palestinian street in Bethlehem. The gray monotony of the devastating wreckage made for a shocking contrast with the glittering vista we just left behind.

[The show will travel to Kunst-Werke Berlin as one component of the larger exhibition, "Territories," on view Jun. 2-Aug. 24, 2003.]